Pedagogy, Politics, & Professional Practice

Build the Future, Fund the Fight

By this time, I hope you heard your union right!
Right? Public education under attack
You know it’s always time to fight back
Never with guns or knives
Cause teachers know what makes us wise
We use intellect, boycotts, and strategize
Sometimes do a dance
For critical thinking
Because everyone learns differently
But we all want the same thing
Collective bargaining, not begging
Health benefits, retirement
A profession!!!
It doesn’t matter what you win
If they always take it back
History of UTLA
There should be a test
But we are all inclusive
Even if you don’t score
We don’t show you the door
Cause we are in this together
Join the scene
The second largest school district in the nation
Is no vacation
But it is a party of rigor and learning
Equity and access
Vote yes for our dues
Think of it as a monthly tithe
To bridge the gap between rich and poor
We appreciate you and so much more
Remember you are the union
The students are the future
This is 2016
Marty McFly, Hollywood, it’s all here
Let us not forget the American Dream
Is not always what it seems
But we strive for a better place
Other than outer space.
Rodda Act you are alive and well today
Let’s keep it that way.

The Unicorn

For Jose

When I was young,
I loved unicorns.
Those horns contained magic:
the power to render poisoned water potable
and to heal sickness.
I collected them~
a stuffed one from our local dime store,
so large it took up my bed.
My Little Pony had an array
of purple and pink
unicorns to collect.
I lost my unicorns years later
when my mother lost her foot to diabetes,
chopped off from infection,
Julie decided to
dump talismans I held dear
from our childhood home.
We lose things,
but new things come in.
A student in a wheelchair
is hesitant to use the assistive technology,
which sits on his head
so he can type what is on his mind
to the computer screen.
A unicorn among horses,
he does not want to stand out.
How can I convince him of the truth
of Mandela’s words,
“Even in prison
a man can be quite free.”
We are not limited to this
physical form.
When Lara was killed in a car accident,
our family changed forever.
Two horns down to one~
her mortal coil shuffled off while mine still spun.
Let us support you,
my unicorn,
for we all have horns
which seem out of place,
but which hold magic,
holding space for the next step here on earth.

Cracker

Isaiah asked, “What is that bag on your desk?”
I replied, “My lunch.”
“Can I have one of your assorted crackers?”
In Elizabethan times, “cracker”
described braggarts.
Are you a facebook braggart???
The root of the Middle English “crack”
means “entertaining conversation.”
I told Isaiah I was not his mother.
In his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X remarked,
"It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country,
letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers,
sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind
that you and I are supposed to have civil rights.
There's no white man going to tell me anything about my rights."
Pejorative connotation?
I didn’t know what a cracker was in high school
until my best friend told me I was a cracker
and he was a spic.
Raymond Carver wrote Soda Cracker, an ode to teach.
I brought Isaiah
a bag of crackers to eat at his own risk.
My mother used to feed me stale crackers~
I feed my students etymology,
hoping they will digest
the ambiguities, complexities, and nuances of vocabulary,
my satire,
in context.

Eulogy for Mom

From growing up in our Church:

They drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the will to win:
We drew a circle that took them in.

When I was little, I asked my mom if there was a heaven and she said she didn’t know. But that she would like to see her mother again. She died on her daughter's birthday, as I was born on the day her mother died many years later. God works in mysterious ways with life and death, the crucifixion and resurrection.

One of my favorite stories she used to tell me was when she was little. She told her younger brother, “Come eat these mud pies. They are so delicious and I just baked them in the sun. He came and gobbled them up. Hours later, he was pooping out rocks and crying on the toilet. Her mother said, ‘What made you do such a thing?’” She laughed when she was little and she laughed when she was older, telling me the story to my horror that my dear mother had such mischief in her.

