Transcending Great Expectations

Many years ago while attending a prestigious prep school, I was part of a track team. I considered myself a sprinter then and I don’t recall if a coach gave me that label after observing my performance or if I had volunteered to take on that role. In retrospect, I find this small detail important and perhaps you will understand why.

My memory consists of one track meet in particular. I was to run a race, but don’t remember the distance. It was within the “sprint” category of races, not too short but by no means cross-country. My recollection of the event is quick but sharp like the instant when your car crashes into another vehicle. I was in the lead or in the very least, heading in that direction. The finish line was very near and I could not see anybody around me. A cramp the size of a tortoise attacked my right hip, sat there under its shell. The pain was intense, but subtle. I was confused. On the sidelines, my team cheered me on, calling my name. I was so much wanting to please them. I flashed into their hope, a slice of exuberance and great expectation beckoned me to fight the grip of pain. In me we all had a winner. After all, I was a fast runner, a natural. But the pain grew sharper in a second and like a breath wiped out from underneath a flame, I broke down completely in the middle of the race. I stopped seeing and the crowd stopped cheering. There was silence and there was me. This is the moment that grew into a cloud. This cloud hangs over the countryside, daring and dark but not letting go of one droplet before it’s time. It steadily holds us, foreboding the eminent downpour, ominous and lurking. There was this silence and there was me.

Many years have passed since that day. As an adult, I naturally fell into a routine of speed walking – it requires less endurance and stamina than running, I thought. Ultimately it was a stress-free choice. My sprinter self never thought to take up jogging. Recently, as a result of the many changes that I have begun to embrace, I have started experimenting with the practice of running. At first, my short distances were sufficient but slowly I started considering goals and endurance and challenge. As my short distance increased, I began to consider that I was no longer a sprinter and even more startling was that I found myself contemplating the possibility that I might have never been a sprinter in the first place.

On the day I succeeded in circling the track for the first time, I returned home with a feeling of accomplishment but it was not joy. I felt this gnawing; subtle pain in my side, a tiny thorn that I had imagined had long ago disappeared. Even though I was enthusiastic, I also felt anxiety each morning about approaching the track. I couldn’t give up my exercise and I needed to be consistent so this dread, if you will, became a concern. Should I go back to walking? Finally, each day I would return to the track and I would give myself permission to walk, not run. I would not force myself to go to that place, encounter my failed self, the other me that I needed to keep at a distance if I were ever to succeed at doing anything. Frankly, doing something, anything was the most important thing. Most of the time, I would run, anyway, knowing that at any time I could walk. I would sometimes jog very slowly teasing my failed self who I realized never left my side. I had accepted my limitation. I was not a runner or an athlete after all.

As the days passed, I continued teasing myself and ironically, I began to run more often than walk – but never once did I make a commitment to run the whole track. I believed my success was born out of this mind game and I found it so fascinating that I communicated my experience to my spiritual guide. I explained the challenge, this battle with myself and put my “experiment with truth” into the context of my youth and tried to explain the perspective of the child I was back in prep school. My spiritual guide nodded gently and when I had finished he let out a long sigh. There was silence and there was me. What? What? I wanted to know. He simply replied, “What an extraordinarily high expectation you had set for yourself back then.”

At that moment it must have been a jolt or a teardrop, but the cloud above my memory broke and out poured the heavy rains that had been ominously hanging over my field of dreams for some time now. The innocence and the simplicity of that statement was a sacred offering, a gift that alters the past. It was in that moment a quantum leap occurred. I traveled to twenty years before and hugged that child doubled over in pain and whispered into her ear the words she most needed to hear, the words that reassured her that there was no such thing as failure and to remind her of all the things she was and was not. She was not a sprinter but a runner, because she runs. She was not a finite moment but a living, breathing life process that was always and will always continue changing and evolving and transforming. Alchemy.

What were those expectations of myself and where did they come from? How did it happen that those expectations quickly led to shame? How do we know which memories are paralyzing and how can we free ourselves from them for recovery?

Everyday I return to the track and I now steadily watch my process as the subject of my own experiment and every day I discover something new about my understanding of expectations. What I find is a bit alarming and might appear unorthodox in a time of standards and performance based assessment. However, I cannot deny or refrain from communicating to all who are open to see. There exists the possibility that expectations can have a damaging impact on performance. As an educator, I have always been a strict proponent of high expectations in teaching and learning and have professionally counseled teachers to “raise your expectations” of the students in front of them because I believed that student failure is directly correlated to the teacher’s expectations. This belief is strongly enforced by research and praxis so you must know, my reader that these revelations and explorations of the nature of expectations are both discerning and tenuous.

John Wheeler, the famous physicist suggested that the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop; a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future, but the past as well. The universe is therefore interactive where the consciousness of the observer alters what is observed (Harvey, 2009). Looking at my own personal and professional experience that spans twenty years of time-space, I recognize how my own level of consciousness as observer (and the level of consciousness of my spiritual guide, which in this case is a significant variable that we can not omit) can change the past and ultimately change the outcomes of the present and future. The liberatory effect that resulted from the release of this clogged energy field from my past continues to impact my current performance. I cannot ignore the fact that the “high expectations” that I had adopted had become an inhibitor rather than a motivational factor in my growth. Consequently, the performance based assessment of this critical moment continued to impact performance over time-space until there was an intervention (guide) that helped create a transformational shift in consciousness that completely altered that which was observed.

Expectations are not neutral. Expectations, like standards come from somewhere-- an individual, a group, a society, a norm, etcetera. Our assessment of any performance or action is based on an expectation or standard thereby reinforcing the notion that both expectations and assessments are determined by a third party or force that becomes the filter through which the performance is observed. This determines, if you will, the level of consciousness of the observer, which in turn will alter the results or outcome. As educators, our unconscious acceptance of expectations and a standard of performance do impact what we observe in our students. Furthermore and perhaps more importantly, our assessment of the performance however subjective it might be (based on higher or lower levels of consciousness), does impact the performance of the student over the time-space continuum.

This means two things. One, the role of a critical educator must be to transcend judgment when observing his or her students – or engage in impartial observation. And secondly, the role of the critical educator is to understand that a student’s performance cannot be understood within the limitations of linear thought. That is to say that a student’s performance must be seen as a continuum that expands time-space that includes past, present and future. The latter requires that the transcendental educator accept the possibility that his or her impartial observation and conscious assessment of an act or performance contains within itself the power to heal and create a brighter future.

Let me conclude this writing by saying that I am not suggesting that educators should not hold high expectations of their students. That would be fool hearty. What I am suggesting is to consider the possibility that our expectations can have a positive or negative impact on student outcomes. As we begin to assess students, we need to stop and consider the power inherent in this act. Ask yourself: What are my expectations of this individual child? Where did this expectation come from? Is this expectation grounded in knowledge of the child’s learning process? Have I engaged in the practice of impartial observation in order to heighten my awareness of this child’s learning experiences? How will my assessment of the child impact the child’s sense of self? Will it inhibit or motivate? These questions are just some of the ways we can transcend great expectations and truly see the reality in front of us. It is an act of courage in a time when we are forced to stand in judgment of others with little regard to the elasticity and alchemy of knowledge exchange.

Back to School Blue: A Word on Belonging

It is the month of school, the time when families from all over come together to deposit their most precious beings into the hands of others, who for some reason or another have found themselves in the business of educating. It is the time when teachers and administrators rub elbows, pull up sleeves and invest time in reconnecting with each other, with the hum drum of an old, or new, school building, putting up bright posters and stamping names into books in order to put some kind of rhyme and reason to the daily routine of schooling. Summer trails not too far behind. Was it a dream, after all? Where do I fit in, in this new space that once was mine but now seems to have taken on a new shape, a new face? Time does that you know. It makes the same feel new and the new quickly feel the same. Frankly, I love the air that September brings. If anything, it brings new beginnings and curiosity. Will the dreams that I built in the sand over the summer break or unfold?

My memories of school trickle back every September, now more than anything since my own children are old enough to remember. My son is attending my old stomping ground and through him I am revisiting an old place I used to call my own. I listen into the silence of my daily walk and remember the joy and the pain of growing up and mostly, the overwhelming need to belong. I remember all the schools I attended, all the people I befriended and realize that year after year I was always, always looking for belonging. In many ways, my education failed me in that respect, or was it society in general, I don’t know – but yearning to belong is in my memory like a legacy. Why did I need this so much? Why was it so difficult to find, this ethereal feeling of belonging. What is it to belong anyway?

