Beginner's Heart

This is how teachers learn best: caffeine & reflection . Well,  at least the teachers I know ~

This week I helped with a two-day workshop with teachers in a town near here — one of the many small Oklahoma towns (population about 2,000 or so) that are fighting lack of funding as they try to keep their rural schools open.

The research is pretty clear that students do better in smaller rural schools than larger consolidated ones. But that doesn’t ‘save money’ ~ it just keeps kids in school. And even as I say that, I realise how negative it sounds. Like a song I was listening to  yesterday says, when negativity surrounds/ I know some day it’ll all turn around. But it won’t if I don’t help it . I have to make the effort to remember that most of us have good intentions. It’s the ones who want to abolish public education whom I don’t understand ~

I went to both private and public schools. Overseas, English-speaking schools are usually private, paid for by a parent’s employer. But when we lived in the US, I attended public schools. And despite their many warts, that’s the decision my husband & I made for our own two sons. We talked it over seriously, and realised that public schools are much of what makes America American .

So I do not understand the current discussion of all that’s wrong w/ public schools. People jump on the ‘bash schools & teachers’ movement w/ very little idea of what’s actually involved in teaching, or in education overall. They’ve read none of the research — something unheard of when we speak of medicine, or energy or other professions. Is it because more than 75% of teachers are female? (NEA — 2007-08) Does that make us think that teaching is like parenting, and anyone can do it? (I don’t believe that either, just for the record )

Around the world, those countries trying to move towards democracy are envious of our public school system. We try to educate all comers: you can enroll in a public school regardless of your background, your abilities, even your language capabilities. And I absolutely support that. Charter schools pick & choose, and still don’t beat public schools, research confirms. In fact, more than 1/3 of charter schools under-perform, compared to public schools, while only 17% out-perform. That’ doesn’t strike me as confidence-inspiring .

Back to the teachers this past week: They spent the two days before they began school working on how to be teachers. They heard research, tried new classroom strategies, and used each other as resources for the difficult challenges they face daily: one-parent families where the parent is working 3 jobs to make ends meet (Oklahoma is a very poor state); lack of money for resources (teachers spend on average $356.00 annually, each, out of their own pockets — a whopping 1.3 BILLION dollars per year). On the pittance salaries most make…

But most people who blame the problems with contemporary education do not read research. They don’t know that consolidating schools may save money, but it harms real live kids. They don’t understand that classes of 60 online students is not a good idea for many research-based reasons. Ask them if they want their child traveling 20 miles to a school, or studying only online, and they may hem & haw. But usually? Americans look at the ‘bottom line’ — the dollar$ .

As I’m always asking — what does this have to do w/ beginner’s heart? Perhaps, if we take the time to study issues, we will see at the heart of each ‘other’ a person much like ourselves, struggling to make it in increasingly complex daily lives. Working hard to help the people around us (including our students ). And not always managing, certainly. But trying. As public school teachers do, day in, day out.

Perhaps we should place human beings above dollars, trying to find solutions that are ones we ourselves would buy into, for our children, for ourselves .

And maybe we should offer each other a smile and a pat on the back for our efforts . Or at least buy a teacher you know a cup of coffee (preferably an iced mocha, these hot summer days!) and maybe a pretty journal ~ It’s little enough .

Credit: Aerial imagery courtesy of MJ Harden, a GeoEye Company.

Those of us who live near Joplin, MO will never forget the tragedy of the May tornado. Such devastation that, as the photo shows, there was a scar where the tornado tore through the earth.

But the thing about tragedies is they often show us who our friends are. And this one brought people from all over the world to the aid of Joplin. Most recently, the United Arab Emirates donated 1/2 million dollars to Joplin high school.

The donation is 1/2 of a $1,000,000.00 donation — the second 1/2 million to be used as matching funds for other contributors. Joplin Schools hopes to provide each of its 2,200 high school students w/ a laptop to help w/ research, online textbooks and schooling, following the tornado’s destruction of the high school.

These days it’s easy to hear that Arab nations and citizens are anti-American. But you don’t give 1/2 a million dollars to your enemies. You give it to your friends. You give it because you’re a good neighbor. And you offer another 1/2 million dollars to encourage others to give, as well.

Blessings to the UAE this Ramadan season. To give during Ramadan is doubly blessed. But to give to people who often revile you and your religion is especially charitable. And to give to children, so they can continue their education — what lovely neighbours. May we all be so generous.

There’s a new US Poet Laureate — Philip Levine. This may not be earth-shaking to many, but to a poet, whose vanity plate gives her ‘POETIC’ license, it’s HUGE .

And I like Levine’s work. I never like all of someone’s work — not even my own . And Levine’s mentor was a poet I’m pretty ambivalent about ~ John Berryman. As I told colleagues the other day, sometimes Berryman is breathtaking. Other times, I wonder why he bothered…

So what does this have to do w/ beginner’s heart, w/ love, w/ anything besides poetry? Well, for me Levine returns poetry to the hip pocket of average Americans. He’s not Billy Collins, whom many academics abhor (I love him, just FYI ).  But he  writes about tangibles as well as intangibles; he tells stories.

I love stories. Most of us do — it’s the way we first learn. And it’s always my favourite way. Books really are frigates, for me. And poets the best of sea captains .

We need poetry. We need the time it takes to read it, let it in, feel it expand the way light fills up a room. And we need poets like Levine, who worked industrial jobs, like the one he had at a gear & axle factory. Poets who can make poetic sense out of the literal nuts and bolts of our everyday lives. Levine’s written that he wanted to make sense out of his own life, so he wrote. But he also said that he believed that if he could write poetry from his own life, it would somehow transform the experiences. Poetry can do that. It’s one reason we need more poets.

Sometimes when you live in the buckle of the Bible belt, people ask you what your religion is. And sometimes, no matter what you answer, it won’t be what they want to hear . So I often answer ‘poetry.’ Poetry is my religion. The focusing of it. The observation of it. The optimism you have to have to commit yourself to such an outré passion. The way it requires you to try to move into someone else’s heart. All of these strike me as profoundly important, even spiritual.

In other words? I believe in poetry. And Philip Levine ~

It’s raining in Oklahoma. This is good. We had the hottest July of any state, any time, in  US history. August didn’t look a lot better, at least until last night. Wildfires have swept much of the state, causing evacuations of entire Oklahoma towns. So I’m grateful for the rain. Especially after driving through Pawnee County after it burned…

All along the highway, it’s the scorched earth of ‘after.’ Only matchstick trees still stand — all undergrowth is burned away. In some places, only a concrete pad is left to show a house was there just days before. Now there isn’t even rubble.

But this evening, thunder is rumbling outside the house, and  temperatures have dropped into the low 80s. The other day it was over 100˚ at this same time . If you’re keeping Ramadan in Oklahoma this year, it’s even harder, I’m certain, than usual.

So here’s a poem for this Ramadan season, Mahmoud Darwish’s In Jerusalem — a poem I love by an author who humbles me. Call it an offering in appreciation of the hard work that goes in to keeping faith . A prayer, of sorts, that we cause no more scorched earth between ourselves. That rain will somehow cool our tempers, and help us grow. because love/ and peace are holy…