One Tribe

"Embrace of Peace." George Tooker. 1988

Want to know something cute? Sure you do.

Ask elementary kids about race.

Ethnicity.

Culture.

War.

Last year I overheard a Kindergartener to a Third Grader:

“Why do they call Jaylan “black? He’s not black he’s “tan.”

“That’s just something adults say. But you’re right, he’s tan.”

Gold star for an answer that surpasses most adult intellects. I salute you my 65 pound mini-friend.

____________________________________________________________

My first year teaching an Egyptian student named Kareem was looking on the Internet at a desert photograph as a reference for a painting.

“Miss B, why are there houses?”

I look. Indeed, Kareem is looking at a picture of Iraq- cars, children, houses… and U.S. tanks. I was confused.

“I don’t know Kareem, it’s a city.”

“Yeah but isn’t this a picture of Iraq?”

“Yeah it is…” I say absentmindedly as I help another kiddo find a blue oil pastel.

“Well what I mean is… there are people there?”

“Yes Kareem… what are you asking me?”

“Like- kids and stuff. I thought the war was fought in the desert.”

Truth fires connections through brazen brain matter. In mere seconds I am struck by a mixture of amusement and sadness.

“Iraq has a desert climate. But there are cities there just like here. Did you think the fighting was happening in an empty desert?”

Kareem presses troubled lips together and nods. I begin wishing I wasn’t the one to tell this third grader that indeed- the war he was hearing about wasn’t being fought in a sandy vacuum.

“So what happens to the people?” He looks at me with big brown eyes.

It is in this moment- sitting on a red plastic chair in a windowless, cinder block room with 25 pairs of eyes on me- that I wish I had the phone number for the president. He ought to be answering this. Only Capitol Hill, oil companies, Wall Street, the Defense industry, and adult citizens pumped full of fear think it’s more “complicated” than this Third Grader is now framing it before my very brazen eyes.

____________________________________________________________

Three weeks ago at 2:30 on a Friday my last class of Fourth graders arrives. They come in and sit on the floor as they always do for directions. Bella raises her hand.

“Miss B, can I ask you something?”

“Why are we in a war?”

I look around at the others. They gaze back at me, as if this is the most appropriate question in the world to ask the Art Teacher during the first 60 seconds of class.

“Well I suppose, if you ask 100 different people that question, you’ll get about 100 different answers.”

I feel strangely proud of this diplomatic response. One that will not incite any agnry parent email this weekend.

She gives me a look.

An “oh you don’t know either” look.

Touche my little nine year old.

I try to do better.

“I mean, it’s a fight- just like a fight you might see on the playground- only much bigger. So think about kid fights. Why do they happen?”

Thus ensues a 15 minute discussion that has nothing to do with clay. Kiddos are the most attentive I’ve see since I first met them in Kindergarten. We never really resolve Bella’s inquiry. I awkwardly move on into a glaze demo and the topic is dropped.

The next week I put in “One Tribe” by Black Eyed Peas. We listen as we work, and one of the students says:

“This song is like a work of art.”

And suddenly a lightening bolt enters my cranium through the ceiling tiles of our vaulted hospital white art room. I hear brain matter sizzle- I swear.

“Would you like to turn this song into visual art?”

Every head turns towards me with saucer size eyes and wide toothy grins. I hear claps and muffled “yesssssss….”

Crap. Couldn’t the universe find a more seasoned, organized Disney Teacher of the year to send this idea to? Isn’t Ron White looking for a good multi-cultural art integrated lesson? Crap, Crap, Crap.

As I look around at them, I realize I’ve been handed an opportunity most teachers dream about. Hell- one that I dream about. Shit, I hope I don’t screw it up.

LINK!

Even the non-Art teachers get it.

Next stop- administration.

They Get It.

Trade. Juane-Quick-to-See-Smith. 1992.

H1N1 is ravaging attendance. Rather than glaze clay with half the students missing such a highly anticipated event… I introduce the next artist that will go along with their Native American Unit in Social Studies.

Juane-Quick-to-See-Smith makes art that addresses stereotypes of Native Americans. It’s appropriate since I suspect student textbooks are limited to teepees, Cowboys v. Indian warfare, and scalps on sticks.

