perky teacher

warning: possible sarcasm. small bit of snarkiness toward one of brooklyn's finest neighborhoods.

i feel like i might have traumatized some of bensonhurst with my last entry and evidently i came off as pessimistic to some. i don't intend to use this blog to further my own agenda with reference to bensonhurst, but i want to set a few things straight here. then we'll go back to happy scenes of whatever.

let's start with this pessimism. i would hope that anyone who would start reading an entry would finish the whole thing (though they do get boggy sometimes) and i'm pretty sure reading the whole entry yesterday would get a body right down there at the end where i talk about continuing to try to do the right thing by my students. because i do this. i look forward to going in each day and i love being in the classroom. i am many things in the classroom. loud, always. silly, mostly. bossy, when i need to be. even pissed off, which doesn't happen so often but you try spending a day being the only adult among fourteen year olds. my students call me evil (our quizzes have names like "happy happy joy joy"), crazy (i expect them to write how many pages?), gross (we're eating crickets again in a few weeks), dramatic (sometimes i fake a swoon when the noise level is overwhelming and i leap around when someone says something really interesting), smart (the kids are freaked out by all the words i know) but not a single kid in my class thinks i would ever give up on one of them. i know this because i have loudly snarled and threatened to give up on a few in the past and they smiled and patted my hand. they know it's not my choice.

the other thing i want to make clear is that dealing with issues of race, class, culture and gender will always be a struggle and i don't imagine it will ever be a pretty one. but it's a struggle i intend to take up every day until the world looks like the sort of place i would want my students to live. and it will always make folks uncomfortable when they're confronted with their own racism. so what. let them be uncomfortable. don't you think victims of their words and actions have been uncomfortable for a very long time?

hate is a really strong word, which is why i use it to talk about racist behavior. i do hate it. i hate it when my kids use "gay" as a derogatory word. i hate it when they spit on people who don't wear the same color hat they do. yes, i did say they spit on each other. and i make it as clear as i can that there's quite a list of behavior i hate, but i'm pretty sure my kids know i don't hate them. because i tell them all the time. and yes, sometimes i yell it at them.

for some synonym happiness see: abhor, despise, anathematize, abominate, contemn, curse, deprecate, detest, execrate, loathe, scorn, shun.

and i talk about the ugly stuff sometimes here because i want you who aren't teachers to know about it, know where these kids stew and ferment, know what they have to work with. because otherwise you'd think everything is swell. knowing that everything is not swell and sighing is pessimistic. knowing everything is not swell and getting loud and trying to change things is as optimistic as anything else i know. and i expect you to do something about it, too, now that you know. i'm not going to get very far standing here by myself. but it's easy. think about the things you vote for. mental health parity laws. funding for afterschool programs. think about what your religious community teaches and help shape the message it sends to kids, because you'd be surprised about how many of those folks say really nasty things about people who are "different" and how often "sin" is code for "stuff we don't do that they do". if you donate money to an organization, be sure you know how they spend it. and if you have kids, don't show them whatever ugliness you might harbor in terms of your own fears of those different from you. they won't be able to use it where they're going, anyway. and if you live in bensonhurst, i don't care who you are or what you do, you damn well better step up and take some responsibility for the children around you, yours or not. because this is your village. start raising something.