When I was growing up, I used to use her sewing cutting board as the walls to my tea cafe. We would go to the mall and have Hot Sam’s pretzels. She taught me to be a feminist, to always earn my own money so I could spend my own money--that’s how she bought the pool and the pianos. I have inherited her love of catalogue shopping, celebrity biographies, and make up. She told me about Red Dye Number 9, how it was the best lip stick color, but they discontinued it because it was poisonous. Thank God for government/consumer regulations, because I think even knowing it was poisonous, she still would have used it. She is a character out of a Tennessee Williams play. She always loved Elizabeth Taylor for her beauty, but she always wrote the dialogue of my plays with her witty lines. I used to talk to her as she would put on her white panty hose for work and her perfumes. She taught me to be a career woman with her own life and friends who went for a margarita after a long shift. I always wanted to be a doctor or lawyer to make her proud, but she told me, “I’m just glad you are alive--all I want is for you to be happy.”

She has been my warrior. When Handley Elementary was being converted to a school for the gifted and talented when I was in kindergarten, she insisted I be tested even though my teacher had not recommended me because I was quiet and shy with a speech impediment. In fourth grade, word was out among the teachers that you don’t say anything negative about her daughter. She fought for me to be in theatre because she wished she would have majored in music and wanted me to do what I loved. She used to tell me when you got really mad, she would see red. Maybe that’s why red roses and Valentine’s Day were her favorites. She is a woman of pure passion.

Mom, I will miss your daily messages. I will miss being annoyed at you when you called me too early and I will miss how you put up with me when I was crabby after a day of teaching in the inner city. There is part of me which lived for you. I am so grateful you were here this past fall and you called me every day to make sure I was okay. I will miss your one-liners. I know you are always with me, inside my heart and head, these cells you have given life to. When I feel lost, like the Runaway Bunny, you are always there to find me.

When I was catering in NYC, someone said, “No one loves you like your mother.” I told her this and she said, “That’s true.”

When I put her on speaker phone, told her I was trying to convince the guy I was seeing to marry me and move in, and she said, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Later, when I told the story to my best friend, we were laughing because he knew she wanted what was best for me. I will miss not having my mother to know what is best for me.

When she came to visit me in California, my students hung on her every word...she just has that star power, the life of a party. She befriended a stranger at my graduation who helped her find Audrey in a crowd among thousands because although she might not know how to use a cell phone, she could charm anyone she met. That day proved my faith that there is a force looking out for us and it all works out.

She carried our pictures in her purse with her everywhere she went. That’s how much she cherished us. Once she told me she never felt cherished. My prayer for her is that she now feels cherished. I know that I am not alone in the memories that I cherish with her.

How The School System Taught Me To Have Hard Hope

When I first read How School Taught Me I was Poor by Jeff Sapp, my cynical nature judged the author for his victim mentality. We are adults. We should be beyond our childhood traumas. But I related to the article, his writing triggering my own memories of hand-me-down corduroys from my sisters which were worn out in the knees. I tried to remember when I shopped for my first pair of new pants, but I couldn’t. I only remembered the pair of Easter pants my mother wanted me to wear which made me look and feel like a boy when I was already mistaken as a boy due to my pixie short hair.

In elementary school, the popular girls in fourth grade, who I thought were my friends, told me how they had discussed taking me into the bathroom and forcing me to strip like the scene in Judy Blume’s Blubber. Some higher force never had them actually carry out their plan, they just told me about it.

My mother made brownies for some fundraiser and wrapped them in tin foil. When she sent me to school with them, I was too embarrassed to give them to my teacher because they weren’t in plastic wrap like the other kid’s mothers used. I wanted to fit in. I came home with all the brownies, lying to my mother, saying the teacher didn’t accept them.

In junior high, my mom took me shopping. I tried on a pair of designer jeans which I really wanted, but couldn’t reconcile the cost.