In order to define such an elusive concept, we watched Susan Boyle’s first audition on Britain’s Got Talent. It was a pop culture reference they could identify with. Teacher eyes got teary as she watched all 3 classes erupt into unprompted applause at the end of her song.

When probed for times they experienced stereotype, candid responses poured forth:

“My bus driver never smiles, so we decided he was a grouch.”

“When I first moved here from my other school, kids called me “Mean Noreen” because I never smiled. Sometimes I was mean because I was afraid, but inside I’m really a nice person.”

A random fourth grade arm pats Noreen on the shoulder. I get goosebumps on my face, which kids never fail to notice.

“Yeah, I came here from Akron. Kids thought I was bad because I was from the city.” (Or perhaps because this poor kiddo is one of 3 black students in the whole fourth grade.)

“Me too! I came from Akron and and kids thought I was bad.”

“Yeah, I was really quiet when I moved here, and kids all thought I was shy.”

“Haha! Yeah Josh isn’t shy NOW!”

Class laughs…

Mina raises her hand.

“When I was in Kindergarten we moved here from Turkey. My accent was really thick and kids thought I was strange…”

I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I know 4th grade children are into double digit years of life experience. I know this, and yet I still wrap up today bewildered and slightly befuddled.

Whenever I’m afraid they won’t get it… that I won’t teach it in the right way… that a concept is too “old” for them… the boogers prove me wrong every time. They jump for the bar and clear it by many inches.

I like to think… somewhere in the hidden corners of my ego… far away from where other teachers or parents will ever see… maybe, just maybe it’s also because I’m good at teaching it.

Just maybe.

 

 

The Universe Speaks

I love this too much not to share.

If you visit tut.com you can sign up for free emails each morning called: “Notes from the Universe.” The site is headed up by motivational guru Michael Dooley. Far from cheesy… I truly look forward to these beautiful messages each morning.

Here is the one I received today:

When it comes to setting aside a little time each day to visualize, Brazen, look at it like this:

No matter how distracted you become or how confused you are about the process, the simple fact that you gave your dream this time and attention means you did it correctly, you did it long enough, and that by the time you open your eyes, already in the unseen, huge wheels have begun turning.

HUGE.

You think I’d make it hard?

Your humble servant,
The Universe

How do you not have a fabulous day after reading that?

Self

Frida Kahlo. Roots. 1943

The Creator gathered all of creation and said, ‘I want to
hide something from the humans until they are ready for it.
It is the realization that they create their own reality.’
The eagle said, ‘Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.’
The Creator said, ‘No one day they will go there and find it.’
The salmon said, ‘I will hide it on the bottom of the ocean.’
‘No, they will go there too.’ The buffalo said, ‘I will bury
it on the great plains.’ The Creator said, ‘They will cut
into the skin of the earth and find it.’ Then Grandmother
Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no
physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said: ‘Put it
inside them.’ And the Creator said, ‘It is done.’
- Sioux Legend

Littered throughout the language of philosophers, writers, poets, song writers, businessmen, leaders, and a (few) great politicians are similar bits of wisdom. Scooby snacks of knowledge if you will… Threads of truth that sustain over time, culture, tradition, and environment. One such strand that I run across again and again is: “Listen to yourself.” I’ve collected some a whole bunch for your reading pleasure:

“Not to the pages or preachers

But to the smallest flower

Growing from a crack

In your heart,

You will hear a great song

Moving across a wide ocean

Whose water is the music

Connecting all the islands

Of the universe together,

And touching all

You will feel it

Touching you

Around you…

Embracing you

With light.” –John Squadra

How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.–Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.– Amos Bronson Alcott

Yet listen well. Not to my words, but to the tumult that rages in your body when you listen to yourself– Rene Daumal

I observe myself and so i come to know others– Lao Tse

Not I – not anyone else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself– Walt Whitman

We are monumentally distracted by a
pervasive technological culture that appears
to have a life of its own,
one that insists on our full attention, continually
seducing us and pulling us away from
the opportunity to experience directly
the true meaning of our own lives