Somehow the need to belong is built into our DNA. Yes, I believe this is true. Don’t you? It is one of the basic needs of the human being. Should I tell you that Maslow said so for it to be true? And yet, I find that very few youngsters feel like they really belong at school. Kids are so cruel to one another. The clicks and gangs and groups that are formed quickly spread throughout the school building establishing rules and imaginary criteria for fitting in. Perhaps not so imaginary, really. Do kids still group themselves by race, ethnicity, and language these days? Yes, I believe they do. Teachers do, haven’t you noticed? Not everywhere, not always -- but in many schools and more often than you think. Why? Probably because many of us still believe we are attracted to those most like us. We assume that we probably agree on most things if we share the same background. In schools where at least 50% of the teachers are middle and upper class whites teaching in schools where 100% of the kids are poor, black, Latino and immigrant populations – well, there is much to talk about when it comes to grouping, belonging, identity. Of course, these issues are by no means exclusive to inner city schools. Prep schools and private schools are equally plagued with the right to fit in, class and status issues sometimes trump race, but not always. More often than not, it is exactly, exactly the same albeit articulated differently. In the inner city, black, Latino and Asian teachers cringe when they listen to white teachers complain about certain students and behaviors and white teachers feel like they couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to be a white teacher in front of angry brown kids. Further uptown, white teachers teach brown teachers the status quo and parents fight for diversity initiatives that never really get off the ground because somehow, somewhere with all the diversity around diversity seems not to be working. And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps, we are ALL right. We are divided amongst ourselves, aren’t we? Aren’t we?

We communicate that to our kids. Every time we describe a person by racial terms or by the amount of money they have or by their job title, we are dividing ourselves and sorting and selecting based on the illusion that we are different. So even the kids of the current generation who have significantly more exposure to multiple perspectives and people of all kinds than we ever did on television and the Internet - don’t really have access (real access) to people unlike themselves except for the people they might encounter at school. That’s why schools become the microcosm of our society. It is the place. Our own complex feelings about belonging in a diverse society, a society plagued with materialism and inequities often misinterpreted through the lens of race (a label that really has nothing to do with the color of your skin and yet has everything to do with the color of your skin)– are transferred to our students every day. Where does the “I” in “we” really belong, anyway? Regardless of all of the confusion, belonging continues to be a pre-requisite for life.

How can we create a sense of belonging for our students and ourselves? How can we break free from the labels and assumptions and stereotypes and desires and fears that continue to isolate ourselves from the universal human experience? Is there a possibility of something else, perhaps another place where we can meet eye to eye? Is it possible to create a leveled playing field? If we live in isolation of one another we can never experience true belonging. If belonging is one of our basic human needs, we can never fully develop our true potential without it.

I would like to make a suggestion. Let’s say that humans are at a critical point in their evolution and that we now have the power to exist above and independent of the material plane and that we have the power to determine the shape and content of our daily experience. Think about this. Read it again. Then ask yourself this: If we could transcend the material plane, how might we see human beings differently? What would we see? There is a unique perception, a higher state of awareness, so to speak that is key in our understanding of human potential and I am asking you to consider this possibility as you begin to contemplate belonging. Not just belonging, but the belonging that will be your responsibility in your school, in your classroom, in your intimate space called teaching and learning space, the space that you will share every day with your colleagues and your students. How can you see yourself and your students differently? How can you help them develop their true potential?

Here is another suggestion. Know yourself. Know your students. What is this sense of knowing that I refer to, that Gardner (1999) refers to? How does this sense of knowing oneself and others create a sense of belonging? Can we deliberately create the conditions in which teacher and students have access to this sense of knowing, this sense of belonging in our classroom? This is probably the most important question that you need to think about when planning your school year – whatever your subject may be -- because it is here, in this search that you will understand your purpose and the power of teaching.

In the first month of school you will inevitably earn the respect or lose the respect of your students. It is that simple. Rarely will you regain respect if it is lost. It’s possible, but rare. Many new teachers reading this might not understand this yet, but you will soon. Other more experienced teachers understand this rule, but still struggle to be successful early in the year. You might ask what does respect have to do with belonging? Well, my dear friend, I am going to tell you a secret. Remember this. The students in front of you – you know the ones that will be in your care for the next ten months -- all know the thing that you might not be ready to accept. And that is, belonging is one of the basic human needs and no teaching or learning will take place without it. If you value the humanity in yourself and in the young souls in your care enough to diligently, purposefully and strategically create a sense of belonging in your classroom, you will earn their respect for the rest of the year. Why? Because respect is born out of the seed of humanity- it is the place where we all meet and all see each other as we truly are – this is human potential. Trust me and take the first step.

Balance

I look around and I see the torrential rains pounding against the trees, the muddy cars and streets, the aggressive and inappropriate police, the underground railroad bloodied by sweat and overworked civic servants, the endless rows of malls and stores that continue to push ahead time by precipitously changing the stock of clothes from season to season, holiday to holiday and fast as it goes I never seem to catch up and frankly I am pissed off because like a child, I am enjoying the sand and don’t want to hang up my bikini yet.

Just yesterday I found myself walking alongside tiny white rowed houses propped up by narrow sidewalks, Andalusian tiles and every once in a while a terra cotta awning barely providing for a shady patch. Cars and mo-peds speeding by, children and grandparents walking home at four in the morning talking street, gossip on every corner topped with a cold beer flood over tobacco and spit lined bar stools, a friendly face found on the beach and the heat that forces your bones to lay still, very still so that the tiny cool breeze will find its way through the maze of window panes and narrow hallways hopefully to land on you for long enough than a heartbeat, then morning -at least when the mountain and ocean dew meet for breakfast and then and only then will it be cool enough to enjoy a cup of coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice. I see poverty and anxiety and hopelessness and flat screened televisions blasting cartoons or the news, garbage bins piled high and overflowing, a torn mattress thrown along the curbside, a sign that warns of too many plastic bags swinging high over a recycling container that spits out bottles of wine and Casera. The older generation complains that there isn’t enough discipline and the younger generation demands liberation from structure and the little ones find themselves caught between the two, silenced voices as of yet, confused and raising themselves while the adults bicker about politics.

Looking outside, I find little balance. I want to choose sides, find the first class ride, make believe that I have a choice, contemplate a better life, think that somewhere out there is a place where I will be happy and free and the weather will cooperate with my mood swings. Somewhere there will be that perfect city where the streets will be clean but the police won’t beat people and the ocean air will float over all the pot holes so there will be no rancid smell of urine or dog feces. A place where we won’t notice any difference between people because there will be no rich and no poor – no immigrant and no citizen, all will belong and all will believe that the place that we live in is really, really just a home for just anybody. Work will be found and hopelessness will not lurk in alleys, bars will be places for joy and the doors will close long enough for people to visit the library, books and movies will be free and fancied like candy and all the while, people will spend at least one part of the day walking and wetting their feet on sand or in the grass, walking to the sound of music or the beat of the sun, clocking time with the rhythm and using this space to give thanks and remember.

There is never going to be balance looking at the outside. There will always be too much rain or too much sun if you look at life through the glass mirror that separates yourself from the world. There will always be a fault. There will always be an imperfection. There will always be something wrong with what you see, when you look outside. We are all desperately looking for balance and we are all so disappointed. Perhaps balance is really just accepting that life is made up of extremes? That our experience of life is like a pendulum – swinging back and forth but never stopping in between? It is a constant movement from one extreme to another and when you get to the far right, prepare yourself, it will return to the left and somehow in this dance, time moves along and life falls not on either side but lies down along the entire continuum. Life is not static – it is always in transit from and to, the ebb and the flow, the high tide will be followed by the low and the deep passion of the night will always be followed by the height of the sun – or the rain, if you are by chance in London or New York on any given day.

I had the opportunity to visit the beach almost every day this past month and many of you may know this, but visiting the beach is like visiting a relative. It is a very familiar place but you never know what you’re going to get. Some days the water is flat like a plate, gentle and calm and shining. Other days, the waves are jumping and the wind lifts grains of sand sending tiny pellets into your skin. Dark water spotted with seaweed, deep green and brown or diving deep under clear blue turquoise waves that rock you and hug you and speak soft stories into your ears. Temperature changes and rocks that you can’t see appear and sometimes there are days when it’s best not to wet more than your feet. Sit alongside it and respect the wisdom from slightly afar. On one day, I never got close enough to the beach because there was no parking and I rode home in the car and watched the sea from a great distance. I was often disappointed. There is nothing more painful than going for a swim and finding the waves too violent or the temperature too cold. But, on the one or two days when I found the perfect combination between the sea, and me-- well, it was amazing. I felt that I had tasted the great heavens. Floating and swimming there in perfect balance, harmony, and perfection. It was only several moments out of many, many - and like ecstasy, it was powerfully hypnotizing - the beauty. Yet, time has passed now since those moments and my memory of the beach is not confined to those two days. It is rather a collage made up of several moments each imprint a unique variation of the sea, the wind, the sand, my feet. All of them together continue to allure me back knowing that on any given day, I might not know what to expect, might not know how we both are going to interact – whether it be in mutual silence and respect or in absolute communion.

Visiting the beach, like visiting a relative is a good exercise in understanding life’s balance. While we are somehow in a familiar place, we really don’t know which way the pendulum might go. If we look for balance, we are not going to find it because our life energy is constantly flowing and moving the scales of balance from one end to the other. On those occasions when we allow ourselves to surrender to this movement, we will experience the miraculous joy of the heavens. There we can see the entire spectrum of colors, a prism of sorts-- when all of the variations and extremes come together to create light.

