Activist Kids Rule!

I thought Wednesday morning, March 14^th would be a solitary moment of street art for me,in solidarity with the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER’s National School Walkout. I live a block from C.W. Henry Elementary school but I had no idea if they planned to walk out, so I printed out my own series of “No More Guns” posters and planned to staple them around the neighborhood’s phone poles. The Walkout was planned for 10 A.M. in every time zone, seventeen minutes to honor the people who were killed at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School a month before.  As a self-employed teacher, (The Sandy Hook shooting happened three days before I completed my student teaching.) I felt that it should be a moment of connection and solemnity for me.

I had just started putting up the posters when there they were, the Henry students with their teachers and principal. The children were silent and serious, well, as silent and serious as elementary students get. Kid art is my favorite thing in the world, and these children’s signs, most of them on orange poster board (orange is the gun control color), saying things like “Our Lives Matter,” and “Enough,” “Guns have no place in schools,” and “Protect kids not guns,” illustrated in painstaking detail. I’m happy to say that no art I make will ever be as beautiful or meaningful as those signs. Feeling like a mini-Shepherd Fairey, I gave the kids the rest of my own posters, then stood back with other neighborhood adults to marvel and support.

“How lucky we are to be alive right now,” goes one of my favorite quotes from Hamilton, and those seventeen minutes were as complicated and bittersweet as that line.

When the seventeen minutes were up, the neighborhood cheered and the kids proceeded silently back to their classes. It was beautiful to see them speaking up for themselves and the school being so supportive of their efforts. As I watched the school walkouts follow the time zones across the country on facebook, I felt a powerful sense of hope for America, my natural optimism galvanized by my seventeen minutes with the brave kids of Mt. Airy.

Art by Cece Mulcahy, bedazzled by me post-walk-out because I wanted to spoil the neighborhood. 

On Saturday, March 24, my best friend and I were among the 800,000 people who joined the Parkland students at the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. It was the same solemnity and power that I felt with the Henry walkout, multiplied by thousands and soundtracked by Andra Day’s anthem “Rise Up,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s new single “Found/Tonight” which reprised lyrics from Hamilton including, most importantly, “Tomorrow there’ll be more of us.”

It was at the March for Our Lives that I met Zahlia, a six-year-old young lady marching for the first time. When she saw the sparkly butterfly on my sign, her eyes lit up as though I were the queen of the universe. I asked if she would like the sign, since it was clearly meant for her. I’m so proud that I got to be a small part of her march experience, that I was able to give her just a fragment of the joy and celebration she deserves.

Sometimes, its hard to feel worthy of the children that I teach, the children that I share a movement with. They are so bright and generous, so beautiful and courageous, shining with a light we are lucky to stand near, lucky to be edified by.

It shouldn’t be their job to save us. The Parkland students should be working on their school plays and goofing around on Snapchat or whatever new weird things the kids are into these days. But instead, they are serving their country, helping us to be better and safer and wiser. I’m excited to see the country they’ll create, and I’m here to help in any way I can.

Thanks 2015! "Countless Small Acts of Courage"

The most incredible thing happened at my mom's Christmas party last weekend, something that was worth a million rainbows. My fourteen-year-year-old niece, AKA the coolest person in the universe, and her BFF (my also-quite amazing bonus niece) were regaling us at top volume about the byzantine love lives of themselves and their friends, stories that included all kinds of straight, gay, bi, and trans characters. It made my heart just shine with joy. Though there's still such a very long way to go toward gender equality, the world has expanded and gotten so much more glittery since I was these girls' age.

I'm so proud of the nieces for their ingrained inclusiveness, so I wanted to stop and appreciate all of the little things that got us to that conversation and to that rainbowiest of days last June.  Not the political things, though those are surely important, but all of the many little moments of connection, of engagement, of expression that helped us to make more room for love one honest interaction at a time.  And I'm so proud of all of us who went ahead and got married anyway (even if I personally failed at it) and of the families who created and supported those weddings, especially my own.

I want to hold June 26, 2015 in my heart as a reminder that there is hope for all of the projects of progress, that every time we speak up, show our love, or work for change in the tiniest of ways, we're getting ourselves to that place where we can stop for a second and say, holy Christmas, things really did get better. The future belongs to my badass nieces and my sweet, thoughtful nephews, and for that reason, I'm wholly optimistic.

Thank You Thursdays: Library Job and Children's Books

I'm in a dark time right now so I'm starting a new weekly posting routine to help me focus on the positive.

