Please Sit on the Grass

Explain one of the following metaphors from pop music:

"Love is a battlefield."

"I am a rock."

"I'm a slave for you."

Journal Prompt, 5/27/09


I've never seen a class this lethargic. The usually riotous pre-lunch class is missing a few of its more rebellious members today, and the loud ones who remain seem to have lost courage. Or energy, if that's possible. They are melting into their seats like birthday candles inside a car, shrinking to liquid at the horrible thought of writing poetry.

This is one of those moments of painful teacher-student disconnect, when our tastes divide us so thoroughly that we're looking at the same lesson from different continents of experience and prejudice. I love this lesson, all of these lessons on poetry with which we're ending the year. I am still thinking about the metaphor from Period One--"the past is a jar of quarters"--still stretching it into form like a Silly Putty poetry, and that was three hours ago. These kids hate poetry, or something that they think of as poetry. When we began the unit last week, when I asked them to write down the "point" of poetry, they eagerly discarded poems as the worthless pursuit of beret-clad, cigarette-smoking, finger-snapping layabouts. Not for us, they wailed. You can't make us, they told me last week, and today they're demonstrating their passion for passive protest.

We make it, somehow, all the way to 11:30, through the analysis of Sylvia Plath's "Metaphors" and a poem called "War," written a few years ago by a student at Denny Middle School. They are impossibly even more listless now than at the beginning of class.

"So, pass everything up. All of it. The poems, your answers, everything. All you need out right now is your journal and a pencil. Yeah, clear the desks. Good." Some glacial movements bring us to a semi-ready state. "OK, new question. Raise your hand... and I need everyone to listen... raise your hand if you would be willing to sit on grass?"

Four students raise their hands, roll their eyes.

"Four? OK, never mind then."

The class seems to sense the missed opportunity, and it wakes them up a little.

"Wait, what did you say?"

"I asked if you would be willing to sit on grass."

"Like outside?"

"Outside. It's really nice out, and I kind of want to honor the twelve of you that actually chose to come to class today. Even though you're all asleep. But if only four of you will sit on the grass, we can't go."

"Vote again!" they cry. "I didn't hear."

"Of course not. One more time. Who'd sit out on the grass, if we went out?" Hands start to rise, waving like the tops of grass. "We need everyone for it to work. Total agreement. And... there it is! Let's go."

It takes a while to get everyone settled in a circle in the grass. The students who'd promised so eagerly to sit on the grass are now finding ants and the remnants of this morning's dew, making them hesitant to come down to our ground level. Once they are in the circle, they roll around and crane their necks to talk to the biology class that is collecting plant specimens, or the the stray truant students who are using their skipping-class time to wander the grounds. It's really funny, actually, all the fifteen-year-olds in the grass, balancing notebooks on their knees and looking everywhere but at me. At least they're caring about something.

Eventually I write the beginnings of simple metaphors on a legal pad, then hold them up for students to see before they spent a minute completing it in as many ways as possible.

"This one is 'Night is...' And don't write 'Night is dark.' Why not? Do you know? Because 'dark' is an...?"

"Adjective."

"Right. Night is a quilt from your grandma's house. Night is the underside of a rock on the beach. Night is..."

We write for a while, and get very little done. They argue about adjectives, argue about turning their metaphors to similes, argue about having to write at all when they're outside. We finish three minutes early, and they argue when I make them sit down until the bell rings faintly.

"Come on. Three minutes relaxing in the sun. Live it up. My gift to you."

In sunlit silence, contemplating our differences but enjoying the same spring morning, at last on the same invisible page, I take in the reality of the lesson, not perfect and far from metaphor.

Prom!

The events coordinator for Woodland Park Zoo finds me at 8:15 PM. I have a zebra-striped table runner tied around my waist, and a long stemmed bouquet of green and pink flowers in my hands.

"Are you still ready to let everyone in at 8:30?" she asks me.

