What happened on Tuesday

What happened was a thunderstorm with a massive burst of lightning and a thunderclap so loud that I jumped out of bed even before I understood that the dog was barking.

What happened was that the dog went crazy, running and barking and shaking, after the thunderclap that shook our house and shook me out of bed, so now I was wide awake and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I talked to my visiting in-laws about the much-needed rain that was pouring pouring pouring down.

What happened was that the rain started coming down so hard after that giant clap of thunder that it took us a second to register the blaring of the fire alarm. “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” a vaguely female electronic voice stated with an oddly calm urgency. She managed to time her words in between the deafening blares of the alarm. Lights flashed from every unit, the already nervous dog went wild, and even my father-in-law, who’s lost a lot of his hearing, had to cover his ears, while my mother-in-law jumped up, and I ran to the back door to let the dog out, then both of my children came loping downstairs, blearily asking what was going on as if our house was not suddenly and obviously full of noise and strobe lights and chaos. “It’s the fire alarm!” I yelled, and my voice was not calm or electronic and my words were not timed to fall between the blaring blaring blaring of the alarm, so I had to repeat myself several times even though what I was saying was painfully obvious.

What happened was that I ran down to the basement to try to turn off the insistent incessant alarm, and the frantic dog escaped from the backyard and tore down the driveway, seeking refuge anywhere that was not our shrieking, strobing house, so my son ran out the front door and intercepted him, then somehow the terrified dog and my somewhat-less-terrified mother-in-law ended up in the backseat of her car, trembling and meanwhile I dragged a chair into the basement and stood on it, ineptly pushing and jabbing at one unit, trying to stop the noise.

^{*What happened was that one week earlier, Max had encountered a skunk and even though we had washed him and washed him, his wet fur now smelled distinctly of skunk, even as my mother-in-law sat with him in the back seat of her decidedly not skunky car, calming him.}

What happened was that I could not make the alarms stop screaming, maybe because they’ve only gone off twice in five years and both times Andre was the one who stopped them, but now he wasn’t home, so I called him at work and when he didn’t pick up, I kept calling and calling while I pushed and held and twisted and pulled and tried everything I could think of to stop the sirens. When that didn’t work, I got off the chair and threw all the fuses, desperate to make the noise stop, but then I was in the dark with the strobing lights and the blaring noise.

What happened was that Andre called back, alarmed and annoyed, and he told me to unplug each unit until I found the one that was the center of the storm of sound, and then, if they still wouldn’t stop sounding to just “throw them in the freezer” and I thought that sounded odd, but we’d once put a bat in the freezer (it’s a long story) and the noise was so loud that I didn’t think too much about it: I stood on the kitchen chair and unplugged one alarm then another while the kids did the same upstairs until suddenly, mercifully, the noise stopped, but when one of the units let out an errant “beep,” I threw them all in the chest freezer in the basement.

What happened was I had planned to meet up with colleagues for lunch, so once I had four alarms in the freezer and the dog coaxed out of the car and everything more or less back to normal, I left. As I drove to the restaurant, I wondered about those frozen fire detectors, but they were there now and quiet, so I continued. And all was well. I came home, took them out of the freezer, and took my younger child to the dentist to talk about braces. It took awhile.

What happened was that as the fire detectors defrosted, they decided they were not done: they started to scream. My mother-in-law put the (still slightly skunky) dog in the backyard, and he tried to escape again. My father-in-law decided enough was enough so he put the alarms back in the chest freezer, and when I came home I decided that I was done with alarms for the day, so even though I’m off for the summer and even though Andre was working, I ignored the clearly unsolved problem.

What happened was that Andre came home and said, incredulously, “You put them in the FREEZER?” and swore that he had said to put them in the cooler which is the ice chest and which does not actually freeze things – especially not fire detectors – and while I can admit that he might have said that, I also reminded him that we have put weirder things in the freezer, so he shook his head and went upstairs to change his clothes then went downstairs to take four frozen fire detectors out of the freezer.

What happened was that freezing the alarms (twice) had caused condensation to build up and the batteries to get low, but this time I knew better so, barefooted and disheveled, I took the dog outside before the chaos (re)commenced.

