The Leaner

"So are you going to just admit this thing's dead, or what?"

New Reporter is towering over my desk, on the corner of which stands a withered orange tree in a plastic pot.  A transferring senior who needs a credit in journalism to finish out his incomplete semester from another district, he hasn't spoken much so far.  I assigned him to "review something... anything" for the paper since he came in after our production cycle began, but other than that we've had little interaction.  I have been running at full sprint, in journalism and my ninth grade classes, since school resumed almost two weeks ago, and to my shame haven't been terribly hospitable to the seven new students who've mysteriously arrived in various classes since Christmas.

Now New Reporter stands at my desk, commenting on my dead plant, the tragic tree whose welfare I actually looked into before leaving for Europe.  "Oh, it'll be fine," the expressive botany teacher crowed.  "Just give it some water before you go, and it will be great."  The other plants were fine, as spry and green as I left them, but the orange tree--a favorite of mine and the journalists--was not.  Now its leaves, as dry as tissue paper, cling hopelessly to the four brittle limbs.  New Reporter leans forward to look at it.

"Don't make fun of it," I reply with a sigh. 

"So, I have good news and bad news," he opens, changes the subject.  His jacket catches a leaf, which clatters down to the desk.

"The bad news is you're knocking my tree apart."

"No.  The good news is that I figured out a song to review."

"A song?  Oh, right.  You're doing a song review.  So you have one.  What's the bad news?"

"I can't get to it at school.  It's blocked, or something, and I can't listen to it at home."

"It's blocked?  Should you be listening to it at school?  What is it?"

"Tupac.  'Trapped.'"

"Hmm.  Tupac's good.  Let's see if we can get it."

New Reporter and I make short work of the Internet filter, which doesn't forbid YouTube for teachers.  I print out the lyrics, scanning them for overt scandal before handing them over to him while the video plays quietly in the background.  Meanwhile, some editors discover the dead tree, begin playing with the fallen leaves which give off an intensely citric aroma.

"What are you going to do with it?" they ask.

"I don't know.  It looks pretty dead, right?  Should I just, you know, throw it out?"

They look stricken, and no more than I feel.  I can't explain, even now, why the demise of my favorite tree spells such doom in January.  I feel like Jonah, mourning the loss of the waxy foliage of September optimism.

"No.  Not yet," Student Life Editor answers firmly.  "Put it by the window.  Give it a week."

I pick up the pardoned plant, but before I can put it down an unfamiliar student walks into the classroom.  She is holding a plant.

"Ms. D?" she asks.

"That's me.  What's up?"

The journalists are staring at the plant in her hands, a sultry maroon and teal affair, whose single stalk lurches almost sideways out of the pot.

"This is a flower for you.  From sixth period botany."

"For me?"  She nods.  "Is this because my tree died?"

The student shakes her head.  "What tree?"

"My... never mind."

"Yeah, this is for you.  It's not blooming, but it's a flower," she insists.  "And it's not dead.  It's a leaner."

"A leaner?" Back Page Editor asks, clarifying.

"It's a leaner," Botanist repeats, turning and disappearing as quietly as she'd arrived.

"Thank you!" we call after her.

But she's already gone, leaving us alone with the strange flower.

The next day, five students will gaze in perplexity at my desk, wondering how their partner in daydreaming, a lithe orange tree, transformed overnight into this piscine flower that looks mostly asleep.

"What happened to the orange tree?" they'll ask.

"The orange tree went back to the greenhouse."

"Then what's this?  Is it dead?"

"No, it's not dead," I'll shrug.  "It's just a leaner."

Students will try to "fix" it all day, only to have it flop  back to its recumbent position.  And I'll find myself trusting in yet another thing, trusting blindly for now.  This flower will bloom.  This semester will end.  It will stop raining. 

Someday.

Riding West, Looking East

Prague is hazy again as we board the train.

We picked Prague as a three-day diversion on our Christmas vacation—after much discussion—because it was historic and unfamiliar and should probably be covered in snow during the last week of December.  I’d argued strenuously that the parts of Italy we could reach by train from Austria wouldn’t be a sun-saturated, sipping-wine-on-a-piazza sort of Italy.  It would be a rainy mess that reminded us all too much of the Seattle we’d left behind.  Prague had in its favor a far-north latitude and seductive foreignness.

It’s not snowing, and in fact the city is living up to the other reputation we read sometime later.  “In the winter, Prague can be quite grey with poor air quality.”  On our first morning here, the spires of the medieval city peered mysteriously at us from behind a champagne-colored veil of lingering fog, smoke, and tourists’ breath.  One clear day, glorious to see from the top of the Old Town Hall clock tower, and now we are leaving, and again this city is sneaking glances at us through the gloom.

