Sunday, October 25, 2009

new school

On my first day I got a list of forty names.
To pick up from their classrooms.
To do this job right I'd need hours, or days, but I have 10 minutes.

There is no time to make this a safe transition.
Clutching little tentative hands, holding little weeping shoulders.
wanting to make it okay, its okay, little strangers.
I don't know anything about you to know why you're reacting so intensely.
I know I'm another strange adult telling you where to go,
after a long day of strange adults telling you where to go.
How do I tell you I'm different, and am I?
I'm going to trust you, so we're going to like each other. But now there's no time.
firmly grasping their tiny hands, pushing the undersides of their backpacks down the hall
all I have to offer is an empathetic smile, crouched down to their eye level.

Its like herding cats down the hallway
these two swinging their clasped hands
this one dragging his backpack, that one dropping her coat.
one grabs each of my hands, one runs out front, one speeds back in the opposite direction.
There are other lines of children, and teenagers, and parents, and teachers.
They are looking at me and they are moving faster and quieter and in straighter lines.
I am so frustrated! My little masses breed anonymity.
I think or maybe yell at them: what is so difficult about being quiet and staying in line?!


Quickly I learn: there is always a reason
that catatonic little body in room 214 is afraid of the bathroom, so hasn't peed all day.
one's streaming tears are for his father, who some days gets off work in time
to pick him up early from after school to play chess, but not today.
She runs back down the hall because she forgot the leather jacket her mother just bought her
He drags his backpack because he was teased all day, he is weary and ashamed.
This one punches all the little Russian girls and wanders,
That one speaks openly of violence and greed- he's 5.
I don't know the reasons yet, but someone will.
Children aren't ghosts, they're full people.
What if all the teachers knew that its the system that's flawed, and the kids aren't to blame?

As weeks go by I often think: kindergarden is torture
yesterday they were all rain-drenched from a field trip with a backpack full of fresh picked apples and a pumpkins bigger than their head- they lug and skid them in my direction, this self-sufficiency is beyond them. Would it really be so hard for the parents to be allowed back up in to the classroom at the end of each day, so they didn't have to move their things up and down stairs?

When I share stories of tantrums and meanness the parents say
it's just that by the afternoon, they're so tired. she hasn't figured out how to eat lunch in 20 minutes yet, up until he went to kindergarden he always took a nap.
I assure them that their child isn't the only one.

Where is the optimism in this? Why have two months go by and I don't dread my job?
Because I know being an administrator means trouble-shooting: I spend much more time fixing the few problems than witnessing the many small joys.
Because a good education, or a good life, is not one where a person is always happy. That my children cry and scream and punch and crumble does not mean the school is bad, it means they feel comfortable expressing their feelings.
Because I am strongest in the face of some perceived injustice, and increasingly I see schooling this way.
Because children are beautiful, trusting and resilient. They smile and they crawl in my lap and clutch my arm, and let me hold their heads and waists and shoulders when they are serious or sad.
Because I am learning to do hard things that are useful, and which I will do better for the rest of my life for having done this job this year.
Because I believe that I am good at this work, and that there is such a thing as a transcendent educator, and that learning to be this is the same as learning to be the best version of myself.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Preparations for Departure

Last month I went to Philadelphia to see my old friend Dan's show in the Philly Fringe Festival. It was called Preparations for Departure and was created and performed by Colin Aarons, Jessie Bear, Emma Furguson, Daniel Perelstein, Sasha Shahidi and Jackie Vitale. I am writing a review for them, to use my small piece of public space to amplify the huge feat of their production. I'm sorry its taken me so long, Dan, its been a busy month.

Six friends play house in an old factory basement on the fringe of philadelphia. I wander the space with the rest of the audience and smile at how clearly it spells out this process: All the old furniture they could find, and their hand written letters arranged carefully in the nooks of this raw cement room. I melt watching Dan playing the youngest brother. The way these friends relish their scripted, imagined domestic life together makes obvious how intimately they know and love each other.

Collaboration is hard. As I watch the show I am astonished that these friends conceived this play from nothing in two months, and that they lived together while they did this. When they unravel their family, half-way through the show, it goes from slightly saccharine to ballsy: they stop time, rewind, slow it down, speed it up, fragments of the story bounce around the space and you know the chaos is entirely intentional. They are in perfect sync with each other. I make up stories that they did not intend me to see, and I gasp and cry. This is what intimacy is for, their show is an almost too explicit example. It confirms my conviction that big acts of sharing with other people are the most worthwhile kind of difficult.

Dan comments on the size of the audience: small. and lots of cast member's family. He scans the web for reviews that night, nervously. Where is the public? Where is the praise? They have worked so hard. I want for him the validation he craves because his show is beautiful, but feel saddened by the external craning towards success. I want it too. It is painful that the audience never gets out even a fraction of what you put in. How else could we frame our success?