Dark and Ugly

The female doctor with us is tall, very lean, blonde and pretty. She didn't bring a suitcase or even a carry on-- all she thought was necessary was one slim backpack with scrubs inside. The skirt we are required to to bring for church on Sunday will be donated, she says, after she wears it. Susan Dirks is an interesting woman who drops things in ordinary conversation off-handedly such as, "when I was in India..: and "my husband is Zorastrian..."

Susan came into the guest house hours after the rest of us yesterday. She spent the day in the clinic that is tucked under the guest house. Stupidly, I was admiring the people who were lined up at the clinic by 7:30AM, their children, their picturesque-ness. I even asked if I could take pictures. One woman had the sense to tell me no. I was a little offended--what do you mean, no?? It didn't sink in until later that day that HELLO-- these people are sick. Would I welcome snap shots, waiting in Med-Express when I didn't feel good? Thankfully, the truck came to cart us to the school and I was eclipsed to do my part of this mission. Susan, stethoscope around her neck and blue-scrubbed, went to do hers.

She joined Doctor Judith, the harried and too busy Haitian doctor who works in the clinic every day. People have to make a two dollar donation to be seen, so they bring great numbers of family members to all be seen together. Most walk very far for the treatments the clinic is able to offer. At mid-day, Susan snacked on a power bar between patients. When she finally rejoins us, most of us have been relaxing for an hour or more.

Someone asks, "Has it been bad? Anybody have any serious problems?" Susan nods her head. One woman has terrible breast cancer, broadly metastasized. "What can be done for her?" someone asks. Susan shurgs, her face sad. "Pain meds."

We are all silent for a moment, digesting this. No saviour will come for this woman, by accident of her bad geographic luck. Once we are gone, will there be any more medication to help her ease pain? How can a person stand the kind of pain that must come from a body being overtaken by cancer cells?

The Hillman Cancer Centare and the new Chidlren's Hospital hae never seemed so precious. Susan tells us that she aslo diagnosed a baby as blind today. Her mother walked miles because the child's movement seemed off-- clumsy. Now she knows why.

There is no medicine in the clinic today. There is some ibuprofen and a pirate's treasure trove of plastic tubing and syringes. But limited antibiotics. No real pain medicine.

We sat in a circle last night, digesting the glorious beef stew with ginger dumplings and root vegetables Marie Estelle made for us-- and the stories of our experiences. Each woman told about her day and her feelings. Some of us-- especially me-- are facing our inadequacies. Why the hell are we here? Susan wonders what real good can come of her time with the 60 patients she saw yesterday. How do you send a woman filled with cancer home with ibuprofen and feel as if you did any good? Mostly she dispensed comfort.

I wonder aloud, how could I have brought duffles full of paint when the clinic's medical stock is so depleted?? What the hell was I thinking?? I suggest we trash our plans to do stories and art at the school and go into Port-au-Prince in search of medicine for the clinic. It must be such an outlandish (and most likely) impossible task that the rest of the group doesn't consider it. Is there medicine there to buy? Could we as a group afford it, get it, bring it back? We continue to share our thoughts.

Many of us feel frustrated. We are coping in different ways. The needs that we are seeing are so overwhelming that we all feel like Susan: facing a dragon with a feather in our hands. Some of us have lashed out at others. Some of us, like me, have clowned, gossiped, sniped and withdrawn. They are all ways to cope with the crumbling ground beneath your toes as you stare into the long, dark abyss of human need we are glimpsing.

I have to stagger at the thought of trying to articulate my experience as a guest teacher-artist at the school yesterday. Mothers pick up their sons from school in America, and after their little boy has buckled up, Mom puts her arm on the passenger side seat, twists around, smiling and asks, "How was your day?" The little boy looks out the window. "Fine," he says. It's all he has. There is too much to say, and no energy to say it. It is impossible at that moment to try to relive and retell all the moments of interpersonal power-play and minute-by-minute success and failure, the bullying in line, the brisk attitude of the lunch lady you look up at from the lunch line, the jokes the teachers make in the hall, the way your best friend wouldn't play with you at recess, the math you didn't understand.

We arrived at the school with the idea that we'd organize the five duffles of art supplies we brought and get set up and ready for today-- Thursday-- the day we would start our program. My idea had been to read the children Karen Lynn William's Painted Dreams. The story is about Ti Marie-- little Marie-- who loves art. She draws on the side of her house with brick and charcoal until it is time to help her mother at the market place. Ti Marie's mother's market stall is unlucky-- they have a hard time selling their vegetables and the family struggles to survive. Ti Marie loves to watch the bocor-- voudou priest, busy at his easel with his paints. She dreams of having enough money to use real paints and a sparkling white easel. That evening, she steals some almost-used up paint tubes from the bocor's trash. She makes her way to the market stall and paints a scene of a beautiful world-- huge food, colorful birds and butterflies, tall trees.

The next morning, as Ti Marie and her mother approach their stall, an enormous crowd has gathered. People from the countryside have come to see this amazing painting, and they stay to buy all of Mama's vegetables. Ti Marie's talent and imagination have brought strength to her family.

We brought four hundred quilt squares with us and a hundred bottles of bright acrylic paint. We have satin ribbon, sequins, glitter, fabric, floss, needles and thread, beads. We want to invite children to create their "magic world" like Ti Marie on a quilt square. Our idea is to bring the quilt squares back to Pittsburgh to digitally photograph and finally sew together. We'll send the quilts back to the school to brighten and inspire the children.

Yesterday, our set-up day, was chaotic. The storage room had no shelves to organize things on-- so our duffles cool their heels on the cement floor. We dashed from classroom to classroom, singing songs, making pony bead bracelets and trying to do the work of getting the lay of the land and establishing trust, anticipation, happiness.

We did that, I think. Lots of smiles, songs learned, happiness. I danced a sixth grade boy off his feet, to the delight of his classmates. The sounds of Hineh Mah Tov-- a Hebrew song that means "How good and sweet it is to be together as friends!" rang throughout the school after we left. The children tried to teach me "Papa Abraham," one of their songs, but I failed. Only the first kreoyl line remains.

All to the good-- but here's the problem. There are over fifty kids crushed against each other in some of the classrooms. The floor is dirty cement. Their "desks" are a single skinny wooden board that runs the length of the benches they are squeezed on to. The board is slanted downward.

You can't paint when you can't move your elbows. You can't sew on beads when your workspace is slanted toward the floor. You can't spread out with a white canvas quilt square to the floor when it is covered in mud. We decided last night to welcome one class of 67 to their "playground"-- an uninspiring mud and cement flat in front of the school. And guess what? This morning there is torrential rain.

It's almost funny. I am starting to wonder if Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Tiger Emperor, striped with scars from the slave master's whip, who personally went village to village with a machete, killing the remaining French men, women and children after his successful revolution, is bringing revenge on this group of well-intentioned white women. Good intentions without antibiotics and medical knowledge sucks.

I am wondering if my mission-- to bring stories and art to these children-- is a milquetoast, white bread, first-world stupid stupid stupid blunder. And then I think of the one little girl in the class of fifty one who was sad-- we didn't know why. Twenty minutes into our thirty minute class, she started to privately cry, silently, covering her face. We had skipped her by mistake. She didn't get pony beads and stretchy cord. She had waited so patiently and so politely. We got her some. But does it mean what we are doing is fun for them? That they like it? That that has meaning?

Who knows? Another white woman with good intentions does not bring light to the eyes here. I am awash in all the dark and ugly things I have inside-- the feeling of impotence, the self-doubt. Vive la Ayiti. Suck it up, buttercup. The mud is sucking, the rain is pouring, and I have a class waiting for me in two hours.


 

Waking Up in Haiti

The guest house through the gates, past the smiling and mightily armed guard, is shocking if you've just driven through Port-au-Prince. There is a tile veranda with large glass tables and umbrellas. Chives starred with purple flowers and fragrant rosemary grown in pots next to tall waving flowers that wheel like pink kites.