After the haste of a hundred people assembling themselves on the late train, the haste of saying goodbye to a dear friend who’s traveled with us for the last week or so, there is the ground-to-a-halt stillness of staring out of the train window.  The dreamy, quiet city slides past as my sister and I share a set of headphones, and soon we’re beyond the streets of pastel Baroque buildings, threading our way through the Czech countryside.

As I’d hoped, it is incredibly cold here, though the Czech Republic in general did not provide the snow of which I'd dreamed.  I watch as frost-enveloped pastures, chicken-restless yards and monochrome cars breathe behind curtains of fog, their outlines sometimes half imagination.  Whole ponds are frozen, their surfaces snapped to an unnatural halt.  I’ve never been anywhere so consistently frigid, and it’s never stopped fascinating me.

This southwest train journey eventually takes us out of the whites and greys of Eastern Europe, back to the green neatness of Bavaria, where friends are waiting with supper.  I’m thankful for a safe destination, thankful to see them after several years.  Still, I can’t deny that there is something irresistible about the empty tracks that run beside us, the ones that would take us further east, into places I’ve only read about.  Perhaps it’s childish or provincial, or maybe just the alloy of vivid imagination, compulsive reading and safe Western traveling habits.  I want to see more.

I’m remembering on the train, remembering these other ambitions that involved exploring.  There was writing, or teaching, or learning, all of them far away.  It’s usually easy to go home, whether home is Seattle—as it mostly is—or just a golden-windowed house in Augsburg, home for a few days.  And yet there are times when home as I know it isn’t the easy path, when coming back asks me solemnly to recall the faces and names, the calling and love that make life glorious wherever in the world I find myself, even if those places seem to be the familiar, the rainy, the predictable.  Glorious and, I know, not entirely mine to begin with.

My parents are talking across from us, but my sister and I can only hear tones over the exuberant notes of the Wicked soundtrack.  Holly snaps their picture and laughs.  Mom leans over to see a frozen river glowing dully behind the spiny fingers of a leafless tree.  Dad highlights the book of Czech history he bought in the Communism Museum yesterday.  It’s beautiful out there, strange and wild as it demands that I ask again what it would mean to live life on another continent for a while.  But in here, on the train with most of my family—a family of love and loyalty, faith and humor—it’s not so easy to imagine.  

Nicht so einfach, as my friends back on a well-loved Austrian farm would remind me.

So I can only pray, as the frost turns to grass, the snow to rain, can only peer through the fog and ask for the next step.

Trust and Round Trips

Trust is the daughter of truth.


I've never been happier that it's sixth period.  Today--the second-to-last day of school before we disperse for Winter Break--has been difficult.  Difficult in a vague sense because we're all a little edgy these days, a little worn out and short-tempered, looking ahead to the rest or excitement or trouble coming in the next few weeks and reacting accordingly.  Difficult in a specific sense because I've just finished hosting five fifty-minute parties for teenagers.


The parties are typical school parties: menageries of flavored potato chips, whole cities of two-liter soda skyscrapers, the driest of Swiss Misses waiting for transformation.  They get snacks, cocoa, drinks, and sit down in the large circle Period One made of the chairs, and we play games I've borrowed from a my heritage of camp and church ministry.  The kids like the games, are shocked they like the games, express their liking for the games in cries of accusation or shouts of boasting when they lose or win.  It's fun, I think, for them.  As for me, I'm exhausted by the time I get to my last class of the day.


The journalism students are having a party as well, but theirs is the low-key kind.  No games for these sophomores, juniors and seniors, who just worked incredibly hard to get their newspaper done (on time for the first time since I've been in charge!) in time to hand out before the break. I'm proud of them and we're all tired as we gather around a table of chocolate mousse, eclairs, Chex Mix and spritz cookies.  I've been trying to avoid gluten lately, so I content myself with my still uneaten squash-and-rice-pasta lunch, sitting down in my corner to watch and be quiet for a while.


Trust talks to people who need to hear her; she listens to those who need to be heard; she sits quietly with those who are skeptical of words.


Ninth graders never come into this remote corner of the room where I have my desk and computer, as barriers of desks, wall and windows enclose it on three sides.  Journalism students have no such scruples, and soon three or four of them have migrated over, bringing chairs and pastries and conversation.  They come without demands; I can speak if I want to, but more often I like to listen, and they're fine with that, too.  It's my favorite place in any social setting--being in the presence but not center of conversations that interest me and people I enjoy--and I'm surprised and grateful to recognize it here.