Balance.

Field of Dreams

The only way to find freedom is by offering it to someone else. Our destiny unfolds in someone else’s dream. This is not a sacrifice but rather it is our reality. Do not understand this wrongly. This does not mean you disappear in someone else’s shadow. Nor does this mean you give up your own dream to benefit someone else. Simply, it means that a dream is a field, not a territory. In a field of dreams, a group of people want it. We are all searching for the same thing. When we recognize our interdependence, we sow the seed together as a team and the result will be everyone’s fantasy. Each person’s unique vision is just a tiny reflection of the entire image – what one sees, we all see simultaneously. Within one person’s sight, we can find our big picture. Each person might focus on a unique task towards its realization, but the dream is the same. The task is defined by each individual’s gift. Your gift chooses you and it is your destiny. Don’t run away or be ashamed by your destiny because you think it cannot be. Your gift never drowns you, it surrounds you. It is all at once your greatest temptation, your greatest fear, your greatest fate. It is both an effortless joy and a painful sacrifice. Your gift may be found in what you may once have experienced as your greatest failure. That is why we often fear it. We have not galvanized enough courage to live our greatness. It might feel safe when our dream remains a dream. But a dream unrealized is to live in a state of imprisonment.

One cannot field dreams alone. Not only must you find nature’s place, a niche between the sharpest stone, the brightest sun and grace. Water flows here, it is a metaphor and a practicality. Do not follow scarcity. Follow the deep well of plenty. You might not see the depths, but you surely will smell it, feel it in your bones.

Choose a team wisely. Sometimes teams choose you. Either way, it is this group that acknowledges simultaneously that there is work that needs to be done and it must be done together. Everyone has a sacred place in the group. Don’t fret over tasks you do not want to do or that you do not do well. Follow only your instinct and this instinct will guarantee you joy. Each team member will fulfill a part of the whole. You cannot do it alone. Be and let be.

Your plan is irrelevant. It will exist but it will not be written in stone. It will be an idea, a glimpse into a lifestyle. Follow only emotion, pure emotion. Follow the things that make you weep. Deep, deep, down, you will know the answer. You will feel the hairs on your arm lift. It feels like electricity. It is that place that you lose voice and reason. It is here that your soul speaks. There is nothing wrong with this place when you allow it to thrive in your field. These are seeds. This is the root of all victory -- in your vulnerability. It might surprise you to find that when you lose obligation, your greatest desire becomes clear. Often it resides in the simplest life forms. Like where shall we go now that we are hungry? What shall we eat for nourishment? What will we do when our belly is full?

On Purpose & Freedom

Everyone wants to go home. It is not morbid to want death, only that death brings freedom. Freedom to be exactly who you are. There is no choice about when is the right time. Life sometimes feels like one is stuck. Fixated to one point in time. How can we find freedom when we are alive? Purpose. There must be purposeful living.

Purposeful living is our only hope to transcend life’s limitations. It is purpose that provides us with a look outside the box. Yet, purpose is sometimes hard to find, hold on to, and endure. Why is it difficult to hold purpose? Time is both an illusion and a reality. Time creates barriers to true purpose. We are lost in the illusion that time is permanent- the now feels overpowering. Release. Each hour or moment we spend focusing on the material world feels like an eternity. If we perceive time through our five senses, it creates anxiety, fear and dependence. If we shift our thoughts to the spirit, we can find relief. But it is difficult to train the mind to do these things. We are attracted to drugs and alcohol because these things speed up or slow down time and it is our perception of time that either inhibits or liberates us. Sometimes we are more secure in a sense of eternity while at other moments we are happy that an experience passes quickly. It is very curious how we experience time and the passing of it.

Sometimes we want another life but we cannot reach it. The other life that we aspire to have is always out of reach. We are stuck in the wanting and cannot see that we are often living exactly what we dream. But we do not stop to admire it, savor it and respect what we have achieved. We can choose to be anything. We can acquire any experience that we desire. Experiences are more valuable than material things. Often we confuse an item with what it offers us. A feeling or an experience embodied in it. For example, a phone is simply the experience of connecting with others. However, if we get caught up in the material, we do not connect and ultimately feel empty. Modern technology does this paradox to us. It creates false illusions of networking. It can both open and close down communication depending on how you use it. It is important to identify the purpose of all things. In its purpose, you can understand your own truth. There you can refocus your thoughts, your energy onto the meaning behind the things.

Sometimes we think our purpose is one thing and then realize it is another. Living in the present moment requires flexibility. Energies are always changing, moving us to different directions. It is better to be aware and open to changing currents than to be fixated on an idea. It can hurt to let go of our ideas because they feel like pieces of ourselves, our identity. Yet, only when we let them go, do we find that our self is not our idea but rather we are a conduit for ideas to travel from one self to another. Ideas need to be set free and yet our emotions tell us the opposite. Some people call this the struggle of the ego. I am not sure why we have to experience conflict over ideas. Perhaps it has to do with value. We believe that ideas, like our identity, can have a material value that we can benefit from. That is why it is dangerous to hold onto ideas or an identity because to establish value is the opposite of freedom. Freedom is the absence of value. It is to be free. Of course, the dilemma lies in the fear that if we do not give value to things and others continue to impose value on these things, then we will be left without. How can we feel free if everybody is not free? Freedom therefore requires that everybody participate in it. Freedom therefore is a state of mind and it is contingent on mass participation in it. How then can we practice freedom in a world where others continue to impose value on material things? How can we teach freedom and create safety in the practice? One of the primary learnings that we must acquire is the learning of abundance. If we allow abundance to exist in our lives, then we can practice freedom because accepting abundance negates the fear of lack.

Real World Brief: On Seed News

We are the bringers of news to America. We are the voices of the people. We experience the toil of the earth, the woes of labor, the disenchantment of everyday things. Every movement, every calling, every revolution starts at our feet. Yet. And I say yet painfully. We are rarely the bearer of such things. We are just the beginning. Let me explain.

Behind every report, every Rhodes Scholar, every doctorate, every critic, every artist – is the real thing, the news, the experience, the life, the struggle, the experience. And yet, we are not the bearer of news. We are not the published few. We are not the reputable group called pundits, called artists, called journalists, called historians, called noteworthy few who make a living off the lives and backs of the rest of us. We are not the scholars who make a living dictating research at college off the backs of disenfranchised boys and girls who were paid candy canes and blow-pops to fill out yet another survey or take another test – all for the benefit of John Doe, Ph.D. who publishes another research report saying all in one “the achievement gap exists,” and “we continue to study outcomes.”

We are the ones who sweat and toil. We are the ones who deliver curriculums made each night by the bedside, after a long days work, because if we don’t nothing gets taught. We are the ones who dig in the soil and give over what we find for a small compromise, commitment or compensation – most likely enough to feed a month or two state of mind. We are the ones who sit and listen to the problems of mankind, only to share for a fare to get from here to tomorrow. When will the person who dreams, feels, works, toils, spoils, rots, cries, despairs, gives up and comes back, forgets about school be the one to share their story for me and for you? Why do we always read about our lives through the pen of others? Why must we find an intermediary? Why are we always looking for someone to tell us our story? Going back to school, sending out a paper, looking for a publisher, getting a job are all such difficult tasks for the working class while for some, it is as simple as that. And the best reads are the ones of the elite who go slipping and sliding into the ordinary world only to go back and tell the details of this and that for the purpose of tolerance, understanding and diplomacy. When won’t we need you to give me charity? When will I get to speak in my own language? When will we get paid for our experience instead of selling it to you (and often without knowing) for free, or for beans? Gringo news. I don’t prefer to hear about things from you. I prefer to hear it from the source. What? They don’t know how to write as eloquently as you? Not true. The only thing is this man who works in the mines doesn’t know the editor of the Nation or the Boston Globe. Isn’t that just it? Coming of Age in Latin America.

We must make a public and valued space for the ordinary. It is not because the ordinary is anything more than what currently exists, but rather because it is not anything less. We must make space for the ordinary. The ordinary builds peace and acceptance for every day life and existence. We must practice the art of honoring the every day voices of the street. That does not mean the “street” as in ghetto. It means the all in between. The world that we know it, not the kings and the queens or the stars and their bars. Simply you and me and mom and pop and his neighbor and down the street. We are the people and we need to fight for a place to be heard. Not because we have studied, or deserve it or have merited it or because we have worked for it or because we are exceptionally gifted and talented or because we are aspiring to be somebody. Simply because we are the ones who sweat the toil of the earth and without us, with out us, there would be no green.

Engaging in the New Advocacy

After conducting a workshop at the Building Balance New School Social Justice Conference, I realize that there is a fork in the road. This is good news because I have been feeling overwhelmingly tired. Not sure where the tiredness comes from but I have an idea that social justice is crying like a child that has not gotten enough sleep. Put yourself down to rest and tomorrow, the day will greet you, meet you with new found energy, a treat – if you are lucky the sun will rise. I remember these words:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.”