Now that I am a professional, I can afford to buy my own new clothes. Diane told me that she and Carole wanted to submit my name for the show “What Not to Wear.” When she told me laughing, I felt that same teasing of the bullying chanting of other children as I approached the morning line in elementary school. Michele, my sister’s friend, yelled, “Leave her alone.” On “What Not to Wear,” they buy you a new wardrobe, but you have to throw out all your clothes. I tried to explain to Diane that I had spent many years and a lot of money shopping for my wardrobe through Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Just last year, I was able to bring myself to buy a pair of corduroys, after never wanting to wear them after childhood. A colleague once called me, “the patron Saint of the misfits.” Perhaps if you have never been an outcast, you just don’t know what it is like not to fit in.

Someone once said that they thought I would have been a very cute little kid. I didn’t show them my first grade picture with the lump in my hair. There was a picture of me in The Saginaw News making a valentine for Valentine’s Day. When my sister threw out all my childhood memories which were stored in a box under the bed of the room I grew up in, I mourned losing that picture, like I mourned losing all the good memories of a childhood I wanted to honor within a family who didn’t.

In the book, Wall of Fame by Jonathan Freedman, I read aloud the quote, “But as the gap between rich and poor widened in the 1990s, I spiraled downward into despair about the future of America’s children.” The chapter is called Hard Hope. It is so hard for me to have hope. A ninth grade student asked me, “Do you have children?” I told her that the man I had been involved with for many years had been through chemo and radiation for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. “What’s that?” she asked. “Cancer,” I said.

I haven’t written with my students for quite some time. The demands of the profession have not given me space as a creative writer. “Everybody blamed everybody else: Administrators blamed teachers, teachers blamed students, students blamed families, families blamed the system, the system blamed society, society blamed race, race blamed history, history blamed human nature….Nobody accepted responsibility.” (Freedman, 4) When I saw Angie’s blog from 2009-2012, I decided to keep writing with my students. Through hard hope, maybe we can all heal.

Flat Stanley

Flat Stanley and I have had quite the busy weekend. I wish every house guest was this easy to travel with and this cheap to entertain! He arrived Friday afternoon in Santa Monica, California where it is always sunny and nice. But you must have sent Michigan weather with him, because no sooner than he arrived, it started to rain! Now usually rain stops all outings for people in Los Angeles, but since I am from Michigan, a little rain never slows me down. We joined my friend Audrey who had complimentary tickets to David Ives play New Jerusalem at the West Coast Jewish Theatre. I had just shown my tenth graders the documentary, The Power of Forgiveness, with Elie Wiesel.

On Saturday, it was pouring rain, but we walked through the campus of UCLA for my National Board Certification class. After working, we decided to drive to Hollywood to the Director's Guild of America to see Mirror, Mirror. I loved it! I strongly suggest you and your friends see it, based on the story of Snow White. I didn't think it was quite literary merit with the stereotypical gender roles, but you can't be an academic snob every minute of the day.

Sunday it was still raining, so we streamed the service of Agape through my Mac laptop. Thank god for www.agapelive.com! Nothing like a little technology on a rainy day. After it stopped raining, we went for a walk on the beach after seeing the film Take Shelter from Netflix. This dvd selection was very ominous with the storm winds, almost foreshadowing! Michael Shannon, the actor from Take Shelter was nominated for a Spirit Award, which are the independent film awards which take place right here at the beach.

Monday it was back to work. I was so impressed by your teacher's assignment, I thought I would give my own version to my tenth, eleventh and twelfth graders! We'll see if they dazzle me with their brilliance. My students are Salvadorian, Mexican, Honduran, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Kenyan, Ethiopian, Senegalese, Creole, Korean, Native American and Irish. In fact, while I was not at Grandma's this Christmas Eve, I was with my adopted Salvadorian daughter's family eating panes con pollo.

Last on our list, was a USC event with Jamaica Kincaid, an author from Antigua who grew up in New York City. (I lived there too, but that’s another letter.)

I decided to make you your own flat Ms. Erudite so you can take me on some of your adventures. You can write back and tell me all about them.