Inside the tall glass doors is a great room with pale yellow walls reflecting the light. Orange mexican tile flows past a living room with spotless new windows and a desk with a working computer and printer. There are four tables hanging with table cloths and a huge metal butterfly that brightens the far wall. A quilt some children made hangs on a fancy metal bar above some cane-seated chairs. There are four bathrooms-- SPOTLESS-- and four large guest rooms. In each guest room are three bunk beds with colorful, new quilts.

Julienne is the manager. She is warm-faced like the sun. She smiles widely and welcomes us and gives us the lowdown:

No smoking, no drinking, this is a Christian establishment. The huge bottles of water are filtered and safe for drinking. The shower water is not. Don't get it in your mouth. Use bottled water for tooth brushing. Don't put your toilet paper in the toilet-- put it in the basket next to the toilet. (ew.) Turn off the lights when you go to bed. Marie cooks Haitian dinner in the evening and American breakfast in the morning. Lock yourself in before you sleep and don't worry-- the guard never sleeps. He's very good. You'll be safe.

The "safe" discussion makes me feel not safe, but hey, I signed up for this and I'm here. I'm not liable to suddenly become a black belt in karate instantly because I suddenly might want to. I pick the second guest room. That way, I'll have time to hide if something bad happens. I remind myself: big gun. Razor wire. Locked door. Buck up, buttercup.

The translators schlep in our five enormous duffle bags. I ask if water is rationed here. It is not. I check out the showers: there is a chain you pull for water. If it comes out, you adjust the temperature. It is warmed by the sun and recycled.

We sleep, so tired, so tired. The bed is lovely and safe, and Marian Allen, the organizer of the trip tells me there are no snakes here.

I wake at 5:30 in a dreamy haze. I am being rocked in a cradle, swaying, warm and sweet, close to somebody who loves me. It is the singing. The women are singing. Next to our guest house is a church. The women have walked many many miles with their small children to seek treatment at the clinic. The clinic is underneath the guest house. They sing all together, in kreyol, songs of praise, mellow, their voices pouring over everything in the half-light like warm syrup. I blink awake, and lie there in the quilt, being massaged with sound. A man is leading them, but they don't wait-- he sings a line to them but the have already started. They know it by heart. I try to pick out words. Jerusalem? David? Who knows...it is like waking in Heaven. My cousin Karen brushes my hair sometimes. We both like to have somebody else brush our hair. It feels so good. We joke that while somebody is brushing our hair, all we can think about is, "don't stop, don't stop, don't stop." That's all I am thinking as these women sing. I've woken up in a bath of warm chocolate.

There are other sounds. A rooster. Dogs, dogs, so many dogs barking, but they are far away. I am in a cocoon. When the singing stops I am released from the spell. Julienne arrives and makes coffee. I wrap myself in my quilt and go out on the veranda. My God. I'm on a mountain top. Huge cliffs stand staring, white and covered in green. On the very top of them are fancy homes. The mountains crag crazily down, and banana trees, bouganvilla, rubble, homes, goats, chickens, random cement block, bags that used to hold foreign aid rice, dogs, and jutting branches are all over. The sky is blazing blue and there are radio towers on the mountains to the right. Red amaryllis stand straight in a row against a concrete wall. A peach tree throws out a flower or two. The coffee is wonderful.

Breakfast is fancy: oatmeal with star anise, hard boiled eggs, bananas and homemade chocolate chip banana muffins . Lots of coffee. Life is grand.

I take a freezing cold shower (solar water must mean that when the sun isn't out yet your water is cold) and horrify our religious house staff and my much-classier-than-me travelling companions by coming out of the bathrooms in a towel. With my hair in a shampooey point. I forgot my hair conditioner and need to get it. I am emerging as the class clown. You get used to it.

It is quickly time to get down the hill to the school. We grab backpacks, take our malaria pills and go outside.

Kay D'Esperans, Thomassin, Haiti

Imagine Wilkinsburg. Now imagine somebody carpet bombed it. And there's some bouganvilla. That's Port-au-Prince. Really. Holy Mother of God. It's funny what you don't know you don't know. I thought I might be vaguely familiar with Haiti, since I've studied it on and off for a few years. I didn't know shit about shit, as they say.

Rubble. Trash. Slap-shod homemade concrete mortar and cement block walls covered in rusty razor wire. The rust looks like old blood. Dust, choking dust. People, so many people, walking with huge plastic tubs on their heads, looking tired. Many, many women and small children selling sketchy looking fruit, or strangely twisted bread, or small pieces of candy, or plastic strainers, or old shoes. Men in dress shirts and trousers, standing idle on the sidewalk or playing cards or walking. A long, jolting bus ride from Port-au-Prince through Petionville, up the mountains.

So much rubble. So much trash. everywhere, choking the flowers that try to fight up between the cracks. A hog. A huge, black hairy hog, the size of a love seat, rooting in the discards among the concrete boulders and mini boulders and bowling ball-sized boulders that form the ground. Her timoun-- her children, rooting nearby. Roosters and chickens and chicks, all over the place. A young cow, tethered to a post. The rumbling of the bus, rolling like a boat, pitching violently as if it was in the middle of a choppy ocean.

Haiti initially seemed to me, and still does as of Day 1- today-- like the moon, or a place so foreign and upside down that traveling across the country is like sailing a violent sea. The dust is in your throat and you start to wheeze. You are in the back of giant bus with the windows down with all your stuff and your beautiful Haitian translator, and you want to be happy to be here at last-- and you are-- but you are in shock.

Holy crap. Is that a baby on the front of a motorcycle, balancing between her father's legs? Why are all of these people crowding around that crazy looking stage, backed with plywood and plastered in graffitti? There is a building, pancaked, the heavy ceiling still suffocating the floor. There's another-- there are more of these than not. Most buildings seem half-constructed, yet there are people in them.

Our translator points to mountains, far off and to the right. "Where we are going!" he announces. It seems far, far away.

As we climb the mountain in the little bus, the air begins to clear. The houses begin to coalesce and become more whole, although the amount of glinty sharp razor wire seems to increase on fences. There are stone fences now, topped with half-shattered soda bottles. They look lethal. The road becomes paved for a moment. We gasp when we see a sidewalk for the first time. Our translator tells us that the rich people live here. It is obvious that the higher you climb the better you live.

We are in Petionville. I look around, having learned that this was a well-to-do neighborhood, and the home of the golf course-turned-tent village that Sean Penn lived in. My travelling companions, a doctor, three nurses, a business woman, a rabbi, two English as a Second Learner teachers and two artists-- of which I am counting myself as one-- argue over how to pronounce it. "Petion-ville" and "pet-i-on-ville" are both accepted. Massive coconut trees and banana trees hang with fruit. A tangled barbed wire fence has been overtaken by a red mandevilla, yellow throated. Sometimes the smell of jasmine flirts and then is gone.

A huge black cloud threatens and the light fades fast. We are all longing to get to the mission-- we are so tired, and all of this Haitian reality combines with fatigue is not incredibly fun. Finally we take a sharp right down what seems like a cliff. We are facing a massive gate, but we don't pay much attention to it because a man with the biggest gun I have ever seen guards it. It reaches from his collar bone to his feet. Razor wire marks the high cement block walls around a building. The guard smiles, opens the gate and pulls in.

Leon Pamphile, the Haitian Pittsburgher who began Functioning Literacy Ministries, turns around in his bus seat. He smiles. "You are home," he says. "Welcome."

Live in the Land of the Real

I'm a brass-tacks kind of person. I like theory, but when we are talking about how to fix things, I need to make it real. I want to know when, what and with whom-- not leave things amorphous and undefined. So, when I watched as much of Jon Stewart's interview with Michelle Rhee as I could stomach, the "real" that was missing from their sweeping statements jumped out at me like a plague of frogs.

Rhee stated that to her, obvious changes for the better in D.C. were to "close low performing schools, cut central office bureaucracy and fire ineffective educators."  Big round of applause from the audience. Fine. Frost that mud cake and take a big bite. Or- we could talk about some of the "real" I've experienced in my nine schools in five months in the Pittsburgh Public Schools for a moment. Then we'll come back to Rhee's prescription to fix schools.

