2005-10-04
fern sully
School is a terrible place to have to spend your days. As any disgruntled student can tell you, the walls are sterile, the teachers suspicious, the curriculum irrelevant, the freedoms nonexistent.
And, out of all the places on earth I could be, I have chosen to spend my workdays here, teaching English at a high school in western Montana. I made this decision, perhaps naively, thinking I could be one of the people (in education there are more than a few) seeking to make the classroom a less terrible place to be.Walls, I thought, don't have to be sterile; color is cheap and imagination is free. Teachers, I thought, don't have to be suspicious; if students are trusted they will be trustworthy, and if they are respected they will be respectful. Curriculum doesn't have to be irrelevant; there's a whole world to learn from. As for freedom, I thought, that's just a state of mind.
Each time the lesson is the same: that cute Koosh toy won't cheer many kids before it's stolen. The bird feeder you put out will attract no finches with a glob of pre-chewed candy. It's fine to park your car in the staff lot, if you don't mind cleaning off spit, smashed banana, or a broken egg at the end of a day. Go ahead and bring your whole heart to the classroom, but be prepared for smirks and snickers.Each time I think, 'Asta, get over it: this is trivial. This is nothing compared to the student who, blessedly, has returned whole and well from a suicide attempt. This is nothing compared to the student who, tragically, has not yet returned from a death in the family. This is nothing compared to the artful poem just turned in by a talented senior, the startling analysis done by an underachieving sophomore, or the research talent now emerging in an unsuspecting junior.
This is nothing. Just a poster on the wall. The kid with the pen must have been desperate for attention, desperate for a laugh, desperate to prove himself. Think of the inky bullet hole, 'Asta, as just another spot of color, a creative addition to the photograph: a different kind of gift from a different kind of student.
You have to toughen up, kid. Much ado over a little vandalism? It's not like there's blood on the floor or an ambulance on the way. It's not like the kid meant to hurt anybody. It's just that school never was the place for trust, for freedom, for color on the walls: it's the place for textbooks, grades, and getting by the best you can. And thanks to a handful of students, a few desperate, wounded creatures? I now know exactly how to keep it that way.
The hole in the poster may be superficial, but the hole in my heart is real. Neither, I'm afraid, can be fixed.
-'Asta Bowen.
yeah. she made a personal contribution to my blog. yeah.
There is anger inside of me. I am learning to accept it and minimize and simplify it down to two specific types of anger: frustration and jealousy. I am mad (frustrated) that this scholarship is due in two and a half weeks. I am mad (jealousy) that the kid that sits across from me in Spanish is so frickin annoying and neurotic about the work in that damned difficult class.
I am mad also that we won't go on our college trip. And I hesistate to write about this, because I don't know if Petie reads or not and I don't want to go all off about it if she would get offended. I told her I would understand if she can't work it out. But now that it seems she can't, I am realizing just how important it is and just how badly I wanted and needed it to happen. Those are the schools that really matter, probably more than all the rest. And we, at least I, need to establish ourselves and our thoughts on these places.
I could go on. But listing out my trivial maddenings like this is pretty useless.
so i am jealous and frustrated.
but i am many other things too.
I am thinking a lot. I am doubting my desires some more. I am doubting social significance, I am feeling a little listless like I doubt it all matters or is of any consequence.
I am seeing things differently. But mostly only because they involve me, and the different-seeing is not in a positive to people-beneficial way.
I want to see more people and things differently. And not just because these things would directly (or indirectly) involve my life. And not just in less complementing, more jaded ways.
Sometimes I swear that if my mind were to be personified, of all the given people in a given room, it would be the one leaning its head complacently against the wall (inevitably lifting up the chin [and nose..]) with its arms crossed.
I dream.
Why the hell did they call those dreamsicles?! They sure look like popsicles to me.
The load feels so heavy, then I write it out and it is barely anything at all.
I wish I was more focused.
Senior year is different that I had expected.
I may have used the word �imagined� in that last sentence, but imagination has a whimsy and usually pleasant connotation to it. meh.
Who will go on a blind date with me? I need my insides to flutter a little. i'm pretty darn good though.
Why fall in love when you can fall in chocolate? (it's a rhetorical question)
You are alive; I rejoice. Be happy for me like I am for you.
leesah-likes at 8:10 p.m.