– Al Gore

When the fight begins within himself, A man is worth something– Robert Browning

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. ~Agnes Repplier

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am. ~Sylvia Plath

You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it. ~Pat Obuchowski

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed. ~The Sickness Unto Death

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.– Buddha

A wise man never loses anything if he has himself. ~Michel de Montaigne, translated

Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

“If you don’t use your mind, someone else will”– Alan Cohen

“More damage has been done to others by persons leading lives of quiet desperation (that is, doing what they felt they ‘had’ to do) than ever was done by persons freely doing what they wanted to do.”– Neale Donald Walsch

We must be our own before we can be another’s. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

We spend inordinate amounts of time, educating children to listen to what everyone else wants for them. Parents. Teachers. Friends. Governments. Societies. Which in and of itself wouldn’t be problematic. It’s just the distinct unspoken counter-message says: “Don’t listen to yourself.”

This isn’t about matters of walking in traffic or eating vegetables. A child certainly isn’t expected to listen to his or her own inner being in regards to bedtime, taking a bath, or crossing the street. We’d have dozens of dirty little boogers strolling down the interstate at midnight eating chocolate cake. I’m talking about matters of the heart.

Children are told thousands of times a day in ways spoken and unspoken… what you love, what your heart desires comes second. We look at children as “projects.” We look at them as a way to fix the world.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.–Carl Jung

All these little “projects” formerly known as children, grow up just trying to do “the right thing for everyone.” Get a job. Get an education. Get married. Get a mortgage. Invest. Save. Have kids. Get more education. Get a higher paying job. Go on vacations to tropical locales. And lay in bed at night looking out at the SUV in the front drive and thinking… I’m so lucky. So why don’t I feel lucky? Maybe it’s because you’ve been ignoring “who you are” for decades John Dear.

I have no purpose to this post. Except that I’m frustrated at just how little everyone cares to look at themselves. I love getting frustrated about this… it certainly beats looking in the mirror and getting frustrated at myself.

Oh wait…

Linksters

I think TFT is quite possibly the best hound when it comes to sniffing out great articles on the web. This one I printed.

MMT (Made Me Think)

La Promenade. Marc Chagall. 1917-18

“For hundreds of years we have believed that if something is logical in hindsight, then logic should have been enough to get the idea in the first place. This is complete and total rubbish.”— Edward de Bono.

Next to my pillow for the last week has been The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. Came across a piece by Edward de Bono on page 140 of the beastly thing. The last post I wrote was about how little we teach children in regards to their inner world (NOT, for the record, cranky teachers who eat 9 year old egos for lunch…)

De Bono believes that teaching students “how to think” is as important (if not, ahem, more) than teaching Math/Science/Language Arts. He says crazy things like:

“Thinking should be a deliberate act, rather than a reactive one.”

And… “Language has been the biggest help, and the biggest barrier to human evolution.”

The piece I’m posting is a blatant cut/paste until I can find shreds of time bigger than a fingernail clipping to blog. I don’t know if I’ll be sent to the principals office for copyright infringement… but I’ll give credit and see what happens.

Enjoy………………………………………………

We don’t think in words. The temptation to equate thinking with language is because words are more palpable than thoughts. After all- I’m thinking- if I couldn’t talk to myself how would I know what I was thinking?

Thinking is hard work; few engage in it.

For those who do there are a number of ways of sorting, each with advantages and disadvantages. They can be broadly categorized:

Natural Thinking. This is fluid and undirected, it wanders and meanders, is subject to repetition and generalizations. The sort of thinking that goes on when we don’t think we’re thinking.

Logical Thinking. This selects a route and follows it to its conclusion. With this approach the solution is largely predetermined, so if you head off in the wrong direction you can end up painting yourself into a corner.

Pattern Thinking. This confines thoughts to operate within given rules. Therefore solutions are limited by the possibilities available within the pattern.

Lateral Thinking. This is purposeful in intent without specific aim. Freewheeling so it can reveal solutions which might have been overlooked in other approaches.

Grasshopper Thinking. (Brazen Method of Preference.) Most of the time our thinking jumps around alternating and mixing between reasoning which adheres to measurable responses, and imagining which allows unpredictable currents to play around with data. Producing electrico/chemical sludge.

