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the46xy
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Interests: Jesus, The National Basketball Association, Moneyball, Global Poverty (the elimination of), A Good Cup of Coffee, Literature (high and low), Romance Languages, This Play That I'm Writing, My Friends
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/26/2005
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| Dear student whose name I won't use,
I'm sorry. You're twelve, maybe thirteen at the most, and you're not supposed to have worries like you do. You're probably not supposed to understand what outsourcing is, even though Ms. Newman and I teach you about it. At the very least, you're not supposed to understand it from a personal standpoint. And even though you are growing up in a poor neighborhood, you're not supposed to know that your parents were poorly educated or that there are massive inequities in different education systems. You're not supposed to conjecture about how much your father could make at McDonald's after being laid off from his other job - the one that was actually making ends meet - and you're not supposed to know what foreclosure means, much less that it results in ruined credit. You're certainly not supposed to worry so much that you ask your teacher if he can help your dad find a job, nor are you supposed to have to deal with his astonished and impotent reaction. I'm sorry that this is the world we have created for you and left you to struggle in. It's not fair to you, and I hope you'll be one of the ones who makes it a little bit better. I hate that any encouragement to hang on and persevere will sound empty, but I do believe it. It won't be easy for you, but you have a wonderful humility, ingenuity, and intelligence that will serve you well. I hope your dad does find another job and doesn't have to start back over at the bottom of another ladder. And, despite my paralyzed response, I hope you'll find me again if you need to talk. I'll try and get better at this.
Much Love,
Mr. Trudeau
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| I'm going to try and say more during year two than I could muster during year 1... here is my first offering (for the record, all students' names have been changed):
8/22 On a hazy Friday night when the city of Denver braces for the onslaught of the Democratic National Convention, on a night when the warm reds and oranges of a Western day will be dulled while the purples and blues of a mountain night will be sharpened, the staff and board of West Denver Preparatory Charter School have all gathered in a graffiti-walled, dimly lit dive bar - one that I remember more for its Wednesday night 80s dancing with indie rockers and emo kids - for a private party. Jerry Lassos, the board president, stands up before us all during a brief round of speeches and congratulations and reminds us of a Native saying that he believes: the strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. After him, Head of School Chris Gibbons shares with board and staff alike that our school - with an 85% poverty rate and a long line of students who arrived years behind where the state has deemed their intellectual formation should be - has achieved the highest student growth rate of any school in the city of Denver. An hour later, an assorted handful of us drift down the street on foot to a Mexican restaurant where we eat and drink ourselves into a stupor, reminisce about the films of our youth, spill greasy food and strong drinks despite our best efforts, and then drift back to our cars where we convey ourselves home again.
Betsy and I, however, find ourselves in the well-hidden back room of a local bar shooting pool on the nicest table either of us have played on in some time (certainly better than the dive bar's unevenly surfaced table, replete with a missing 8 ball and cues without tips, where we had managed to embarrass ourselves only hours earlier). As we take turns missing more shots than we make, I broach a question with her that has been settled in my mind for several days. She bends to line up a shot as I ask, "Has it ever occurred to you that the world is full of plenty of well-educated assholes and tyrants?"
She stands straight upright as the ball drops neatly into a side pocket, "Sure. I try to avoid them."
"You know what I'm driving at, though, right?"
"Of course: how do we teach them humanity?" It's not an abstract question for two seventh grade teachers.
"Do you ever think that maybe a lot of what we got from our parents came through osmosis, the build up of things they've done before we were even born being imparted to us?" I fire another volley at her.
"Yes. And that scares me. So many of them have horrible parents and horrible lives outside of our walls."
"But it's clearly not a guaranteed curse. We both know plenty of people who have proven that circumstance won't define you."
"But there are also the kids who are already affected by their circumstances. Ramon's mother has said outright that she would give him away if she could." "When she came in for the conference yesterday, I wanted them to check and see if she was sober."
"I know. Exactly."
I've taken a few shots and barely registered if anything went in, if I was winning or losing. Our questions and our responses place us squarely in the middle of the tension of our vocation: Just how much can we do for them, and how great of an impact can it have - even if we do it as well as we know how?
