Pay No Attention to the Rat in the Corner

It's Monday morning, and my students and I are sleepy as I put up the next artifact. We have been analyzing various "artifacts" for their tone. It's been fun, since the artifacts are multimedia; the first three were songs, the next are pictures, and later we'll watch some movie clips and read from the novels we've studied. My students, predictably, are excited to watch any amount of a movie on a Monday morning, no matter how brief or unsatisfying. I, also predictably, am excited to talk about tone, this sophisticated literary concept that I've never quite gotten to with ninth graders. This will be the year, I think optimistically, as I provide mini-definitions for words like "sardonic" (dark and sarcastic) and "lugubrious" (sad... really sad... kind of ridiculously sad).

I like talking about tone because it is a concept that we can carry beyond the abstractions of literature into the broader world of all artistic expression. I daydream about these kids, in eight years, standing in the Tate Modern in London and discussing the tone of cubist paintings. Then they will go to a cafe and discuss the tone of Ezra Pound as opposed to T.S. Eliot, before taking their tone-aware selves to the movies, where they will undoubtedly be watching for shots, acting, and setting that denotes a specific attitude toward life, the world, suffering, etc. Tone, in other words, is the gateway into several conversations that deeply interest me.

As we finish up with the three songs--all from movie scores, all instrumental--I put up a picture. It is from a masterpiece picture book, loaned to me by our zealous librarian, called The Arrival. The pictures are dusky, hazy dreamworlds, each filled with a play of light and darkness that inspires and delights. I want to sit with this book for hours, just making up stories. So, on the document camera, anticipating their squeals of appreciation, I share the first picture with my students.

"OK," I say, watching them shift in their seats to see the picture reflected on the overhead screen, "Write down some words to decribe the tone of this picture. Then, write down--specifically--what about this picture gives it that tone?"

I expect them to begin writing immediately, since the picture is a glowing scene of a family eating supper together. The tone seems clear to me. Instead, they are staring, perplexed, at the screen. I glance back at the picture and see the problem.

In the corner of the picture is a large creature that can only be described as a rat. It doesn't exactly look like a rat, since it is as big as a dog and has batlike ears, but it is pale in color and has a long, ratlike tail. It lingers in the corner of the happy family tableau, smiling and perhaps hoping to catch a scrap from the table. If it were a dog, it would fit easily into the scene. But it's not, not a dog.

"Um," I hesitate, wondering if I should draw attention to the alien creature. "OK, to do this right, I need you to not worry about the big rat in the corner. It's not there. Can you do that?"

Students are shaking their heads. No, we can't to that. Of course we can't. There's a sort-of rat in this picture! That changes everything.

I have to laugh, and resist the temptation to turn this experience into a metaphor for some aspect of life or teaching. Some kind of elephant-in-the-room scenario. But I won't. Because for now it's too funny, too ridiculous, the contrast between my rather pretentious tone lesson and my students, valiantly trying and obviously failing to ignore the giant rat-thing that drives out all thoughts of high literary jargon, pulling them from abstraction into bizarre imaginations.

Homes

"We didn't always live on Mango Street."

Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street


It's Tuesday night I am lying on my bed and catching up on some reading for my LA 9 class. I gave this writing assignment ages ago--last week, maybe--and I hadn't found a spare moment at school to grade them. I continue to be amazed at how difficult it is this year to find quiet space for things like reading pages and pages of student writing. This afternoon, a time that I had set aside for grading, I weighed the benefit of staying late at school against that of going for a run in the park on this cold, clear October day. Oddly enough, the park was victorious. But then the assignment followed me home, here to my bed, where words blend chaotically with the pattern of my bedspread in this pleasant room.

I've asked my students to mimic the first chapter of Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street, a story of a young girl growing up in a Latino section of Chicago's south side. As we finished the chapter, in each class the conversation was the same:

"How many of you—raise your hands—have lived in the same house your whole life?”

In each class there were fewer than three raised hands. I knew this. A third of them were born in different countries, and another third are the first of their family to be raised in the United States. For the rest, I know that moving houses is as common as changing grades, and perhaps as frequent. My students and I have probably known hundreds of different homes all over the world. “We didn’t always live in…”

"Who can finish that?” I asked hopefully. “Where didn’t you always live?”

All day the answers poured out eagerly:

"Um… here. I did not…always… live in Seattle, before that London, and before that Somalia…”

“Oh, right. We din’ always live in… Northgate? Does that work?”

“Sure. Neighborhoods count, too. Or even streets. I could do it, too. We didn’t always live on 34th Avenue…”

“Where’s that?” someone interrupts.

“Magnolia.”

“Oh, right. I went there once.”

“Me too. I live there. Don’t interrupt me.”

“Sorry.”

“So, I didn’t always live on 34th Avenue. Before that it was 97th Street, and before that… um, 19th. And before that it was Emerson and before that Sixth Avenue and before that North 66th Street.”

“That’s a lot of streets.”

“I move a lot,” I shrugged.

“Me too,” a student agreed from the back.

“So you know what she’s talking about. Now, I want you to write it. Your version of this chapter. It’ll be different for everyone. Some of you have moved around Seattle, and some of you have come from other countries. It doesn’t matter how far, even. This is about change, about home, moving. So, get started. In your notebooks.”

Write they did. For most of these classes I traced dizzy paths of assistance, repeating the same hints and questions to the perpetually confused, directing my students again and again back to the book for guidance. They borrow syntax from Cisneros and from my version, which I leave on the overhead as they write, but the stories are their own. I glance down occasionally at a sentence or two, or read a few paragraphs when I have time, but mostly I flit from student to student, helping with micro-problems and hearing little of the scope of these tales.