What happened was the dog treed a raccoon and one of our cats got into a fight with a neighborhood cat, and as I tried to calm things down, two little boys, brown as berries and attracted by chaos, wandered by and stopped for a chat. One told me that he was four and he could lift this rock and he could spell his own name. He was astonished to learn that I was a teacher and wondered why I was sitting on my front steps with a dog. I said, “because it’s summer” and he didn’t ask about the thin sound of fire alarms seeping up from the basement and only wandered away with his cousin when Andre came up and asked if I knew where the compressed air was. I did not.

What happened was that Andre, looking somewhat wild, begged me to go ask our neighbours if they had compressed air while he went downstairs to blow dry the fire detectors and even though this request was patently insane because who has compressed air, I got up from the porch and went door to door, barefoot and trailing a dog, asking. The two oldest neighbours laughed out loud and delightedly asked how our fire alarm was holding up. I didn’t tell them that four units were frozen and dying and currently being blown dry in an attempt to bring them back to life but in a silent sort of way because that was even more insane than asking 75-year-olds for compressed air on a Tuesday night. I tried four houses; no one had compressed air.

What happened was I came home empty-handed and finished blow-drying the four dead-ish detectors, leaving one after another on the basement floor, dazed, with their poor half-dead eyes winking weakly on and off until Andre fetched them and put them back in their places – except for one that we dubbed the “problem child” and put back into the cooler (not the freezer) until further notice.

As far as I know, one week later, it is still there.

Basic kindness

“Mom,” he says, “there’s some lady outside who needs water.”

Mr. 17 is back from soccer practice, standing in the front hall, holding an unfamiliar water bottle.

I blink. What?

“She was going to use our hose. She was walking down our driveway. She seems really thirsty, so I told her I’d get her some water.”

Our house is not large, so he’s already in the kitchen by the time he finishes this uncharacteristic rush of sentences. I hear ice cubes clink against metal, then running water. He lopes back towards the front door, screwing the lid onto the water bottle.

Before he goes out, he pauses and runs a hand through his sweaty hair. He looks at the water bottle in his hand and looks at me. “Do you have maybe $5 we can give her, too? So she could buy some water or something? She seemed really thirsty. Everybody should have water, you know? It’s like, basic.”

I nod, find my wallet, and hand him $5.

“Thanks, Mom.” He hugs me, takes the water bottle and the money, and disappears out the front door. I catch a glimpse of him handing someone the water. She has certainly seen hard times. Seconds later, he’s back inside, saying, “Oh, I’m going to [my friend’s] house. They’re waiting outside. I’ll be home later.” He looks around for a bathing suit, finds a towel, and he’s gone.

And I’m left, quietly stunned.

My children don’t follow the news. I wish they did, I guess, but the news these days is so often unsettling that I don’t push. Sometimes at dinner, we bring up various topics for discussion, but mostly our teens are happily ensconced in a world that is immediate to them. Mr. 17 probably doesn’t know that right now the world is arguing about who is or isn’t providing aid to people in Gaza, pointing fingers and laying blame while allowing children to starve. I doubt he’s seen the images that make my stomach hurt. He certainly doesn’t know that I was just talking to a friend about feeling helpless, overwhelmed and almost constantly unsettled. And yet, when someone was in our front yard, thirsty, he got her water and gave her a little more than she asked for. He did it without even pausing. I am stunned by his easy kindness, by his clear statement: everyone should have water.

Worldwide solutions are, of course, far more complicated than this interaction; but really, the idea that everyone should have water (and food) seems like a reasonable place to start.

What does it mean to be American?

It’s been twenty years since I taught American Lit to 11th graders in a high school in Washington, DC. After I’d taught the course a few times, I used to start the class with the question students would answer on the final exam: What does it mean to be American? In September, students answered glibly: duh, you have to be born here. But even as they said that, they could feel that it wasn’t right, so they would hack away at the edges of the answer: you have to have an American parent, or maybe an American passport. But a cursory look showed that didn’t work, either. First, not all Americans have passports and second, does the passport make a person American? The rest of the school year just made things more complicated.

