gettin' outta here

i am currently devising a plan to get out of los angeles for the summer.  i am writing my way out this city.

yesterday i tried to get outta here--this city, this space in my head that's full of lesson plans and credentialing work, this moment where i'm feeling disconnected from this monster of an idea i've created in my head called "community."  i hopped on a bus at 5:45am with a bunch of strangers and we drove through the desert for 3 hours.  we were headed toward the annual manzanar pilgrimage.  i've always wanted to go and so i went with the teacher's union.  i thought of it as an opportunity to leave the city for a bit, meet new people, re-engage with a "community" of sorts.

returning home, i was exhausted and an emotional mess. maybe a visit to a prison in the middle of the desert does that to you.  damn, the site really was isolated, desolate, depressing, in the middle of nowhere.  still, it was beautiful to witness a coming together of people to remember in order to act in the name of friendship/justice/peace in the now.

i always have this wish for things to be simpler and cleaner.  the messiness of my days exhausts me, makes me want to sit at home and hide under the covers or, like it does right now, compels me to get away. right away. write away!

*thanks for new ktown cafes, comfy chairs, getting the work DONE

i lecture my students in ways i never thought possible.

frustrated and tired today, i tell my students that their education is a right.  it is my hope that everyday they demand an education that accurately reflects them, challenges them, inspires and transforms them, arms them to face their current situation and deal with the future that awaits them.  they have the right to an education, but so does the person next to them.  i tell them that the moment they deny someone else's right to an education, they are giving up on their own right.  they cannot productively and positively contribute in the space.  today i sent some students away.

in an attempt to teach genres and its purpose, we listened and analyzed blue scholars' "the distance" and read an editorial from the LAT about harsh immigration policies. second period--in their usual passionate, wild, and LOUD way--yelled their questions, their frustrations, their anger and confusion all at once. in these moments, i am always moved yet also frustrated because i struggle with teaching them to use this fire productively.  how do you teach students to fuel fire and shed steady light rather than burn up, explode and turn into a pile of ashes, forgotten in the wind?  come back to the text. practice this skill. think with me.  write and respond in the way scholars do--in the way fierce, fighter, warrior scholars would.  sometimes they hear me. sometimes they don't.

at the end of the day, some of fourth period is falling asleep.  two students are completing this color by number, image search activity for some class. they are waving these papers as we discuss the works as a class.  while some students are genuinely trying to understand the editorial and embrace the images in the lyrics, other students are completing some ridiculous activity that could have come out of those old school highlights magazines.  i am furious and explode, asking them to justify working on the assignment during class.

i know students will never demand an education if they do not understand its purpose, its value.  it is my greatest responsibility as an educator to help them see its purpose, but everyday it is a battle and sometimes i’m just tired. i flat out ask them every now and then, why are you here?  why do you bother coming here?  are you warming a seat?  do you need storage space for your body?  i wait.  in painful silence, we wait for their responses: we have to be here—it’s the law, my parents make me, the school gets money for my presence.  they will not fight for an education that seems pointless, but we have to work at seeing its purpose together.   i tell them to think about others in the world who fight for an education—those who protest and rally and sacrifice their lives for the right to participate in the process of education.  all the while, we can sit here-- in this place where we desperately need to awake our consciousnesses-- passively waiting to be screwed over.  the apathy, the unwillingness to see, and the complacency with un-knowing scares me. these bullets, this youth, man…sometimes the bullets are corroding in this acid.  the beast looks like it’s winning, digesting, consuming.

*thanks for college day, reflective process, the possibilities that summer brings