Light

Today feels heavy.  Dark clouds hang in the eastern sky, and the prediction is for rain and snow in Boulder over the next two days.  My students have been restless, edgy.  Spring break gave them a taste of freedom, and now they're back in these plastic chairs, trapped for hours in these square rooms, told to open their notebooks, get out their pencils, pay attention, engage now.  I stand in front of them and conduct a fun economics game that most of them seem to enjoy, but I keep drifting to the hours M. and TK and I spent driving through the red dust of the southwest, all that open space in my mind.

Today is heavy because eleven educators were convicted of racketeering in Atlanta and sent to prison.  They look familiar to me:  the stooped shoulders of people who work for too many hours for too little pay.  They've stood in classrooms in front of too many students.  What they did was wrong, of course.  But I recognize them as my colleagues.  And as victims of an enormous system that coerced at least 178 people into cheating.  The science fiction I'm writing doesn't seem too distant, if the testing culture is pushing entire school districts to these extremes.  Educators as criminals.  What's next?  Educators as superfluous?  I thought to look up a piece of satire I published as a 28-year-old grad student ten years ago -- "A Modest Proposal for Our Schools" -- and was shocked to find it's even more relevant today.

Today is heavy because Arkansas wants to pass similar "religious freedom" laws to the ones recently passed in Indiana.  In how many states will I -- and my family -- be declared unwelcome?

Today is heavy because I got the fifth rejection letter I've received in two days.  Yesterday, Room magazine wrote that they "regret to inform me" that they did not want my fiction or my creative non-fiction pieces.  And today, The Orlando Prize emailed that there was too much greatness in the submissions for spring; my essay and my flash fiction were "just not for them".  Fence thanked me for patiently waiting a year for their decision about their 2014 book prize, but I had not been chosen.

Sigh.  M. teases me when I write out "sigh", or when I say the word aloud to accompany the sound.  Thinking about that, and the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she teases me, makes me smile.  And TK's excitement today about April Fool's made me smile.  And a few future possibilities I'm leaning toward.  And the way it felt to write all day yesterday at a coffee shop, acoustic guitar music in my ears.  And the plain M&Ms my friend Dede thinks to send me every single holiday because she knows they make me happy.  And the memory of Arches, that red-brown rock, the secret silences.  And the fact that it's Thursday tomorrow, and I know my students will love comparing Russian and American Cold War propaganda.  And the fact that I just beat M. at Scrabble.  And my niece and her round cheeks and the way she says "I don' know!", and my baby nephew with his voluminous wild hair and his fascination with his fingers. And my sister's laugh.  And the way TK murmurs in her sleep sometimes, like she did just now.  And my dad's happiness to be out on the trails again, stopping on a bridge to search for an American Dipper.  And the letters my mom and I write each other on Sundays now, like she and Gram used to do. And June, which I've always loved for its possibilities.

Days aren't heavy like they used to be.  I spent almost two years in the darkness, and now it's Easter, all deep plant roots and first crocus blooms and light breaking in, all the pagan fertility and whispered joy.  A light shines in the darkness.  NPR is playing the news about Israel and Palestine, and TK says, "Could you turn that off so we can be happy together?" and I do, because she's right.  I want to be responsible and learn as much as I can about the Iran nuclear negotiations and the ongoing search for fairness in Ferguson, but I also I want to make sure I keep a view of the light.

I'm here.  In Gram's green chair, with a view of the bright yellow happy wooden star that used to hang in a doorway at Gram's house.  My apartment is quiet; I've spent the evening reading The New Yorker; I'm about to write another chapter of my novel.  A sweet, smart, beautiful little girl is sleeping just down the hall.  Tomorrow, M. says, she'll be here after school, and she'll take care of dinner and hug me when I come home.  It might rain all day tomorrow, but we can have warm brownies and ice cream and watch Bette Midler's Hocus Pocus, and Fable the dog will stretch out beside us and close his eyes because his pack is all accounted for.

The message emerging in the science fiction novel I'm writing is this:  connect to humans. Turn off the devices; hold someone's hand; watch the clouds change in the sky. It won't fix everything, but it will make everything a little easier.  A little lighter.

Twenty Ways of Looking at the PARRC Tests

inspired, of course, by "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," by Wallace Stevens

1.  As I'm passing out pencils and scratch paper to the ten eighth graders who are taking the PARRC test in my classroom, I listen to them talk about why they're there (three-fourths of our school's eighth graders' parents opted them out of the test):
-- F. says her mother, who grew up in Mexico, wants her to obey whatever the school says.
-- S. says he wants to know how well he can do.
-- J. kicks the desk and says his dad wouldn't let him out of it: "He says I can always learn something."
-- C. shrugs.
-- L. points out that their peers who have refused to take the test are required to sit silently in the next room.  "I might as well take the test."

