public education

Day and Night

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There an element in the mind that can keep me up at night. Not all the time, but sometimes. Anything almost can do it: taxes, old boyfriends, current work competitors, regret long lasting towards my mother. This last one can especially go on forever as she left her body years and years ago so it’s a no ending one sided conversation. A way I torture myself, I suppose.

In the daytime, all this disappears. No such psychic monster exists on waking. It’s as though the light of day has washed it all away.

There’s an in-between, however. YouTube helps in the middle of the night. If the thoughts become too overpowering, I turn the power over to the phone. I can listen to anything, anytime. My favorite is High Fraser reading Agatha Christie. It’s amazing how many people he can be in an audiobook. I love him.

Sure, maybe murder isn’t a great springboard into the unconscious world of sleep and dream, however Christie has no sex, no violence, no gore or torture. Mostly just intrigue in rich people’s houses.

I could listen to someone on YouTube who is spiritually enlightened. Lord knows there’s an infinite quantity. Problem is I have been on the spiritual path for so many decades, that the path has worn to dirt and walking on it creates clouds of dust which make for hazy vision.

I never saw my school at night. As a child, I left school at 2:30 and I made it home for dinner. We all did. We went to our friends houses or the park. Judy had a long haired dachshund and I had a short haired one. She was my best friend and her house was between school and my house. When time came, dinner bells sounded and mothers yelled. Judy’s house on Winterberry and my house on Maryknoll weren’t too far apart and I was a fast runner in those days.

Only once in 2nd grade did I see my school after dark. It was lit up for a book fair. It was magic. I got a book about dragons and I felt omniscient as I’d just learned to spell.

Now kids are in aftercare till after dark during daylight savings time. No magic in that.

Later as a young adult, I enjoyed pools at night with the round white light coming from the walls underwater: Magic. Walking hand and hand on a golf course under the moon: Magic.

Now, as an older adult, I sit in the hot tub very late at night hearing the owl say “who?who?who?” Magic.

No ART at Public school

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Tommy (not his real name) has been working In the office for years. When he first came, he seemed a certain kind of proper and prim. They’re quiet as well from that background different from my loud one, which is what I assume gives him his ultra upright demeanor.

After having been the United States culture for long enough and at that the school long enough he starts to lighten up. He starts to become more “hood“. Whether he always was this and is now more comfortable showing or whether he has over the years become this, is not for me to know.

What I do know is that I am more comfortable with him this way.

As I am leaving the office, he says, “Hey Dana, wait a minute. I have something for you.”

Although we have become friendly over the many years by exchanging a sentence, or maybe two as I sign in, we are not friendly enough for him to be giving me a present. I wonder what’s going on.

He hands me a bag of art supplies that someone has donated to the school and hopes I can use them.

I am shocked that I am the one in the school of 600 students that the office associates with Art.

There is no art teacher. Neither is there a maker space teacher. There is no one there to show the kids how to make something with their hands!

I teach one class one afternoon a week and I am the one they associate with art. Tragic in my mind.

Offhand people say oh, there’s no budget for that.

They have no understanding that in art a kid learns how to listen to their inner voice. How to listen to themself. How to make decisions.

They learn how to get an idea and follow it through to completion.

If you don’t like sports, and you don’t like academics, you better have art in your school or you are gonna fall through the cracks.

Art builds confidence in oneself the way no other academic subject does !

What is a flower?

Teaching Ceramics at Elementary school

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Teaching ceramics at three elementary school is a lot of things. One of them is stressful. The stress starts early in the day when I am wondering if the school bus will be blocking the entrance to where I park. I need to park close to the school to unload the dolly full of ceramic equipment. There’s new school bus drivers this year and there’s new school buses. In fact, I think they are electric. There are nice school drivers and then not so nice bus drivers and then there’s those in between. The one time I had the trouble and was not able to get in some parent encouraged me just to drive over the curb into where I had to park and that I did.

The next week the driver was friendlier and moved the bus a bit.