Besides getting lots of hard work done on my memoir publication dream, my favorite thing in my daily life right now is my library after school program job. I get to spend big swaths of time playing Legos, doing lighthearted science projects, and just enjoying time with the neighborhood kids. Today was computer lab day and I had two little girls making up songs and singing different things at the same time--I told them they're the best people ever--and they are! You can see LOTS of their poetry and artwork here: http://leapkidsmag.blogspot.com/2015/10/fall-acrostic-poems-and-leaf-art.html

The weirdest thing about me is that in all of my years of teaching and teacher-training, I never really connected with children's books. I guess I was just too surrounded in the haze of standards and planning anxiety to spend much time just soaking up the language and art. I've decided to read anything the children's librarians hand me, and it makes the world feel bigger and more magical.

Spending Some Time With Teacher Grief

Last Year's Class

Lately I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well my work life seems to be falling into place: I’m working at a steady clip on what I think is a sellable memoir, teaching gratifying poetry playshops for grownups, and I even have two honest-to-goodness creative coaching clients. For friendship, pleasant exercise, and routine, I have my job at Rosemont College Bookstore, and for teaching, I start back soon at the library afterschool program I always loved—which means weekly Apples to Apples Junior and probably starting up the kids’ blog again!

And yet, when my Perfect Life Friend (Do you have one of these? I think Instagram invented them.) posted a picture of her new classroom with exuberant thoughts about fresh pencils and (*shudder*) “Common Core Icebreakers,” the feeling of having failed as a teacher asked me for some attention.

In my relief and joy of coming back to the creative life, I often forget how happy I was this time last year. My classroom was so pretty, all sky-blue fadeless paper and flower border. The flowers were not just to remind me of the creativity and generosity of god, but to reassure me of the beauty, order, and patterns of math as I settled in to be the math, science, and (until test prep time started to eat the enrichment schedule and our souls) poetry teacher.

 I was absolutely in LOVE with my coworkers—with the intern principal who had a cat named after Rory Gilmore and praised my decision to teach “Such Great Heights” as one of our class songs, with my sweet but tough-as-nails 28-years-teaching and SO over it grade partner, with the cute-guy fourth grade teacher down the hall who’d end up hugging me so sweetly when I was crying at the copier by January.

My favorite teacher friend was a red-haired sasspot who would call out the bosses in front of everybody for time-wasting “organization strategies” meant only to impress the constantly visiting superintendant. She rode home with me almost every day, knew the best and worst of both my work and school life, but the trauma of last school year has meant I can’t stand the thought of talking to even the favorites who were part of it. Losing that friendship is one of the saddest, most unfair parts.

But back to last August—our school had extra grants for professional development so we started early and spent two weeks together. The cute intern principal had us write down our thoughts on David Foster Wallace’s “This Is Water” speech and show-called me, so that I was the one who said “Yeah, but David Foster Wallace killed himself, so I don’t think mindfulness is enough. We have to prioritize self-care.” (Really, “This Is Water” is a way to try and push ourselves through a system that doesn’t support our embodiedness or make sense—actually the opposite of water, I’d say.)

We learned lots of Teach Like a Champion strategies, many of which seem totalitarian to me now, especially “100%” (compliance). The intern principal once compared a child reading with her head down instead of sitting straight up and down to Malcolm Gladwell’s Broken Windows—that was the feeling: let one little thing slip, and it will all come crashing down. As optimistic and aesthetically pleasing as the beginning of the school year was, there was a desperation at its center: If I had the right classroom setup, the right folders, the right pencil strategy (If I could spend no more time EVER thinking about pencil strategies or the word “strategy” at all…) the right data-collection binders, the right rituals and routines, I could keep the chaos of the children’s lives at bay and make an island of safety and happiness where kids with even the most horrific circumstances could learn and succeed, where I could learn and succeed.

That was what I was tasked with doing, and I did do it for a lot of each day. I learned, would you believe, to get children who were overflowing with life and passion and creativity to walk silently in a straight line. I filled the classroom with plants and student work and inspirational sayings and more flowers. We had gorgeous room-to-room transitions where the only sound to be heard was my grade partner and I harmonizing to “Lean on Me.”

It was beautiful, and I felt so much love and accomplishment and heavy meaning in every day, so much connection to my fellow humans, connection to my soul. I have so much to say about what prevented order and beauty and love from winning, including (often starring) my own limits, but for now, I just want to acknowledge how much I loved my classroom, and honor the pain of letting it go.