*

2.  I read the directions from a thick book, and the students open Chromebooks, type in codes, click "sign in".  I'm not allowed to say anything but what is printed in the "SAY" boxes.

*

3.  Begin.

*

4.  The test administrator book contains a special section for "extreme weather situations".  If there's a tornado, I am supposed to ensure the kids' safety and then return to secure the tests on each of the Chromebooks.

*

5.  The daffodils blooming in the tall slim glass vase on my table this morning made me happy.  M. left me and TK a note:  "This is how I feel now that I've met you both." That makes me happy, too.  I walk around and around the testing room, thinking about M.

*

6.  J. must be clicking random answers.  Only nine minutes into the 90-minute testing period, he raises his hand and tells me he's finished.  He eyes the football in his cubby, and leans back in his chair as far as he can.  "Did you do your best?" "Sure."

*

7.  In Georgia, twelve teachers are currently on trial for participating in systematic cheating on state tests in 2009.  They are being charged with racketeering, and if convicted, could serve twenty years in prison.  They erased student answers and filled in the correct ones.  Maybe they did it because administrators threatened their job security, or maybe they did it because demonstrated school progress would translate into raises for teachers.  Or maybe they did it because they were just scared.

*

8.  Twenty years in prison.  In how many ways would that change a life?

*

9.  Outside the window, there is no tornado.  Inside, the students tapping on keyboards, J. tilting back in his chair again, me walking and walking in circles.

*

10.  If education meant reading all of the thousand books in this classroom, we would live in a radically different world.

*

11.  On Sunday, M., TK and I shared breakfast on the front porch:  waffle sandwiches with bacon and scrambled eggs, a side of chopped cucumber and tomatoes.  The sun warmed us and Fable stretched out at our feet, his nose quivering in his sleep.  When I looked at M., I thought: I almost forgot the world was this lovely.

*

12.  C. is working harder on this test, which counts for nothing and means nothing, than he ever does in class.  His brow is furrowed.  Some days, it's difficult to get him to write more than a sentence or two on an assignment, but he is typing furiously.  I don't know what, since I signed my name to a contract promising I would not look at the test screen or discuss any part of the test with students.

*

13.  The 1st and 2nd graders have just been released to recess.  They run pell-mell from the door toward the playground.  I see TK isn't wearing her jacket, as usual, and she is grinning, racing her friends to the tire swing, where they will spin and spin.  J. catches me watching them, shakes his head sadly.  I hear his thoughts:  not fair.

*

14.  It is sacrilege to keep quotes from e.e. cummings ("be nobody but yourself") and Emerson ("I am a transparent eyeball") and Mary Oliver ("What will you do with your one wild and precious life?") on the walls when students are taking a computerized standardized test in a silent room.

*

15.  The British-based publishing giant Pearson has made millions of dollars from its contracts with states like Colorado.  S. asks me in the hallway:  "Is that taxpayer money?"  He's fourteen, asking the important questions.  I nod.  "And they're British?" I nod again.

*

16.  Next week at this time, I'll be in a car with M. and TK, driving across the red canyonlands of Utah.  For five laps around the room, I pretend I'm walking through a canyon at Arches, and that I'm entirely alone.  A red-tailed hawk calls, but otherwise the world is silent.  Abbey's world.  He'd tell me to hightail it out of this square room, these standards, these kids who would prefer to look at mindless games on their phones than engage, engage, engage.  Abbey, of the Monkeywrench Gang.  Where's the weak spot in this testing infrastructure?  What can I sabotage, and how?

*

17.  Two kids are still working.  The others sleep, or flip the pages of books.  Why are these two kids pouring so much time and effort into this test?  It won't count.  It can't.  They wouldn't judge our eighth graders' performance based on just one-fourth of our population.  Would they?

*

18.  We don't need no education.  We don't need no mind control.  Teachers!  Leave those kids alone!  R. and J. try to communicate with invented sign language across the room, and I shoot them a look.  Why?  R. would rather spend all his time playing video games.  J. just wants a ball in his hand.  In my social studies class, they want to play war games, and they stop paying attention when we debate freedoms and basic rights.

*

19.   I'm burned out.  Burned up.  Burning.  Not fired yet, but not firing from all cylinders.  Fired up.  I'm a good teacher, but it's the scores that matter.  The data.  Bill Gates announces tests must be standardized so we have a measurement for all Americans.  Pearson sets the cut line.  Cut.  Cut up.  Cut down.  Cutting edge.  Cut me and I'll bleed.

*

20.  All the kids have finished.  Now we are supposed to sit in silence until the administration tells us all the testing rooms are done.  Silence is the only gift these tests give us.  No phones, no music, no conversation. I sit down on a blue plastic chair, gaze at the far wall and let myself be silent.  I don't know where else to begin.