The Good:
Wallace Sapp, a community member who devotes over 40 hours a week to the school. Building relationships with teachers, Mr. Sapp runs a hugely popular math enrichment program during class time. Teachers trust him to support the curriculum enough to give him instructional time-- and it works. Mr.Sapp and his wife Lisa Freedman have the community to their home, a block from the school, where they host parents to work out problems and concerns with the school. They are a driving force in the successes at Pittsburgh Manchester because they bridge community and school- and foster trust between these groups.

Miss Smith, a grandmother at Pittsburgh Lincoln Elementary, who volunteers twice a week in a third grade classroom, in a relationship built on trust and respect with students, teachers and parents.

A grandmother at Pittsburgh Faison who daily volunteered to serve breakfast before she went to work, talking to kids, encouraging them, offering to read to them at her house after school. This grandmother visited the school library daily with her two adopted sons, making them report out on books they had read the night before, and borrowing new books to read to them and to other students at night.

The art teacher at Pittsburgh Mifflin, whose classroom is filled with blooming hibiscus plants and a busy kiln. She stays late to refire the children's creations so the glaze will be brighter--and hangs the brilliantly painted, bejeweled and glittering life-sized Egyptian Gods and Goddess down a "Hall of 7th Grade Egyptian Art" in the school. Next to this are the three-dimensional African masks younger students created.

The scores of teachers who buy and bring pretzels, fruit, cereal bars and crackers to school daily to feed their hungry students who need the extra food.

Ms. Applebaum, who buys silk flowers and florist's tape to create flower pens with her students at Pittsburgh Arlington. It keeps their hands busy so she can talk to them about their rage, their distrust of school, their problems with their peers and parents. Her classroom door, decorated with a rainbow sticker announcing her class as a safe place for LGBT youth, swings wide for all children in her embattled school. Behind it they find an adult who listens.

Mr. Dap Porter, a former Pitt Basketball star, who works with autistic children at Pittsburgh Arlington. He plays academic "Jeopardy"-style games with all of the kids during indoor recess and gives hugs as rewards.

Ms. Deonne Arlington, Principal of Pittsburgh Lincoln, who bought coats, hats and gloves for her students when the wind chill was below zero.

Mrs. Gail Livingstone, school librarian at 5 schools, who sneaks books between classes to children who didn't get a turn to visit the library.

The Bad:
The experience of students with learning disabilities at one school who have to take standardized tests with no adaptations allowed. Their frustration, their pain, and their internalization of failure.

The empty supply cabinets at some schools. No scissors, crayons, markers, glue, white copy paper.

The children who face a locked nurse's office most days of the week in every school I've worked in, who go without needed medications or suffer through asthma attacks, fevers and stomach disorders in busy classrooms because their working parents can't take them to the doctor or pick them up from school.

The students in all of the nine schools I've worked in who think they don't like reading because they don't have access to a school library, a loving and close relationship with a school librarian, a book store or a public library.

At one school, the science teacher was still waiting to receive her science curriculum in December.

The needed supplies moldering in closed schools because budget cuts from the state have cut central office personnel. There is nobody to inventory, assess needs and dray out these things. And when supplies get to schools, there are not enough tech staff to fix computers, printers, SMART Boards, networks, etc. to get things to work or keep them working.

The Ugly:
In one school, each Kindergarten class has 33 students. One undiagnosed child screams for at least four hours a day. Unrelenting. In January, not all of these children knew the names of their classmates. Some do not yet know how to spell their own names. The teacher goes into the hall for a moment when she needs to cry. Then she goes back into her class and carries on.

The students who arrive not knowing their names. The students who can't tell you what their last names are.

The 38 fourth graders in a computer lab with 18 working computers and a malfunctioning school furnace, making it 88 degrees in the room with broken windows-so opening one risks decapitation.

The mentally ill child who screams "FUCK YOU BITCH" and other colorful phrases in the hall or in class many times a day at one school. He was released from a placement to his local public school without necessary support by our broken mental health system.

The child who sits in class having seizures because his mother consistently does not give him his seizure medication.

Each of these "Good, Bad and Ugly" lists could go on for pages. Let's stop now and think about the brass tacks of Rhee's prescription for success.

None of the schools I listed, above, are doing particularly well on state assessments. Several of them are doing exceptionally poorly. Rhee would call them failing, and they could do better, be more. However, if Rhee closed Pittsburgh Manchester, Lincoln and Faison, the trust relationships built so lovingly by Mr. Sapp, Miss Smith, that grandmother who reads to the community and the parents and staffs would be obliterated. It is not easy to establish trust relationships in communities of any color, but the North Side, Lincoln-Larimer and Homewood are particularly fragile neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Destroying the connections between communities and schools is not a kind of collateral damage we should accept.

Governor Corbett's calamitous budget cuts began with central office. Dr. Lane valiantly began with her own house-- but the effect has been difficult. Without enough staff at central office to adequately oversee schools, rebuild broken technology and keep networks running, situations like broken data systems occur- making it hard to record attendance and grades, let alone do anything else. We need human infrastructure in our central offices. They do the work of keeping the schools running right.

Firing "ineffective" teachers begs the question: ineffective based on what? We know Rhee relies on test scores, but how can any of us accept the scores hungry, sick children get? Do these scores really indicate what kids know, what they can know, what their teachers are teaching? Would Rhee, Jon Stewart, members of his enthusiastic audience or any of us want to be held accountable for the test scores of that kid who has seizures? For the kid who has to sit next to the mentally ill screamer? The kid who needs the school nurse-- but--whoops-- the funding for school nurses has been cut, there isn't one, suck it up asthmatic kid? Kid who needs his ADHD meds? Kid who has a flare of her sickle cell and is in terrible pain? Kid who came here from Somalia, via a Tanzanian refugee camp last week and speaks no English?

You may think I'm picking out the red herrings-- the exceptions to the rule to excuse bad teachers. I'm not. I'm speaking from the trenches. Five years as a certified Librarian and fifteen years of work inside and outside the classroom. From the daily realities of working in public schools, disproportionately filled with the neediest. With her three years' experience as a teacher, self-admittedly poor experience, can Rhee really speak to how to fix public schools? Why is anybody willing to listen to her?

I tell my library students, when I have them, to consider an ultimate question when they are confronted with any information or source of information. The ultimate question is, "Who benefits? Who benefits from you accepting this information and going about your life with this bit of information as a given?" Please, my friends. Take it from a brass-tacks Librarian. If you aren't aware of what is REAL, you have no place making decisions about educational policy. If you aren't working to be sure that kids have food, access to books, medical care, shelter, acceptance and love-- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs-- you can't work toward fixing schools. Because if kids don't have their basic needs met-- and many of them don't--they can't learn as well as they should.

To anybody who is interested in education: Live in the land of the real. Know about whom and what you speak. Or, you'll pardon me, but shut the hell up.

New-stats-show-high-absentee-rate-in-Pittsburgh-Public-Schools/-/10927008/18399172/-/nnjt0p/-/index.html

Read this! At The Chalk Face's Update on Stewart and Rhee

Yinzercation Fighting On Many Fronts

PSEA and Governor Corbett's Ruinous Cuts to Education

Sign Our Petition for Adequate Funding for PA Schools!

http://www.bread.org/what-we-do/resources/newsletter/february-2013/hunger-in-the-classroom.html

Les Miserables and Courage in the Face of the End of All Things

“Not being heard is no reason for silence.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables



Yesterday I went to Pittsburgh Public School District professional development for Librarians. There are 50 schools in our district and around 16 folks attending. Since the Library Services Department has been obliterated, a non-Librarian former Assistant Superintendent has taken us on to watch over, advocate for and listen to. Poor lady. Dr. Barbara Rudiak is a visionary, stoic, composed, erudite and brave woman. A former Principal, her school was known for academic success and its Spanish magnet program. Highly respected, she became Assistant Superintendent for around 8 years before her imminent retirement.