Were the Pilgrims (born in Europe) and other early settlers American? We read some of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. Ok, the students said, the Pilgrims count as American (even though “America” didn’t exist at the time and obviously the original settlers weren’t born here); if you came to America for a better life, that counts. I complicated things: So, if people who fled their homeland in search of freedom count as American, what about people who do the same in modern times? We read short stories by Edwidge Danticat (American, born in Haiti) and Jhumpa Lahiri (American, born in England to Indian parents). Are their characters American?

What about the people who already lived on the continent when the colonists arrived? What of the Native Americans? (Honestly, I’m a little relieved to realize that even 20+ years ago we read at least one speech by a Native American, though we should have done much more.) And what if you didn’t choose to come? What of people who were enslaved? Surely Jim in Huckleberry Finn was American.

Maybe being American is about a set of values? We looked at Puritan leader (born in England) John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” (from his essay “A Model of Christian Charity”) and considered what he calls on fellow Puritans to try to create: a community of virtue, effort, and compassion. We read the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (written by Thomas Jefferson, born in the colony of Virginia) and excerpts of (French author) de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Does he see in the mid-1800s what Winthrop dreams of two centuries earlier? Is that what Huck Finn seeks when he decides to “light out for the Territory”? Is it what Jay Gatsby is striving for as he reaches for the green light? What Janie longs for in Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Gatsby is definitely American – no question about it – but there is the pesky concern of the “foul dust [that] floated in the wake of his dreams.” Perhaps, students thought, Americans had strayed from important original values, as Jonathan Edwards (born in America) thundered in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Again, this gets complicated. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne’s (born in Europe) sin is the impetus for the whole novel, but in the end, (like Gatsby? unlike Gatsby?) she is the best of them all, except for maybe her daughter Pearl (born in America) – but Pearl takes her riches and moves to Europe. Hester stays in the New World. So who is American?

But, those are just characters, the students protested. True enough. But many real live Americans, good Americans, I insisted – Americans who shaped our nation – were sinners and criminals. Some students were doubtful – 20+ years ago was, I think, a more innocent time. Still, I said, Roger Williams (born in England) was banished from Massachusetts for advocating religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. We read Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” We read Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and more. One year we read My Antonia and made popcorn balls. Always we came back to our central question.

(How did I get them to read so much? I have no idea.)

By the end of the course, no matter what we read, we had a massive tangle. Americans, it seemed, could be born anywhere and live anywhere. They could be Americans by birth, by choice or by force. They could be saints and sinners, criminals and leaders. And then it was time for the exam. We ended where we started: “What does it mean to be an American?” The answers were always complicated.

****

Last week, on the 13-hour drive from South Carolina to Buffalo, my two sisters and I had plenty of time to talk. We usually see each other only once a year, and we never run out of conversation. This year, after a gas stop in West Virginia and a possible sighting of ICE agents, our talk turned to politics and family.

I guess you could call our family “blended,” but mostly I think of it as chaos held together by love. Even if I just tell you about the children (my six various siblings) who go with my dad and stepmom, things get complicated. My step grandmother was born Dutch and became an American; my stepmom is Alabaman through and through. I was born in the US but am now a dual citizen. My children, born and raised in Canada, are dual citizens. My partner is pure Canadian, but his mother, my mother-in-law, is a dual citizen; my father-in-law is 100% American. One of my sisters was born in Panama on an Air Force Base, but she doesn’t remember it at all and does not speak Spanish. Her daughter, my niece, born in the US, does speak Spanish and is dating a young man whose family is Mexican (his dad was born there; I can’t remember about his mom); he is American. My sister-in-law is a naturalized American who was born and raised in Cuba. Her mother is living with them (very legally) but is not yet a citizen. My brother, her husband, is pretty much a good ol’ boy (in the best of ways), but his kids have olive skin and dark hair and speak both Spanish and English. Except for my sister-in-law’s mother, I would say all these people are American. Even she may be a future American.