The week after that, she wasn’t there, and there was a white haired lady who told me that she had fixed the problem. I asked her who she was and she was basically the all-around person at school.

I realized that she must be replacing taylor. What a change. Taylor had been there for many years and looked like an African-American Graphic novel hero: powerful young man with dreds and very black skin.

He seemed a little scary, but actually, he was friendly, and he worked with small children. He had his own office. He had a very fancy sports car which he parked next to where I parked.

Once in the driveway with the car unloaded, I can get into the cafeteria where I need to teach. The next stressful moment is: will I be able to find someone who can open the kiln room for me? The kiln room is the dungeon room, down a dark staircase holding electric curcuit breakers and storage.

No one ever really needs to go in there so when the office gives me the set of many keys, they don’t know which one it is. When Pete gives me the set of keys he knows exactly which one it is. André the janitor gives me a choice of three.

It’s best if this doesn’t take too much time. I give myself an hour to set up, half of that with an assistant. I set up on two very long tables in the cafeteria where some 200 kids are congregating after the school day. Eventually most of them leave. Then 20 select ones come to my class.

It is a fast paced, hectic meaningful hour full of love and instruction. I try to fully meet each child.

After the first 20 leave, the next 20 come in.

Same same: love and instruction but now with a little fatique mixed in

After the second group, the cleanup looms enormous, but it is doable, and eventually it ends with me going down to the kiln room, to load all the kid artwork into the kiln, while the assistant finishes up the last of the cleaning

It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it and the children are wonderful. As am I and

at the end of each Wednesday, I feel like I should get a medal for pulling it off yet one more time

I care, don’t you?

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Recently I was at a UCLA 2018 commencement ceremony.

During this process the National Athem was beautifully played. We were told to stand up and put our hand over our heart.

Thinking of the children inconceivably taken from their mothers at the border, I sat.

A few sat. Most of the thousands stood and looked at us sitting as if we were in the wrong. 
And then, that Melanie Trump’s jacket. OMG. 

It’s hard to believe this is really happening. How to stop it? 

Clearly, it’ll take more than sitting

Magic in the classroom

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Discipline is not my strong point in after school ceramics: age 6 to 12. I don’t like to do it and I don’t do it often. Truth is I don’t mind a hectic atmosphere as long as all are busily creative. Early on the kids learn the rules, and then it’s a group studio. Kids sit next to who they want to and jabber along to each other side by side, across the table and even down the table a stretch. It can get louder and louder and louder. All in a good humored, fast paced, three ring circus sort of way.

Today, in the midst of what is now a lot of noise, suddenly two of the six fifth graders started playing their recorders together. The notes of a simple song being learned in school, sound like Japanese flute harmonies. Quickly the roar of the classroom stops. Everyone’s listening.

They were tamed by the music.

Two sides of the Coin

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Normally, I’m all for meditation. All over it in fact, every morning.

There are “mindfulness” programs in schools, especially inner city ones where all the kids are on the free lunch program and 70% of the kids when asked will answer yes to the question, ” Do you know anyone whose been shot and killed?”
Ditto, for this program in jails. This program is very helpful and successfull. Simply put, it brings in the pause ( the old “count to ten”) before you hit someone on the playground. It’s very helpful. In schools like the ones I teach at, this program is maybe less necessary.

After school art class had been over for a while and I was cleaning up. David was hanging out while I did this. I thought he was waiting for his parent to pick him up. He is lithe and lively and bounced around in his tiny six year old body talking to me as I gathered my tools and such.
Almost done, I checked my list and saw that David was supposed to go to the schools’ after care program so I mention perhaps he should get on down there.

His bouncy body slumps into a giant C as he plunks down in a chair.
“Oh no.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like after care? Why not?”
“UGH! They make us Meditate.”
(Feigning indignation I say) “What!? Meditate!? You mean you don’t get to run around with a ball or something? What do they make you do, listen to a bell?” (Knowing they do this)
“Meditation is, well, (groan) it’s hard to explain.”

