Hey Teacher, Rip That Shit!

As the school year progresses, the children get more bearable while the adults become harder and harder to stomach. If teaching were truly "just about the kids" I think that I could get into it for more than my contractual commitment. Unfortunately, my life is more driven by the Board of Education, Superintendant Rudy Crew, the Zone henchmen, and irritating irate parents sent to my goddamn classroom bitching at me to change their idiotic son's well-deserved F.

Whew. The parent scandal must be saved for another day, for that drama has yet to play itself out.

Regarding the children...

Upon the conclusion of the infamous halfway point: the Second Nine Weeks, I set forth on a brand-new topic: poetry! Now, structured verse might just be one of my all-time favorite literary topics (just behind metacritical mysteries, of course), and I believe that my enthusiasm shows through the teaching. It also makes "lesson planning," the scraps of words thrown together on a formatted paper, exceptionally easier.

Having introduced my English classes to a few of the more formal poetic terms like meter and rhyme, my first real poetry lesson was upon me. Also, it came to my attention that a few ground rules for poetry were necessary, due to the debacle of 1st Period's reception of "The Jabberwocky" and my rendition of "Where Go the Boats" as the lullabye that my mother used to sing at bedtime. Knowing full-well that two vocal performances in a row might just do me in, I fearlessly (or stupidly) plunged ahead and picked up the next day with my planned lesson: Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee." For those of you unaccustomed to the text, as a depressingly large number of my colleagues here were, I will reproduce it here.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child, and I was a child.
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not so happy in Heaven.
Went envying her and me;
Yes! That was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In her sepulcher there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

This exquisite lyric example of Poe's delusions (or genius, depending on your poetic bent) comes equipped not only with a regular rhyme scheme, but excellent examples of non-irritating internal rhyme, and a regular meter. Thus, with those three structural elements, it closely resembles another form of contemporary rhythmic art: rap.

After a brief historical context of my homeboy E.A.P., I read through the poem, and we discusses the aforementioned poetic conventions of rhyme and rhythm. I then asked for a volunteer from the class to drop a beat so that we could see how anything with an organized beat can be spoken rhythmically. This was slightly less successful in my first period, when the children all started laughing hysterically when I broke it down. One refreshingly frank young lady said "hey y'all, you gotta give it to her, she was workin' it."

I was even more leery of trying this experiment on my 2nd period class, usually my worst behavior issues. However, I knew that several kids freestyle relatively seriously, so it might be worth the risk. It took about 10 minutes of waffling and embarassed adolescent insecurity before one student dared attempt the first stanza. His stamina wore down around stanza four, so I picked up for the last two. Eyes fixed on me, with my eyes staring down at the 'lyrics,' I could see smiles and incredulous faces as I (according to the former bane of my existence, H.) "ripped that shit."

For the first time in second period, I smiled; I laughed. Several minutes later, after a short closing lecture, we finished our introduction to poetic forms, and the children listened to me. It's a pretty heady feeling to have kids who have thrown paper at you, called you a bitch, told you that you don't know how to do your job, and outright defied any modicum of authority which you've tried to establish actually give you a look of respect. After my performance, H. was smiling up at me, but I was afraid to hear what biting comment he had to say.

I was shocked, and a bit touched to hear bestowed upon me the most venerated adjective in the urban Miami youth's vocabulary: "gangsta." "Damn, Ms. Williamson, you gangsta!" Thus went my 15 minutes of Miami Central fame. I'd made a brief breakthrough, touched some kids with a piece of poetry written over a century before by some dead white guy, and felt pretty damn proud of myself for doing so. Maybe things would get better after this, right? I mean, I'd made a connection with these kids, established a bond of trust, right?

H. transferred from Central on Monday morning, during the transition to block scheduling. My wishes from December came true: I'll never see him again in my life.

N.B.

[while reading jan/feb 2004]

God, I am SO out of practice with creative writing. I can't even come up with a creative food metaphor for a godddamn post, even with the epic-style dinners of late. I used to be such a better writer. Boo. Life has sucked it out of me [melodramatic sigh].

