Small America Watches the Inauguration

To everything--turn, turn, turn
There is a season--turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven

The Byrds, "Turn Turn Turn"

On Tuesday morning, 35 students, two teachers and an intern stare in rapt attention at the TV on a cart at the front of Room 120. In newer schools in Seattle, TVs are mounted into the corners in every classroom, providing a convenient space for video announcements and the inevitable class movies. It's been half a century since our school counted as a "newer school," but TVs for all is one of the less bothersome implications of our school's age. I've wired (or, to be honest, found clever kids to wire) my precious media projector to every medium imaginable, running DVD players, VCRs, computers, and document cameras from the box on the ceiling to the big screen in the classroom. On 1,460 out of 1,461 days, the media setup in Room 120 works just fine. But on that last day there is a presidential inauguration.

The teacher next door has brought over the television and his class of ten, which seat themselves easily in the back of my sparse second period. There had been some rebellion when my intern, a teaching student from a nearby university who is just beginning her third week here, got up to start the class. "What?" they cried in alarm. "We're not watching the inauguration? We have to!"

Standing outside in the hall, I'd heard her calmly reassuring the students, who grumbled while they dragged out notebooks, that we would be watching in just a moment, that the real business of swearing-in would not begin for fifteen minutes. They sighed, and began to respond to the oh-so-irrelevant words on the overhead screen, lyrics to a song written ages ago, which even then were stolen from that most archaic of texts, the Bible itself! What, I had asked in the morning, could these words mean to you today? I had intended it to be a reminder that the terrors of finals week were transient, that they did not need to fear the hard work of the next week because, like all seasons, it would not last forever.

I hadn't realized, several days ago when I wrote the lesson, the other significance of the statement. And yet all day I had heard from my students not reflections on their own academic lives--no one even bothered with the stress of projects and papers today--but expressions of hope for the changes in our nation. A great collage of voices, all declaring that this morning was the beginning of a new season, that the turns they saw ahead were for the better.

As the Chief Justice begins the swearing-in of the first African American President of the United States, I sit in the back of a classroom that is a small America, full of voices and histories and ideals that undoubtedly reflect those of our nation. We wait, all 38 of us, as the hand rests on the famous Lincoln Bible, the voice we've begun to recognize repeats words we seldom hear, the oath of this office pledging one man to work in service to the welfare of a nation. Though even the youngest of us have seen the abuses of this office, we are all moved by the depth of the promises our new President is making.

It all goes by so quickly. I wonder if it feels fast to the students, who sit here enraptured by Barack Obama's first words as President; I wonder if they feel the weight of this moment, and wish to savor it as I do. And even as I consider this, I remember that I do not feel it as deeply as others must, that I have not lived long enough, nor seen the breadth of prejudice in our nation, to understand fully the meaning of this day. Still, I hold my breath and listen, longing to hold onto this moment of hope, the morning I was honored to greet a new season with my students.

Prizes

"We're reading in a minute, but first we need to play a game."

The students, in the second period of the first day back from winter break, greet my statement with mixed reviews. Some of them are wildly enthusiastic (Yes! Finally!), others confused (Good. I hate reading), and still more apathetic (Whatever. I wish some music was on.) A few, however, are instantly suspicious.

"What makes it a game?"

"Is it fun?"

"Who wins?"

These kids, clearly, have had some damaging experiences with games. The deceit of typing programs disguised as video games and lawn chores dressed like contests! The horror of enjoying a word search until the very end, when they realize that all of the words have to do with mitosis! Oh, the wickedness of parents and teachers, who hide learning in places where it doesn't belong, in the sacredness of games, which are the rightful territory only of prize-lust and Machiavellian competition! We will not be taken in, they cry, by your promise of a "game." We just finished a three-week break! We know what real games are!

Oddly, is is the three weeks of break that have necessitated the game in the first place. Our winter break, already a long two weeks, was extended even further by a snowstorm during the final three days before, so that we left on a Tuesday, not knowing that we would not return to our classes until the next year. The last week, meant to be a week of finishing and tying off, readying ourselves for a relaxing break and a productive January, had instead become a frayed and tangled disaster, full of half-classes and last-minute adjustments. Worst of all, we had not finished our play, Othello, and now had to return to it after a break longer than the entire unit, to read the final scene on a Monday morning. As the cynics had guessed, the game was not as much a game as a review exercise. Caught, I shrugged.

"Everyone wins. It's fun. So open your journals to a blank page."

"Is there a prize?" one optimist persists, while the rest of the students sigh. No real game includes journals. Everyone knows that.

"A prize," I repeat blankly. Usually I would say no, but I feel guilty about the non-game. "Um, maybe. I'll see what I have."

The mere rumor of a prize is enough to get journals pried back open, pencils ready for instruction.

"What're we doing? What do we write?"

"Oh, right," I reply. Thoughts of prizes had distracted me from giving any real directions. "I need to you write down the last thing you remember happening in Othello--" Shouts of protest drown me out "--even if the last thing you remember is 'Othello married Desdemona,' you need to write it down. But try to get later than that. As close as you can to where we left off. And whoever gets the closest to where we actually left off wins."

"And gets a prize?" they press.

"Right. Gets a prize."

While they write, I wander over to my desk, looking for objects suitable to give as a prize. There are plenty of trinkets on my bookshelf, silly objects that have no purpose and have been there forever. I examine a rubber duck, a kaleidoscope, a "scapegoat" that you push pins into, but none seem suitable for the non-game. Desperate, with students finishing their answers, I head to the closet in the back.

This closet, which with its peeling wood-grain veneer and uneven wheels is the ugliest piece of furniture that I have ever claimed as my own, is an unlikely hiding place for ninth grade prizes. As the time runs out, I snatch at the first three objects that I have enough of to last for the next few classes, and return to the front of the room.

"What is it? What's the prize?" Pencils are down, heads are up and expectant.

I've never considered myself a good salesperson. I look down at the items in my hands and realize that this is going to be the improvisation of the week.

"Well, if you win this game you get not one but TWO bookmarks." I hold them up, an online learning community's promotional bookmarks, which the librarian had given to me almost a year ago. I get most of my prizes from the librarian. The kids squint at the bookmarks. Is she kidding?

"Bookmarks," is the blank echo.

"Exactly, bookmarks. But not just a normal bookmark. These are shiny, you know, and have these nice pictures on them." At this point the kids are laughing, both at the bookmarks, which are decorated with squiggles that look something like blue and pink ladybugs, and at their serious entry into the category of acceptable game prizes. "But that's not all," I add dramatically. "Along with the two bookmarks, I have, for the winner of this fabulous game, a... plastic fork!"

I hold a clear plastic fork out to my class. They stare. A fork. She's got a fork. Really, this is too much. A fork for a prize.

"Because you never know when you might need a fork."

"No really," a voice chimes in from the back. "You never know."

And the game is on, a game again. The bookmarks and fork do not fare so well in later classes, reminding me that improvisation is probably best when it is just that, used when necessary and not forced into all situations. But here in Period 2, their energy seems to raise the temperature of the room on this snowy January morning, as kids shout out events from Othello and we put them in order, all in pursuit of two bookmarks and a fork.