As Dr. Rudiak prepared for retirement, the $1 BILLION in budget cuts from Governor Corbett took effect. The disastrous effect of these cuts to our District can not be overstated. Dr. Rudiak made the valiant and loving choice to stay with the District for another year to help it right itself. Iin doing so she agreed to take on the oversight of the Librarians...the bedraggled, unloved, mud-splattered and bloodied survivors, those who didn't flee to the classroom, other districts, early retirement or extended leaves. Those librarians still standing, facing the onslaught of 5 libraries to serve EACH. Those librarians who over the course of decades lovingly and with full intellect and talent built collections to serve their one school--the children they knew and loved, the curricular thrusts of each subject, the special interests and projects of their staffs-- these collections were boxed up, drayed out to strangers, sent into a literary diaspora. Whether they gather dust in warehouses, moulder on shelves laden with dust and spiderwebs or sit, unloved and untouched in backrooms, nobody really knows, least of all the women (and two men) who selected each and every one.

If our school district can be compared to Hugo's Les Miserables (and since this is my blog, it can) the Librarians would be played by the deserted street children and the bedraggled whores on the streets, the most low, the unloved. Please be clear. I am not calling our librarians whores. I am saying-- of all the PPS teachers on this particular stage, pouring out "Do You Hear the People Sing?" the librarians are the least regarded and have the most reason to complain. In a cowardly move that this union will never live down, the PPS librarians were robbed of their building seniority JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE LIBRARIANS. And then their jobs were "reimagined."

At the end of last year/beginning of this year, Pittsburgh Public Schools librarians had to begin to get their heads around the new "educational delivery model" envisioned by our Superintendent: 5 schools each. 5 Libraries each. 2,000 students each, and if you are lucky, 12,000 books in each library to tend. For a profession built on human relationships, on the intimacy of one librarian-one child, the loving interaction between seeker and finder-- blasted to bits like a shot from a canon. Good luck learning the names of your 2000 students, let alone what they like to read, what challenges them, what they are learning about, what they want to learn about. How can you help kids to learn to love to read if you can't know them?

To put it mildly, the Librarians were not amused. As. Dr. Rudiak discovered in her first meeting with us, those left standing were destroyed. Not in tears, but in silence they sat there-- at first. Devastation does that. 

At yesterday's meeting, Dr. Rudiak adroitly managed to listen while not allowing our meeting to turn into a bitch-fest. She is good at that. And it was at that meeting that I learned that an expert librarian will be losing his full time job at his school this year, where the Principal had managed to finagle him a full time placement with extra funds. This librarian built the collection there-- it is a classical academy, so the library has a wonderful special focus-- from the ground up, staying late to barcode and automate the system himself. Over the course of decades he created a collection to meet the needs of the school and the kids. And now he is facing the howling winds like the rest of us, abandoned in the cold. Two other librarians in similar situations shared their feelings. Beyond being empathetic, I realized that with at least three librarians with more seniority than me waiting for jobs, and with our district facing insolvency in two years, my hopes to serve Pittsburgh Public School students are dead. It is widely known that the district will have to close more schools in 2015. Fewer libraries, fewer jobs. The librarian I was subbing for is returning, so as of today, I am a sub waiting for a call. No school to report to, no library to rehab, no stories to read,  no crafts to plan, no miracles to engineer.

So: the end of all things school library. For me. Now what? Dunno. Finding school librarianship as a profession has been a long and twisting road. When I finally found it, I gave myself, body and soul to it. I am uniquely suited to it. It doesn't exist now, for me, and probably, within two or three years, for most in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. I'm a steel worker in Pittsburgh in the 1980's, except nobody thinks Japan or anywhere else is doing the work better, cheaper, stronger. The need for kids to read is there. The need for somebody to guide their reading toward quality and curricular relevance is there. The need for kids to think about what information is and how they ought to get it and use it has never been more urgent. There seems to be $1 BILLION in Pennsylvania tax incentive dollars to give away, free, to enormous natural gas conglomerates, which our Governor did this year.  But no money for books for kids, or libraries for them, or librarians. The absence of school librarians and school libraries is an engineered crisis.

Did you know that one of the first Tibetan victims of Chinese genocide were librarians? That libraries are universally burned when new regimes take over? Is it a coincidence from ancient times, when enemy take overs were begun, that libraries and librarians were the first to go? Does the destruction of libraries from Alexandria to Tibet have anything in common with the corporate take over of public education and the destruction of school libraries and librarians? I wonder.

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be finding something new to do. One thing is sure: I'll be reading, learning, fighting and speaking out. I won't be silenced. Ever. And I'll always work toward making sure that libraries in schools and outside of schools prosper, thrive, and remain connected--one child, one librarian-- at the heart, through the mind, from eye to eye, heart to hand. Want to fight alongside me? Come to Yinzercation's Rally for Public Education February 10th. Let's rally. Let's sing. Let's decide that our children are worth more than this.

Rally for Public Education

“Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Can You Hear the People Sing?
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Into the Breach

‎"Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

It sounds like its from the News of the Absurd. Yesterday, as Joe Biden began his discussion with the National Rifle Association about how best to keep students safe from gun violence, a young man with a shotgun was leveling his barrel at a fellow student in a California high school. Feeling bullied by his peers, and having made a kill list of students, the young man entered the science classroom to get revenge. The shooter shot one student, aimed at another and missed. Ryan Heber, the science teacher in front of the class did not run, lead a stampede, hide or pull out a semi-automatic firearm. He engaged the shooter in a conversation, allowing his 28 other students to escape out a back door. Heber had been hit by a stray shotgun pellet and was bleeding from the head, but convinced the shooter to lay down his weapon, saving the lives of the students in his classroom and the shooter himself.

I teach in a school that is in full melt-down status. It absorbed 200 children from a school that was closed this year and is bursting at the seams. Kindergarten classrooms have 33 children each on their classroom rolls. The ISS Room rolls are bursting and keep growing. Last week there was a terrible fight that resulted in a kid leaving school in an ambulance. Now no one in 3-8th grade is allowed to go to outside recess. Teachers who take kids outside for recess will immediately get a "critical incident"-- a very serious consequence. Hall Angels roam the halls. Managing disrespectful behavior from students is one of the highest priorities in the building. Teachers are breaking down and sending out infuriated and frustrated emails of protest to the entire school list-- a risky move that happens when teachers are driven crazy.

The Principal, a kind and loving man, is driven to make AYP twice in a row. He has the teachers doing test prep constantly. The kids have done two mock PSSAs already--its the beginning of January. They've taken their CBAs--curriculum based assessments, they will take their Keystone tests, eighth graders have special tests just for them--and real PSSAs are in Spring. A significant number of days this year have been devoted to filling in test bubbles or preparing for it. Art, music, library-- all are rare and low-level. You can't endeavor to thoroughly teach clarinet or oil painting or research skills  if you see kids once or twice a month-- at most.

This week began at this school with a former student, who came to pick up younger siblings. The former student got into an altercation with a current elementary school child. The former student's father showed up to help mediate the altercation with a baseball bat--and a swastika tattoo on his head. He shouted racial epithets. A bus driver had to come to the rescue of our elementary school student. The Principal's response was to place more teachers along the sidewalk at dismissal to, I suppose, form a human shield against this dangerous parent or others like him. When the Principal asked for additional school police, he was told that the department had been cut so much that there were no police to spare. Those teachers will stand alone, middle aged women in comfortable shoes in the blustery cold, to face that parent and any other threat.


At Garfield High School in Seattle, an entire school staff has decided to unite and conscientiously refuse to give one of the standardized tests they are required to give. The teachers feel the test is superfluous, damaging, and a blatant misuse of their students' time and talents. Never mind the extreme conflict of interest that exists between the former Superintendent and the test-maker-- let's save looking at that man behind the curtain for another day. Today, those teachers stand in solidarity. They might lose their jobs. They might be bullied individually by their Board of Ed. They might be threatened with losing their teaching credentials. I don't know what havoc will be wrecked upon them-- especially as news gets out about their rebellion and other teachers in other districts begin to follow suit. For now, these teachers have acted heroically, and they stand alone, without legal protection.