If Ulysses James Joyce exploited the fact that we don’t think in words, and even if Ulysses is so complex as to be inaccessible (at least to me), it must still be a gross simplification of the mush of muddled thought constantly churning, tumbling and swirling around in our heads.

Paradoxically education allocates more value to logic and analytical skills than to imaginative conjectures. Thus law is held in esteem whereas art, or design is considered a fiddly, fussy, arty-crafty activity of minor intellectual endeavor. An attitude with an attitude- particularly perverse since analysis looks backwards while design looks forwards.

Language also plays its part. Have you noticed that when we don’t agree with someone we say: “I don’t think so.’ The ‘… think so’, literally indicating a prescribed route.

The conventional thinking we are taught (and conditioned to think) employs what Edward de Bono calls ‘rock logic.’ Rocks being solid, hard, permanent, inert and unchanging. Like bricks, rocks can be added on top of one another to build structures. However there is also ‘water logic.’ this is fluid and flows according to gradient (context), and assumes form according to space (circumstance.) If you add one rock to another, you get two; if you add water to water, it changes shape. Rocks analogous to a page of accounts and water to a piece of poetry.

The former has units which add up to a conclusion, the latter has images which conjure up a perception. One isn’t better than the other; it’s courses for horses.

To move from hod to pail do Bono suggest inserting an equivalent of the mathematical zero into our thinking. He suggest ‘po‘, a neologism derived from hy’po‘thesis, sup’po’se, ‘po’ssible, ‘po’sition, and ‘po‘etry. Confronted with a sticky situation one inserts ‘po’ into the equation, instead of giving a knee jerk res’po‘nse. This allows for time to generate new thoughts and ex’po’se fresh perceptions. ‘Po’ can open the mind to reveal ‘po‘tentials outside of conventional thinking and analytic evaluation.

The world we have around us is a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, unfortunately it has also produced problems we cannot solve on the same level of thinking at which we created them.

Alan Fletcher. The Art of Looking Sideways (Phaidon 1994.)

A New Kind of Class

Banksy

“I hope you find a job one day where you get to make silly drawings… because that’s all you’ll ever be good at.”

A teacher told me she said those words verbatim to a nine year old a few years back.

She should have added an asterisk…

*PS… I am not being supported by parents or administration with my extremely unfair work situation right now. My son is dating a girl who’s no good for him, my daughter can’t find an internship, and we can’t afford to pay for a fifth year of college. Plus I’ve gained ten pounds because teaching this year’s combination of kids is like horseradish, kidney beans and orange juice frappeed on “whip” for 30 seconds. And then drinking it. If you had taken out your sketchbook and been caught drawing during Math last year… I probably would have given you the evil eye and written a letter to your parents. Sorry kid. It’s not all you.

But she didn’t say that.

I asked what he did in response. She shrugged.

“He freaked out of course.”

Yeah. I guess he would have.

This is the world. I know this (now). Even if you’re seething… know that this teacher is as lovely as she can be unkind. I have hurt people. So have you.

I guess the point of this post is not to demonize anonymous teachers, but rather… At what point in his education is this boy going to learn how to emotionally deal with power struggles which make him feel like a bug on a car windshield?

By getting smeared by wiper blades a dozen times a day? Paying 100 bucks a session for a therapist when he’s 30? I’m sure a cranky teacher isn’t the first… or last person that will reduce his self-worth by a few milliliters. Why is educating children on their inner lives left to be stapled to a bulletin board with the title: “Rules of the Classroom.”

I have this… hunch, that a self-reflection class at age 10 would have been a lot more effective than sobbing into a phone at 3 am, to my mother on a Tuesday…

“Will I ever get married…? Will I be an old cat lady? Will I ever get un-broke…? I feel like an imposter… I’m always afraid of being “figured out….” I can’t do anything right… I forget my keys in the shower for chrissakes…”

OK … I made that last part up.

I ask these things because my mother is a minister. A progressive, liberal thinker with endless compassion for the underdog. My Dad is one of the top ten calmest human beings in northeast Ohio. My family is functional, supportive, and above all… loving. I have a friend network that puts Phoebe, Joey and Rachel to shame. I have more love in my life than one knows what to do with.

