A Christmas Carol

The history teacher arranged to bring the middle school to the historic Fox Theatre to see Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The theater is significant for these kids, although I'm not sure they realize it. Apparently, a few decades back, it was the theater where African Americans used to go, because they weren't allowed in other places. Walking in, I couldn't think of the history of segregation. Instead, I was blown away by the elaborate decorations and elegance of the theater.

As we were seated, I kept admiring. It made me think of days before modern movie theaters, when going to a play or a movie was a big deal. I know I'm romanticizing, but I like the idea of places to see and been seen, to watch people and shows. Dressing up, making it an occasion.

We had the students dress up for the occasion this time. They cleaned up sharply, including a couple of bow ties. Although they clearly had little experience in an elegant setting (cultural capital!), the behavior was overall something to be proud of.

I had a very teacher moment there. Well, actually, several. Other children ran up and down aisles, made loud sounds in loud voices, loitered, and lingered. I had a quash impulses to whip them into line.

Kicking the Vending Machine Doesn't Always Work

Tuesday after work, Ana and I headed further into the city to pick up a friend of hers whose job had brought him to St. Louis for a few days. Brad does lighting at conventions, so we took a quick tour around the convention center where he lit up a stage for us to show off his skills. Other than the perpetual arch, which got annoying fast, it looked pretty awesome, with colors and shapes dancing behind the podium. Plus, we parked in a secret hidden drive right behind the convention center, where only cool people get to park. It had the effect of walking through an "Employees Only" door.

After the tour, we headed out to dinner. As we left the restaurant, we were stopped by a man asking for money. It's the first time that's happened in this particular area, and I don't know if the cold holiday season has made people more desperate or if it makes it easier to play people's emotions. Is it bad that I am getting that cynical?

Well, we handed him a couple dollars and hopped into the car. Then Ana shut her door -- or tried to. With a sound of metal hitting metal, the door hopped back open. She tried again. The door wouldn't close.

Brad jumped out of the car to do the man thing and fix it. He had already fixed our television by turning a button off and on again, but this proved no easy fix. First Brad, then Ana and I, examined the latch, the alignment of the door, the other door, anything we could think of to help. I know I know very little about cars, but Brad was determined to fix it. Finally, he told Ana, "Turn around and don't look." Which she promptly did, and he employed the strategy often used against ornery vending machine: brute strength applied in a generally helpful direction. He slammed the door.

It shut.

Something cracked as it did, and he opened to door to investigate. We heard a rattling inside the door, and Brad felt no click as he pulled the door handle. The latch had broken and sounded to be rattling inside the door. The door now shut, but didn't lock and could be pulled open without the use of a handle.

Ana called AAA and we got the car towed. The end result? Simple living does not provide much spare money, so car repairs mean no Sister Hazel concert.

Seamless Garment, Part III

Today I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. No, I did not attempt to enter seminary, nor did I propose to Prince Caspian, though those were legitimate guesses, if you happened to have made one of them. I finally watched the Law and Order based on the murder of George Tiller. In case you haven't seen it, click here.

It takes guts to present a TV show on abortion to start with, and the makers of Law and Order didn't hold back. Characters discussed the pressure from boyfriends as a reason to abort, genetic defects, and born-alive cases. A mother of a child with a genetic disorder testified about holding her child who lived only 21 hours, with the same kind of love and joy that I have seen in real-life mothers. A nurse told the story of a child born alive in a botched procedure, and the jury listened in horror to how the abortionist killed him. The trial ended with a photo of a baby scheduled for an abortion, who had now been born.

The "law" and "order" people also added to the discussion. Of detective and lawyer pairs, one of each took the pro-life side and one the pro-choice. The debate between detectives got a little preachy at times, but someone had fun with the lawyers. The "pro-life"/"pro-choice" roles were complicated by the fact that the pro-life ADA wanted to win the case (convict the pro-life murderer), while the pro-choice one felt ethically obliged to help the defense. In the end, the pro-choice one began to question her assumptions, something I did not expect to come out of this show.

To my relief, the jury found guilty. I'm not sure how that factors into an overarching message about life/abortion, but the closing argument captured how a lot of the pro-life movement felt about Tiller's murder. No matter what our disagreement on where life begins and what dignity means, we can all agree that the violence of that murder was wrong.