After a while Frivolities Editor (generally she's the Back Page Editor, but for this holiday issue we created new titles) turns to me.


"I made you a card.  It's this one."  She hands me a square purple card with a paragraph glued to the front.  "The quote is from this book that personifies character qualities.  I thought that the one that someone gave to me was amusing, and this one... this one sounds like you."  I thank her for the card, and she turns back to a conversation on convex geometric shapes while I read.


Trust rarely buys round-trip tickets because she is never sure how long she will be gone and when she will return.


It has been a hard week, month, year so far.  Not hard like when I began all this, the hard of knowing just what to do and when, what to look for and how to see and hear and be all at the same time.  Hard because even if I become the best teacher in the world, I'll never be able to accomplish everything I want, nothing less than peaceful lives and a tolerant, critical, intellectual attitude toward the world for each of my students.  As pessimistic as it seems, I think I'll still be making calls home in twenty years, as I did yesterday afternoon, notifying parents that their sons/daughters are not coming/not performing/not listening as they should.  I'll still hear the heartbreaking news of warrants out and results just in, of interventions and the deaths of beloved family members.  It's hard because I keep hitting these limits and having to remember that I'm not God, that I can't make everything well just with concern.


Everyone has daydreams for discouraged moments, and mine involves moving away, teaching in a different and easier place.  It's selfish, I know; these kids who need so much won't go away if I stop teaching them, if I cross the ocean looking for adventure.  I'm humbled as I read the card, read this character of Trust to whom she's comparing me.  I wonder, did I buy a round trip ticket to Ingraham?  I know I began with an end date in mind, a June that meant the dissolving of some ties that kept me in Seattle, but that year has come and gone.  


I'm here.  


I have no idea if this is the last year or year four of forty, but I realize that on a day to day basis it doesn't matter that much.  There's today, with all it's parties.  There's tomorrow, when I'll miss my students as I board a plane to Germany for Christmas.  There's two and a half weeks from now, when we all start again, resolutions unwrinkled and ready to keep or start trying.  There are six months after that.  Who knows what each day holds, each hour, each minute?  The longer I teach, the more I'm learning that the most I or anyone can do is fill these minutes together with as much love and peace as I can, and that the best days are the ones when I can accept that it's not my love, my peace, my strength that makes this beautiful.


Trust is at home in the desert and the city, with dolphins and tigers, with outlaws, lovers and saints.


Frivolities Editor whirls out with the rest of them as the bell rings, crying "Have fun in Germany!" as she goes.  A few moments later she returns.


"There's a back to the card," she points out.


"Thanks."  Such a little word to express a magnitude of gratitude for the amount of confidence and, well, trust that her gift expresses.  It's the common thread, perhaps.  The trust I place in my students to make a poster in a group, or to become young men and women of wisdom and responsibility.  The trust that they place in me to tell the truth and not waste their time.  The trust that I learn again every day to place in the God who knows about this trip, whether it's round or one-way, who gives me just enough of love and wisdom to last each day.


...she is the mother of Love.

The Trial

The classroom--always a primary-colored melange of visual inside jokes--looks odder than usual. A third of the desks are pushed up in two rows against the windows, another third piled in the back, and the remaining third arranged towards the front of the room and bearing yellow placards that say things like "Othello," "Iago," and "Prosecution."  I'm leaning on a sarong-draped AV cart, clad in a black graduation robe.  


I'm always a little conscious of "what someone would think" if they walked into my classroom at any given moment.  Usually, the worst that could be said is that instead of restlessly pacing the floor I am sitting cross-legged on a table at the front.  (The most energetic and perfect teachers are always on the move; I prefer to hone Zen-like stillness, hoping it'll rub off.)  The scene today would be madness to an outsider, and I'm torn between hoping some supervisor shows up so I can explain, and praying that no one bothers us today so we can have our imaginative fun in peace.


"Students!  Listen up!"


"Use the--what's it called--gavel," suggests a student.


I pound the red plastic handles of a pair of scissors on the top of the cart.  "Order!  Order in the court!" It makes a hollow metallic sound, not the satisfying click of wood on wood that a real, non-scissor gavel might provide.


"You're not even supposed to be here yet," L the Bailiff reminds me.  She's sitting on a tall stool to the left of my cart.  She was absent for the day of trial preparation, so I've given her a scripted role.  "I'm supposed to call you in."