I am sure there are some doctors who have turned in their medical licenses because of undue and unethical pressure from hospital boards and pharmaceutical companies, but I don't know any. If you are reading this, you now know, however, of teachers-- who not only stand willing to lose their livelihood and cherished profession-- but their very lives if need be to protect their "patients"--their students. What other profession does this? Do dentists? Do lawyers? Now compare the prestige, power and earning potential between teachers and the other professions.

Here is what I've decided today. My two oldest children, finishing college at Temple University, have long talked about being teachers. Their father has encouraged this, and I have done everything possible to discourage it. I don't want them to live far away from me (because there are no teaching jobs in Pgh) get treated like pariahs and be paid unfairly. I don't want their faces to be targets for Neo Nazi parents with baseball bats because our Governor cut funding to schools (ensuring there wouldn't be enough security police.)
I have been willing, however to honor my youngest child's desire to join the Israeli Defense Force after high school. She wants to defend her "other" country. My son, home for winter break, threw an astringent rinse on my thinking. How can I support my youngest going to war? And with that thought, I have to acknowlege this: if I encourage my youngest to join an army, how can I discourage my two oldest from teaching? I must acknowledge his point. Especially when ultimately, in our country today, these two are almost the same thing.

I have changed my mind. Thank you, my son. I will no longer discourage you and your older sister from being TEACHERS. There is no more ardently valiant, brave, patriotic occupation in this world. I don't think that for those who truly know what it is to teach today the following words will seem hyperbolic: we are engaged in the civil rights fight of our time when we dare to teach well. We are striking a blow against the corporate deformers who would ghettoize our poorest and most vulnerable students in a world of violence and despair. A world of endless test taking, stripping art, library, music, joy, love and pride from their days.

When we go to teach, we go to war. We arm ourselves with a vision of love in the way all major religions understand it: as a way to live shalom--wholeness--Dr. King's vision of peace--the presence of justice, not just the absence of conflict. We go to possibly lay our investment in our education, certification status and family finances on the line in service to the children of our country. We go to place our bodies between violent students and parents and those they intend to harm. Most often, we fight our own failing will in the face of withering disdain from the general media, mayors in major blue states like Bloomberg, trusted and esteemed union leaders, NYT columnists, our own President. We fight a spiritual, financial, professional, emotional battle-- and we fight alone. No majority political party will come to save us. No majority of parents of kids we teach will save us. We save ourselves by doing the fighting.

Those of us who want to TEACH-- not test--are ALL those middle aged women in cheap coats and comfortable shoes, standing along a sidewalk alone-- ready to face the attack. In homage to them, I thank God for making me a teacher. To stand in their ranks is an honor, no matter what the world calls us-- union thugs, "just like the NRA", lazy, incompetent child-haters. Thank God for allowing me to have personal children who see true, call it square, and make me face my own self. I will always be frightened for you should you decide to become teachers. There is a lot of fear to go around in teaching circles today.

Into the fray, my children, my colleagues. Into the breach. We'll throw our bodies into the machine-- because that is how we have chosen to live. We'll stand alone for children because the rest of our nation sleeps. The corporate media lullaby calls out a dark and irrestistable call to our country: be afraid, don't dare to challenge authority, obey, submit. We won't. We'll stand, even alone. Thank God. Amen.


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Rant Alert! Dear Mr. Obama

This is a picture of an-all-but empty supply cabinet in a school. Where's the glue, paint, scissors, construction paper in a rainbow of colors, rolls of colored paper for displays, rainbow chalk, raffia, colored pencils? 

I blamed Republicans and conservatives for the decline of public education in my article, 2012: The Year of the Embattled Public School Child. My good friend, sister librarian and in-the-trenches public school teacher Kipp told me off a little for that in a comment she made on that article. Duh. Of course she was right.

In the article itself, I reference No Child Left Behind's co-authors John Boehner and none other than the Lion of Congress himself, Mr. Liberal-- Edward Kennedy. I can privately think Mr. Boehner had nefarious reasons, and Mr. Kennedy had altruistic ones-- but even if I'm right-- which I'm possibly not-- the fact remains that the single most egregious legislation to wound, maim and slam public schools to bleeding in a desert of test-prep came from this brotherhood of left and right. OY! Why does it matter? Because the LEFT bears just as much responsibility for public schools' decline as the right.

And that, Mr. President, is where you come in. You, sir, are an educational policy train wreck. Race to the Top is WORSE than No Child Left Behind. No child should have to COMPETE for needed resources in their schools. But don't worry: I can fix it for you. 

Recipe for Better Public Schools:

Appoint Diane Ravitch as your secretary of education. Beg Jessie Ramey of Yinzercation fame and Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teacher's Union to join her. Make these three women an important part of your Cabinet. Educational policy is a National Security issue. Kick Arne Duncan out of Washington with a spiked boot. Rethink your support of charter schools, which by nobody's reckoning are generally out-performing publics, but are re-segregating and miseducating kids, as well as busting unions and leaving special needs kids out in the cold.

Demand state Departments of Education take down their charter-boosting language on their websites unless they fully account for their finances-- publicly-- and while you are at it, make them follow the same rules as everybody else. If charters are public schools, make them take every child who applies. Give Rahm Emmanuel a public spanking. That dude is an absolute educational Vlad the Impaler. His policies in Chicago are criminal. Or should be. Invite teachers to the White House on a regular basis to discuss the reality in the trenches and how you can help. Get Michele involved in boosting the country's tone when discussing the work teachers do. By-pass the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers. That woman has sold her sold to the Devil. Standardized testing for teachers now? What??

Sasha and Malia don't have to swelter under the dictates of No Child Left Behind, and I'm glad. If those two beautiful girls and their exquisite mother can teach you about how wrong you were not to support LGBTQ marriage equality, maybe they can teach you about education policy too. Walk through a public inner-city school twice a month, your honor. Check out the lack of resources there. Come visit our shuttered and empty school libraries, our mouldering, inadequate buildings, our bright and shining Kindergarteners packed 30-deep in a room with no air conditioning on the third floor. It's December and they don't know their classmates' names yet.

Watch the test prep, test prep, test prep, ask where their gym is, how often they have music and art, where the violins and flutes are, what kinds of art supplies are in the storage room. You'll be met with a big, fat, echoing NOTHING. Because those vital things aren't there, Boss. They've been sucked up with the need for more test prep to help kids made Adequate Yearly Progress.

Increasingly, this is the message being shouted by educators all over the country. LISTEN, Mr. Obama. Consider the effect of the current state of public education on your Presidential legacy. End of rant.

Except this: read it. /the-hardest-job-everyone-thinks-they-can-do/

Libraries and Miracles In Haiti

“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations.  Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.”
--Toni Morrison


America the great and wealthy, stretching from, as she says, "sea to shining sea," hangs above a tiny island nation like a gated mansion next to a favela. We Americans look down on scenes of great wealth next to abject poverty in places like Brazil without recognizing the irony of our scorn. 


Two years ago a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, destroying an already supremely needy nation. Television news blared about Haiti being the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. I sat next to a very wealthy philanthropist at a meeting who said that no matter what others did to help, Haiti was a hopeless cause. I should learn to love bleak thoughts like that-- they enrage me. And that rage burns me to action. 

Fired by what I was seeing on the news and by that man's nihilism, I started to wonder: what else was Haiti? Truly unknown to me at that point, an itch to know started to bug me. What was Haiti? Were there strengths there we didn't consider? 

I began to talk to my students about Haiti, the earthquake, the questions in my mind about the news coverage, their questions. I told them we were going to do a research project, from fourth through six grade on Haiti to answer the questions we as a group had. 

Here are some of the things we found out, in no particular order:

* Haiti is the world's only democracy founded by a slave revolt. 

* Columbus didn't discover America. He landed on Haiti- and tried to rape it to death. But from the beginning, the Taino fought back. Like the ancient Israelites, they were a tough bunch to conquer-- and didn't stay conquered for long.

* Touissant L'Overture, a brilliant strategist and statesman, led the slave revolt against Napoleon-- one of the greatest dictators in the world-- and won.

* Haitians make art out of trash: they punch sculpture out of steel drums and get around in tap-taps: old buses covered in beautiful bright paint and French or kreyol proverbs.