We are not despondent; in fact we are both hopeful and confident that education can be a key to choice in life if nothing else - "there are also a lot of uneducated assholes and tyrants," I quip - but teaching kids who have seen the odds stack up against them through lives of poverty and transience draws both of our attentions to the prevalence of injustice. We agree that we are watching fourteen-year-olds make sacrifices that we have seen fully matured adults pass up or avoid.
"When they came here two years ago, they knew exactly where they would end up, and their dreams matched up with that. Today, even the worst of them know that more is possible," Betsy lights up as we recall the kids who have decided to become more than they had ever been told they could be. We feel a little bit self-righteous, but unashamedly so, as we run down a list of the eight graders who would have been expelled or abandoned within a traditional school, and we consider where they might be and who they might be in a year or a few years. Eventually all the balls find their way home, we put the cues on the wall, and Betsy drives me home. "Let's make this a tradition," she says as I get out of the car.
"Definitely."
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| Hi. Yes, I know I'm not a good regular updater, and that I snuck away without much of a warning and am popping up now with very little to say.
I have a hard time forming a good judgment about Kampala, or at least a fair one. To me, Kampala is always the city where I have to stop on the way to where I want to be, or the city I have to pass through after leaving where I want to be. Either position doesn't fare too well for Kampala. The knock on Kampala today is especially strong, as I thought I was leaving it on an airplane for Nimule at 8am this morning (a 1.5 hour flight) and instead must wait for the 3am bus (an 8-10 hour bus ride). On the plus side, I am here with Ross, but on the negative side I sent the rest of my team along on the plane (a long story that I don't like telling, suffice it to say we knew there was a chance that I would be left off the passenger log for the flight).
Shoot! This post was supposed to be longer and more cheerful, as I am truly thrilled to be back on African soil (even if it is Ugandan), but my time on the internet is running low. Perhaps more later?
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| I play a game of promises that leaves me with a string of unfulfilled guarantees propelling me forward. Ross and I sat in the back of the only cab that could be found in all of Kampala, where petrol was as scarce as prosperity, and passed shuttered station after shuttered station where the employees sat outside on the curb, eyeing every passing car with the hope that it might need diesel, of which there was still some supply to be found. The road signs announced the lessening distance to separation: Entebbe 25km, Entebbe 10km, Entebbe 5km, and then we were paying the security guard at the gate and driving up to the departure lane, where I was to be dropped. I remember last words; I remember telling the kids at Cornerstone that I left a piece of my heart with them and would have to return to recover it, but that newly fulfilled promise left a void. "I better see you back here this summer," Ross's incredible verbal economy was on display, and I knew that he was not just extending an invitation but was furthering a bond of brotherhood that had developed between him. And I didn't turn him down, nor even hedge my response, but told him that he would, that my plans were already in motion. That newborn promise, even when it was lying dormant, compelled the next six months. In 5 days, I intend to fulfill that winter's day promise, not knowing what might creep up to fill the void that it will create.
As I left West Denver Prep for the last time before a long break, one of my coworkers commented to me that it would be nice to live a double life like I do, leaving one world completely behind for another, different world. The challenge of it, though, is living wholly abandoned to whatever world it is that I find myself in and ignoring the inevitable feeling of separation and tearing that finds me wherever I may be.
I was at one point immune from that, my heart in Sudan and my body in Denver. Teaching is an act of faith, an investment into a future that is not the teacher's to own or control, a future that the teacher may not ever witness.
At some point, I grew to accept that proposition for my life.
I remember that where I go and what I do I don't do for my kids, my coworkers, my friends, or my family. I do it for Jesus, always for him. Life, Dorothy Day reminds me, is a pilgrimage. That may be why travel feels so natural to me, the sense of movement towards something, progression and discovery constantly evident. And that may be why I grow restless when I stay in one place too long, unable to remember that the pilgrimage has not terminated but has deposited me at a way station. Unable to remember that I know where the road leads but not how it gets there.
The road ahead is hard, but the company is good.
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| I'm not one to make lists, but here's one anyway - the small allowances I've made myself on a day off at the end of a long (though mostly satisfying week):
-Four donuts from Lamar's (and a terrible cup of coffee)
-Two episodes of John Adams
-One very long shower
-One large white mocha from St. Mark's
-Several chapters of Sam Smith's The Jordan Rules (like discovering a historical relic)
-Lots of Beatles
-Even more deferred plans
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