Adding in my mom’s side – she has four siblings – doesn’t make things any more clear. My uncle married a Filipina woman who is now American. One of their two sons, my cousins, just got out of the Marines, so definitely American, right? But when he was on tour, children in Saudi Arabia made the “slant eye” face at him, annoying him to no end. My mother’s sister married a Brit, and they live in the Cayman Islands; their child, my cousin, is American-British-Caymanian. He went to college in the US and worked in NYC before meeting an American woman and moving back to Cayman. Their children were born in Cayman. All except my uncle have American passports.

As a family, we are Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, atheist. We are white, Asian and Latino. We speak English, Spanish, Tagalog, and French. We are gay, straight and bi. We are addicts and we abstain. We have committed crimes and been arrested for them or gotten away with it. We have done good things and been recognized for them or overlooked. We have high school diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, MDs or PhDs. We are business owners, doctors, teachers, CPAs, hourly employees, unemployed, researchers and more. We were born in six countries, and we currently live in three countries; we have lived in many, many more. We voted for Harris or for Trump or not at all. We are all American.

In the car, my sister worried about a friend who is married to a US permanent resident who was born in El Salvador. His parents brought him here when he was a toddler. As a young teen, he got involved with a gang and committed “a bad crime” (yes, it is bad). He was arrested and went to jail. He served his time, got out, got a job and got married. Now in his mid-40s, he has never committed another crime. As we drove north, he was on his way south to his annual check-in with immigration, and they were terrified. The family has money and a lawyer, and a no-deportation order. But they had no idea if, after he followed the law and went to the courthouse, he would come back out or be disappeared. “We talk about ICE deporting ‘criminals,’” my sister said, “and everyone seems to think that is ok; but he’s a good person who did an awful thing. He’s here legally. Should we deport him because of something he did when he was 15? Why can’t we talk about the human cost? When did we stop thinking of immigrants as fully human?”

As we drove through the mountains of West Virginia, I mused, “What does it mean, then, to be an American?” I still don’t know, exactly, but I am sure the definition should be rooted more in love than in hatred. If there’s one virtue that my loving, chaotic family and all those texts I used to teach have in common, it is compassion.

Well, maybe not “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but really, that one is kind of over the top.

There, their, they’re

I’m losing them and there’s no time to think this all the way through. The class is smallish today because it’s Eid al-Fitr. Split-second decision: I go for it.

“Let’s play a game!” I clap my hands together. Faces look up. At least one cell phone gets pushed into a desk.

“A good game?” someone asks.

I shake my head. “Always a teacher game.” They’ve heard me say this so many times, I half expect them to chime in, but they don’t. Wow. We are really disengaged. Before they have time to complain, I start counting them off. “Remember your number. Use your fingers.”

Six groups of three. I tell the students to push their tables towards the back of the room. As the metal legs scrape across the linoleum floors, I write there, their, and they’re on whiteboards – one up front and one on either side of the room.

I turn around and clap again: “Everyone to the centre of the room!”

I wish I could tell you that they are excited, but mostly they sort of drag themselves suspiciously into what is generally the centre. Hmm… I am going to have to be the one to light this fire.

My brain churns. Clarity is key. On a good day, I’ve pre-planned the activity and thought through the steps, so I can give directions efficiently and effectively. Today, however, I’m winging it. Exams loom, the Chromebooks aren’t available, it’s a Monday…and it’s raining. The students are standing in the centre of the room, looking at me warily.

“Ok! Each group has three people. For every round of this game, one of those three people has to move AND it has to be a different person for each round. You can consult with each other, but every team member has to take a turn being it.”

Oh, now they’re paying attention. “It?” Yup.

I explain that I will read a sentence that uses one of the forms of there/ their/ they’re. The team whose runner touches the board with the correct form first will get a point. Then, we’ll do it again with new runners and a new sentence. I indicate the whiteboards with the various forms. I tell them that I plan to move fast, so they should have the next runner ready to go once the first one is done.