* Haitian culture combines aspects of French, Catholic, African, tribal and Vou-Dou roots, making a gorgeous and exotic stew.

* Anacoana was a Taino queen who tried to make peace with the invaders. She is remembered as a mother of the nation.

* There's a Vou-dou mermaid goddess that adorns some flags, covered in sequins! 

We began to see there were two ways to look at Haiti: the poverty view or the strength view. We learned that news reporters banged away with the poverty, tragedy, horror-- but the more we dug into the music, art and culture, the more inspired we became. We used the picture books of renowned children's author Karen Lynn Williams as a starting place, including Painted Dreams, Circles of Hope and Tap-Tap. Gorgeous, wonderful books! 

We carefully planned out how to show facts from the strength perspective of Haiti-- facts our research had taught us. We painted cardboard tap-tap buses with things like mountains and the word "Ayiti"-- the Taino word for "mountainous land"-- Haiti's native name. We used brilliant colors, jewels, glitter-- we soaked our art in the richness and diversity we were so inspired by. We meant to auction them as a fundraiser for Haiti, but a fundraiser at the school I worked at was worried the school's own fundraising would suffer. Disgusted and hurt, I kept the tap-taps for a better day.

That day is today. I am going to begin to work with educators across Pittsburgh to enlarge and broaden our original ideas about Haiti research. I want to bring the strength view of Haiti-- and poor countries in general-- to kids and educators across Pittsburgh. Why? 

From a personal perspective-so I can be strengthened and broadened by the historical heroism of the Haitian people. I want to grow to be like them. I want my students to know that in the face of unspeakable privation the human spirit finds a way. And the Haitians' way seems to be with color, music, art-- what could be more glorious? Who wouldn't want to be close to that? 

How? Here's one idea: do mini-research lessons on Haiti in Pittsburgh classrooms with teachers who have the time and interest (and curricular room.) Brainstorm with them about how to show what we know after we research Haiti. The art teacher at Carmalt thought of buying actual windows from Construction Junction, a local construction reuse store, and having kids decoupage on them in the style of Haitian-American artist Jean-Michele Basquiat. She wants to call her unit, "Windows Into Haiti." Brilliant! Then- I go to Haiti in February. I bring a ton of art supplies with me, partially paid for by donations from my First Giving site (Libraries and Miracles in Haiti) I invite Haitian kids to tell their stories, express themselves, create picture books. With the children's permission, I bring some of those back. 

There's a deeper "why," and it isn't about me. It's about empowering Pittsburgh and Haitian children. If we present an idea to kids, let them figure it out, then show what they know via art, film, digital storytelling, whatever--we show them they matter. Their voices, thoughts, feelings, intellects, talents-- these things will instruct and inform the broader world. And when we add a Pittsburgh art show, with all the Pittsburgh and Haitian kids' art on display for auction to benefit the building of a children's library in Haiti-- we have let kids build a fundraiser-- and a library-- with their own hands, hearts and minds. It's a great idea. 

Please support my donation site. Please direct message me if you want to get involved. And thank you. Dr. King said, "Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the presence of justice." 2013 is going to be a year we move mountains toward justice and Dr. King's version of peace. Together, with our strength vision, in love. 

Strength and beauty in Haiti

Sparks in the Dark

You hold on to the joy you can find. Here's some:

Casey, the funniest middle schooler I know. We had an unexpected Library class, one that needed to happen on the fly because of a scheduling issue. No plan was possible.

A week before I made 500+ salt dough ornaments in the shape of animals for my younger students to paint and glitter. To those classes, I read Patricia Polacco's The Trees of the Dancing Goats, about a Jewish family that brings hope and joy to their Christian neighbors during an outbreak of scarlet fever. The family decorates tiny Christmas trees with little, brightly painted animals and gives them to Christian families who are too ill to make their holiday for their children. The salt-dough ornaments were a literature extension, and a way to build fine motor skills as we carefully wielded paint brushes, glue bottles, glitter glue. Ultimately, the project was mostly to romance the kids. You do that when you are in a school one day a week. You want kids to associate fun and excitement with libraries and books.

Back to my on-the-fly middle school class. I figured, what the heck, I had a zillion extra unpainted ornaments, and the middle schoolers don't get to do crafty stuff as often as the little ones. Do it with them. So I read the book and turned over the supplies. You could have heard a pin drop as my usually racous middle schoolers, even while some of them poo-pooed the project, got to work. Their hearts were in it. They carefully painted rainbow stripes, glittered intricate patterns, and wrote their names on the paper plates that the projects were to dry on. Nobody but them was going to take their particular ornament home.

This week I again got my schedule mixed up. (Don't judge. I'm juggling over a thousand kids and many, many classes.) Casey showed up, asking where I was. Why wasn't I up in the class with the ornaments? Wasn't I going to let them finish them? I quickly packed up all the stuff and hiked up three flights with him. They pounced on their ornaments, this time to bejewel, string and gift-wrap. Wanting to be sensitive to differing family configurations, I said to the kids that they were now free to give their gifts to their "Moms, Dads, grandparents, foster parents, or Great Uncle Fred." Casey says, rubbing his chin, "Um. I don't have a Great Uncle Fred. But I have an Uncle Sam. You know-- the rich guy with all the money." I raised an eyebrow at him. Huh? Casey grinned his beautiful bright smile and said, "He takes most of your pay." How does an eleven-year old get so funny, so bright and so quick?

I had a first period class in a room with 3, 4 and 5-year olds. These tiny ones. Bright brown eyes, long eyelashes, little braids. Tiny pink tutus over polka dotted tights. Shoes smaller than my hand. They shout when they see me. A great wall of joy passes between us, reciprocal, symbiotic. The run to the story carpet and sit down in eager rows. I'm grinning. I sit in front of them and jump a little, alert. "Did you hear that?" I ask them. They shake their heads. "Oh! It's the invisible Library phone! It's ringing!" My pinkie and thumb extended, I put the "phone" to my ear. They squirm with delight. "Hello?" I ask. "SANTA!" I cover the "phone" and say to the kids in a loud whisper, "It's Santa." Back to the conversation. "Hi, SANTA! You're watching the class? You want them to know you are proud of them? That they are very polite? Oh-- okay. Hold on a minute." I turn to the kids. "He wants you to know he's watching and he's so PROUD of you! What good manners!" Every little eye is dancing-- every little mouth is smiling. They are adorable. We are so happy to be together.

We read Lon Po-Po, the Chinese Little Red Riding Hood. Next semester we are going to study Asia-- so this is a taste of what is to come. We add magic dust (sparkly glitter) to our cards that go home. I teach them to spell "China" in American Sign Language. We sing as we work on our art-- Jingle Bells, I Have a Little Dreidel, Frosty the Snowman. A child starts a new song and we all sing along.

More sparks:

The teacher in a different class who dims the lights and plays Tchiakovsky while the children work. She has released them to their chairs only after they name a fact about Australia-- the last continent they studied. Marsupials. Continent. Aboriginal. They have the vocabulary down.

The art teacher who stays late to re-fire the pottery kids made with her. The colors aren't bright enough for her liking. She wants them to be proud of their work.

The second grader who told his mother, "No bad guy could come in to Carmalt. Dr. Och would wrastle any bad guy to the ground." Dr. Och is about 90 pounds and female-- but everybody at Carmalt's Christmas concert laughed when she told that story. Not because it was improbable-- but because everybody there, Black, white, Asian, middle-eastern, grandparent, foster parent, teachers, Pre-K through 8th grade student--knew it is true. A trembling, tender, dear moment.

The parent who remembers you, the one-day-a-week librarian, with a family photo Christmas card and a lottery ticket-- and a thank you.

Thank you, God, for the opportunity to serve tiny people. They are such a source of joy and light. Sparks in the dark. After Newton, in this age of assault on the noble and, sure, I'll say it-- holy act of teaching-- you hold on to each one.

The Year of the Embattled Public School Child

"What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it thinks about education." 
                                   --Harold Howe, former U.S. Commissioner of Education


This morning on the Today show, Matt, Al et. al discussed picks for Time's Person of the Year for 2012. Malala Yousufzai, Aung San Su Kyi and others were floated as good choices-- but for me, the obvious choice is the embattled public school child. Here's why.