Antisocial

It's bad when I don't want to talk to people. Not that I don't want to talk to the people in my immediate vicinity; I get along fantastically with my roommates. It's the tenuous electronic and telephonic links with my long-distance family and friends which are beginning to dissolve into an abyss of apathy.

There's a lot going on in my professional and academic life right now; I consider myself doing "okay" if I only spend an hour or two each day thinking about how much my life is going to suck in the next few weeks with the implementation of the Zone. None of the children have schedules, there's an extra hour of class, I'm teaching 2 more preps (one of which I don't even know what it is), and I have mandatory professional development every day this week after school which is going to make me miss one of my grad classes.

I don't want to talk about it. There's enough bitching about it in this apartment, and that's *without* having to explain all the gruesome background info. Right now, I just can't summon the energy required to tell someone about my life if they haven't spoken to me in 2 weeks. Unfortunately, according to those restrictions, that's my family too. I know that now of all times I should be connected to them, up on what's going on with my aunt, but I just haven't. There are many reasons, none of which matter much.

Instead, I bury myself in fiction, true Williamson style. It's like high school again, but in some bizarre Twilight Zone effect, I've become the teacher. I retreat into words, chosing to write about my frustrations: excise them through paper and pen (or internet and keyboard), rather than involve other human beings in my messy, confusing dilemma.

My problem is that when I talk to people, all they tell me is bad news. Phone calls from unidentified or infrequently dialed numbers just bring more complications, more things to stew over on a Monday night while I sniffle through the end of a head cold. I don't want to muster the forces and make myself reestablish those lines of communication; right now, cost-benefit analysis looks pretty dismal. [semi-random shout out to DDH, sparked by economic argot: Entertainment Weekly used the word "sartorially" last week. They must be cool.]

I'm pretty damn happy down here when I can spend a rainy "winter" evening curled up on my vintage velvet couch with a book, kill 2 hours in the mall with Mary and VA because the traffic going north made us miss the first showing of "In Good Company," and talk to my loving (or at least hungry), entertaining (some would say psychotic), and very feline cat. If all I have to worry about is feeding myself, dragging my little professionally dressed body to NW 95th street every morning at 7:00, and exercising occasionally, I'm fine.

The problem is, being Thea: daughter, friend, colleague, coach, student, correspondent, is much more difficult than all that.

Getting in the Zone

There has been a brief hiatus of posting, due mostly to a large meltdown of the LOGIC BOARD of my beloved computer, and in a small part to my live-in visitor of late. The logic board Apple fixed for free, after a brief but intense self-meltdown in Kiawah when the screen started to blip, blip, magenta, green stripes, and then poof: gone! I felt hamstrung, isn't it sad?

I officially [heart] the Genius Bar at the Mac Store in Aventura, despite all the 11-19 year olds coming in and whining because "I like, um, did something, and um, my iPod like, um, erased itself."

I officially do not [heart] FIU, after being lied to about, avoided, and overcharged for semester I of my graduate education. I have since registered for semester II (Second Language Acquisition, and Defining Urban Education), paid my hitherto unbeknownst to me overdue tuition in cold, hard cash, and am actually mildly excited about a stimulating intellectual challenge.

Christmas break was a whirlwind without stop: Alex came down for a few sun-and-fun packed days; a quaint New Year's in Kendall with Gemma, complete with 4 live fireworks shows; mid-term exams; the end of soccer season; another TFA program director quits (that's three for the year); grades due (again); and finally, the implementation of the "School Improvement Zone."

This fantastically counterproductive restructuring of 1. the school day 2. the academic calendar 3. everyone's schedule and 4. professional development requirements. I'd bitch about it, tell you why there were 11 people in my 7 passenger van on Friday, and finish this post, but I'm off to see a matinee, and waste part of my Sunday on Ofoto, a favorite pastime. Grin.


p.s. Miss my ex-roomie like crazy, what with the new season of ALIAS kicking off and reading the DaVinci Code (finally). Sigh.