On Soulmates

Assignment:
Free-write about an issue you care about

Student writes:

Girlfriend

My girlfriend and I are soul mates. But we fight about EVERYTHING. Like, what are we going to name our kids?

Walk on, Walk on, Walk on

The only steps that matter are the ones that you take all by yourself.


Thank you Katy.

Stopped me in my tracks

For women particularly, but not exclusively, the restrictions and repression breed not always compliance but rather conflict and dissonance. I know this because I lived this way myself for a decade, from my late teens into my late twenties. I lived a double life, secretly satisfying my curiosities about men while lying to my parents because I knew that I was crossing boundaries that weren't supposed to be crossed. I couldn't live with the lies, deceit, and hypocrisy after my marriage fell apart, when I realized that we aren't meant to suffer so deeply just to deny our true selves and realize societal, parental, and external expectations for ourselves....

In any society governed by oppression and rules that don't make sense, there will be rebellion, even if it's expressed privately. To express such rebellion publicly is to me the sign of a mature individual and a mature society.

(Standing Alone by Asra Nomani)

Truth be told..

I'm feeling kind of lousy. I hear that's kind of how you're supposed to feel around November as a first year teacher. That doesn't make it any easier. It's a bit like culture shock. The honey moon's over, you're far away from the finish line and now it's all just painfully real.

I get up and its dark. I get out of school and its dark. Sometimes I see sunlight through windows in a classroom that smells like non-deodorized pre-teens and dead mice.

Sometimes my kids are lovely. Sometimes they're not lovely at all . But always, their stories are emotionally draining and make it impossible to separate work from home and home from work.

They are literally years behind in school, and they don't even realize what that means for their lives. Sometimes I just want to scream: YOU'RE ELEVEN AND READING AT A SECOND GRADE LEVEL! YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR TIMES TABLES! WAKE UP!!!!! Sometimes it's like running on a treadmill and not getting anywhere.

Today, June seems awfully far away.

It's happened...

One of my students called me mom today.

I don't know how I'm feeling about this.

History through my students' eyes

As I walked through Harlem on the way to school this morning, up Amsterdam and past the Apollo theater, the world felt different. Only a few hours before, this same path that I was walking was filled with jubilant chanting, marching, and ecstatic celebration.

My students described their experience living in Harlem during this historic event:

All of a sudden people just started banging pots and pans up and down the halls of my building chanting OBAMA! OBAMA

It was so crazy in my building. People were banging pans together and even shooting guns into the air to celebrate

The streets were so loud I couldn't sleep!

I looked out my window and one guy was yelling OBAMA! He saw me and said, "Hey girl why aren't you celebrating?!" So I started yelling "OBAMA" out my window too.

My dad just kept on hugging me, screaming and crying, and yelling, "I can't believe it!"

My classroom broke out into chants and cheers as we watched Obama's speech today. "It's Obama's day!" said my AP to my students. "You will remember this day and tell your children and your children's children about this day."

When talking about what the are feeling about this very moment:

I was just thinking that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in the country and about how now we have our very first African American president. A lot has changed.

Why do people keep saying he's black? He's not just black he's also white because his mom's white. So why is everyone calling him just black?

I'm sorry but slavery, that's trash. What did slaves do to anybody except be forced to live here and work without any rights?

Now that we have our first African-American president, it makes me think that I can be the first Dominican president.

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Elections

Picture from huffingtonpost.com

Last week, my students made their voices heard by casting their votes at our PS. 161 mock elections.

The results:

In the 5th grade, 89 students voted for Obama. 1 voted for McCain.
In the 6th grade, every student voted for Obama.

Today, I cast my vote for Barack Obama.
Have YOU voted?