The administration is making a video for the parents and students to thank them for their hard work during this time of remote learning, which is now into the SECOND March! It is really hard to fathom that.
Some days I feel like a full-time teacher, but I find joy in doing some of the extras, which used to get dropped in the full-time crazy juggling of being a coordinator and teacher. So now my days are filled with some of the balls I used to drop. Lately it’s editing talent show videos, long-term subbing so full-time teachers don’t have to also add that, planning and implementing a spelling bee, and tutoring individuals and small groups.
It’s been rewarding work during a pandemic, and a way to ease out of the classroom instead of going cold turkey.
Yesterday was full, so I woke up this morning (which is still Wednesday in the U.S.) and wrote a poem for the parents and students. It’s a monotetra.
Today is one more day
To learn and to pray
The God who sees you says
Go this way, Go this way
Dark is the night
Lord, give us your sight
We want to get through this fight
Be our light, Be our light
Another yesterday today mirrors
Now we have entered another year
Be not afraid, for God comes to cheer
No more fear, No more fear
You are a determined tower
You’ll get through this hour
Radiant and ready as a flower
God empower, God empower
Awaiting our final trip home
Enduring months of the unknown
We’ve been here seven years so great
Always knew the expiry date
A seizure has gripped us and shown
A pompous plague pens a new tome
We will sacrifice to atone
And appease the curse to create
Our final trip home
Have we now reaped what we have sown?
How long before we will have grown
Beyond this harbinger of hate?
I yearn to stop and end the wait
Our final trip home
Oh, ginger spice, you bring joy to life
Your honest and prodigious flavors yearn
To share their beauty and reduce strife
Thank you for your irresistible warmth.
Oh, ginger spice, your flavors dance on my tongue
Sweet, salty, biting hot and spicy
Your flavors blend so fine, but remain unsung
Rivulets of deliciousness flowing within.
Oh, ginger spice, how to describe your color?
brownish-red, bronze, chestnut, copper–
Those are not quite right–they seem a little duller
That’s why you have your own exclusive eponym.
Oh, ginger spice, you are covered with cracks
and crevices, dipped in sugar and teeming with
reasons to overindulge. My healthy eating slacks
As I enjoy one, two, three, four, five, six…
1
There’s a story in this place
A story no one told me
My ancestors
My teachers
My textbooks
Were whitewashed tombs
The Greatest Generation
Family vets came home from war
bought houses in the suburbs
and graduated from college
Thanks to hard work and persistence
Why didn’t they let me see
the decaying and decrepit
bones inside the tomb?
Family vets came home from war
bought houses in the suburbs
and graduated from college
Thanks to the GI Bill that
worked primarily for white veterans
2
Bill Barr, you are wrong when you said,
“Well, history is written by the winners,
so it largely depends on
who’s writing the history.”
We’re done with that.
The introductory essay
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
in The 1619 Project won a Pulitzer.
3
Story, come anew
Story, come afresh
Story, call us onto your lap
Hold us gently and whisper truth into our ears
And if we don’t hear it this time,
slap us upside the head
Tell us a story to retell to ourselves
A story to tell and retell
to future generations
We’ll be better ancestors
Better teachers
Writing better textbooks
We’ll break the unspoken
Racial contract, the one that denies
All people are created equal
Come quickly, Story
For five days, each month, I write with other teacher-poets at EthicalELA for Open Write. Read more about it or sign up here.
Ode to Ginger Spice Cookies