"Oh, right."  I walk out the door and return as she intones the orange-highlighted words on the paper.


"All rise for the Honorable Judge D, Duchess of Venice!"


This is fifth period, the third mock trial of the day.  I had hoped to have time to give both a final test and do this trial with my ninth grade English classes, but the short days between Thanksgiving and Christmas break ran out, and we had time for only one or the other.  In an effort at democracy I allowed students to vote on which final assessment they preferred.  One voted for the test, and one had their trial cancelled because half of them were absent, for various reasons, on the day of trial prep.  That left three trials, this the last one.


The Question: Clearly, Othello is guilty of the death of his wife, Desdemona, but is it entirely his fault?


There are many holes in this trial.  First, the defendant is dead at the end of Othello, so his  hypothetical trial requires a hypothetical failed suicide.  Second, since he is so clearly guilty I have doubts about whether or not the degree of fault even matters in a legal sense.  Our entire trial, in fact, is built around idioms and procedures that we've learned mostly from movies.


Still, it's turned out to be an excellent assessment of knowledge of the play.  The prosecutors and defenders have had to study Othello's character and history in order to craft their arguments, have had to line up their information in the most compelling order.  The witnesses had to reread the play to create their testimony, remembering what their character could have seen and known, trying to guess what information would be asked of them.  The jury, replete with opinions of their own, have had to write statements for both sides of the case in order to prevent bias.  As far as finals go, this one is as interesting and summative as they come.


"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," the speaker for the defense team begins after the prosecution's opening statement, "Othello has had a difficult past.  He was a soldier and a slave.  He fought in wars and was put in prison.  After all of this, the one thing he loved, the one thing he trusted--his wife--he thought she betrayed him.  This messed up his mental state, and with that kind of manipulation from Iago he isn't completely at fault."


The next day, I'll hear almost the exact words chillingly echoed in by the defenders of Naveed Haq, currently being tried for opening fire on the Seattle Jewish Federation three summers ago.  They'll repeat that the accused believed his actions were completely right and therefore could not have been fully sane.


This defense doesn't hold true in ninth grade.  The jury comes to a unanimous conclusion after only a few minutes of deliberation: no matter what voices led him to his crime, Othello must be held fully responsible for his own actions.


It can be tempting to question the relevancy of reading a text that is four centuries old, especially in a class where the anti-magic words are "it's just a book."  And yet as we finish this one I'm again struck by the importance of the issues we're discussing.  Responsibility, revenge, jealousy.  As much as Shakespeare may have hoped that these would "go out of style," they never have.  We're still trying our real Othellos in court, still trying to drown out the voices of real Iagos and decipher the truth in lives that are seldom as symmetrical or organized as a Shakespearean tragedy.

Giving Thanks

Dear Students,


I'm thankful for you.  Happy Thanksgiving!


Love,


Ms. D


PS Please take the first five minutes of class to study for your vocabulary quiz!  Thank you!

--Overhead Greeting for Wednesday

It bears repeating, this thankfulness for the people with whom I spend most of my time.  Perhaps because I think I've complained more than usual this year, if not committed to permanence here in the transience of conversations.  Or perhaps because this year is harder and more confusing than last.  I forget what I love about teaching at times like these, when the trees of details mask the forest of people who make this excellent.


But I'm still thankful for everyone here, for the young people who fill these days with energy, hope, confusion, laughter, and curiosity.  For the educators from whom I'm still learning, inspired by their love and passion and creativity.  It's a good place, a good time.


Thanks.

Legos

My students are playing with toys at the front of the classroom.  


Lego people, to be specific, mostly of the maritime variety.  There are several dressed in the red and white of the British navy, one with an identical uniform in blue (French?), a few pirate-esque gentlemen, two ponytailed ladies and a kid in a tux and baseball cap.  Right now, lunchtime, four or five boys are huddled around the table, posing this motley society a variety of martial (and dubiously sexual) positions.


"OK, you can play with the people," I accede from my desk, where I'm pretty busy with the warm and delicious leftovers from my first ever whole roasted chicken and the Myspace profile that a clever student created for a character from Othello.  "You can play with them, but don't change their hats and weapons around.  That's annoying."


No, I haven't been reassigned to an elementary school mid-year, as amusing as that would be. This is still ninth grade English, and the Lego people are fairly important--if rather quiet--members of our class these days.  They are, you see, the characters of Othello.  There is a Lego Iago (standing out in villainous blue, with forbidding jagged mustache), a Lego Cassio (with glasses and a backpack, as all lieutenants good at math are prone to have), and of course a Lego Othello.  