I examine the room. It's a food court by day, but with black linens and square vases and tropical flowers and the whirling lights from the DJ's table by the window, you'd never know it now. We're waiting in a safari, elegant and cool in the evening of this hot May day, for the guests to arrive. After almost six months of planning, it's prom night at IHS, and we're ready.

"Yes. Definitely let them in," I reply, nodding.

Prom is the first of four events that I have helped to plan as the co-advisor of the Class of 2009, and by far the most complicated. This business is far out of my comfort zone. Never a party planner, most of my birthdays slide by without much ado, as I shrink away from the detail-ridden process of inviting, arranging, reserving, splitting checks, and other complications. Prom 2009 has been full of complication: We've spent hours on the phone with caterers and DJs and photographers or in meetings with the Prom Committee, voting on backgrounds and themes and decorating schemes. Though the students have been deeply invested in this project, helping at every step of the way, we're the ones in charge right now, as the students are still posing stereotypically and ordering hip urban food in stately gowns and tuxes. With the room ready, we retreat for a moment to change into pretty dresses and cardigans, then head outside to wait.

The gravel walk from the zoo gate to the pavilion is lined with votive candles, flickering in miniature fishbowls. Half a dozen teachers wait along the shadowy path, sipping coffee and chatting about the end of the year, of past proms and future plans. The first students arrive and we applaud, cheering for the ironed and proper look of rumpled boys in tuxes and the girl who wears a backwards baseball cap every day, tonight donning a cocktail dress and pristine black curls. As the sun sets and the candles glow, we squint through the dusk at each new face, disguised but so familiar. A camera dangles from my wrist, but I've never been excited about interrupting moments to take pictures. And this, the true promenade on the way to prom, is truly a moment.

It's a moment for them, certainly, but also for us, the teachers who welcome our guests, our students. This is the first class that I have seen all the way through, from the first day of freshman year until now, just two weeks before I stand on the stage and call them up to receive diplomas. In a way, we've been waiting for this forever--but it only feels like a few minutes. I've had time to learn names and faces, a few stories and some quirky personalities, and now they are on their way out. Just a moment, these four years.

It is a night of effusive celebrations. Perhaps the lights are a little too bright, and the process of naming the king and queen is awkward and slightly silly, but no one minds. Mostly they are happy to be together; I get the impression that the details are just a colorful background for friendships at their summit. With a swaying last slow song--which I swear was the same slow song that ended my own prom, seven years ago--it's over and they pour out, laughing and talking and shouting "2009" into the cool night.

"All that planning!" sighs my co-advisor.

"All that money!" I laugh in reply.

"No drama!" congratulates the principal. "No drunk kids."

Only a few more steps and we'll be parting ways for good. Whether or not my co-advisor and I, both facing the loss of our jobs, make it back to IHS, these seniors won't be back. When I started all of this, I thought that four years was the marathon of education, long compared sprinting of camp ministry and even the middle distance terms of student leadership in college. Four years is ages to teach someone, I thought back then. It's true: four years is long enough to know someone well, to recognize handwriting and read expressions as clearly as words. But it's just a moment, really, from the Day One to this day, one of the last.

And we're carrying bouquets back to the car, reflecting on the night. Did they like it? Will they remember it? I know I will.

RIF v. riff

riff (rĭf)
n.
Music A short rhythmic phrase, especially one that is repeated in improvisation.

riffed, riff·ing, riffs
v.
To play or make riffs.


RIF  [rif]
n.
A reduction in the number of persons employed by a business, government department, etc., esp. for budgetary reasons.

Origin:
R(eduction) I(n) F(orce)



riff (n.)

The lions are dancing down the aisle. One is silver, the other gold, and they twist and furl themselves from the doors at the top of the auditorium, past a thousand frozen faces as a boy onstage beats a frantic rhythm and another—the lion tamer—follows with a mask and a fan. When the golden lion is even with my seat on the aisle, the head bobs up and I see the puppeteer brothers underneath.

