Labor Day, 2010

I have taught Marge Piercy’s poem for many years to my ninth grade students. I think it speaks to the sentiments of this end-of-summer, American holiday. I hope in the months ahead, many unemployed Americans find “work that is real.”

The photograph above of American journalist H. L. Mencken at his writing desk is taken from a Wall Street Journal article on a new collection of his essays and criticism. The copyright belongs to Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

To be of use
By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

“To be of use” by Marge Piercy © 1973, 1982.
From Circles on the Water © 1982 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Middlemarsh, Inc.
First published in Lunch magazine. Used by permission of Wallace Literary Agency

These Days*

So it begins, another school year, and for the first time in more than two decades, I’m not there.

In June, I was quite startled to discover my job being advertised on a teacher employment website. Fifteen years at the school, and the administration did not have the decency to tell me face to face that I would not be asked back. No reason was given when I confronted the powers that be, because as the vice principal told me, “It’s a one year contract and we do not have to give a reason for non-renewal.”

Okay.

My suspicion is that after fifteen years, the financially-troubled school wanted to divest itself of my salary. A clearly clueless vice principal and school board were icing on the cake. It was time for a change.

I have been steadily employed since freshman year of high school. I paid my own tuition for my Catholic secondary education and my university degree. For my high school, I picked up trash around campus in the morning before school, shelved books in the library, and taught the drummers in the marching band how to play a double-stroke roll on a snare drum. I also put in time stuffing envelopes at a travel agency during the summers.

In college, I filled parts requests for an aerospace firm until the shop closed. My girlfriend put up with the manure smell of my clothing when I worked at Target’s lawn and garden department. That job ended when I got pneumonia selling Christmas trees in the parking lot. Next, I worked security for a department store. Luckily, I landed in my teaching job before I got myself killed by a miscreant on a mission.

I have done my time.

But in this economy, jobs are hard to find, so I am not surprised to discover it is September, and I am pursuing freelance writing projects and contemplating a return to a graduate program or MFA.

Not being employed has its drawbacks. Two areas most acutely affected are my self-esteem and lifestyle. It is hard for me not to take unemployment as a personal affront. Books and articles I read tell me losing my job is not personal. It is just a fact of life in a recession. And now, when a potential employer gets hundreds of resumes for a single position, there is no rhyme or reason to the rejection. As William Saroyan wrote in The Human Comedy, “…every man in the world is better than someone else. And not as good as someone else.” I am often left scratching my head as to which I am in this crazy job market.

As for lifestyle, I have been hearing Henry David Thoreau in my head for quite some time now: “Simplify, simplify.” I have more books than I can read in my lifetime. I have a wife who loves me. What else do I need? Cut down, cut back, live simply, simply live.

We hurtle through life at such a breakneck pace that it is a blessing to be forced into taking some time to reflect. Teaching is a giving profession. You are there for others to help them reach their goals, maximize their potential, become better writers, realize their dreams. Teachers often have to put off their own questions and quests to give full attention to their students. You just push on, planning lessons, grading papers, counseling, consoling, encouraging.

I am finding a lot of solace in reconnecting with my deeper soul, reading philosophy, and considering where I want to go next. There is so much depth and texture to life when we look for it and allow ourselves time to sink into living fully each day. Will I go back to teaching? Sister Doris, my mentor, used to tell me that real teachers always find their way back.

For now, I’m writing, studying, reading, continuing to learn. I rise in the morning to the wind chimes on my neighbor’s porch. I feel the seasons changing, and at night, I hear the final baseball games of a dying summer played out at the park up the street. My days and nights have a rhythm of their own.

Sometimes, darkness overwhelms me, and I worry about the future. What secrets does it hold, what challenges, what successes, disappointments, tragedies? Where am I going?

Life is the journey, say the authors I read. We do not know what will come next, but it will come.

I am consoled by Galileo staring up at the vastness of the universe, wondering what it would be like to journey among the stars. Or Magellan, gazing across the wine-dark sea, dreaming of possible riches in a brave, new world. This is a time for considering the possibilities. It is not the end, but the beginning. We do not know what lies ahead on the journey, but we will find our way.


*Update: Check out William Michaelian's piece connected to my post on his excellent blog, Recently Banned Literature. His main site containing an archive of his writing is also a literary feast.

Gazing Into The Mirror

This has been a summer for taking stock, for deep reflection about the direction of my life and what I hope to accomplish while living it. Change is the only constant in this universe. Everything must change or die.