Chaos ensues. We whip through the sentences I had originally planned for us to do as a worksheet, then keep going with another handful. Students are laughing and sweaty. Heck, I am laughing and sweaty. I have to settle a few near-arguments about which form is correct. We pause for everyone to catch their breath, and I change the words on the board to its/ it’s. We play another round. Eventually, class is nearly over. We have just enough time to move the desks back. The winning team gets to choose a gift from the “box of terrible prizes.”

“These really are terrible,” one of them mutters, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve reviewed, and the students are ready for the homophones that I know are on the test. Plus, it was fun.

****

(Pull back the curtain)
“But… how did you think of that?” my younger colleague asks when I tell the story after school. It’s a good question. In the classroom, we often have to think on our feet, and I’ve realized that I have a series of questions that help me make choices:

What do the students need to know?
Tricky homophones
Why do they need to know it?
For the test
- Why is it on the test?
  Silly or not, using these words correctly is an entrée into a certain level of education/ standing in the world; this is clout.
What’s standing in their way?
Boredom, widely varied levels of knowledge, lack of urgency (they don’t care about this)
What options do we have to learn this material?
Worksheets (boring), computers (someone else booked them), independent work (won’t hit the Goldilocks zone in this class – it will be either too easy or too hard), pair work, group work…
How does this group of students learn?
They like talking and moving, but they don’t 100% trust each other.
They do well with competition and speed but not too much pressure.
What would make this memorable for them?
Movement, working at the board
How can I put all that together?

It doesn’t always work, but this is more or less where my brain goes when I’m planning. What? Why? How? What would make this stick?

And, of course, it never hurts to embrace a little chaos.

Twelve Days

In 12 days, he will be done with high school. Today, however, he is sitting in my classroom during his “spare” period, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He has his earbuds in, his phone out. He’s using one of my Sharpies to write a thesis on a scrap piece of paper.

He will not catch up.

I’ve known him since his first day of grade 9, and I’ve taught him English three times. Usually, when I say that out loud, I put air quotes around “taught”. When he was in grade 9, I hid the Sharpies and push pins from him so that he wouldn’t casually harass his peers. In grade 10, I insisted that he read aloud to newcomers (which he loved) and tried to cajole an essay out of him (which he hated). Now he’s in grade 12, and during independent reading time he is (still) reading the book he started in grade 9. He claims he’s close to the end. These days, I can only occasionally convince him to come to class – and even then he doesn’t pay much attention.

Today, after a futile hour of explaining that a thesis statement is supposed to be about more than the plot of a story, and insisting that to create an effective thesis statement a person must actually read the story under consideration, I head to my office to grab lunch before my hall duty. In the stairwell, a colleague comments on my obvious exasperation and reminds me that, because of me, this child will (possibly) read one more story than he would have otherwise. He will, at the very least, write a series of (bad) paragraphs that are loosely related to one another. He will know that someone thinks he can do more.

I try to believe this is enough.

I manage a few bites of sandwich before the bell rings, then grab my apple and head into the halls. In the science wing, someone has pulled the handle of the emergency shower, so the floors are flooded. A VP stands amidst the resultant disaster, directing students away from the shimmering water while custodians run the shop vac. Around the corner, a large group of students talks loudly in the new bathroom; I tease that they must be having a bathroom party, and they laugh as they slowly move away. Nearby, a student sits against the lockers, their head tilted back, their eyes closed, creating a moment of peace in the chaos of the school day. A colleague pauses to ask me a question. Behind us, two girls chase each other, screeching, down the hall.

Outside, the sun beckons. The lawn is dotted with dandelions and dawdling kids. Students fill the basketball courts and the athletic field. The year is so close to an ending that I can almost feel the hallways holding their breath. “Soon,” they whisper, “soon.”

As I walk, I remember the day my mother dropped me off at university. When it was time for her to go, she cried. “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, not sure if I was comforting her or reassuring myself.

“I know,” she sniffed, “it’s just that I have so much more to teach you.”

She was right, of course, though so was I. My student will manage something, and it will be both enough and not nearly enough. I will put away the Sharpies. The year will end. He will graduate. I will have more to teach him.

