Ground Zero

NYC, November 2001

Sunday we got up at 5am to catch an early morning cab down to Ground Zero. Mar’ia had been told by a friend of hers to go down there at that hour because early Sunday morning is the only time New York ever sleeps. We were assured that all would be quiet and the place would be well lit. That advice proved priceless. Approaching Ground Zero in the dark was indeed an awesome sight to behold. The war-torn North Tower was clearly visible from blocks away in the taxi. The lights brightly illuminated it in the darkness giving it a surreal yet crisp, edgy feeling. Our driver dropped us off and we proceeded together to walk block by block, freezing in front of each blockade, staring down the long corridors of buildings that stood between us and the site of the devastation. The barriers were up in the form of covered 10-foot fences around the perimeter of Ground Zero. Then at the other end of the block, another barrier was in place at each intersection guarded by NYC cops. I was struck by the smell. It was pungent and strong. There were spontaneous memorial shrines of flowers, letters, banners, photographs and paintings that had been erected on almost every block paying homage to the fallen.

We made our way silently down the road… having already realized, without speaking to each other, that taking pictures was out of the question. How can you take photographs of sacred ground? What’s the point of capturing on your own film a crematorium? Others have done it much better than you ever would. How could anyone be so callous? As we approached a policeman standing guard at a barrier, he asked us how we were doing and what we were doing down there at that hour. Mar’ia answered, “We came to see.” He asked her where we were from and she told him Seattle. He said, “You came all the way here just to look?” Mar’ia (ever-ready with the perfect response) said, “Actually, we came to New York to spend money as well.” You could see the expression in his eyes change as he looked at us both for a moment. He understood her expression of support for his wounded community. He nodded and then said, “Come on, if anyone asks, you’re with American Airlines.” He turned to lead us past the barriers.

We walked down the street towards Ground Zero and approached the covered fence. He called to someone on the other side to open it up, and it rolled slightly open to allow us entrance. The person asked him who we were, and he told them we were with American Airlines. We stepped through the fence and the force of what we saw made us tremble. We stood there, at the foot of it all and could hardly absorb it. Our policeman was silent as I heard the distant sound of Mar’ia’s weeping through the ringing in my ears. The grayness, the billowing plumes of smoke, the stench, the wrecking ball and the intermittent jet of water aimed at the North Tower combined to make us feel as if we were standing out over the edge of the universe. It had become a sacred place: A breathing epitaph to three thousand stolen lives. Standing on the site, I was overwhelmed by the scope of the collateral damage. Twenty buildings in all had sustained damage: This one had a pie slice out of several stories, high, high above the ground; that one had a giant rake running the length of the entire building; this one had huge cloth nets completely covering two of it’s sides. Then, at our feet was rubble…destruction… too much to really see. A wrecking ball was chipping at the North Tower, knocking pieces to the ground below, as water sprayed the ruins. Our officer told us that the other day there had been a green gaseous cloud that had erupted from it all. Nobody knew what it was. He said that he and everyone down there had had a persistent cough since the 11th. No one can be sure what gasses were combining in there. He had been on seven days a week, fourteen hours a day since the disaster. He said he lost three men in there. After a few minutes, we silently made our way back through the fence and thanked our gentle guide.

Still stunned by the experience, we caught a cab and watched the buildings go by, looking at their black faces. Block after block, the dark buildings marched by. It seemed that the blackened faces lined up to forever. Scaffolding on many of the buildings was set up for cleaning, inch by inch, the affected buildings. Some of the buildings were already finished, and stood out in shining contrast to the many that had not even begun. I wondered if even an eternity could wash away the effects of September 11th. And everywhere: Police, firefighters, memorials….
I felt a deep ache rise inside of me: A painful breeching of love and pride for my firefighters, my policemen, my soldiers, my countrymen, my heroes

The Final Moments

In a frenzied haste, with excitement and exhaustion, we all lurch thru the finish tape. It is an extraordinary and very familiar feeling to see the backs of yet another year's associations pass though my doors for one last time, some with joy and playful exhuberance, and others with the hesitant steps of one who realizes they are, at that exact moment, straddling a world they understand and recognize as safe, and a new, unfamiliar future, full of endless possibilities and fears. Often, I'm as surprized by who races out of the room without a backward glance, as I am startled by those who hesitate at the door. Some are unexpected, some are familiar lingerers. It is the dawning in these faces I find myself dwelling upon the most. These eyes, softened by the fresh realization of temporality, scan the room and seem to plead for some invisible hand to escort them through the door, and into their new worlds. It's both endearing and bittersweet, but it always is. I no longer am surprized by the ones who stagger to the finish line with increasing fear masked by hostility, often directed toward myself, as the full impact of their approaching uncertainty looms closer. It is those children, those who have required the most vigilant care, nurturing and management, that often blow their tops at the year's end, creating for themselves the unfortunate legacy of a great year topped by a rotting peach. I wrote to a parent of one such child today, and I asked her that she please pass along the following message: although the final days were probably a disappointment, I thought he was a great kid, and that I had the highest hopes for his future.- with this message,. I wanted to absolve him of guilt. I wanted to return to him all the days he tried, with constant struggle of self and curriculum, to muddle through a difficult path toward manhood. I wish him well, as I wish all my students, no matter the course. And as I approach this same threshold, I throw my own hesitant, backward glance and I too wish them a fond "adieu".