My family has moved again, my office is in a new/old space. It is strangely close to where I grew up. Brown faces on the street, the Irish, the Jewish, the Italian, more brown from down town, up town seems over crowded, the language, the beat, the street is up the street, a Pizzeria, a home cooked meal Dominican meat, the backyard lined side by side where I can see a traditional clothes line, down the hill from the elite, I stay. We are away and back and I am sure that I am absolutely home and not home in a way.

“Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.”

Building Balance is linking social justice to spirituality. I breathe in that title, Building Balance, like it was written for me. My presentation was cut short, started late, few people attended and I remember the youth in me, the beginnings of organizing and my own and many first tries and my round table dialogue and sitting and waiting for young people to invite me into a space that perhaps I have grown out of long ago and wonder: What am I doing here? What is my purpose? Everyone around me wore jeans and t-shirt. I wore a navy blue suit and heals that scarred my feet (never again, by the way) and in both my suit and in my New School, I felt all at once the same and different and the only thing that I really needed to do was take off my shoes and let my feet breath. Then I would have allowed myself to fully embrace this exercise of patience. And patience is the foundation of spiritual awareness.

“And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.”

I felt that I might be leaving social justice not too long ago. But now it is clear that I am not leaving it, rather, it is leaving me. I am not sad to let it go because every thing that has come and gone, every thing, yes, everything is the same thing and I am just moving around the circle to the other side to take a different look. And what a relief! Let me say that social justice education is my birth into the work that I do and will continue to do and that when I refer to leaving, I by no means suggest that I am putting down my work, my fight. It means that I am expanding my view of advocacy. Let me explain.

Building Balance workshop at the New School participants wanted to talk about injustice to find compassion and empathy. I started talking about justice and fire was out. No fire. No sensationalism. Repeated the same exercise I’ve been doing for years and it was dying in front of me and it was the first time and when I looked at the screen at the bold and underlined words which I wrote that said: real teaching and learning can only take place when the question posed is of equal curiosity for the teacher as the students – I realized that I was reflecting for myself my own awakening. There was no fire because the fire had left me. And so, we started working on a mandala activity and I was tickled pink with the outcome. Just really, child-like me.

The purpose of the mandala was simply to start the process of linking our work to the spirit. In Aung San Suu Kyi's essay "Freedom from Fear," she writes: “The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear.”

According to Jung, the purpose of the Mandala is to put an end to human suffering, to attain enlightenment and to attain a correct view of reality. It is a means to discover divinity by the realization that it resides in oneself. Mandala= Sanskrit/ Indo-Aryan language (Buddhism/ Hinduism) meaning circle, essence, having containing, completion. A mandala is a physical representation of spiritual awareness and journey. What is this revolution of the spirit, we speak of and how can we integrate the work of the spirit into our work as activists for social change?

Agency is rooted in the sense of purpose and the capacity to make a difference in the world. Agency requires skill development in critical literacy. Spiritual awareness starts with self and emanates to others through a sense of interconnectedness. Awareness requires skill development in reflection, perspective & compassion. Social justice must bring together both; any significant movement comes from a combined sense of agency & spiritual awareness.

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

I am suggesting a new advocacy. It is a call for agency & spiritual awareness. It is a commitment to engage in and provide an ongoing forum where we can bear witness, center our thoughts, consider movement, contemplate art, engage in dialogue, build a sacred space and visualize. In this time, I will work towards letting go of the anger and the scrutiny of the achievement gap. I will work towards letting go of our incessant obsession with seeing things in black and white (Another article in the Nation reads: Behind the Abortion Color Line: Reducing unintended pregnancies is an urgent priority for African Americans). I am working hard to let go of rich and poor, wrong and right, and for better or worst. Please forgive me for letting go of these things as you must know that all of these things, social justice things are so dear to me! I am going to try to let go of anything that is polarizing. I wonder what is in-between? I am going to try to sit in the circle and find a way to change me, once again. In this, I hope, my work will expand into a new advocacy. A new advocacy… What does that really mean? There is more to come.

****

Round Table Dialogue: A Retrospective

A month has passed and this is not the first time I attempt to articulate and summarize what happened amongst a small group of 12 diverse participants who took a risk, flipped a switch, traveled to Harlem, 125th Street to talk about working together across race and class for change. Several things went wrong and yet the end result was extraordinary. It was a surreal experience that left each of us with the thirst for more. What does it mean to dialogue, this open ended inquiry that for no other purpose is to delve into the unexpected task of searching for truth, a group endeavor of sorts, as worthy as a treasure hunt albeit left incomplete?

In spite of staggered arrival times and an over ambitious task of sorting through several dense readings written from four different perspectives, the conjuring up of historical spirits to start set the tone for what would result in a curious, but tentative dialogue that in the very least managed to highlight some essential truths and critical questions. Since the process is of equal importance as the topic at hand, I will list the findings and divide them into two categories: “On the Art of Dialogue” and “On Working Together Across Race & Class for Change.”

On the Art of Dialogue

1. While it has been well documented that “it is natural for groups to first experience a dialogue as a slow and inefficient way to discuss important issues,” the actual experience of this phenomena is by far more unnerving than expected especially if we compare dialogue to traditional modes of professional group activities, such as conferences or workshops. In the latter, conversation is dominated by explicit linear outcomes, time frames and data driven goals. Dialogue is non-linear, abstract, open-ended and is driven by intent and curiosity.
2. Dialogue takes time, a mutual commitment to starting and ending on time, a safe space that respects flexibility when necessary.
3. Connecting personal experiences in pairs before engaging in a whole group dialogue can facilitate trust.
4. Grounding dialogue in a shared piece of literature is a powerful tool, however the selected piece can delimit the discussion if not chosen carefully. Participants should focus on one selection and should have plenty of time to digest the material before engaging.
5. Face to face dialogue has purpose and value in our work and while dialogues can include on-line formats, it is essential that people commit to coming together in a shared physical space.
6. It is a rarity to have the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with such different people.

On Working Together Across Race & Class for Change

1. It is worthy to mention that class was the dominant variable in the dialogue. Are we more united by class experiences rather than race & cultural experiences?
2. The question of whether activism is a luxury was raised: Who can afford to be an activist these days? Who has the time to sit around and “contemplate” the green movement, for example?
3. Sustaining activism and change movements are historically expensive. Movements differ depending on who is leading the movement – marginalized people or the upper class? If we are to change education policy, how can we unite public and private interests?
4. Who is ultimately responsible for the state that we are in with regards to our environment? With regards to a faulty education system? Do the poor and disenfranchised have equal responsibility in fixing up the mess that “they” have imposed on them? What about capitalists and corporations?
5. We need “ordinary people” to be part of any movement if it is going to really change things. Can “ordinary people” afford to participate? We need to re-think what it means to be part of a movement.
6. People have a tendency of grouping people together under labels – the rich, the poor, Asians, etc. How can we identify key patterns of inequality while also understanding there is inter-group diversity?
7. Change is contingent upon the majority of people feeling directly impacted by a problem. How does the education system directly impact the majority? Do we need the majority if a small group of private interests dictate policy and have the advantage of capital?
8. “Survival” is at the heart of any big movement for change. Is it survival of the fittest or is it survival of our species?

Several people have contacted Real World who would have wanted to participate in the dialogue but could not make it out to New York City. Others have since contacted me regarding scheduling another dialogue to keep the momentum going. The experience is new and inviting and the participants unanimously agreed that it was only a first step and that the topic is worthy of further exploration.

Towards planning the next dialogue, whether it be on line or at a location in NYC, please contact info@realworldpd.org if you are interested in registering. Please specify if you would be interested in a session in the late Spring 2009 or the early Fall 2009 and if you would consider registering for a dialogue on line. Real World is in the process of moving so please be patient over the next couple of weeks for the website to be updated with further information regarding this planning.

New Aged Philanthropy

The motivation is not the same
It is not my voice that I seek
But the voice of another, my adversary
Not my friend, Hope
But the imprisoned me.

With all my might I reach and stretch
Into strength I pull with clenched teeth
Stand as I may to fight your good fight-
I cannot and I’m failed again.
Just another borrowed claim-
Underground the cellar door agape.

It is not my arrogance or shame
My wisdom tells me not
Compassion, if you will, is the not the same
Compassion burns transparent
Knots to knot to not.
Empathy or to blame?
Indifference of the same?

It is simply mercy, mercy please
My shadow self in you is crying!
I no longer can stand by complacent.
If it is not I that can rescue you, who?
Tell me, angels, what shall I do?
Isn’t that what love tells us to do?

And my far angel replies. Tonight.
Tonight, my child.

At night I am given a different tool.
I am told to meet He-She beyond the beyond Way
There I will be told of secret runes
There I am told we won’t be alone
Somehow we’ll cross borders and meet through
Future and presents past
Zip, zap, zoom and we’ll blast
Snowflakes, I might see, turned rain
Beating hard against the window pane-
Come back! Come back! I might yell.

