Othello seeping in...

I had a dream last night that took all my unexpressed thoughts, worries, dilemmas about who/what my community is, what I get out of teaching at a privileged independent high school, how my involvement in conversations about race is benefiting me and hurting me at the same time, and gave them a story with which to express them.

In my dream, I was teaching Othello to my juniors (as I am in the process of doing in my conscious world's Shakespeare class). The problem was, I was feeling very personally connected to the discussion of the text, to our comments on Othello, and getting very emotional as I was standing in front of the classroom facilitating an intellectual discussion. Somehow, I became aware that I was getting less and less competent in the eyes of my students, less and less effective as a teacher. In my mind, I was thinking I really ought to talk with my academic dean about what is happening to me and brainstorm some options; I was thinking maybe I should not be teaching these kids anymore. So in comes the music teacher. He is young and a boyish goof. He takes over my class, and I stay in the quiet role of just writing the salient parts of the students' comments on the white board as I usually do, but this time, I do it quietly without responding to the students, without posing them complicating questions. I listen, I write, I stay quiet. But I am thinking the music teacher is doing it all wrong; he is cracking up cheezy jokes and trivializing Othello. I am upset, but the students respond to his "jokes." Ten minutes to the end of class, I decide to leave. I give my -incompetent but well-liked- sub a hug and thank him in the doorway. I start crying and I can't stop. Before we part, though, he cracks up another flippant comment, so I take my arms off his body, look at him, no longer crying, and tell him that's it, he pissed me off, and I am staying. I take back my class for the last ten minutes, and I keep teaching in the style that made me think I was no longer able to do my job effectively, and I lose the students' interest left and right, but I stubbornly keep doing what I am doing until class is over. Only one student stays to hear me finish my sentence; others are out of there as soon as the class is over. I am powerless, and I know I need to go talk to my academic dean.

I leave the classroom. A student of color walks up to me over lunch and asks me how I liked living in Turkey while I was growing up there. S/he (the student was two students at once during the conversation, one male, one female, both students of color) asks me questions, and tells me s/he is thinking about going to Turkey for college next year. I ask if it is a year-long exchange program, but the student says no, s/he is thinking about going for four years at least. My heart sinks, and I think "you poor thing, you are going to choose to live in a strange country like Turkey, so unlike your country?" I tell my student, "You saw me in class; you know..." And I add this comment either in my head or aloud to the student, I can't remember which: "it will never be easy, and you will never fit in."

on education(al paradoxes)

education is the only medium through which I can connect with this country. It is also the medium through which I can, in some ways, fight this country. That's a big topic. And in that paradox is a sense of impotence, a sense of humility, a recognition of how tiny what I do is, and how it is so little in the face of something so unwieldy. I teach in an independent school, for one thing. Instead of teaching kids to value themselves elsewhere, I try to teach kids who have the privilege of never devaluing themselves some compassion so they can be global citizens instead of selfishly powerful. I think there is a healthy way of being selfish, the generous selfishness with the ultimate goal of altruism, or doing something for community, for social equity and justice. There is also the "it all ends with my own happiness" school of selfishness. Sometimes I wonder if I delude myself into thinking I am generous in my choices. Some days I wonder if in leaving home and family behind I actually took the easy way out. There are days I can't tell what I am doing here when it is clear to me that I will never fully belong here.

There are days I wished I stayed in a neighborhood like Holyoke, Massachusetts to work with the inner city youth. There are days I wished I stayed in a neighborhood like East Palo Alto to work with kids who live in trailers and stay at school until they get kicked out because they know they'll get into trouble if they go home. And then there are days I know so many doors would close in my face because of the public school bureaucracy when I tried to teach kids to like themselves, to respect themselves, when I showed them I like and respect myself (the teacher I worked with in East Palo Alto got fired for doing exactly that). I want to reach all these barrios and ghettos and reservations and the self-confined wealthy neighborhoods at once. I want us all to ask for more than mere survival.

A bright student of mine pointed out in our dicussion of Alexie's stories last term that survival is the bare minimum, not the ultimate goal. I don't think she was being naive or disrespectful; I think she genuinely acknowledged the success in surviving. Her caution was against being satisfied with survival alone, against not demanding what is right for everyone to demand.

I talked with Sherman Alexie once. I told him my students wanted to know where the hope was amidst the portrayal of the hardships of reservation life, which confirmed a lot of stereotypes and made them uneasy. I told him I had my own answer, and I wanted to hear his. He said they are not mere stereotypes; they are the realities. He said the hope is in his writing these stories. "That's what I thought," I told him. So once again I go back to the hope being in the creative process. And once again I go back to the mural - I saw the hope in the hands of the man, and I have to believe in that hope. If I don't believe that the artist's perception of hope and the artist's expression of that hope through art are credible, what would remain? What would be the goal of my educating people?