But the best statement of all came in the last scene. It summed up much of what's wrong with various movements for justice in this world. Jack McCoy: "I used to expect people to be consistent, that pro-lifers would oppose capital punishment, that champions of human rights would claim some for the unborn. I don't expect that anymore. It's a big messy world."

Math Monster

Yesterday, the 6th grade math class had a group project. They had to design a walk-a-thon course, using ratios and fractions to mark food, water, and rest points. Their teacher let them divide themselves into groups, which provided some interesting combinations. Two of my favorite kids were working together and they were pretty much the definition of opposites. Student One is a quiet, studious, meticulous child who does his work quickly and thoroughly. He is a rule-follower, by-the-book type person. Student Two is constantly out of his seat, has difficulty with a lot of his work, doesn't speak clearly, and rarely if ever does his work. But he is constantly creating things and his mind works constantly outside the box.

I came over to check on the pair and see how they were doing. They had settled on the floor. Student One was bent over his paper, hard at work figuring out where to mark things with his paper ruler. Student Two was halfway underneath the teacher's desk. He told me, "The desk is eating me!" And sure enough, he kept sinking farther and farther underneath the desk.

Undaunted, Student One looked up. "I've got it under control," he said. He stood up and shook his hand over the desk. "I sprinkled pepper." And obviously, this would make the desk sneeze Student Two back out.

Sociologist Becomes Teacher

This week, the 8th grade had research papers for history class. They were due Friday, which meant, of course, that Wednesday people started research, and Thursday they wrote papers. Each of those days, I got a group of 8th graders in the library to work with me on their papers. Wednesday, the topic count stood: slavery 3; Middle Passage 2; the lost colony of Roanoke 1. So, unsurprisingly (especially since at least one of the girls came to the library to talk, not work), the research party turned into a discussion. I let it go, however, because it was the first time these girls had talked openly to me about race.

My main talker wanted to know why black people fought black people, when they had come through so much to get where they are today. She also said that she didn't understand people who threw away their opportunity at an education, when their ancestors had fought hard for it. The other girls chimed in, complaining about the lack of leadership from authority figures : for example a black mayor who refused to change the times that clubs were open, in spite of the crime rate that might be reduced by earlier closings.

Then someone came up with the idea of a play, to show their classmates visually what their people had gone through. Another girl had the astute thought that for something to make an impact, they needed to take it to DC. For a second, I thought they were ready to plan a march, but they narrowed down to a petition. I explained 1) that petitions didn't just appear, someone (such as themselves) had to write it; 2) they would need to figure out something more specific than "we want racism to end," if they wanted to make a petition; and 3) there was no reason why they couldn't. Or, we concluded, if they made a play, they could videotape it and send it to Obama.

Because I'm the white teacher, I don't hear very often what my students have to say about race. Even in this impassioned discussion, I got a lot of "I'm sorry"s and "no offense, but"s. So this conversation gave me an insight into how my students perceive and live their race. For them, it seemed that race was more poignant than gender. No one talked about the fact that after slavery ended, only men got the vote. No one talked about the ways that being a black woman was different from being a black man -- in spite of the fact that they used gender-charged language in their discussion, showing that they at least subconsciously picked up on the differences. In all my sociology courses, we talked about how people experience class, age, race, gender, and sexuality, but never about how one becomes more important than another.

I wanted to probe it further to see if and how they thought about class and gender, but the teacher kicked in over the sociologist. Rather than impressing upon them how they were oppressed in another way, I asked questions about how they can change things and how they are going to succeed in the world as is. To my joy, despite the language of oppression, these girls have every confidence that they can take life for all it's worth -- one big fat "gives me hope."

The Office: Spoiler Alert!!!

When I watched Freedom Writers with Em, I expected it to hit hard. That movie is about an idealistic teacher in an urban school. Sound familiar?

But sometimes life hits you when you don't expect it. The Office normally brightens my day. Today, however, half the plot focused on "Scott's Tots," a group of students to whom Michael had promised he would pay for college. He made this promise when they were in 3rd grade; they now were graduating high school. Of course, Michael can't pay for the college education of 15 kids.

It broke my heart. Those kids were my kids in 4 or 5 or 6 years' time. I know how much hope it would give them if someone promised them college, and I know exactly how they would react if someone broke that promise to them. I know only the iceberg's tip of the promises that have been broken for them, of the people who haven't come through, of the ways they've been let down. I couldn't find it amusing to watch that happen on TV.