Immigrant

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teacher can safely assume that every child in a class of 25ish can, with relative ease, find a person in their life who has immigrated to the country. Oh, and we live in a place where that is a good thing.

I no longer take this for granted.

My child chose to interview me because I am an immigrant. Some days I am highly aware of myself as an immigrant; others, it seems like a word that pertains to other people. As an American immigrant to Canada, right now I feel horribly connected to my birth country: people who, like me, have immigrated, only to the US instead of to Canada, are being targeted and deported – sent to rot in foreign jails from which they may never return – for no reason other than being immigrants. Yes, yes, I realize that there are trumped-up reasons for their deportation, but even the Cato Institute (not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking) has determined that many of the men recently deported to an El Salvadorean prison had no criminal record and had never violated immigration law. The immoral actions of the current US government must surely give many immigrants pause.

So, when my child started asking me questions, I was a little tense. He was conducting the interview in Frenglish because I refused to answer exclusively in English for a class that he’s taking in French. Soon, he learned that I had lived in five places (and two countries!) before I was ten; that I have taught in four countries; that people in the US don’t take their shoes off when they enter a home. (“Wait? Really? That’s weird. Why don’t I know about that?” he asked. I said that his American relatives probably just laugh at him behind his back. Hee hee hee.)

He learned about the visa process and what it was like to move to a country where I could not yet hold a job and didn’t really have any friends.

“What did you do?” he asked.
“Learned to knit,” I replied, which is sort of true.
“I never really thought of you not knitting,” he said.
Oh, my sweet child. One is not born knowing how to knit.

After the interview, he drafted his “article”. It was still in Frenglish, though the French was coming along. Tonight, he’s polishing it, so we’ve spent quite a long time making sure the French grammar is right and double-checking accents. “I trust you more than Google Translate and BonPatron,” he tells me.

I point out that I am American. He is literally writing about me being American. I am not a native French speaker and still have a bit of a Southern accent when I speak. He says my French is still “really good,” and I decide to accept the compliment.

He decides he wants pictures to accompany his article. He’s particular – he wants me at specific ages and doing certain things.
“Do you have any in the snow?” he asks.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I tell him, but I live in Ottawa now, so of course I do. I send him what I can.

After a few minutes he says, “Do you have any of you looking normal?” which makes me laugh – I love making silly faces for the camera. Still, for him, and to make immigrants look good, I find some “normal” pictures.

For you, however, I will share some of the funny ones.

There: faces of an immigrant. Remember this the next time another person gets deported. They might be a lot like me.

I bought you a book

She had grade 9 English with me and, though it’s hard for me to believe, she’s in grade 12 now which means we’ve been smiling at each other and saying hello in the hallways for three years. In seven weeks, she’ll graduate, yet it was only a few days ago that I realized I’d never told her the story.

Oddly, I’ve told a lot of other people the story: how we were both new to the school; how she was quiet but eager; how she finished reading a book then asked me shyly if I had any books about Asia. She didn’t even ask for something set in Bangladesh – her home country – just anywhere in Southeast Asia. Oh, how I wanted to say yes! I scoured my bookshelves – my classroom library suddenly seemed so paltry – but I could only come up with one, and it didn’t really fit: it was really about a girl living in the US who was dealing with issues of sexuality. The 14-year-old in front of me wasn’t ready for that book; she wanted something that reminded her of home.

I was sad to have to tell her that I didn’t have anything, really. We found another good book, and she continued to read, but I couldn’t shake my disappointment. I looked online to find books about Bangladesh. I checked out Samira Surfs from the public library – too young, too refugee-focused. I found books set in Pakistan, books by white authors, books for adults…

As the school year continued, I had to confront a sad truth: my classroom library was designed for a different student population. At my new school, the books I had didn’t reflect the students in the room. I knew I needed to address the problem, but I also knew I needed money to do it.

At this point, I applied for a classroom library grant from the Book Love Foundation (founded by Penny Kittle). I asked two senior students to write me a recommendation; they also helped me with my video. And then… I won a grant! Oh, the books I bought – books set in places around the world. Sports books and fantasy books and realistic fiction. Graphic novels and novels in verse and memoirs with main characters from places my students knew and I did not. And yes, a book set in Bangladesh.

