Why I March

Teachers took to the streets on May 16 in North Carolina. It's been a long, hard decade for education since the economic meltdown. When the state legislature and governor's mansion changed hands, things became grim indeed. They've never recovered and now public schools feel under attack from all sides.

I started this blog when I left the classroom in 2011. The changes were already apparent. Raises were a distant memory. Classroom budgets diminished and I found myself spending more of my own money and tapping parents for basics. I hear it got a whole lot worse after I left teaching. Retirement gave me some distance but I still talk to friends I left behind.

This has been a week of public protest. On May 14, the Poor People's Campaign kicked off with direct action and civil disobedience in more than thirty cities across the country. Raleigh was one of them. The crowd was small compared to the Moral Mondays from a few years ago, but the issues are the same. Poverty, racism, healthcare, living wage, education. People are coming together.

These two actions back-to-back have had me thinking. They are so intertwined, poverty and education. I think back to my days in the classroom and the poverty that was evidenced every day in our school.

It wasn't one of those terrible schools you see pictured on the documentaries. Actually, the building was sound and recently renovated. The school staff was caring and dedicated. It stands in a neighborhood whose residents often struggle. Many of the 6 to 8-year-olds I taught showed signs of stress.

I remember one little boy who, after being given a toothbrush by the visiting dental educators was thrilled because he had his own now and wouldn't have to share a toothbrush with his siblings.

I regularly had children who were underdressed for the weather or showed up in clothes that hadn't been washed recently. Some came to school too late for breakfast and arrived hungry almost every day. Some whispered that they hadn't eaten any supper the night before. I kept large bags of cereal behind my desk and cheese crackers in the closet for such situations. 

Sometimes they would go through the lunch line only to find that their account was empty. I wasn't the only teacher or teacher-assistant who kept extra money on account to cover those lunches.

Serious behavior problems arose. A few times I had to report suspicion of abuse. More often, a child would "act out" unaccountably, hiding under a table or crying and rocking inconsolably. I made many referrals to our overburdened counselors or assistant principal. 

Our school had a burgeoning population of Spanish-speaking students during the years I was there. Despite the language barriers with both the children and their parents we managed, and all of us grew together. What I did not anticipate were the problems particular to immigrant families. There was the boy who took everything home every night because this was the third school he had attended during the current year. Sure enough, one day he simply never came back. When one of my little girls confided that her daddy had been taken away and had to go back to Mexico, I was stunned. She was devastated. My heart broke for her.

Too many of these kids had to deal with situations that would have been unthinkable to me as a child: the boy who was going out to dinner to celebrate his dad's birthday but they ended up at the ER after the girlfriend stabbed his father, the girl who came to school one morning talking about the man who had been shot dead at the end of her driveway the night before, the number of kids who lived with grandparents or other relatives because their parents were on drugs or locked up, the child who had to get up before dawn to ride with his taxi-driving mother until time to go to school.

Poverty. I thought I knew about it. I had been on welfare and food stamps when my son was an infant. I had scrounged and worked multiple low wage jobs to hold body and soul together. But I realized it was a whole different level of experience the day I tried to teach a sequencing lesson to one of my first-graders.

I spread out six brightly colored picture cards entitled "How to make a Bed." His task was to put them in order. He hesitated then moved the cards around, obviously guessing. I gave him hints, but it didn't help. Finally, he told me he didn't know. He had never had a bed. He slept on the couch or the floor in a sleeping bag.

 Poverty and Education. That's why I march.

Poor People's Campaign, Raleigh NC, 5/14/2018

Sudden Change

Jill and Todd

Jill and I are in the pause, the hush and intake of breath that follows a sudden death. Yesterday, her brother Todd died unexpectedly. He was only 49 years old. The stillness is intense.

We all do it, I think. We chug through life doing what needs to be done, following routines and prescribed roles day after day. There's comfort in the mundane --- grocery shopping, laundry, lawn mowing, jobs. Even with the certainty that nothing stays the same for long, we walk through days and weeks as though today is the permanent blueprint. Until it isn't.

The phone call marks a break. There was before and then there is after. Before was normal. After, unpredictable. It takes time to adjust, as though the molecules have rearranged themselves into a new shape that is not recognizable in this moment. 

Previous losses crowd to the top, loosed from their moorings once more, adding to the sense of disorientation. It's easy to stand for minutes with the refrigerator door open, unseeing, lost in thought. Dogs nudge questioningly, aware that something is amiss. Conversations lapse in mid-sentence.

Gradually, it fills in again, the empty spaces begin to shrink but never disappear entirely. The sudden impulse to text or send a picture doesn't hit as sharply over time. 

"He would love that . . ."

"She never got to see . . ."

A sudden scent or sound triggers memories that flood through, stabs of pain, then cleansed and washed away.

Farewell. You leave a self behind that will not be erased in the minds and hearts of those who knew you. Sleep well, Todd, and be at peace. 

                                                                                    Todd Hahn 1968-2018

Band-aids and Ice

Back in the golden, olden days of television, there was a show called WKRP in Cincinnati. Of the many memorable characters on this sitcom, a favorite of mine was Les Nessman, played by Richard Sanders. Les nearly always wore a band-aid. Most of the time it had nothing to do with the action; it was his schtick. That tickled my funny bone and it reminded me of being a kid.

My parents convinced us that band-aids could treat almost anything. Fall down and skin a knee? Wash with soap and water (ouch!), apply Mercurochrome (ouch!) or Merthiolate (double ouch!) and top with a band-aid. The injury didn't even have to involve broken skin. Come crying to Mom with a bump or bruise and she would give it a little rub or a kiss, and a band-aid. A goose-egg might bring out the waterproof pouch with the screw-on cap, filled with ice to relieve pain and swelling before the curative band-aid was applied.

Those strips were 1950s magic. Some of you who are old enough may remember that they came in metal containers with a hinged lid. The crackly wrapper on the strip itself was opened hygienically by pulling an orange thread down the side. No touching the sterile pad!

By the time I settled into classroom teaching in the early 2000s, late in my education career, the fear of litigation meant that we had returned to fifty years earlier when it came to children's daily scrapes. School nurses were few and far between; first aid consisted of band-aids and ice.

We sometimes speak of "slapping a Band-aid on it" when we treat problems with stop-gap measures. In business or politics, complex issues are often addressed in superficial ways to relieve the pressure of public opinion and put off effective examination or remedies for another day.

A band-aid won't cure a broken arm nor will feel-good legislation, however well-intentioned, bring relief to problems endemic to the society we've created. I have been reminded lately of the "common good" and the responsibility we have for each other. In times when the wider world seems fraught with conflict and dangers which I can do nothing about, my actions need to be directed close to home.

More than ever, I am called upon to be mindful, kind, and respectful. It may seem inadequate in the face of turmoil and uncertainty, but a well-placed band-aid and a kiss can create peace that angry words and hopelessness will never accomplish.

I wish you peace and serenity, whoever and wherever you are. We're all in this together.