Lay me down to this twist of time
Like fate undone, a wrinkle, a sound
I’ll wonder now who and what we really are
And pray to know the location of that far way star.

Wish I may and wish I might
Have I been given the wish tonight?

Each night, now before I wake-
I ask HeShe for guidance sake
There we meet and within this light
I am told that love is a different plight.
It is not about fighting another’s fight
Or removing him or her from pain.
But meeting these brotherhood souls at night.
Where light breeds light and warm is free
Where I have learned that I can’t change thee.

This is the key.


-----------
Thank you to all who attended the first round table dialogue.

On The Cast System: And Holiday Wrap

Over a long and lazy holiday weekend my mother told me that as a child I spent hours on end locked in my room reading, reading, reading and writing, too. She always felt, she added matter-of-factly, that I’d grow up to be a writer. In the midst of preparing a day after Christmas meal where wine and sweets still decorated the kitchen table and my feet were snuggled in my new Dearfoam slippers, I stopped briefly to savor her sentence. What at first could have been construed as casual words took hold and there, found depth and significance. A wave of heat swept through me, like a shot of tequila or whiskey, and almost for a moment I felt like a baby weeping. I knew just then that I had forgotten entirely that my mother was the first human being to know me. Simple words dashed across a black bar stool, treasures buried along the way, lost and found map of my destiny, insight into my present world, a moment of time travel, if you will – where I meet my mother again in a past when we shared everything and further beyond still when we shared just one body.

It occurs to me later on, that life has a tendency of wrapping our souls with layers and layers of thin strips of gauze and that while each strip is light and transparent, together they form a firm cast that tends to freeze, immobilize, paralyze movement. Are we locked into a frame of time in order to heal? Are we after all broken from the start? Is this original sin – born with the need for a little bit of fixin’? And as day break becomes sun down and another day looses shape, it dawns on me that perhaps we spend the greater part of our adult lives peeling layers and layers of gauze trying to find our way back in! The cast of life is ultimately a temporary state of being for healing.

When I was a child I left a letter for my step-father on the table outside my bedroom door. He always worked late and often came home after I had already gone to bed. The fact is, I don’t remember what was written in that folded letter of hope, but I do recall hearing his laughter through the door and him saying to my mother something to the effect of it being a childish love letter of sorts. I fell asleep ashamed. The next day, he was gone again and the letter was never mentioned, as if somehow it was a crack in time that evidently found no place, no relevance, no existence. The days that followed, I dodged him, knowing that I had somehow exposed too much and that he gratefully, silently agreed. How could I have allowed myself to fall into rare vulnerability? Many years later, I fumble through the gauze to show you folks this memory and let me tell you what to see.

Every time we write, there is a tender moment of childlike innocence exposing the real thing. It is the more too often silent self that rarely people see. It is a micro-revolution, a surrender from the fight. It is a glimpse into a hidden world, sacred and vulnerable and in spite. To exercise voice is an act of faith that behind the hundreds of layers that life has cast upon us, underneath in voice, it ceases to bleed. And in this case and perhaps in all cases since we are all a part of one complex relationship (and because in fact, we are all the same), memory becomes more valuable than diamonds in exchange. As my mother’s words tumbled effortlessly from her mouth, a thought, a slip, a mere memory – to me, well, to me, it was a powerful moment of synergy that in an instant of time connected me to all of my life and eternity. Like wise, by revealing my step-father’s insensitivity, I have leaped and crossed over time, and it is after all like the ghost of Christmas Past, a total act of forgiveness.

When I was a young adolescent I’d visit a friend and we’d run across town. We spoke of first loves and innocence. We called our spiritual connection God-like children. Dare I digress?

Children are so, so innocent. They embody truth and faith and love, and so painful it can be rubbed up against the wrong energy! That is why as parents we work so hard to protect our sons and daughters because we know, from first hand experience that they do not come to us broken. Children come to us whole.

And therefore, it is impossible for me to believe in original sin.

Like the holidays, it’s easy to lose track of days, the hours shift us into different modes, we reconnect with loved ones, we speak of memories and the deceased, we find that we are still scared and running away from the same things. We pass on tradition and try so hard to create new ones for the sake of our children and we tell the truth and not so truth of old stories that honor the spirit of giving. It’s hard not to get lost in all this stuff, get through the layers and layers of egg nog and gauze. How hard it is to make a decision to unbury the past, check out if the old wounds have healed, wrap up a different time, a plate, a piece of cake with Saran Wrap instead, store the left overs and break bread and get all choked-up over absolutely nothing in those moments where we find each other in the night and bump into everything that is everything that binds our lives together indefinitely.

While I did not expect to this year, this Christmas reminds me of forgiveness and healing. And while I wondered what gift to gift a man who has everything, I decided to buy nothing. Instead, I dug deeper into my pockets still and found forgiveness. Break through the cast and find. Under the layers and layers and layers of wrap, accept pure, 100%, organic, homegrown, wild caught L.O.V.E. And then, gently, try again.

Everyday Framing

On the Home Front
At a small and quiet Thanksgiving reunion, family members discuss the rules of Secret Santa and we wait while we vote on how much we should spend. There is laughter. Jolly. Some argue that the purpose after all is not the gift, but the gesture and “don’t we all have very little money to speak of?” Others think that since this is the first year that we are experimenting with a one gift option we should agree on an amount that would afford a gift of significance. Why not buy something nice? Don’t be cheap, someone hissed. Last year, I recall, my husband and I used gift money to shop for gifts (yes, folks, that is possible) and others settled on home baked cookies. Are we really trying to save or are we asking ourselves what is the true purpose of giving at Christmas?

Meanwhile, I can’t remember the last time I received so many Bed Bath and Beyond coupons. Frenzied shoppers who had been waiting since five in the morning to shop at a local Walmart, trampled over and killed a worker on Long Island. Students at schools are hungry and without health care. I, for one, can’t figure out how I will pay for my son’s dentist visit on Saturday. I seem to remember growing up with different priorities. My children want a big day out at Burger King. I decide whether or not I should forgo a new toothbrush for another week. Did someone tell me I might not get paid this week? Thanksgiving is to give thanks. My daughter comes home from school wearing a stapled paper bonnet reminiscent of the pilgrims. She tells me that the pilgrims and the Indians shared food and that is why we celebrate Thanksgiving. I look at my husband and he hears my silent thoughts. When shall we tell her about the genocide of the Native American Indians? When will it be appropriate to tell her about how our country treated these human beings after sharing? I do believe, though, that it is right to give thanks. I wonder if I will ever be able to celebrate anything these days without feeling phony. I wonder if I am doing the right thing for my children by guarding them from the real state of things. Every time my son is exposed to the “real world,” he says, that’s sad. Then he finds release by creating a virtual reality called Sims. The other day, though, he announces that his virtual family lost their children to a social worker because they weren’t sent to school. He asks: Mommy, is that true that a social worker can come and take your children away? Even in virtual reality there are rules. Shame. If I were a parent living in the South Bronx, I wouldn’t necessarily send my kids to the neighborhood school. When is it appropriate to explain to my son the concept of zoning?

On the World Front
While Britain tries to entice their shoppers to shop by instituting a consumers tax cut, 400 are dead in Nigeria due to sectarian rioting. Apparently, the ethnic and racial tensions between the Muslims and the Christians have reached the level of bleeding. The Taj Mahal hotel in India is the target of a Mumbai massacre. The Taj Mahal, like the World Trade Center symbolizes wealth to me. No one is really sure who is really behind these terrorist acts. Roy in War Talk describes displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, fascism and genocide. Which one of these is behind this attack? Rigged elections, daily humiliations, disappearances, jihadist militants, and foreign mercenaries. India is a Hindu country and Muslims can be murdered under the benign gaze of the state. Death toll is somewhere close to 300 today. The airport occupation in Thailand is on day 6. Again, not too sure how to figure this either. The protests are supposedly being led by PAD (Peoples Alliance for Democracy), which is led by media Tycoon, Sondhi Limthongkul. Is this a vehicle for the middle and upper class or is this democracy? Is democracy of and for the people anymore? Is this really about universal health care and human rights? Whose government is who? Coup.

"The news in the papers is always the same – some people’s house petrol-bombed, youths and activists arrested, suspected informer necklaced, police shootings—it only varies from place to place. It’s been like this for… I don’t know how long. It’s really depressing. Today I did not even have to buy a paper, things just kept happening since late this morning."

--(Gcina Mhlope, It’s Quiet Now, Somehow Tenderness Survives: Stories from Southern Africa)

Today is Sunday, a gray day. My children wait. We are going out, take a drive, change the scenery a bit. My son and daughter are beautiful. I tell them so. My five year old daughter wants to know why she is beautiful. I explain that she is beautiful because her spirit is strong and her energy is warm and inviting. She giggles and says, “No, Mom! I mean, why am I beautiful?” My ten-year-old son explains what she means – he uses his big brother tone. “Physically, Mom, physically!” Yeah, I nod at him smiling, appreciating his sense of authority. Well, you know, sweetie pie, I say, when you’re old and gray and you are wrinkled like a raisin and your back is curled over like a crooked branch, you will be beautiful. And if you ever get sick, like Titi Carmen did, and you loose a lot of weight and your face turns yellowish green and you can’t get out of bed because your feet are too swollen, you will be beautiful. Because, why? Because your spirit will be strong and your energy will be warm and inviting.” I say these words and I am an activist, I believe.