I mistakenly thought that one reaches a certain age and the self is clearly defined, a finished product. Not true. The day we stop growing is the day we die. I realized that I needed to make some changes, that the dissatisfaction and restlessness I have been feeling were the result of my desire to move forward, to discover, to learn more. I needed new challenges.

I became a teacher because I love to learn, and I want to give back to others what my teachers so graciously gave me. It is a most important vocation, one I feel blessed to have been given more than two decades ago.

This summer has been about reaffirming what I am looking for in my work. I need creative challenges and the chance to discover something more about this life. I want to continue to work with students who see the world in a unique way, and who have big dreams. I have always been lucky in that regard: the students I have worked with in my teaching life have been the best part of the job.

Change: it keeps us on our toes, helps us to stay focused and invigorated, and makes us grow and further define who we are. Human beings are always becoming. We are never finished, and we must never rest on our accomplishments. It is a good thing to stand and look into the mirror, even if the image is blurred and not fully articulated.

There are always fresh horizons and new worlds to explore. It is okay to feel a little apprehensive, a bit discombobulated, for that is when we summon the courage to step off the cliff, ever closer to our destiny, and never more fully alive.

Tigers Above, Tigers Below

Comfortable With Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
By Pema Chodron
Shambhala, $12.95 paper
ISBN: 978-1-59030-078-7

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
By Pema Chodron
Shambhala Classics, $12.95 cloth
ISBN: 978-1-57062-344-8

There is a story Pema Chodron cites in the middle of her book, Comfortable With Uncertainty, that sums up perfectly the notion that we should live in the moment. “A woman is running from tigers,” she writes. There is no escape but to go over a cliff via a hanging vine. The woman swings out over empty space, free from the pursuing tigers now above her, only to see another group below her, seemingly waiting for her to fall. She sees a small mouse begin to gnaw at the vine, and in the moment, realizes that her life is in grave danger. Her attention is distracted by a cluster of wild strawberries growing on the cliff face next to her. “She looks up, she looks down, and she looks at the mouse,” Chodron writes. “Then she picks a strawberry, pops it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.” Even in the midst of danger, of extreme emotional distress, we must live in the moment. We must forget the tigers waiting to devour us and focus on the sweet beauty of what we have right now.

The story is part of her 56th meditation, “Experience Your Life.” Her book contains 108 in total, many of which are drawn from her previous writings and teachings.

Chodron was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduated and became an elementary school teacher. Marriage and family took up her time and focus, until a chance encounter in her mid-30s changed her life, and she became a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the “Vidyadhara” and preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism in the west. Through her study with him, Chodron became a specialist in Mahayana lojong teachings, or mind training.

She went on to become a fully ordained nun, a rare honor for a westerner, and was appointed director of Gampo Abbey at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She continues to teach at the abbey and offers workshops around the country for dedicated followers and lay people in various aspects of Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. She has also written many books on her teachings from which Uncomfortable With Uncertainty draws its 108 meditations.

The book is a good beginner’s course in Pema Chodron’s work. Each of the 108 chapters offers a single focus for meditation and reflection. The topics include the study of Bodhichitta, a Sanskrit word meaning “the awakened heart of loving-kindness and compassion,” how to approach meditation, work with selected Buddhist “slogans,” and reverse Samsara, another Sanskrit word meaning “journeying,” or “the vicious cycle of suffering that results from the mistaken belief in the solidity and permanence of self and other.”

The secret to this philosophy is deceptively simply. Impermanence is the only certainty in life. Any attempt to hang on to something is doomed to failure, because everything changes. We are all in a state of transfiguration, even to the smallest atomic particle. Trying to hang on to something and make it permanent can only lead to suffering. Until we free ourselves from such clinging, we are destined to be in pain.

Chodron’s advice is often spot-on for our difficult times, A second book addresses the arduous and challenging moments we are all facing today. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times was compiled from various teachings Chodron gave from 1987 to 1994. Her editor, Emily Hilburn Sell, suggested she work through her notes and lecture tapes and see if there was another book in them. Together, they rewrote, edited, and completed the book.

She begins with the idea that “fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” We are drawn to challenging circumstances without knowing if we can face them. This leads to a reluctance to live our lives, a fear of being present in every moment. She recommends immersion in the emotions we experience—fear, jealousy, hatred—and to withhold judgment. Above all, we should allow ourselves to study the feeling of fear, to live in it and appreciate what it makes us do. Only then can we modify our behavior to live fully in the moment. This theme recurs throughout the book.

