Wondering
Pondering
Thirsting
Pondering
Thirsting
Inquiring
Pausing
Marveling
Pausing
Marveling
Leaning into discomfort
Expanding the heart
Welcoming the mystery
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Repair
We spend millions on standardizing the right answer
Millions to ensure
that those who should make sure that
those who teach the right answers
are sure that the right answers are taught.
Private companies making millions of public dollars
ensuring that we teach so that at the end our white privileged children get the right answer.
Millions spent on what we know does not yield critical thinkers, passionate writers, and avid readers.
I am not against the right answer,
not against benchmark expectations to ensure our children learn
to read, to write, to count, and to compute.
Just not only for teaching the right answer when it upholds systemic oppression and racism.
Not only for teaching the standardized answer
because it never demands that we be antiracist in practice and policy,
and what if the right answer teaches them less than
they would learn from the wrong answer when critically examined?
The right answer misses the opportunity to teach them about ruptures and repairs.
Ruptures in history, friendships, and relationships,
in resource gaps, mass incarceration, and systemic discriminatory policies against Black and Indigenous people.
Why not criminalize the predatory racist centering of the single narrative in textbooks, media, and education systems?
Why not teach them the power of examining ruptures and missteps and guide them through repairing?
A radical idea it would be to scaffold repairs, rethinking, rewriting, recalculating, and reteaching.
Maybe then our children would learn to read so they could fly
and write not just words but expressions, resistance, and dissent.
Memorization and computation would be just a step to seeing that math is everywhere,
from the design of their pencils to the distance between it and their dreams.
Maybe then we'd realize that the only right answer is to repair.
Would we spend millions for that?
Millions to ensure
that those who should make sure that
those who teach the right answers
are sure that the right answers are taught.
Private companies making millions of public dollars
ensuring that we teach so that at the end our white privileged children get the right answer.
Millions spent on what we know does not yield critical thinkers, passionate writers, and avid readers.
I am not against the right answer,
not against benchmark expectations to ensure our children learn
to read, to write, to count, and to compute.
Just not only for teaching the right answer when it upholds systemic oppression and racism.
Not only for teaching the standardized answer
because it never demands that we be antiracist in practice and policy,
and what if the right answer teaches them less than
they would learn from the wrong answer when critically examined?
The right answer misses the opportunity to teach them about ruptures and repairs.
Ruptures in history, friendships, and relationships,
in resource gaps, mass incarceration, and systemic discriminatory policies against Black and Indigenous people.
Why not criminalize the predatory racist centering of the single narrative in textbooks, media, and education systems?
Why not teach them the power of examining ruptures and missteps and guide them through repairing?
A radical idea it would be to scaffold repairs, rethinking, rewriting, recalculating, and reteaching.
Maybe then our children would learn to read so they could fly
and write not just words but expressions, resistance, and dissent.
Memorization and computation would be just a step to seeing that math is everywhere,
from the design of their pencils to the distance between it and their dreams.
Maybe then we'd realize that the only right answer is to repair.
Would we spend millions for that?
Detour
What if we taught our children to learn from mistakes?
What if we used the millions spent on standardized tests to train teachers to disrupt systems of oppression or create a pipeline of critical conscious teachers practicing cultural and linguistic responsiveness and humility?
What if we encouraged mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings to be repaired for they are great teachers?
What if we coached them how to repair through observing, learning, and not repeating?
What if the oppressive mistakes and atrocities of the past helped us write better roadmaps for a more just antiracist future?
What if we centered the stories of those whose narratives were erased by those who mistreated, misstepped, dominated, suppressed, and never repaired?
What if we were courageous enough to teach children to examine their mistakes or failures as gifts for their path ahead?
What if they were not called mistakes but detours?
What if?
What if we used the millions spent on standardized tests to train teachers to disrupt systems of oppression or create a pipeline of critical conscious teachers practicing cultural and linguistic responsiveness and humility?
What if we encouraged mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings to be repaired for they are great teachers?
What if we coached them how to repair through observing, learning, and not repeating?
What if the oppressive mistakes and atrocities of the past helped us write better roadmaps for a more just antiracist future?
What if we centered the stories of those whose narratives were erased by those who mistreated, misstepped, dominated, suppressed, and never repaired?
What if we were courageous enough to teach children to examine their mistakes or failures as gifts for their path ahead?
What if they were not called mistakes but detours?
What if?
Friday, December 8, 2017
Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...
Dear Pain,
Remember the years I shut you out?
I denied your existence in the name of Happiness.
Well, Anxiety and Depression moved right on in and derailed that plan.
I take you back Pain because Addiction just called and wants to surf on my couch.
Let's take the couch and Joy can have my bed.
Love,
Another Way to Be
Remember the years I shut you out?
I denied your existence in the name of Happiness.
Well, Anxiety and Depression moved right on in and derailed that plan.
I take you back Pain because Addiction just called and wants to surf on my couch.
Let's take the couch and Joy can have my bed.
Love,
Another Way to Be
Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...
Dear Pain,
An unconditional welcome is the best gift I can give you,
Which only stillness can buy.
Love,
Another Way to Me
An unconditional welcome is the best gift I can give you,
Which only stillness can buy.
Love,
Another Way to Me
Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...
Dear Pain,
Funny how when I shut the door on you,
Anxiety climbs into the windows of my sacred ground.
She comes in shredding my stillness to pieces
Leaving my wreckage strewn about.
My heart hardens.
The broken record of intrusive thoughts spins me into a dizzy spell.
You are persistent and again you knock.
And when I finally open the door, there you are standing right next to Joy.
Come on in.
Both of you.
Love,
A Softer Me
Dear Pain: A series of love poems and musings...
Dear Pain,
I will honor you with my stillness.
I will nurture you by filling my well of Self.
I no longer am scared of you.
I no longer abandon you.
I no longer feel ashamed of you.
I will say your name.
I will give you space.
I will give you voice.
I will breathe you in.
I will hold you.
I will give you purpose through cultivated creations.
You are mine as I am yours.
You are a great teacher.
Love,
Your Student
I will honor you with my stillness.
I will nurture you by filling my well of Self.
I no longer am scared of you.
I no longer abandon you.
I no longer feel ashamed of you.
I will say your name.
I will give you space.
I will give you voice.
I will breathe you in.
I will hold you.
I will give you purpose through cultivated creations.
You are mine as I am yours.
You are a great teacher.
Love,
Your Student
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