Death and Hypocracy

So, today, the end of massive state testing at the secondary level ended with what the kids at my school call "the annual death". In the most catastrophic manner, a student, her entire life gleaming on the horizon, her high school career almost behind her, her future blazing like the sun, was murdered. The strangeness of this event is the fact that this child, 17, was a random victim of a schitzophrenic sex offender. Poor Anna was taking a break during her shift at the Vancouver McDonalds at 8pm, when David Sullivan, after pacing back and forth a few times, reached into her booth and stabbed her with a kitchen knife. She died at the hospital one hour later. The tragic circumstances of a mother who couldn't be reached by telephone, arriving to pick up her daughter from work only to be informed of her child's death, is incomprehensible. The perp was apprehended, and from the pictures of his mug shots, roughed up a bit in the process.

The kids are in pain, of course. This girl was well respected by staff and students alike. The kids don't know what to do with their anger. One of my students bemoaned, "everything I can think of to do to that man (Sullivan) is never enough. I can't think of a suffering that would do her justice." They want to attack the walls of the school. They want to tear it down with their anger. They want to create great works of graffiti art to express their pain and suffering. It's a genuine outporing of pain and confusion. "Of all the people this could happen to, how could it be her?" they ask, bewildered.

One of the harshest facts that I learned today, outside of Anna's cruel murder, was the statement that several students made to me regarding the mortality of their peers. "I was wondering when we were going to have our annual death. It hadn't happened yet this year. I was starting to wonder who it was going to be this time."

This little, surburban town has grown into a greater metropolitan area. It is regularly host to teen suicide and homicide. If our kids are waiting for their peers to be killed, what are they feeling inside? What kind of future do they have to look forward to if they are constantly looking around them and watching each other senselessly drop to the ground? They throw out the questions of "What's the point of living a clean, upstanding life, when you end up dead anyway?" Underneath this question is "How can you guarantee me a future? You can't and you know it. You, dear teacher, are a hypocrite. You are selling snake oil.

They have a point. They have a reason to be angry, unimpressed, and cynical. I wish I could give them more than temporary techniques for focusing their anger. I wish I could show them a future, but I can't. For them, right now is all there is.

Rising standards, declining population

In my state, as well as many others, seniors are being required to present a portfolio at the end of their high school career as well as a senior project. The portfolios include student’s best works over the last four years, evaluations of work, post-high school financial plans, résumé’s and career plans. The senior projects are the result of a semester-long course which requires them to identify research, prepare, and present a specific topic-oriented paper. Not only does the student have to research the topic, but they have to volunteer service time with a mentor in the area of their topic. The culmination of this project is a paper with proper citations and a presentation before staff and community members. The judges are there to critique the presentation and determine if each student’s content, organization, presentation, and impromptu skills are below, at, or above average. This is something that is required in order for each student to graduate. If the presentation is below average, the student is to redo the project in order to receive his or her diploma. The standards are being raised.

School accountability is being monitored. This seems to be a direct outcome of NCLB. Is this good for students? I believe it is. Today, as I was trying to motivate a group of 9th and 10th low-level, at risk students to work on their little research paper (complete with note cards, citations and sources). I was asked if this was the type of thing that they will have to do in order to graduate. One of my most challenging students announced to the class that this is “a really easy” version of the paper that they will be writing in just a couple of years. The senior project has been a motivating force for the students to learn how to write. This is also requiring students to stand up and be not only recognized for hard work, but held accountable for not putting forth the effort. I wish there were more opportunities for accountability and more severe consequences for a lack therein.

The disservice that we do our kids is not making them more self-reliant. I am surprised by the number of students who do not have the ability to work independently. I find that independent workers are the exception rather than the rule. The number of requests that I get from students for me to work through their thought process for them is startling. Not only am I being asked to do the work for the students, am I restating directions for students who do not bother to read the instructions even once. Rather than read, they moan “I don’t understand!” We are working so hard on writing. We are working so hard on reading, but I think that we are facing a bigger demon.

