What I Think About When I See Trash in My Neighborhood Park

Every other early morning, weather permitting, I walk to Van Cortlandt Park to jog.  Like clockwork, I’m greeted at the entrance with a field of garbage thrown about like wild dogs ravaging the grass surrounding the pool and BBQ area.  Small and large piles of plastic containers, aluminum trays, soda cans, left-over food falling out from all sides of broken portable vessels all on pernicious display as if just moments prior, there was some communal decision to spit filth and grim living onto the earth for all to see and share; and for those selected few clad in evergreen or occupational blue overalls to pick up with needle point sticks or some other device provided to them by the recreation and parks department, NYC. 

Why such disregard for our community?  Why such lack of judgment or restraint? To see the beauty of a park, to worship it as if were our second home, to take great care of it so that we can come to it without the shutting down and out signs of NO  NO  NO typically imposed upon us by city officials who in some board room shuffle argue whether or not it makes sense to keep cleaning up the park day in and day out.. Why do people go out into public spaces, set aside for just that, a moment of reprieve from the hot steamy concrete or the dripping walls of an old apartment building on a hot summer day—and desecrate?  How is it that we do not have the habits and behaviors that communicate respect and care for the environment?

Every other early morning I gasp at the sight of it, the outright shame of it and think that while we are bludgeoning our children with testing in schools, we have forgotten to teach the most important skills of all—community consciousness and how to care for one’s beloved surroundings, what is nature, the dangers of pollution locally and globally.

Then, I ask the question: what is the relationship between the garbage trail and poverty?  Is this an act of vandalism, a cry out in the streets for recognition, a shrill, a howl into the air saying, I AM HERE AND IM NOT INVISIBLE I OWN THIS MOMENT IN TIME THIS SPACE IS MINE AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU CANT TELL ME WHAT TO DO

Or is this laziness?

Is this bitter and exhausting vision of wild life trash an organic response to our systematic disregard for some members of our society, for some areas of our city? 

People must feel pissed upon if they are going to sit around a bonfire of trash and leave it behind for someone else to clean up.

Character & community building is a big thing in schools although I’ve rarely seen it done fully and successfully, the kind that spills out and around the school into the streets.  And even though I‘ve designed curriculum that I believe has touched many teachers and students by starting a constructive dialogue about life skills & behaviors— I still wonder how best to educate our newer generations?  How do we teach each other to act responsibly in a shared space?  How do we start a conversation about how we really feel about our community and surroundings with humility and dignity?  As I think about the delicate and complex nature of character and community building within a context of a greatly divided society, I ask: how do we suspend judgment and help move our citizens in the direction of caring and behaving differently? 

Yes, I Do Take Offense

Yes, I do take offense when I have to defend “teaching and learning” as a field that requires scholarship and research, separate from content and just as important as the study of human development or say, a scientist who studies the brain. 

Yes, I do take offense when everyone has the answer on how to fix our ‘teachers,’ who by nature of their title are riddled with fault or worse yet, incompetence. 

Yes, I do take offense that teachers are taking blow after blow for the media hyped, politically motivated misconception that our schools are terrible when in fact schools in healthy, economically stable communities are doing quite well. Yes, I do take offense when education reformers say ‘years of experience’ or an education degree doesn’t matter, that it’s only “value-added” performance that counts and in the same breath say we value education.  (If that’s not the ultimate in double-speak, or in laymen’s terms, hypocrisy, then what is?)  

Yes, I do take offense when schools are being hijacked by business men at the expense of generations of children (poor children and children of color) who are being used as pawns for one of the great coups in American history.  

Yes, I do take offense when I’m forced to watch the slow and methodical dismantling of structures that have provided voice to parents & community leaders that validates their crucial role in developing schools with social capital.  

And yes, I do take offense when people manipulate the definition of words like majority or minority conveniently as if polls and statistics are not used as weapons to ‘frame’ the debate and manipulate information—or as if the demographics of our public schools truly reflect our diverse nation.  

Yes, yes, yes, I do take offense and let me tell you why.  Like Nelson Mandela said on his 70^th year, it is absolutely a choice people make to care.  Do you know how much time it takes and energy and stamina to care enough, to keep the conversation going even after it’s clear that the system fails to stand for justice?  So, whatever big bubble might burst in your face, and the trouble it makes to find discord, the awkward silence of disagreement, or the sense that some feel entitled while others are being harassed— it is simply what one must do. 

Yes, I take offense because it takes not one or two but hundreds of thousands of persons to stand up, to keep up the fight for what we do, for dignity, for integrity and simply to exercise our right to say it like it is.  It is not an act of defiance, but an act of love.  Love for the beauty in it. Love for the humanity of it.  Make a choice to care. 

Take offense.  Reclaim the teaching and learning profession for everything it is worth.

In Response

Forgive me for intruding here, but I find this dialogue particularly interesting. It’s one like others, perhaps—but that I’ve been missing? Are there true educators for “social justice” who do not believe teachers are doing enough—that the ed reform movement is good in that it’s an effort to hold teachers accountable for the first time..and that perhaps teachers have fallen short of their charge to educate the most disadvantaged in society? Maybe I have misunderstood.  Back and forth, back and forth between teacher agency and student agency.  Who is missing?

I will say this. There is nothing wrong with teachers being concerned about their paychecks and their jobs, why—how else would we survive? Teachers in my humble opinion have been expected to act as if the teaching profession were equivalent to charity and an act of self sacrifice (in the poorest of schools, anyway) and have never been compensated or recognized as the masterminds behind our future generations, like scientists who have been given the delicate task of shaping the minds and hearts of human beings!! Accordingly teachers have never been revered in society as the professionals they are, in some generations by parents and local communities yes, but as a profession? Of course, I have met many teachers who do not respect poor children and/or children of color and there are some that need a lot to learn about effective pedagogy (with any children), but perhaps I’ve been lucky (or blind?) to have found that the majority of teachers work extremely hard to fill in the gaps of a society that systemically perpetuates poverty and inequality. 

Think about doctors.  Who can say that every doctor is worthy of their salary?  No, they are human beings with inherent weaknesses and failings and there will always be some that are stellar and memorable, others who will be average and the third group too will exist, those who are incompetent fools!  

Student agency is imperative, yes.  But I would argue that the average student in disenfranchised schools living egregious living conditions are many steps away from activating “agency” in a way that can impact and stimulate change, let alone confront the mammoth edreform machine/monster.  Why, adults who have risen from oppressive conditions themselves, or newcomers to the “middle class” who often have great sympathies for the children taking the brunt of corporate reform abuse—hardly have the money, stamina, connections and social currency to withstand the pressure upon them and are forced to keep (a little) quiet and move things ahead so they can survive, literally survive. Those who are proactive must be extremely careful if they want to stay in the game at all and even then, they are quickly identified and banished. The statement “until students are mobilized by teachers (yes teachers) without their losing their jobs or messing up their careers”(Andres Castro) hits a critical reality.   

The sense of “vomiting” is with me daily, the reality that what we’re witnessing in and around schools is repugnant and humiliating (it must be, must be!! the same for any conscientious educator...) yet, I can’t help ask the question—what is is that we want teachers to do exactly?