And even I don’t get this “life shit” most of the time.

Why the hell was I memorizing the periodic table of elements when I was 16? Give me some fucking wisdom teachers!

I think that’s why teachers end up clutching styrofoam cups of coffee in the teacher’s lounge, griping about the kid who was coloring Star Wars figures on the Social Studies test. They really want to gripe: “Why the “f” am I giving a fill in the blank test on Squanto and Samoset? When I was in college I thought I was going to spread joy and peace across every classroom in the land….” I know most teachers want this. I know most go nutty when they realize the system isn’t going to allow it.

Wise, happy, self actualized children don’t grow up to fill their lives with meaningless entertainment, objects, processed food, depression medication, and alcohol. Our economy would collapse if we created classes like that.

Check that. Reverse.

We better stick with teaching kids to find “N” at point “G” between the X and Y axis. They can plot a graph to equate how to find their way out of the mindfuck they will experience when first conceiving how they will work under someone else for more than half their adult lives. Seriously. All they need is a Texas Instruments calculator and a number 2 pencil.

If you’re an Algebra Teacher feeling a bit put-out, I’ll do you one better.

Let’s teach students to arrange composition, format color, and recognize 3 out of 4 Impressionist painters… then create a National Standardized Art Test so we can water down the few classes that still allow kids direct access to untapped parts of their minds and hearts during school hours.

I mean truly… I’m so ecstatic, I don’t even know how to end this post… except maybe an awkward, inappropriate conclusion that leaves the reader vaguely confused.

A Peek in Another Classroom

MC Escher

Thought provoking and humorous video over at Science Teacher Doyle’s blog.

Me: Off

Sabrina Ward Harrison

To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert: “I’m like a work horse when I write… I chug, and sweat, and curse…”

Which is pretty close to my experience. I’m hardly a ballerina. More like a water buffalo. Ideas are typed within an hour… and four hours later up it goes… pieces and parts conglomerated, patched, deleted, and re-spelled in a process comparable to child birth of the brain.

Last night I spent 4 hours listening to rain, and punching keys. I was excited about an idea that struck while serving tables during the day. I desperately wish to know if other people experience ideas this way. Like… poof… there’s the idea just as I refill empty water glasses. I imagine it would give me comfort if this happens to others. Not academia people, rather construction workers and McDonald’s drive-through attendants… the people I suspect have musings about world peace while pouring concrete and bagging french fries. At the very least, it would grant me a little more faith in humanity when I’m in passing a flat screen CNN rant at the gym.

But often if I’m too invested, the idea becomes more important than the delivery. And try as I might… I could not delete the pomp and aristocracy out of last night’s post. I sounded like a know-it-all… a CNN know-it-all. I deleted it around 3 am.

I woke up 5 hours later in a state of “bleh mixed with melancholy.” I trudged through the kitchen and began unloading dishes to put in neat piles. Doing dishes is a dreadful task that will suck up precious hours of “real living” once a day for the rest of my time on earth. Yet I begrudgingly admit menial tasks help calm cement trucks in my cerebral cortex… so I pressed forward with squinty eyes half asleep. Between stacking the bowls down came a poof… “Sit here and write about it.”

Really? Could you be a little more specific? There was no idea. No matriculation of concepts. Just a nagging. So I made some cocoa jasmine tea, and this is what came out. Is it profound? Nah. But maybe a tink more genuine. I wish I could describe the feeling of making something with “me turned off.” I always end up sounding like a New Age Motivational Speaker with nothing tangible to offer:

“Just do it from you SOUL. Live for the LOVE…”

I’m supposing that it’s for each to experience in their own time… rather than read a self-help book about. Or a teacher’s blog for that matter. I’m not good at waiting for wisdom to pull into my driveway. I keep hoping if I act wise I will “become as such.” Acting wise is tiring. I’m young, I say silly things, and I want some freaking permission. I imagine my own students want permission… god forbid I give it them… they might think it’s actually O.K. to fuck up.

I suspect I’m supposed to learn something profound from all of this… but wise Brazen checked out at 3 am last night… and really all I want right now is a shower.