Tonight, two-thirds of the way into grading, I am weighed down by the magnitude of what they have written. I should have guessed that when I asked them to write about homes and moving and dreams I would in turn read tales of those same things. And that the stories they told, my students, would not be like their sparkling fantasies, which made me laugh for hours last month. It's so much easier, I remind myself, not to ask these questions. Keep the class in the realm of hypotheticals and abstractions, fantasies and academics. I could have avoided the weight of their writing, simply by choosing a different assignment. Write about a good day, I could have asked. Write about food traditional to your culture. Instead I had to ask about moving. They wrote exactly what I asked. These are stories about exile, loss, and upheaval. How foolish of me to expect the same cheery story of young-adult apartment hopping that I had used for their example. I feel honored but weary as I read their honest words.

From my students I learn of hopes thwarted and expectations not yet fulfilled, but disappointment is not the only tone. There are moves that seemed at first like the end of everything, only to lead them to places that they came to love. There are homes that were plain and small but surrounded by neighbors who spoke the same language and chatted in the front yard. There are apartments filled to the brim with people, but the people that my students love best in the world.

I look around my apartment, looking up from the stack of papers. It's not forever, this home, like I wrote in my own chapter. Not the home I dreamed up when I was in ninth grade. Though I have not lived through the same suffering, I find that their voices are telling my story, too; their longings for permanence, safety, and wholeness are mine as well. And with them I see great beauty here, in this temporary place, which is home for now.

In Print

"My name's on this."

The student has his finger on an article in our recently-published student newspaper, smudging black ink with insistent forefinger as he points out the byline. He, like the rest of my sixth period journalism class, has the issue spread out on his desk. The classroom, usually hummingly busy, is silent this afternoon, as the staff of eighteen students, one teacher and one intern examine the fruits of the last four weeks of hard work.

"I know," I reply. "You wrote it." This seems self-explanatory to me; I can't tell what he's getting at.

He shakes his head. "Well, yeah. And now it's... it's here. In the paper!"

His surprise makes me smile. A late entry into journalism class, he wasn't one of the ones who registered last spring, those passionate seniors with heads full of vision and news leads pouring from their fingers. He arrived a week after school began, regretfully returning to Ingraham for the second year. Given an apparently sparce choice of open electives for sixth period, he must have shrugged and chosen this one without much idea of what it would be like. Since he was a former student, I was aware of both his vast capability and sketchy attendance record, so on his third day I assigned him to write a brief article explaining the electoral college. Now it's this article--with his name under the headline "The Electoral College: What is It?"--that holds him transfixed by the miracle of publication.

At the beginning of the year, one of the senior visionaries declared that a student newspaper was important because it gave many students the opportunity to be published. I remember being impressed, but not taking much time to consider the value of that point. Today I understand what they meant, as I watch this student experience, for the first time, the paradoxical exhilaration and vulnerability of having his words read by others.

Empress

You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you

"All is Full of Love," Bjork

I am sitting dazedly on the floor when the activity coordinator calls my name over the gym PA system.

I'm on the floor because the clothes I am wearing--a white sweatband, blue soccer jersey, and white basketball shorts--were not terribly fresh when I put them on an hour ago, having spent much of the last decade in a locker in the basement, and after a brisk ten-minute volleyball game I don't feel fit to be near the other teachers.

I'm dazed because an errant serve collided with most of my face, six minutes into the faculty vs. student volleyball game. I saw stars, like a cartoon character, and the rest of the ridiculous game blended into a hazy swirl of student cheers, exaggerated high-fives from my vintage-clad colleagues. Then, grateful when the fifteenth error led our speedy defeat, I collapsed to the cool wooden floor at the foot of the bleachers, happy to watch the rest of the homecoming pep assembly in quiet anonymity from the floor.

It has been a busy week, full of details and commitments. Along with the festive oddities of Spirit Week, for which I came to school in pajamas and dressed as a black queen chess piece, the regular and irregular routines of the day have worn away most of the luster and excitement that I would ordinarily take to such an assembly. The volleyball knocked away the rest of it, so that now I am watching the bizarre pageantry of the assembly with a detached and disenchanted gaze.

Then there's my name, in the middle of it, and I look up to realize that the activity coordinator is announcing the Homecoming Court. What is this? The kings and queens, right? I remember that at my unique school they not only choose two of these for each class, but the students have voted on two teachers, also. And that they must have chosen me. I'm the 2008 Homecoming Empress. I receive a plastic gold crown, a laminated certificate, and a ride in a shopping cart, pushed by the Emperor, another ninth grade teacher. With ten students we parade around the gym for a strange minute, amid waves and cheers and laughter. It's all so odd, and yet I feel grateful and encouraged in the midst of the strangeness.

I remember marveling with a few other teachers, at the beginning of the year, about those moments when I have experienced grace from my students. Times when I have been clearly in the wrong, and have asked for and received their forgiveness. I can't know this for certain, but I suspect that not all teachers bother with this, with the messy business of confession or apology. There are certainly days and weeks when I would rather not bother, when I would be content to gloss over mistakes and injustices, hoping that we could all forget. Sometimes it's not even pride that holds me back; a simple weariness tempts me to the easier disengagement. And yet I have never regretted these times, the conversations that humble me and bind us back together, conversations of renewal and healing. It is in these times that my students have surprised and blessed me most.

In this wild shopping cart ride in the gym (and for the rest of the day as concerned students make sure I don't lose consciousness in a volleyball-induced concussion), today I am surprised by their love. Calling me up from my place on the floor, flat and tired, to warm me with a reminder that we are in this together, these students and I, transforming day to day with such displays of love as a cup of tea, a crown, or an inquiry into the soundness of a recently-pounded forehead.