I am being told, and witnessing a dependence on technology that is unprecedented. Given a video screen, students are capable of sitting in front of a monitor, nursing entertainment hour after hour. Students abhor pens, books, dictionaries and paper, but will create a power-point with great care and investment of time. While that may seem good, and as I sit here in front of my own monitor sympathetically absorbing my own mind into the great Web, I am being told from these very graduating seniors that some of them are neglecting their social lives in order to play video games. A student today told me that she is averaging eight or more hours a day playing various video games. This is a demon that today’s adults have not yet considered a rising force in the youth of our culture. This is generating an apathy toward the written word that is technologically induced. It is a laziness that is rapidly driving us toward an oral-based society. A society that very easily may melt into a history of conjecture and fiction, because the written word is being blasted, like this very blog, into nothingness.

You're not charming

Some days I wake up and wonder how different I could possibly be from my old high school teachers. Although it was many moons ago, and I was the center of the universe, there had to be a point when they looked out at us and thought to themselves, 'You aren't charming, funny or even interesting.' Now a teenager cannnot conceive of this idea. We all know that when we were teenagers we were exactly the opposite...but something tells me that we were the only ones thinking this at the time. I watch so many kids vying for attention. They use volume, mediocre to actually quite insightful witicisms, they take....I mean they take all the time. They walk up to my desk and snatch my stapler, tape, paper, etc, for no other reason than to get my attention. They love my attention. I sometimes react to this by saying,"Oh my, you really need my attention today. What can I do to give you more attention? I sure don't want you to feel sad because I'm not giving you enough attention!" I pursue them around the room until they hide from embarassment. It is effective, but takes more energy or specific opportunity than I have to offer them all the time, but when I can do this, it works well.
I'd like to end the year with a bang, but I'm afraid that, like a collegue stated to me today, "I'm capable of caring less than the students." It is nice when they do care, but it is rare.

What will they do?

I've been pondering this question for quite some time now. What will they do? I'm looking at a classroom full of, say, 10th graders. There are approximately 30 registered for the class. 20-25 attend regularly. Of those, being generous, 25, none of them are exceptional. This is not an advanced level class, but neither is it a remedial class. Things were going swimmingly with these students when we were doing creative poetry and in class readings, but suddenly the curriculum demanded that we enter into literature. We had three books we needed to read. The majority of the students stopped working. It was, and is interesting to me that these students, of average intelligence, refuse to read. They will not read a book either in class or on their own time. The last novel we just concluded was To Kill a Mockingbird. If a person polled the class for an honest number, I believe that maybe,(again, I'm being generous) 1/3 of the students actually read the book! The ironic part of this is that those same students. The students who do not read, rarely participate in class, much less complete in class assignments, are the most confrontational about their grades. They expect to be passing. They will look me straight in the eye and tell me that "I'd better be passing." with a glint of a threat in their voices. I'm appalled. I know that I was no star pupil when I was in the 10th grade, but I know that if I didn't read the material, especially if that was the crux of the entire curriculum, that I didn't have a chance. There was no doubt that I wouldn't pass. These kids are clueless. What do they expect will be happening to them in the future. They are going to be facing huge demands, and how are they going to stand up to these demands? Are they going to make veiled threats to their professors, employers, social workers, parole officers? Are they going to go to work when they have nothing else going on in their most exciting lives? Are they planning to work for something, anything? Several of these 10th graders lack of initiative to read was so striking that I did a quick reading assessment. I found that several of my students had a 6th grade reading level. 6th grade in the 10th grade! Big problem folks. The low level readers are the most disruptive. The readers who are challenged by Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird or Julius Caesar, are the most easliy distracted by these disruptors, and those to whom the material is not challenging are frustrated and feel out of place. Why mainstreaming? Why can't we track our kids? How are we supposed to educate if we have 6th grade readers in a 10th grade class? I have so many angry students right now because they are not passing. When I tell them that they are not passing because they never read the book, I might as well be talking into a vacuum. All they see is that someone else who they don't consider any more intelligent than themselves is passing, so it must be my fault. I'm disgusted. Right now I see the labor force, the welfare rolls and the drug trafficing businesses booming with prospective employees, but there is no one left to doctor my babies, protect my community or teach my children. I'm very concerned.

Dead kid

Not too many weeks ago, a former student, if that is what he is called, was killed by the police very near my school. This student, I never knew him, attended my high school for less than a year before dropping out. This boy was pursued by the police for stealing a car. This boy, who was 17, sped away from the police and a chase ensued. The boy was then reported to have actually run down a police officer. The officer was standing in front of the vehicle when he was run down and physically went underneath the car. So here's the deal: An invincible 17 year old boy plays "Cops" in a neighborhood, placing not only his own life in danger...which was unimportant to the boy at the time, but the life of the police officers and the citizens of the community through which he sped on his joyride were not even on his radar. As the case most assuredly had to unfold, the boy found himself dead at the wheel, as the surrounding officers, responding to the threat of the downed officer, filled him with at least a dozen rounds of bullets. Hmmm. Silly boy. What were you thinking? Were you high? Were you laughing? Were you crying? What possibly went through your mind in your last moments here on earth? Was it like it is in the movies, or perhaps in videos?