Remember Angel from my previous post Outside the Lines-- of the Standardized Test Bubble? She's a grain of sand in a vast desert of kids sweltering under No Child Left Behind policy-- the wandering African American child in the halls of public schools, kicked out of class for disruption, rudeness, teacher's irritability--that kid was probably an Angel. In almost every school I've been in (and as of today, since September, I've been in nine) these kids are a fixture, angry ghosts haunting the halls. It is not because teachers hate Black kids. It is not because Black kids are troublemakers. It's because public schools are at Defcon 5. 

We have, as one of my Uncles likes to say, "one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel." No Child Left Behind was co-sponsored by now Speaker of the House Boehner and Senator Edward Kennedy. As a result, schools, teachers and most importantly, children are being crushed to death by 11 years of what Fordham University Professor Mark Naison calls, [an] "education reform policy [that] will be judged by future historians as one of the most destructive and immoral social policies introduced under the aegis of a bi-partisan consensus since the Vietnam War.."

My dark angels roaming the halls didn't get there by accident. Unengaged students in class aren't there by accident either. Connect the dots: teachers' unions vote Democrat. Kill one of the last standing major unions and you help the big businesses who eye the enormous amounts of money to be made in a newly structured education model. These businesses buy politicians, who abdicate their responsibility to write legislation for the common good to for-profit charters, "consulting groups" and Pearson, the standardized test company...who see public education as a tasty morsel to be gobbled up for their own profit. Think I'm nuts? Want some  peer review? Check this out: pearson multinational and its influence on education policy and this out: It's All About the Money, Money, Money and this: Excerpt: The Life and Death of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. 

So-- how to kill teachers' unions? Thoroughly. Start by branding teachers as lazy, whining, overpaid kid-haters. Fund movies like Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down. Portray teachers as union thugs who sit heavily at desks and torture children. Move in for the kill: demand 100% of kids achieve on a test that is rigged for failure, and control how the test is given. (NOTE: If you are a Congressperson, be sure to send your kids to a private school that would never rely on this policy. Even if you aren't a Congressperson, be sure that your kids' private school doesn't take mentally ill kids, pregnant kids, kids with mental retardation, etc. and pretend it is because "your school doesn't have the resources to help those kids." Be sure, however, that your kids' private school has state-of-the-art technologies, small class sizes, new auditoriums, art and theater departments and beautiful facilities.)

 Control who scores the test. Make teachers' and administrators' jobs rely on those scores-- and punish them with fewer resources if the kids don't achieve. Publish teachers' names in the paper, like the L.A. Times did, branding them as "FAILING." In essence, take most things worth doing and knowing and absent them from public school days--and ensure teachers are weakened and disparaged enough to frantically try to comply with your catastrophic educational policy. Roll up the carpet of failure and, "for the kids' sake," offer your carefully crafted, astonishingly-ready-already new "delivery model:" charters, for-profit charters, racial segregation and unelected officials in charge. 

The bad news for education deformers, as Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan are widely called-- is that we are on to them. The good news for them is that they have at least a 12-year jump on us-- and by "us" I mean educators, parents and of course-- the embattled public school child.

Policy, politics-- who cares, right? What's the brass tacks? Here it is:

My own children's Pittsburgh Public elementary school experience pre-dated No Child Left Behind. They had a full time music teacher who taught them songs like "Siyahamba," the South African freedom song. They had a full time art teacher in a huge art room with a working kiln, and time for oil painting tutors. They had a full time French teacher, a librarian who read Greek myths to them, a fourth grade teacher who integrated sign language into lessons. Their second grade content areas were enriched with art history-- my oldest, Sarah, studied Bruegel, Monet, Keith Haring-- and made an edible self-portrait in the style of Picasso for FUN. Remember fun in school?

My kids benefited from a cranky but truly expert science teacher who hatched chicks every year in the science lab and helped to build a nature walk around the school. Their social studies and language arts classes were enriched by artists in residence who played up-right bass in school, explored the work of Langston Hughes, Thomas Jefferson, Pakistani ghazals. They had gym every day, recess every day, they slept over at kids' houses who didn't look like them.

The common denominator here is that teachers were allowed to TEACH. They weren't consumed with test prep, or Common Core Standards. They were enriching the children in front of them with the best humanity has to offer--with art, literature, music. They were accountable to a highly involved PTA and a demanding principal who was universally beloved. Did I mention that all of this took place in the middle of a crime-ridden, impoverished area surrounded by public housing? That my son's favorite teachers were two African American women-- Ms. Benjamin and Mrs. Stevens? That my daughter's first best friend was African American? That the school was totally integrated? That the staff was racially diverse?

Show me the charter school that can touch that experience. Show me the PRIVATE school that can touch that experience. You know what I'm fighting for? You know why I nominate the embattled public school child as Time's Person of 2012? Because you would be hard-pressed, 11 years after No Child Left Behind, to show me that experience in a public school today. That racial diversity, that level of teacher engagement, that integration of arts, that availability of resources, that thrumming, gorgeous school life my own kids loved, that shaped them into the gorgeous souls they are today-- it is DYING. Gone but for a few hold-outs where parents have enough disposable income and time to get involved, volunteer, advocate, talk to the members of the Board of Education...where there are administrators with epic courage who support teachers who act for the benefit of the whole child.

One of my current four schools has warned the staff that any teacher taking her students to recess will get an instant critical incident filed against her. There isn't enough staff for recess. Each child there gets one box of Prang crayons per semester. The supply cupboard is bare. If there is any integration of art-- which there generally isn't, because they have been doing test prep since September-- it relies on the money teachers can spare to fund it--since they have to buy their own supplies. I haven't seen 8th grade in that school in the library, and I probably won't. Seeing their almost 600 kids in one day a week as their librarian is impossible. I'll see them a few times a year, at most. The school is coming apart at the seams. Teachers have stopped putting up displays in the halls because our hall angels tear them down. A science teacher hadn't received her curriculum yet-- and it is December. Broken technology and no tech staff to fix it in a "data driven" world. These poor teachers just can't educate 600 kids, all of them so poor they require free or reduced lunches-- with no resources, too few counselors, social workers, school nurses, a curriculum strangled by test prep, too little art, music, library, little administrative support and an uninvolved group of parents.

My hall angels. Our children who NEED music, art, technology, who NEED teachers who aren't driven almost to breakdown with central office and state demands-- it is these children who deserve our attention now. As Karen Lewis, the hero from Chicago, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union showed in her successful CTU strike this year: teachers' concerns are kids' concerns. Some of their most important requests, requests that required a STRIKE to get the District to agree to were: more counselors for needy kids, textbooks guaranteed on the first day of school or before, a "better day," not just a longer one, including art, library, etc. What other professional has to take an unpaid leave to stand in all weathers with a sign to get supplies to serve their clients or patients? When has an attorney ever had to stand on a sidewalk for free to access a law library? When has a doctor ever had to hold a rally to beg for surgical equipment? Don't believe me? Read the facts: community-group-has-a-rally-for-better-school-day

Time's Person of the Year for 2012 should be The Embattled Public School Child. My hope is that the tiny faces of the victims of the shooting in Newton, CT will drive us toward a national discussion of the importance of teachers and teaching. It can be noted that the Sandy Hook music teacher and librarian's jobs were on the chopping block right before the shooting. Thank God that music teacher and that librarian were there- they saved children's lives. Teachers, in the most extreme circumstances, save children's physical lives. In less extreme circumstances, teachers can save children's spiritual, academic, social, artistic and emotional lives every day. Let's let them.

Outside the Lines-- of the Standardized Test Bubble

When I was student teaching, I had an experience that left me in tears and immoblized for days afterward. It started well enough-- with what I thought at the time was a cultural difference I didn't fully understand. It ended badly. Let me tell the story.

