What Could Happen

There are two big questions:  What happened?  And what will happen?

I don't have an answer to either, but maybe here's a start:  on Thursday, I told my students that none of us, as yet, had any answers about this election.  I made each class spend five minutes writing down every question they could think of on index cards.  At the end of the day, I had a towering stack of cards, one that defied any attempt to contain its abundance:  rubber bands, paper clips, and folders were all useless and I ended up putting the cards loose in my backpack.

About a third of the questions were repeats, wondering how Donald Trump was elected.  Most of my students are from Brooklyn, have rarely left Brooklyn; they do not know a world where so many would vote for Trump.  Their incredulity rings clear in their questions -- why?  how?  What will happen now?

Other questions, though, get deeper.  My students are smart, perceptive, naive, funny and afraid.  Some questions dig deeply into policy and politics; others reveal vast, cavernous fears.  A sampling, presented without further comment:

Water, not rock

I've been trying to write this blog post for the last two weeks and I can't seem to start it right, so I guess I'm just going to keep typing.  I hope you'll keep reading as I try to figure this out.

I have a challenging group of kids this year.  I know this because everyone and their mom told me ahead of time that I would have a challenging group of kids this year.  I also know this because last year, I saw these kids walk out of classrooms with impunity, throw each other across the hallway in play fights that became more than play, swear with creativity and without compunction at their teachers and each other, and, worst of all, put their heads down, on their desks, in their cell phones, casting themselves out of the school building and away from our reach.

Balanced, home

During the first day of summer break, the custodians opened every locker in the halls of Oberlin High School.  The locker doors would stand open for a few hours while the custodians cleaned them out; they'd throw all the contents into a giant, industrial-sized trash can.  OHS was small and quickly traversed -- if you looked at a floor plan of the hallways from above, it would look like a lollipop on a stick -- and an enterprising seven year-old could easily investigate each and every locker before the custodians finished, skimming out treasures:  mechanical pencils with plenty of lead, a miniature stapler, an abandoned ugly clay ashtray from art class, a red knit hat.  The school was empty, save the custodians, administrators, and a few teachers who were still finishing up their grades and cleaning their classrooms.  The halls were ghostly-silent, and anyone who'd ever fought through their normally boisterous cacophony would find the whole thing eerie.

An Open Letter to First-Year Teachers

An Open Letter to First-Year Teachers (or student teachers, or would-be teachers, or all teachers, or those concerned with the care and maintenance of teachers):

Dear First-Year Teachers,

It’s February, and you may be starting to feel existentially overwhelmed.  I know I did, when I was in your shoes.  You did your student teaching, you spent what seemed to be an interminable amount of time in courses on theories of education, and now you’ve had your very own classes for about five months.  You may – and I might just be projecting on this one – be feeling the weight of the system, in a way that manifests as a combination of anxiety and a sinking, dread-filled pit in your stomach.

Outside Jew

When people ask me where I live, I say "South Williamsburg."  Then, inevitably, in an inept and snobbish attempt to distinguish my neighborhood from Fancy Williamsburg, I add: "Where the Jews live."

Then I get even more awkward, usually because of the startled look on my conversation partner's face.  What follows is an increasingly ridiculous and offensive ramble:

"The Hasids!" I blurt.  "I'm Jewish.  Well, half Jewish.  But I live in a super Hasidic neighborhood.  They hate me because I'm the wrong kind of Jew.  But not all Hasids feel like that -- just the Satmar, that's one of the sects, Hasidism has sects.  I mean, sects, like sect.  Not sex.  Anyway, that's the sect that lives in my neighborhood.  And maybe they don't even hate me, I mean, I just feel like they know that I'm Jewish and I have tattoos so that I can't be buried in Jewish cemetery, I guess?  Anyway, those Jews.  I guess I also live where other kinds of Jews live, because I'm Jewish, so wherever I live is where Jews live?  But, um, anyway, HASIDS."