By the time the books came in, she was in grade 10 and our paths rarely crossed, so I didn’t think to tell her what she had inspired. Last year, I barely saw her at all. This year, though, our schedules overlap, and I see her often. And this year, I finally realized that I’d never told her about the books. So, last week I told her. She was startled. She didn’t remember asking for a book and she was surprised that I remembered where she was from. She blushed a little and we went on our way.

Then, a few days later, there was a knock at the classroom door. Could she come in? Could she see the books? I showed her what I could find on the shelves, but I had to laugh: so many of the books that I would have offered her if only I’d had them then – Amina’s Voice, Amina’s Song, Amira and Hamza, The Last Mapmaker – weren’t there because they’re being read by current grade 9 students. Still, I showed her Saints and Misfits, and Love from A to Z, and The Patron Saints of Nothing – and listen, it’s not perfect, but oh how she smiled.

Three years later, her request and the Book Love grant have changed everything.

(If you are interested in information about applying for the grant, feel free to reach out to me – though honestly the link has all the information; if you are interested in donating to the foundation, please don’t hesitate. All kids deserve to see themselves in good books!)

The Day After

“Have you talked about the election in any of your classes today?”

Most heads shake no. Interesting.

“Do you know who won last night?”

Now a few heads nod. A few voices venture an actual response: “The Liberals.”

“Right!” I push on. “Great! So… who knows the name of the Prime Minister?”

Hmm… harder. Murmurs move around the room. Maybe it starts with an “M”? Someone is sure there’s a /k/ sound. One confident student says “Not Trudeau” and everyone laughs.

“Mark Carney,” I tell them. A few fingers snap, a few heads nod. Yes. Yes, that’s right. They knew that.

And now for the tough question, “What else do you know?”

I know I teach English, not Civics, and I know these students are only 14 and 15 years old – far from voting age, at least as far as they’re concerned. Still, last night was a federal election, and I believe that school must be about more than the assignment of the moment. In fact, in the last few years I’ve come to recognize that a big part of my personal “why” in teaching is to help students become thoughtful citizens. I want to help them learn to think deeply. I want them to believe in their own inherent value and to understand the value of others – and of compromise. In a world that tells them that they are valuable mostly as consumers, I want them to feel agency. So here we are, talking about politics in English class.

A few minutes later, we’ve put together some basic facts: the Conservative Party actually performed very well last night, even if they didn’t win; this means the country is divided; the NDP, which is more liberal than the Liberals (“that’s weird”) lost official party status; the Green Party still exists; people’s votes mattered because the vote in many ridings was close.

Someone asks if the Conservatives are “against human rights.” I assure the students that they are not.

Someone asks who I voted for. That’s private. Why? I explain the idea of secret ballots and the idea that someone like a teacher might have undue influence, even unintentionally, on students. Nevertheless, I acknowledge my bias and encourage them to challenge me if they think differently than I do.

Someone asks when the next election is. We talk briefly about minority governments and why that makes the date of our next election a little less predictable.

The class, usually extremely energetic, is somewhat subdued. I know they know some of this information already, and I know that sometimes inviting the outside world into the classroom can feel odd. Their focus holds for three minutes, maybe five, and then we’re back to the regular routines – requests for pencils, for water, for the washroom, for someone to move their desk, to pay attention, to “say that again” to “just be quiet already”.

Still “Mark Carney” stays written on the board until halfway through class when we move on to brainstorming evidence from our book. If I’m lucky, some of them will remember his name and how we talked about the election, even in English.