Making a Flower

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I let Justin (1st grade) cut out early to the playground. Ellen (3rd grade) sees this and she wants out early too. I say no doing. Justin can hardly sit still for five minutes let alone 60. He’s two years younger and made to run.
Ellen, two years older, is somber and capable. I want to get at least one more piece out of her before she leaves for the week. We settle on “a flower” I wad up the clay in a certain way and start to show her something I know she can accomplish In the time she has left. After my quick demo, she’s doing her own kind of flower. She’s decided she needs to make a rose and that she needs to make it petal by petal. I explain that we don’t have time for this kind of flower and besides the clay we are using today (drier than usual) is not suited to a rose made petal by petal.
At this point Michael, who is in 2nd grade, chimes in with his opinion. He says a flower is a flower and that you don’t need to get all caught up in the type of flower. I turn my attention to him and gaze into his wider than wide eyes. Michael’s eyes are so big. I stare into them forever and reach the something in me that never goes away. This takes maybe 30 seconds and I turn my attention back to Ellen and let her cut out early.

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Finger Prints

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In Oakland,to teach after school classes you need to be finger printed. The law is there to protect kids from sex offenders. From kids who might find themselves alone with such a teacher. Even though fingerprints don’t change, they take prints every year in case your criminal record has changed. Irregardless of my moral behavior, I teach a chaotic class of twenty kids in a public area of the school.

This is expensive at $100. a year. The woman in charge of this is inaptly named Angelica. She emails me and gives me a half hour window on a certain day to come down to an unpleasant neighborhood and put my hands on the screen to be recorded. I email back and tell her that I can not come then and ask if I can (please) have this done at a convenient time at my usual place.

I receive no answer for weeks, after which she emails me again with another half hour slot I can’t make. She signs her email “waiting for your response”. I email back as previously. Again, I recieve no response for weeks. When I call I get a swift short recording in almost broken english.

After a month of teaching I start to feel like I really do have to get this yearly request fulfilled as I am supposedly breaking the law, although I’m feeling that I’d have a case to argue otherwise.

I go to my usual place run by a chinese couple. They also speak broken english. The wife is her usual unfriendly self and the husband is warmer and helpful.

There are three people before me in line for this process. Their IDs are mexican passports and they speak no english at all. I translate for them. The woman in charge of this group is beautiful and young; dressed in dark pinks with thick hair easily flopped atop her head. The young man has on one of the best beaded Guadalupe hats I’ve ever seen. I compliment him on it. Initially, I am unsure whether he is her mate or her son but the way she then brushes his hair (also thick) away from his face, tells me that he is her son. The other one is maybe her cousin.

They clean one of the schools. She is carefully handing over three hundred dollars! in cash. The most important part of what she wants to know, and what I am translating, is about the line with the 6 digit government number which will get her a partial reimbursement for this process. It’s only $25 but she is adamant about getting it.

When it is my turn, the wife, in her slightly sour self,  asks me “So, you’re going to be a teacher?”  I say, “I already am a teacher” in a tired way because I am sick of being in a room without windows. “What do you teach?”, she counters dryly.  When I say “ceramics”  she lights up like a bulb. “Really?!  Can you teach me?  Can I make this?”,  she says as she touches a four inch light green ceramic pot housing a small fake tree. “Yes”, and for a few minutes we talk ceramics and it is the first time I have seen her look alive in all the years I’ve been there.

Then I go with him into the closet like area with the machine. I am amazed (again) at the comfortable and easy way he takes each finger and rolls it around on the screen. I think of how many hands he has held and how he does it with nothing extra and it is somehow actually enjoyable.

When I get home, I scan and send the fingerprints and form to Angelica.

Five minutes later I get three emails from her. The first two are auto-response explanations about how is she out of the office until some unforseen time. The third one is actually from her. She says that under no circumstamnces whatsoever will they accept fingerprints done anywhere else but the Oakland Unified School District office and that she is there from 8 to 5 every day and that I need to come down there, pay again, and have them done again.

She is waiting for my response.

She won’t get one.