On most days I am horrified and appalled at the state of things and sometimes scared as hell that I won’t be able to stay afloat. Every day my bank card is accepted, I experience a sigh of relief. It is there, a miracle breaths. Or, when I bend down low and speak to the Gods about small things, well, I can’t help feel a deep and sincere sense of gratitude. And then, just like that, I am reminded why we all continue to show up at the Broadway play called “Thanksgiving.”

Making A Difference

When I was younger, I was told that a sign of diplomacy and intelligence was the ability to act rationally and to control your emotions -- especially in a debate. So, I practiced this and when I grew up and had just about enough, I decided that instead, I would become an artist. Then I would be allowed to act out, act up and speak out with passion using the unabridged version of my speech. As an educator and an artist, I ask: Why can't I speak of both social justice and democracy? Why can't I speak of the human condition and speak of politics? In Van Jones' article in this week's The Nation, he advocates for both approaches. So, on that note, I offer you:

Reflections on Election Day

I saw him accept his honor. It was a speech -- the Inaugural Address? Or was that me that joined the masses in the sixties? Was it me that let out my hair, a proud and bouncy light brown afro that resembled a halo? Was it me that got a chance to hear him speak, walk the line, picket the fence, defend, stand up, lay down arms and breath the sweet air of peaceful resistance? Was it Hopi prophecy or was it hope? I could no longer feel the limits of my body, define my space, separate myself from the others that huddled next to me, beside me, inside me. I was holding hands with Frieda Khalo and Paulo Freire, Arundhati Roy and Ghandi. I dressed like Che Guevara and smoked a cigarette with Malcolm X. I floated across the water with Tin Shed and the brothers and sisters from Amistad. bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn each held the hand of a child who marched in Birmingham while Gerla Weissman stood tall between Melanie Bush and Jawanza Kunjufu. Mary Crow Dog looked over me on the delivery room bed with my legs spread open welcoming my son into the world. It was the deepest pain, the coming together of all the world’s suffering that united me, reminded me that I am but a wave in the ocean of all life and we are together making a difference, one moment at a time, one word, one breath, one small thing at a time. It was today, that I felt this in my throat when I held my daughter's hand in the voting booth, when I took my turn at deciding our fate, and saying thank you, thank you Barack Obama for reminding us of Toltstoy. The Kingdom of God is Within You and we have every day - a choice.

This campaign, this memorable campaign has made all the difference in my life and I share that with you as so many of you are feeling the same. Whether in small groups or in a large audience or in the quiet space of you alone you – acknowledge that no matter what the outcome of this election, we will never be the same. There is a difference. Over the last six months, I have talked more about the issues that mean the very most to me and my loved ones, my family and my community, my country and the global village than I have ever before. Concentrated in this point of time, in this history in the making, where courageous conversations and the art of dialogue have slowly become more routine. Not the norm, just more routine. I have felt every emotion. I have felt indignant and shame. I have felt embarrassed and courageous. I have felt loving and tolerant. I have felt shock and hatred. I have felt humility and godliness. I have felt joy. I have felt sorrow. I have felt like John Stewart and I laugh. I continue to cry. However, I have not felt alone. I have felt so a part of the rest of humanity that I am beginning to understand the power of hope and the power of talk and the power of change and the power of how one man, one person, one voice can echo in each and every one of us and make a difference. A difference that we can feel. A difference that vibrates energy.

On this November 4th day, before the tally has been count, I want to publicly thank Barack Obama for playing this awful, brutal game we call politics. I want to thank him not for what he promises, but for what he has done. Not for perfection, but for his excellence. Not for tomorrow, but for today. And whether you vote for "septic" over "sewer" or if you'll sacrifice the mass good for your own personal conscience (Alinsky, 1971) or whether you decide to vote independent to advocate for a multi-party system -- I want to thank each one of you for participating. And of course, for those of you who have invested just a little bit more, then, well, I thank you more.

There are only two things that I am certain of at this point - and that is regardless of what we might feel tomorrow morning. One, is that we are definitely evolving. And two, I am a sap, after all.

Neighbors

I live in the country where it seems that nothing happens. I confess that I have fallen prey to the art of generalizing. You know – the people here, the places here, they’re so “country.” I long for the crisp sidewalks of the urban terrain. I long for the crisp ideas that pop off dirty streets and dark alleys. Yet, I must admit that when I take a three-mile walk in Poughkeepsie often in the company of Christina Aguilera, Sting or Marvin Gaye – I am at peace. So much so, that I turn off my music to hear the rustle of the orange, yellow and green leaves. I am at home, here too, in my open space and in my dreams.

I walk with my daughter to a near by park. Not sure if the pleasure is more hers than mine. Her chatter reminds me of innocence and better days. I am awed by a child’s grace. At the park, a neighbor comes by with his wife and children. He wears blue denim overalls and ruddy cheeks over light peach flesh, blue eyes, I think. His wife petite and brown, I learn later she is from Cambodia. Their small child greets me first. He is four. He wears dingy pajamas with a hole on the knee. He is one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen. After showing me his boo-boo carefully wrapped with a band-aid, his father starts to speak to me.

I learned that his pension had been threatened and that at a recent meeting he found out that they could only guarantee 38 cents per dollar, that after twenty-five years of service in construction, he was worried that he would end up with less than what his family needs. He spends his time between the political affairs section at Barnes and Nobles and home with his three kids since he is unemployed as a result of a leg injury. He is outraged that while his government proudly spends a billion dollars on a military helicopter to hover over a country over seas, the supermarket clerk treats him with disdain every time he shuffles through his wallet in search of his food stamps. He asks me sarcastically, “Am I to blame?” He sites the names of notable political theorists and makes significant and insightful connections between his daily life and the economy, politics and history. He wonders how the media spends so much time demonizing an intelligent Harvard grad with new ideas when “all of us are represented in that fellow’s DNA!” Who in American ain’t an immigrant?” he exclaims. “Isn’t it enough that he’s got a plan to change?”

After forty minutes of pushing swings and swapping stories, information and resources that run the spectrum from Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore to fights on the phone with cablevision reps and credit card reps to explaining the relationship between Cambodia and American history and what that means in 2008… I say, I have to go now, it was a pleasure meeting you. He replies when my back has already turned, Thanks – Hey! Thanks for sharing.

All the way home, I couldn’t help feel two things. First I felt shame. Shame that at first glance, I’d think this neighbor was just another country blue collar red-neck that had little to offer me in terms of progressive thinking. (gotta go, gotta go home back to the hustle and bustle of the urban streets.) And two, I felt deep gratitude and humility. That while the flaws of my ego were clear to me, to him; he was able to feel my higher spirit. And I guessed, that perhaps, just perhaps, I had honored my search for truth long enough, worked for love long enough, that while still very human, I was afforded the honor to connect and expand myself through the life of another human being different on the outside from me.

I don’t know my neighbor and my neighbor does not know me. Sometimes I step out of my safety and I get scared at what I see. It is so easy for me to dodge the dialogue on diversity because listening to our loved one and our friends and our neighbors can be so disappointing, alarming. Yet, every time I think I have got to stop and run away, I meet a Tom or a Daisy or Fernando that reminds me that we are all struggling within our own limitations to be free.

During this election season, when politics and religion so urgently divide, find the courage and strength to explore your light and dark side. Participate, debate, and make your best and sincere choice for the benefit and honor of all of us.

A New Day

On Exploring the Contemporary Child

I can barely lift my head out of the sludge. The alarm clock beside my bed reminds me that I am home again, back to reality. Ironically, as I stare at that short rectangular box on top of my vanity, I am reminded that my alarm stopped long ago. Back when I was a teacher, I spent many a night praying for freedom from that insidious inhumane ring that would wake me up before sunrise. When I was granted my wish and left teaching for a more flexible job, the corpse remained in place and now squeals at my husband like a charcoal colored Poughkeepsie crow. He sets it daily and without it, my husband would completely forget that we are after all earthbound still.

Vacation is over. There is beer here and there but ultimately I know the difference. Plus, the calories weigh down upon me and it’s time to face the work ahead of me. I wallow a bit more in the pain – I remember failed plans and the death of a part of me. Optimism flounders but all the same, I look to Obama, once again, for a little bit of hope, encouragement and inspiration. The Nation sprawled across my floor screams at me. The words, “What He’s Made Of” beckons me to think and I sigh heavily. I am a woman with the wind inside her, the ocean is far away but it is there, a low but notable tide. The school year is about to begin and I think of the children and the teachers and I trump my depression with the joyful memory of sharpened pencils, silly friendships and new books. In this space, I make a wish, a New Year’s wish, as September for all academics like me is really the start of the New Year. My wish is in response to the Obama question: What is he made of? What am I made of? I ask.