Perfect. I’ve been asking to see this dance—which they always described energetic but abstract terms—for almost four years now. Always we get to May and I ask the older of the brothers why they don’t do it for our school’s Multicultural Assembly, and for three years he protested was too busy. Now he’s busier than ever, but time is running out: the head of the golden lion, all of the silver one and their masked tamer are graduating seniors. They’ll be gone in a month, leaving only the memory of the lions behind.

The Multicultural Assembly, always a high point of the spring, came too quickly this year. It crept up among the chaotic responsibilities of planning the senior prom, getting the newspaper out on time, meeting with parents teachers principals committees, researching journalism camp and resuming some of my responsibilities as a classroom teacher after several months of serving primarily as a consultant to a teaching intern. I came to school on Tuesday and realized that the assembly was Wednesday. I started to look forward to it.

Then, a few hours later, several of my colleagues and I lost our jobs. And I forgot about the assembly again.

RIF (n.)

The details of a RIF—or Reduction in Force—are not clear to me. Yesterday I did enough research to learn that I was not being terminated for any reason other than a lack of seniority in the district. The hope is that jettisoning dozens of young teachers may lighten the load enough save the leaking ship of a district from sinking under this year’s stormy, debt-ridden economy.

I’ve spent the morning listening to stories, some nearly legendary in their bizarreness, about what’s happened to me. A veteran history teacher recalls the media frenzy of a massive RIF that took place one year after I was born. An administrator tells me she was laid off and then hired back to her school three times in her first three years of teaching. Another staff member remembers being riffed and then getting a job at another district, even though she thought she might have been able to return if she’d wanted to.

“I moved on,” she said and paused, perhaps lingering on the abandoned path for a moment before she remembered me. “But we don’t want you to do that. We want to you stay.”

I’ve been wandering around the school all morning, running errands as I mechanically return to the duties of teacher, advisor and editor that haven’t gone away or become any less pressing as I try to regain my balance in light of this news. And everywhere I go the command has been the same: Don’t give up. We want you here. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

riff (n.)

The lions frolic onstage until they are replaced by an upright piano and a Rachmaninoff concerto. We hear “My Girl” sung by a barbershop quintet from the Special Education department, then a former student sings “My Heart Will Go On” with earnestness only available to someone who was an infant in Africa while I was in middle school and glued to the radio. Ethiopia and Eritrea have two separate songs, but the dancers are the same students wearing different dresses, a mixed group united to share both cultures with their school.

This is who we are, this Multicultural Assembly, an experiential collage, full of people eager to tell their stories. A few weeks ago, the journalists were considering the ways in which our school, never an athletic standout but with nationally ranked chess and rocket teams, was different from more “typical” high schools.

“You know, we don’t have one of those… you know, hierarchies here. The cheerleaders and the sports people, they’re not the most popular,” someone remarked.

And I love this about my school. The class presidents are in the school plays and the captain of the wrestling team is singing a Vietnamese pop duet on stage at the multicultural assembly. We cheer loudest for the Special Olympics basketball team and listen to podcasts of our Rocketeers on an alternative talk radio show. Wherever I look, students honor the gifts they see in each other, celebrating successes and uniting in the face of loss.

The final number of the show, called only “Hip-Hop Dance” features many of the same dancers from the opening lion dance. This is where they are in their element, in the whirling and falling and shaking of break-dancing. These are boys that I taught their freshman year, when I was a student teacher and they were fourteen-year-olds excited about the Seahawks in the Superbowl and the way their Mariner hats matched their shoelaces. In a month I’ll read their names aloud at graduation, shake their hands when they walk across the stage, and say goodbye as we part ways. They to colleges across the country, me to somewhere, to interviews or traveling or, as my colleagues ask, waiting here.

It’s the lion who really closes the day. Most of the way through “Hip-Hop Dance,” after the break-dancing bully has break-dance beaten down a dozen of his friends, the golden lion romps back on stage. It’s the past and the present, their heritage and their passions, colliding in a ridiculous battle at the end of my favorite Multicultural Assembly. The lion conquers the bully, writhes for a mighty moment, and pulls a vanquished enemy offstage by his foot, the true victor of the hour.

And I am grateful, not eager for it to end.