I student taught at a new construction school in what folks called "Crack Row" in the historic Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. 100% African American, free and reduced lunch, a terrible academic record. I had asked for an urban setting- the rougher, the better. After having taught poetry at my kids' school, East Hills International Studies Academy, I thought I was well prepared. That school was in the middle of the projects. Our poetry club went from 30 kids after school to culling grad students from Pitt and other parents to teach Kindergarten-Fifth grade. We were a huge part of the school culture, the Principal loved us, the kids loved us, we got grants from Heinz Endowments-- it felt a lot like success in an inner city school. I got this, I thought.

Now getting ready for my student teaching--I had some education classes under my belt, I had lots of experience working with kids, I even had read Keith Gilyard's Voices of the Self. This book was highly influential. I was on fire to save children from deciding by second grade that school was not for them, as Gilyard's work described so eloquently. I was going to make the difference in their lives with my training, my love, my passion and my sheer will.

Fast forward to a week into student teaching. Breaking up fights every day multiple times between children who sometimes seemed to these very white eyes as feral, managing hungry kids, homeless kids, angry kids, mentally unstable kids-- this was terribly hard-- but not as hard as dealing with the adults in the building. Some of them were motivated, excited to be there, loving. Some of them were motherly, professional, highly talented, academically prepared. Some of them were racist and some of them were hopeless complainers-- and of both races. The Principal was a terrible manager. Some of her teacher favorites strolled up to get their kids from lunch duty 15 minutes late-- fully 1/3 of our Library period-- while we held that teacher's kids outside the library with our own incoming class in line, waiting to go in. I was overwhelmed and disillusioned. Nothing had prepared me for kids with PTSD and adults such as these. A week in, I wasn't sure I had anything to offer inner city kids.

And then it was time for the PSSA's-- the standardized tests that are part of No Child Left Behind. Our school had not made AYP, the Principal's job was imperiled, as was the entire staff's-- and the pressure for the kids to do well was ON. The Principal ordered extra food that week so all kids were fed a bigger breakfast and had unlimited access to fresh fruit, crackers, cheese, etc. between and during classes. Immediately the poor behavior came under better control. The kids were hungry-- I knew that-- but I didn't know how hungry, or remember how food insecurity can affect one's mental state from my own childhood. The Principal also had the staff plan an enormous rally to get the kids pumped for the tests.

On the day of the rally, there was a guy in a costume, blaring hip hop music, dancers, a play of sorts-- a really big production to try to get kids to understand the importance of the test. I thought this kind of thing was an expression of a cultural difference between myself and the African-American staff. I hoped it would help. It did the work of getting us all more on edge than ever, that I will say. We clearly understood the high stakes going into testing. The kids seemed to clearly understand what was at stake should they perform poorly. They were amped. It wasn't clear how they felt about the tests- but they knew how we felt, how the Principal felt- how the state felt. I was taken out of the library for the week of PSSA's to help "proctor" the exam. I was paired with a second grade teacher I didn't know.

The first day of the PSSAs I showed up, coffee in hand, dressed up, bright eyed and ready to do anything I could to be part of the team and drive up test scores. The reality was that I sat at the edge of the room while a teacher scalded the kids- really scalded and flayed them-- with frustrated, shrill instructions interrupted by screaming reminders not to ask questions. She said she wasn't allowed to answer any of them. Children were seated with their cardboard test-taking "privacy screens", their extra #2 pencils, their mints. She read the instructions and told them to take their tests. She called them "beauties," pretty incongruous to her task and her tone.

 One child kept moving the table he was sitting at. The teacher shrieked at him to quit distracting others-- didn't he know how important quiet was for concentration? Did he want others to fail? Fail their school, their families, their teachers? The tension in the room, already high, made the children and I sweat. I went to the kid who kept moving the table, to try to quietly encourage him to stop. He couldn't. His legs were too long and didn't fit under it. He wasn't trying to move the table-- he was trying to sit there quietly. But he didn't fit-- and he couldn't-- and each time he tried, the teacher, really at this point a terrifying witch stereotype from a badly acted Hansel and Gretel film-- shrieked at him.

Many of the kids weren't doing the test. The teacher would read the instructions, allow the time to run out, and then read the instructions for the next section. Those kids who weren't doing the test couldn't read the test booklet. You read that right. They couldn't read the friggin' test. They couldn't read the answers. The test was a joke from beginning to end for this group-- totally inappropriate-- but the teacher had to give the test, in the manner proscribed-- whether or not the kids could do it. She said she wasn't allowed to explain or clarify questions, and there were test monitors in the building that day to be sure each rule was followed to the letter. I was frantic. How could I be sitting in a room while this kind of situation occurred? I didn't know what to do.

And then a child named Angel, most inappropriately named, solved the problem and broke the tension. She turned over her desk in the middle of the room, spewing papers, pencils, mints and the cardboard privacy screen onto the floor. It hit the hard floor like a canon and echoed like thunder. She stood there, defiant, smiling. The teacher turned blue and screamed. Angel did. not. care. She clacked her hair beads around, stuck out her little behind, and danced in a circle. She sang, "Go pee-pee! Go pee-pee! Go pee-pee!" while twirling her little self around in circles. Sometimes she'd stop and do a huge, all over booty shake. Sometimes she'd just make faces and clack her beads. The other kids watched her, smiling, awed. She got louder, the clacking beads more frantically bashing around her head, her dancing crazier. Papers settled in corners of the room, swishing under her feet.

The teacher yelled at the kids to ignore Angel and do their tests. We all knew sending behavior problems to the office resulted in a triumphant and quick return of that kid, smiling knowingly, having had a "talk" and a piece of candy with the person in charge. Some kids tried to resume their test, but most just watched. I was awed, too. Angel's response was the only one that made sense. Here I was, a 40-something teacher, and I was cowed by the teacher, the high stakes, the tension, the repercussions, the need for acceptance, you name it. Not 7-year old Angel. She just flipped over the desk and essentially gave the whole thing the finger. She knew bullshit when she saw it.

I cried in the parking lot after school. What had I signed up for? At the end of my student teaching, I was absolutely sure I did not want to-- could not-- work in an urban setting. I felt-- still feel-- that student teachers need a full semester devoted to nothing but working with a type of inner city child: the child who lives in a food desert, whose parents are in prison, whose family members are shot in front of their eyes, whose parents sling drugs, who live with grandparents or in homeless shelters or with family friends. The children who jump behind cars to avoid being hit by a drive-by shooting, which happened during my student teaching. Babies-- shaken, almost hit by flying bullets, having saved their own lives on the street by hiding-- now coming to a school where their performance on a standardized test-- devised to make them fail, requiring none of their intellect or gifts--was used to judge them, their teachers, their community.

You've heard all this kind of thing before. What you may not have heard, so far even from me-- is the joy of the kids. The kids like Kristopher, a quiet fourth grader who wrote a poem off the cuff beginning with the line, "the faces of my people" about how beautiful his neighbors were. The joy of those children and parents who somehow triumphed: the grandmother who adopted two little boys born addicted to crack who worked nights, but still found time to volunteer in the cafeteria, iron the boys' uniforms, and visit the school library daily to get new books to read to them. She had her boys report out to us each morning about what they had read the night before--and ask probing questions about the books. The way the kids-- lots of boys included-- could double-dutch. The talent the kids displayed at critical thinking-- the ways they questioned stories, authors' intentions, instructions to assignments, above all, us. The way the kids made incredible poetry, visual art, and were grateful if you remembered their names, remembered them-- their beauty. Their minds. Their ability to solve problems that had nothing to do with canned tests. Their ways of answering questions that hadn't been asked, that were 10 steps ahead of anything we had thought to ask. I thought of them then-- and still do--- as uncharted rainforests full of things that could cure the world, if only we could find a way to nurture them, protect them, get out of their way. We were trying to make them into bonsai trees--carefully controlled and shaped to our specifications--when each one was a wild growing forest, full of blooming.

Here's to Angel and the brand of wild fight she had in her. Here's to the kids at that school who saw us for what we were: frightened sheep more concerned with keeping our jobs than walking the hell out, saying we refuse to give PSSAs-- fire us now, we won't do it. And here's to the kids who won't end up in jail or slinging, but making art, writing poems, nurturing younger ones, finding a way- and who knew deep down I loved them, I cared for them-- but didn't know how to teach them.