I wish to be made of insight, humility and imagination. I wish to see into the eyes and hearts of those around me, find compassion and unity even as we disagree, share in the wrinkles that crown our brows and in the hesitance of our speech. I wish to remember that there is nothing that I can teach if I am not open to learn, that there is no other experience lesser or greater than my own, that those that I fear are similar in nature to those that I admire for they are both inside me – after all -- we are all reflections of each other. I wish to open my mind to discover un-chartered territory knowing that the future will greatly depend on my ability to believe, that our children need us to reach past the limits of our present day. I wish for insight, humility and imagination on this September day.

Imagination is difficult for most of us. Our children are living and breathing a totally different world than we could have ever imagined and it continues to change rapidly. How can we keep up? What do we as educators have to offer this new species of child that is so easily bored with traditional modes of education? Just think politically. John McWhorter writes in New York Magazine’s August 18th issue on race, “If Obama becomes President, there will be a shift in the conception of race in this country that neither side in the culture wars can control. It’s all about youth. Think about it. If Obama is elected to two terms, an entire generation of 10 year olds will come of age having been barely aware of anyone other than a black man in the White House,” (Obamakids, p 28) While some of us are stuck on the “I don’t see race” which according to Patricia Williams, becomes “I don’t see racism” dialogue and many more of us are listening to Rush Limbaugh singing those subterranean fears of “Barack, the magic Negro,” or to Pat Buchanan fretting that Obama is a radical, unpatriotic, extremist, elitist to whom the liberal media hands a pass as a “special-ed,” “affirmative-action” candidate (Talking About Not Talking About Race, p. 26) – our children are being immersed in an already changed world where race and culture means something very different. Skip the rhetoric, the code word de jour, presumptuous (Alterman, 2008, The Nation), ladies and gents and keep your eyes focused on the new day because the new day is already here and most of us don’t even know it. As McCains’ politics are virtually identical to those of Bush, so Obama’s stated platform is virtually identical to Hillary Clinton on every matter from women’s issues to defense. If one was going to vote for Clinton but will not now for Obama, what else could it be but the most insidious, self defeating form of identity politics? (Williams, 2008, The Nation) And while identity politics has a strong hold on many of us who live in the past and tired circles of the present, know very well, folks that whether Obama wins the presidency or not (and I believe that he will), the shift of our conceptualization of race has already been taking place because it is in process. It is not the end result where change occurs, change is in the process. It is right to assume that the children we teach today have already absorbed a different language around race and culture. That is why John McWhorter writes: “And the 10 year olds shall lead us.”

In fact, in contemporary US culture, young children are not only oriented by their own multiple cultures (racial, ethnic, age, gender and family, to name several), but also by living and learning within a socio-culturally conditioned world filled with many different conditions of cultural difference (Hyun, 2007). The contemporary child experiences early exposure to multiethnic perspectives and are often more adept at negotiating multiple perspectives and realities then they are given credit for. In this way, traditional schooling can “box” children into traditional groupings that no longer suit the needs of the contemporary child. That is why, progressive schools are looking to critical pedagogy – that is an approach to teaching that embraces the students’ multidirectional, multidimensional, multilingual and multiethnic experience (Hyun, 2007) and builds upon it towards non-linear forms of critical thinking and subsequent agency in a global community.

What does that mean in laymen’s terms? It means that we have to ask a lot of questions to start. Start off September not with a plan of action based on information that you are anxious to impart. Start off September with an active research plan based on critical questions that you are anxious to explore. Who is the contemporary child sitting in your classroom? Is it possible that there is a world inside them that you do not know? A world that might sprout out of a brown face or a thick skin or a quiet mouth or darting eyes or “dangerous” grin – but does not stop there. We all see the world through multiple identities, whites are not white after all, for it is a color that stops while the human being is an endless journey of multiple intersections including sexuality, faith, language, economy, geography, personality, family, birth, physique to name a few. And blackness while we must see it, it is only the first step into a multifaceted being where there you find incredulous diversity. Why not start September with daring to start impossible conversations that you have every day with yourself, in your heart of hearts, the real conversations that are important to ALL of us? And your job, dear educator, is to guide your conversations and make critical and transformational connections with your students, your self and your subject matter. Start September with knowing that it is the child in front of you who will lead you this year. Find out where they are already taking us and find creative, challenging and safe ways to guide them towards this place.

_______________________
Here are a few sample questions that I imagine would be particularly interesting in their exploration: (and wonderful writing prompts!)

Open Question: How does my unique history influence who I am?
Focused Question: How might Obama’s bi-racial & bi-cultural upbringing influence how he sees the world?

Open Question: What does it mean to belong to a community?
Focused Question: How could we have avoided the disaster of Hurricane Katrina?

Open Question: How can we resolve conflicts peacefully?
Focused Question: How can I protect myself from the neighborhood bully without fighting?

Open Question: What do I call home?
Focused Question: Why are some neighborhoods cleaner than others?
_________
If you are interested in hosting a REAL World Educators dialogue at your school or scheduling a professional development workshop on how to implement literacy based dialogues in your school or classroom, contact Dr. Raquel Rios at Dr.RaquelRios@gmail.com or realworldeducators@yahoo.com.

Poverty, Peasants and Schooling

Reading Tolstoy for Social Justice Education

Brilliant Tolstoy discusses the complex nature of “education for emancipation” in his classic novel, Anna Karenina. I refer to Levin, of course, a wealthy landowner who spends his time in the country farming, writing a book on agriculture and secretly longing for the simple and joyful life of the peasantry. While Levin entertains the idea of organizing his farm into a cooperative business enterprise where the peasants will participate in the profits in order to increase productivity, he argues with the gentry on whether or not “rational farming” can truly make a difference. Here is a brief excerpt of a dialogue (pages 335-337):

Sviyazhsky: The people are on so low a level both of material and moral development that they are certain to oppose what is good for them. In Europe, rational farming answers because the people are educated; therefore we must educate our people – that’s all.

Levin: If the people are on a low level of material development: how will schools help?

Sviyazhsky: Schools will give people other wants.

Levin: How will schools help the peasants to improve their material conditions? You say that schools and education will give them new wants. So much the worse, for they won’t be able to satisfy them. And in what way does knowing how to add and subtract and to say the catechism help them to improve their material condition, I could never understand! The treatment seems to me just a parallel to treating peasants by means of schools. The people are poor and ignorant, this we know…but why schools should cure the ills of poverty and ignorance is just as incomprehensible as why hens on their perches should cure fractiousness. What needs to be cured is their poverty. Schools are no remedy, but the remedy would be an economic organization under which the people would be better off and have more leisure. Then schools would come.

Let’s just flash for a minute to a recent web article by Ashleigh Patterson, entitled Feeling Poor Spurs Lottery Ticket Purchases (7/25/2008, Reuters Life!) which quotes George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who states, “When people are made to feel subjectively poor, they end up buying more lottery tickets which is somewhat perverse since every time you buy a lottery ticket, it's the equivalent of burning money," In this “study” people earning less than $100,000 a year, which was suggested by the researchers to be a low-income, bought 1.27 lottery tickets compared to 0.67 by people who earned more.”

And so, I pause and I think. I try to wrap my brain around the fact that this study refers to people earning less than $100,000 a year as low-income. Consider of course, that if a family making $95K a year is low income, how would we describe a family living on a teacher’s salary of $42K? Then, a salary over $100,000 is now considered just breaking into middle class, these days? I also consider the ramifications of the use of the word perverse since every time you buy a lottery ticket – you burn money. Would this be the same as the statement that “people are on so low a level both of material and moral development that they are certain to oppose what is good for them?”

And then my dear readers, I did what I always do. I thought about myself, my life and my current predicament. My husband and almost everyone I know buys lottery tickets on a weekly basis. My grandmother, may she rest in peace bought a lottery ticket daily along with playing the numbers. My aunt who after twenty-five years of service in a wealthy private hospital is lying ill in a bed concerned that her health benefits will expire too soon (and will you please take that wallet in the drawer and buy the Mega tonight, dear?) bought lotto tickets her whole life, and I myself having been unemployed for more than two years and stuck in this horrific real estate market -- am buying a lottery ticket. This new tiny, 2 X 3 slip of paper sits every Tuesday and Friday on my desk next to a diploma for a doctorate of philosophy in educational leadership. Not that that last fact says anything about my level of intelligence or my capacity to live a productive and meaningful existence. In fact, it says very little about anything. In the last few years I have gotten such ill and ignorant treatment from highly educated members of the community who are apparently unaware and oblivious to the facts of life out here in the real world. So much so, that to them, a lottery ticket is a perversion while for me as of late, a lottery ticket on a Tuesday, is simply an act of hope. It is a choice to feel hope and dream and imagine in spite of the despair, desolation and poverty that pervades every day existence. And I am not alone, folks. And we all ain’t ignorant.