This title character posed something of a problem to me last year, as a search through Noah's bin of Legos produced only white (actually canary yellow) Lego people, whereas Othello is the most dynamic and powerful African character in all of Shakespeare's works.  After criticizing me roundly for my lack of cultural sensitivity, last year's journalism students took it upon themselves to color my Lego Othello's head and hands with a brown marker.  While that might have been a lateral move, sensitivity-wise, we now have a distinctly African Othello Lego.


My students thought the Lego people were funny the first day, as we began to read out the play aloud and various students bravely waded through the complex blank verse.  I set them up beneath the document camera--these days projecting so much more than documents!--with a black and white photograph of Venice as a backdrop.


"Why do you have these?" they demanded.  "Do you have kids at home?"


"We've been over this.  I don't have any kids."


"Then where did you get them?"


"They're my brother's."


"Your brother?  You took your brother's toys?  That's hella mean."


"My brother is twenty-three.  He'll be fine.  Plus, he has more Legos at home."


Now, a few weeks into the unit, we all accept the toys as a matter of course, a legitimate visual for a complicated book.  We don't start reading a scene until the characters and setting are up there to see.  We've moved on from Venice, and now we look at a castle that is, of course, the fort that Othello & Co. are busy defending in Cyprus.  As characters enter and exit, I set the people on the table or pull them off, tossing them into the blue plastic bowl that serves as backstage.  Students occasionally demand impossible acting from the characters, whose range of motion is admittedly limited, but mostly they glance up once in a while from the tricky syntax, resting their gazes with amusement or consternation on the primary-colored people projected on the screen.


"Why didn't you do this for all of the other books?" some students ask when Period Five begins and we start assigning parts for the day.


"Because the other books weren't full of Italian names that sound the same and written four hundred years ago.  This helps us remember who's there and what's going on.  Now, who's reading Roderigo today?  Short part, and today is his smartest day ever."


"Isn't he the really dumb one?" a student asks.


"He's the guy in the tux with the Dumbledore beard," another responds, pointing to the screen.  "A tux cause he's rich, and a beard cause he's in disguise, right?"


"That's the guy," I respond.


And I love my job.

Snow Days of the Soul

My friends, ask gladness from God.  Be glad as children, as birds in the sky.  And let man's sin not disturb you in your efforts, do not fear that it will dampen your endeavor and keep it from being fulfilled, do not say, "Sin is strong, impiety is strong, the bad environment is strong, and we are lonely and powerless..." Flee from such despondency, my children!"

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The Brothers Karamazov

Friday afternoon.  This is the middle of my third day off from work this week, lurking indoors under self-imposed quarantine with a dilatory fever and various other halfhearted versions of the H1N1 symptoms that most of us in Seattle know by heart now.  A miserable Monday and Wednesday at work (yes, I went back to work on Wednesday, to teach a lesson on quotes in essays, be irritable and come home feeling far worse than before), and three quiet days at home, spent mostly on my computer.

Craving human contact, I've composed a few emails, engaged in some IM conversations, read narratives written by my two talented substitutes (trying to link names to the unfortunate quotations and habits relayed), and lingered on Facebook more than is healthy.

On the media front, I've watched half a season of The West Wing online, along with a few rental movies.  I've had several meals consisting only of soup, orange juice, and rice cakes, along with endless cups of tea and Nalgene bottles full of water.  It's all very busy, caring for myself.

It's the end of the quarter at school.  Grades are due in a week, and I dearly hope that most of my students turned in their final essays today.  The days for which I was present were full and fast-paced, taxing and demanding.  I wasn't kind or terribly patient, and neither were my students.  I didn't want to miss this week, but only because there was lots to do, I realize now.  Not because I particularly wanted to be there.

I always think of snow days as God's way of getting lots of people to stop and listen and do something different, all at once, at least here where snow is extraordinary and inconvenient.  These days have been like that, a mandatory slowing down and looking around.  Taking time to tend to things I haven't bothered with in a while, like reflection and reading and prayer for the people I love and serve.

As I finish what I hope will be the last sick day, considering another West Wing episode and what kind of tea to make next, I'm struck by the necessity of rest.  The sabbath was a commandment, a time for worship and community and restoration.  Without it we fall apart and have to stop anyway, eventually.  For a week or so, to wait while we're put back together.

I've been thankful for these three days, thankful for the people who've been teaching for me while I recover sufficiently to reenter society.  And with this perspective, a time apart, I'll be happy to return.