Now everyone knows this boy. He, of course, became a Cause Celebre to the students. Mail boxes artistically tagged with "RIP....." and students sporting tee Shirts with his year book picture as they photograph themselves in various stages of anger and stoicism. Students going room to room soliciting funds for the family and white boys speaking eubonics as they glorify a white boy gone to the "great hood in the sky". What is their rally? What is their cry of outrage? Nothing really. There is no mention of the officer. There was a sadness that permeated the school for about a week, but now it is gone. Is there anger? No. Who made the shirts? I don't know. Do the kids see themselves being shot down in the street by the police? Some do, some only fantasize about it, others just feel strangely drawn to a cause. And this cause went nowhere. It fizzled out like a bottle rocket in a puddle.

Kids in the classroom

I need to understand something. Every day I am responsible for the education of students who don't want to learn. I have found that No Child Left Behind is extremely challenging when there are so many kids who WANT TO BE LEFT BEHIND. If their parents cared, perhaps there would be some recourse, but in many cases, their parents CHOSE to be left behind when they were in high school as well. The cycle is this. The student does not want to be in school. The student makes the attempt to be in class for a time, perhaps even turns in a classroom assignment once or twice. Eventually the student starts disrupting the classroom with his or her antics, competing for the spotlignt, looking to make him or herself a power in the classroom. A force to be reckoned with. Of course, this is directed toward the teacher. Lines are drawn. The student attempts to create a coalition. The student works to bring others into his or her sphere of influence. This begins by cheating. The student finds someone in the classroom to use as a pigeon as his or her ticket to an easy A. The pigeon gladly complies, whether for the attention of a beguiling member of the opposite sex, or perhaps for the "protection", or acceptance that this alliance creates. In many instances the student decides that the classroom is not where he or she belongs. They stop coming to school, but not without leaving a trail of disruptive behavior in their wake. All should be well, right? Wrong! After 24 consecutive days of missed school, the juvenile justice system seeks the child out, arrests him or her, and places him or her into Juvi. The student then spends 20 days in juvie, then is returned to the same classroom! Wow. so now we have a child in the classroom who was educationally or emotionally behind when class commenced in the fall, but now we have a child who is almost 50 curriculum days behind expecting to be educated at the same level as his or her classmates. This is ridiculous. The behavior problems that arise from this kind of action makes learning an extreme challenge for those in the classroom who wish to learn. The children who fall into this disruptive cycle are in the minority, but those who want to gain an education are in the SILENT majority. The disruptors, who are coerced back into the classroom because of NCLB, spend all their energy focusing all the attention onto themselves. As I witness this behavior in classroom after classroom, I know THIS IS NOT WHERE I WANT MY CHILDREN. And I'm a teacher!!! No Child Left Behind is a bold plan, but with serious casualties. These casualties are the very children we need to protect; Those ambitious individuals who will be running this country someday. These children need to be allowed the freedom to learn, share and discuss the material without the interference of lousy legislation that demands tolerance of those who have no interest in persuing a path of higher learning. As one once said, "Aim for the Stars, the least you can do is land on the moon"..or something to that effect. NCLB has the vision of idealism but it is wrapped in the cloak of impracticality.

Donaldina Cameron

Have you heard of this woman? She lived in San Francisco between the 1890' s and the 1980's. She rescued Chinese child slaves and prostitutes. She ran a home for girls and helped to give them skills, education, husbands, or return to China. She would break into the Tong dens to rescue these girls. Someone would tip her off, then she would assemble the cops and break in on this most dangerous, opium and prostitution scenes and rescue the child. She left Oscar Schindler in the dust. Girls from this time were not recognized as human by the United States Government. They were kidnapped, raped by sailors on the trip over to the states, then sold into prostitution once they arrived. The contracts were actually set ups for indentured servitude. One day sick extended the contract by a year etc. She had to repay all costs to her purchace, medical expenses etc. Once they were enslaved, their circumstances varied from pampered Chinese concubine to under-ground chattel, confined to chicken coop sized quarters, chained to a bed behind bars. The Girls were unable to prevent the sexual diseases wrought upon their bodies by their "visitors". When a girl became too ill to work, in many instances a cup of poison was placed in her room, the door locked and she was left to make the "choice". No expenses were put out to provide her with food or water. Several days later, no blood on his hands, the owners would open her room, and remove her corpse. Donaldina spent her life campaigning for the rights of these poor women. Donaldina Cameron's only crime was to be a Christian. Today, that seems to negate her heroic deeds today. As we read about the Underground Railroad, the great deeds of Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and Barbara Boxer, the most amazing heroes are invisible. Their faith makes their stories fall on deaf ears.