Now, back to Tolstoy and schooling. The argument under consideration remains that people who are low on both a material and moral development level are certain to oppose what is good for them. First, the latter does deserve some discussion, doesn’t it? For example: How do we know the levels of moral development, exactly? What criteria must we follow? It vaguely reminds me of my dissertation and my noble attempt to quantify critical literacies outside the box – you know, outside a person’s ability to phonetically read a paragraph and mechanically write a sentence. I wanted to quantify an individual’s ability to interpret, put into perspective, strategize, critically analyze, interrogate, validate themselves and others, have a social awareness and imagine. That noted, I want to push us along and quickly agree with Tolstoy when he says that if education is simply about giving these people new wants, then so much for the worst because they won’t be able to satisfy them! What are the wants that education gives people and why won’t they be able to satisfy them? This is the fundamental question behind social justice education because it underlines the assumptions embedded in our current education practice.

Here are the assumptions: People have wants. Wants are different depending on whether you are peasantry or gentry. Education gives people new wants. The new wants are reflective of the wants of the gentry (ie. the status quo). However, if the peasantry learns the new wants, they will not be able to satisfy them, regardless of his or her education. (Why? Because then the status quo would be altered and the wants would have to be redefined in order to reproduce the notion of Haves and the Have Nots.)

It is also noteworthy to consider Tolstoy’s statement about the relationship between schooling and poverty. He writes, “What needs to be cured is their poverty. Schools are no remedy, but the remedy would be an economic organization under which the people would be better off and have more leisure. Then schools would come.” Why, then schools would come? Does he suggest that a result of economic well-being and leisure is the desire for education? If so, then, what would the purpose of education be if it were no longer to “give people new wants?”

If we free ourselves from the notion that participation and achievement in the current educational system will provide us with “equal” or better opportunity in society and consequently free ourselves from the notion that we must “give” our at risk, struggling, impoverished youth “new wants” (because ultimately they will not be able to satisfy them in the current socio-political structure) then – we can begin to imagine education as a completely different endeavor. What might education look like if “people were better off and have more leisure?” What kind of school would come?

Laying a foundation for “the new school” is at the heart of social justice education. Unfortunately with standardized testing and the privatization of our schools especially threatening in the most impoverished communities, schools making a commitment to social justice struggle every day with negotiating a perilous terrain intended to swallow the bravest. The first thing educators considering social justice education need to know is that the heart of the work lies in each one of our imaginations. I use the word imagination because the school, the new school, that is – does not currently exist. It requires that each person on board is ready to break down and sprout new wings and this requires a leap of faith and a lot of hard work.

The biggest step, however, and the most difficult step is understanding, adopting and living by this transformational belief:

If people are “better off and have more leisure” the schools will come.

What are the fundamental assumptions embedded in this statement?
Well-being and more leisure are critical to education.

So, while the current debates in education still hypnotize us to believe that our children, our teachers, our parents in the ghetto, in black and brown skins, in despair or in prison – need to learn to work harder, get more discipline, close the achievement gap, stay in school longer and throughout the summer, jump higher over the moving hurdle, get more math and reading and less music and theater and art, point a finger at yourself for not working hard enough, feel shame for not reaching the $100,000 “low income” salary –

Stay clear eyed and firm about what is real and what is spin. Fight hard and fight long for well being first, more leisure second, and I promise, the school will come. The school will come.

_______________

Guiding Questions for Discussion
_______________

1) What is the purpose of schools?
2) Do people of a low material and moral development oppose what is good for them?
3) How does the notion of schooling and education change depending on the socio-economic status of the students?
4) If all of our children in the schools were better off and experienced more leisure, what kind of schools would we create for them?

Dialogues for the Rich (& Poor)

“Curiosity as restless questioning, as movement toward the revelation of something hidden, as a question verbalized or not, as search for clarity, as a moment of attention, suggestion, and vigilance, constitutes an integral part of the phenomenon of being alive.” (Paulo Freire, 1998)

After attending Harlem Stage’s Community Dialogue Series on Harlem, Cultural Capital and Naming the Future, I began to consider the complexities involved in the art of dialogue. How can we engage in a dialogue that effectively challenges each of us to consider alternative perspectives? Also, how can we engage in dialogues that promote activism?

The recurring theme of the evening was education, the failure of the system primarily as it relates to educating poor, urban youth of color. The underlying assumptions were that the problem lies within a) the education system and that it can be fixed and b) the youth of today who are damaged to some degree and that if we fix them in schools that are college bound -- the future would be a brighter and better place. In attendance were a mix of educators, artists, young African Americans from Harlem, Whites, Latinos and other. By the dress and presentation of each individual, I’d gather that there were several members of the upper class, other members of the working class and again, some struggling to make ends meet. Not a bad group to try to engage in a discussion. Bill T. Jones tried to jump start the conversation by asking the panel members what their vision of the future was. And I agree that this was an interesting “exercise” as he put it, in one’s “imagination.” While many of the panelists made references to the Civil Rights movement and the 60’s, I couldn’t help think about John Lennon’s hit single, Imagine. I also couldn’t help feel tired and outdated with the conversation. Everyone was talking about the same things we have been talking about for generations. And yet, there was this sense, this “tension” that Omar Freilla exposed as being a generational disconnect and that “romanticizing” about past activism doesn’t help us much in critically looking at the present. And it is here in the present, he suggested, that activism takes place. Furthermore, he added, regardless of how we “spin” the story, most people, that is the average Joe in any community is busy living, putting bread on the table and engaging in life – one day at a time.

My sense was the following. First, there was that ominous pink elephant in the auditorium. While the youth group gave a compelling performance and suggested to all of us a sense of urgency and despair (and mostly asked for money for better “student centered” schools), there was the invisible “gentry” that while in attendance remained silent. Most of whom send their own children to private schools with tuitions in the range of $20,000 to $35,000 a year. Who would never have to publicly make a commitment to college or a “child centered” education because the wealthy can afford the luxury of abundant play as fundamental to their education. The talk for a call of more discipline was also ironic to me when increasing the school day or the school year has never had a direct correlation to academic performance and that in fact, private schools spend most of the “extended day” providing enrichment activities in the arts, music, theater and dance. According to a landmark study by the National Center for Children and Families at Teachers College and the University of Maryland, data indicated that white students spend a comparable amount of time on academic subjects but tend to have longer school days that include enrichment and recess and the data “illustrate the racial and economic inequality in America’s schools” with poorer minority students deprived of the opportunities enjoyed by well-off white students. In running a relatively harmless and quick search through the missions of the top 8 private schools in New York City, the following description of what was important came up: to become a responsible member of society, challenging the mind, body and spirit, cooperative learning and student centered, freedom, non-linear and natural curiosity, awareness, diversity, abundant play, intimate teaching, artistic, athletic and community activities, academic excellence, imagination, creativity, passion for learning, joy, respect, integrity, self-confidence.

In the current climate when public schools are being privatized first through the charter and small school movement, and most educated folk who can afford to send their kids to private schools – I need to ask: Are people really concerned with fixing the public system? Who does this system currently serve? And finally, if historically the only consistent determining variable for student outcomes has been socio-economic status of the child – then we need to ask: How are wealthy kids being educated in this country and in whose best interest? Perhaps the problem is not about how much different students are learning and that Black students are learning less than White students; the problem is possibly what all students are learning and that all students are learning in ways that perpetuate oppressive ideologies (Kumashiro, 2008). Raising the “achievement gap” in the current education system is counterproductive if what is being taught is biased to begin with and the current system does not invite us to investigate into the nature of ideologies being taught to students who are considered “successful.”

Finally, while this was indirectly discussed during the dialogue, but not deliberate enough -- I would like to add a word about the impact of the arts on learning and social development. Children involved in multiple arts activities take risks and chances in their learning community. There are various ways that arts affect climate. Children’s relationships with teachers and adults, for one, and more significantly, connections between arts learning and cognitive, social and personal development (Horowitz, Burton, Abeles, 2008). While arts, athletics, counseling and other “enrichment” style programming continues to be dismantled in public schools and replaced by “college prep” classes aimed primarily at increasing standardized test scores – in private schools and some small charter schools across the country – the arts and athletics continues to be part of the core curriculum, clad with state of the art facilities.

Reading and math test scores do not guarantee success in life. Neither do Saturday arts programs that provide a safe space for public school teens desperate for an alternative education. Our schools are more segregated than before Brown vs. Board of Education, by race and by class. We can’t even imagine anymore how the other half lives and breaths. There is a fundamental break in what used to be a democratic society that calls for a new kind of dialogue, a new kind of activism. It does have to do with understanding and knowing the history, but it mostly has to do with facing reality. What are we teaching about life, sustainability and living together? What are our priorities and what do we value as a society? Can you promise our youth that if they “do all the right things” that they will be guaranteed a piece of the pie? Does working harder and for more hours increase your wage? Does your salary equate intelligence or your position in a company? Who is calling the shots in this country and what did they score on their SAT’s? When will the poor be able to stop dancing for money and when will the rich open their door – not for charity, but for humanity?