The student (prose poem)

April is Poetry Month, so I’ve been occasionally stopping over at EthicalELA to participate in Verse love and write some poetry. The people who write there are incredibly supportive, which encourages me to keep playing even though writing poetry intimidates me. Today’s prompt suggested writing a prose poem (a poem that looks like a paragraph but reads, somehow, like poetry), something which has fascinated me for a few years now – ever since I discovered Nicole Stellon O’Donnell’s book of poems You Are No Longer In Trouble – specifically, the poem “Marriage,” which makes me giggle. Here, see what I mean:

Marriage

The rash of weddings at recess continued until Mrs. Provencher had to give a talk. You are third graders. You cannot be married. Parents had called to express their concerns. The margarine tubs full of violets in your desk were bouquets and the flower girls had carried them, stems pressed into foil pilfered from the kitchen drawer. She can say what she wants, but you were married to Doug M. all those years ago, bound by asphalt promises over the screech of the swings’ metal chains.

Margaret Simon suggested that we use Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello’s prose poem, The Houseguest as a model and personify an emotion, so I gave it a go. Here’s what I wrote.

The student

Curiosity pops into your classroom before the first bell. You are writing the date on the blackboard – neatly, in the upper right-hand corner, in cursive. You finish, then place the chalk in its tray. Next, you connect the cord to your computer then cast about for the remote control. Curiosity discovers it over near the bookshelves and brings it to you. You continue your morning routine, aware that Curiosity is watching: straighten the student desks; sift through the papers. You want to settle in, but Curiosity has found the magnetic poetry in the back corner and is busy creating crude verses – and cackling. You hesitate, trapped in the fun house mirror as you pretend not to watch Curiosity who is pretending not to watch you. Should you interrupt the word play? Stop the game? Once, you would have sidled up next to Curiosity and, snickering, added an “s” to “as”. Once, you would have scrawled the verse on the walls in permanent marker. Once, you would have grabbed Curiosity’s wrist and run out of the classroom before the bell, after you had both arrived early. Today, you quietly allow Curiosity to continue writing poetry.

Thank you, Sen. Booker

One thing about writing later in the day is that sometimes I can catch an unexpected moment that might otherwise slip by. Tonight, I am writing in the moments after Senator Cory Booker broke the record for longest floor speech set by Strom Thurmond in 1957. While I realize that many people in the US and the world will not know or care that this has happened, or maybe they won’t recognize how impressive this is, Andre and I called the boys into the living room so we could watch this historic moment as a family.

While Senator Thurmond, a segregationist, spoke to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Senator Booker is speaking “with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able…because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.” As I write, he is still speaking, still saying important things, still imploring citizens to pay attention as he speaks in protest of “actions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.”

Here in our house, Mr. 16 is in the middle of research for an essay on the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement, so he knows that, despite the way we often speak of it as mostly the actions of small group of leaders, it was truly a movement of everyday people, of mothers and fathers and workers and students. He is beginning to understand that ordinary people have power when they work together. He is, I hope, beginning to understand true citizenship. It’s hard for them to imagine, I think because my children have never known a world where a Black man cannot be president or where they cannot date or befriend or marry whomever they wish. My children believe that people are inherently equal and understand that while racism exists, it is something we can and should push against. It’s hard for us to remember how much has changed in a short time.

Cory Booker is speaking to draw attention to the fact that President Trump’s administration is rolling back many rights and bringing into question many others, to point out that many of their actions are unconstitutional. Around the world, we are seeing similar autocratic movements and democratic backsliding, and it is, frankly, frightening. Even writing this with an eye to publishing it on my little blog makes me nervous: we know that immigration agents are now asking people applying for a visa to provide their usernames for social media platforms. I’m a US citizen, but I live outside the country. Will I be allowed back in if I voice dissent? Some will scoff at the question, but Sen. Booker’s speech is part of what ensures that I will be – and that my children, half Canadian, half American – will be, too.

I took a picture of the kids watching Sen. Booker as he set the record. Mr. 14 declared the moment “not picture-worthy” and I am, unsurprisingly, not allowed to share it. Maybe my children will be right: maybe this moment will not be that important because civil rights will never be called into question again. Maybe we’ll forget the picture and the moment and the feeling of crisis that has led to it. Even if we do, Sen. Booker’s feat will help us remember that American ideals of justice and equal rights are foundational – “all men are created equal” – and worth fighting for. He will help us remember that ordinary people are the ones who have to stand up. Hopefully, tonight, my children heard that message; hopefully, other people did, too.