What we come to discover is that our ultimate fear is the fear of death. How do we live in a world where we are destined to die? The answer, of course, is to live. This is not easy, as Chodron takes great pains to teach us, but “it takes death for there to be birth,” she writes, and there is no greater challenge than for us to accept our lives as they are and simply live.

Chodron goes on to address themes of loneliness, isolation, peace, and non-aggression. She discusses how hope should be abolished. Many Christian and Catholic faiths teach that giving up hope—despair—is a sin against God. But Chodron means something different and refreshing. Life contains both the good and the bad. To say that I have hope that tomorrow will be a good day, is a ridiculous wish. There will be good days and bad days. If we are mired in a terrible moment in our lives, we can rest assured that a good moment is on the way, and of course, the reverse can be true as well. To hope for only the best is not to live in reality.

The final chapter in the book lands on a common theme in several cultures. Chodron believes “the path is the goal.” Our wisdom comes from living the journey. “The source of wisdom is whatever is going to happen to us today,” she writes. “The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very instant.”

Chodron is a proponent of starting right where we are. There is never a more perfect moment to begin to live then right now. Many people might wonder if these books are appropriate for people who have strong religious beliefs in other faiths, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, and Jew. One does not need to be a Buddhist to appreciate Chodron’s themes and ideas, nor is she proselytizing for her faith. Eastern philosophy has much to offer the west, as we have discovered over the years. It is not about becoming a Buddhist; the philosophical elements of the east have traveled well through the west in the writing of Emerson, Thoreau, Kerouac, Ginsberg and a host of others.

In the end, one reads Pema Chodron because she offers good advice and a way to live in these perilous times. Through her teachings, we can deepen the spiritual experience of daily life and come to appreciate our journey, knowing that now is all we have and all that we are given.

Wake The Sleeping Bear

Don’t look now, but the Los Angeles Times may have found its way back to relevance.

This past weekend, writers Jason Felch, Jason Song, and Doug Smith woke the sleeping bear by going after teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In an article entitled, “Who’s Teaching L.A.’s Kids?” the reporters “obtained seven years of math and English test scores” from the district and using a system called “value-added analysis,” compiled a startling picture of who is effective in the classroom and who falls miserably short.

A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the local teachers’ union, was quick to condemn the article and ask his members to boycott the paper. (I don’t think this should worry the management at the paper; most subscribers have already left.)

First, let’s talk about the article and the information contained therein. Value-added analysis “rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year,” according to the writers. “The method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration.” Obama has supported and renewed many of the failed policies of the Bush administration, even when the architects of “No Child Left Behind” called it a mistake last year. Obama swept into office promising change, but in education, he has been a weak imitation of a failed predecessor.

The Times writers did come up with some interesting discoveries. Many LAUSD students find themselves with the same failing teachers year after year. And “although teachers are paid more for experience, education and training,” they write, “none of this had much bearing on whether they improved their students’ performance.” No matter how many degrees or credentials a teacher has, certificates and diplomas do not make teachers. Teaching is an art and craft, and if a candidate has no affinity for it, the students will suffer. Many people have credentials and degrees, but few can do the job because it is a calling, a vocation. Do a Google search of how many online degree programs there are for teaching credentials and masters-in-education programs. If you have the money, you can get a teaching degree very quickly in cyber-class. But unless you have talent and passion for the art, you will fail in the practice.

When the standardized test scores are used this way, it is amazing how quickly teachers and union leaders put them down as “flawed,” saying they “do not capture the more intangible benefits of good instruction.” When test scores earn them raises, salary points, and tenure, they shout hosannas in a come-to-Jesus fervor. As the article states, test scores are only one measure of an effective classroom, and by no means should they be used as the only measure.

So how do we rate teacher effectiveness? Our intrepid reporters at the Times observed that the best teachers “shared a tendency to be strict, maintain high standards and encouraged critical thinking.” They also engaged students, often in Socratic dialogue of question and answer. If some of this seems familiar, you must have gone to Catholic school.

Four of the teachers profiled in the article demonstrated the reporters’ observations. One, John Smith, struggles to control a class and is flippant with his students. He sent three to the principal’s office as unteachable. The second, Miguel Aguilar, is “soft-spoken and often stern,” giving praise only occasionally, which, according to the writers, makes his students try harder. He runs a tight ship with high expectations. Is it any wonder his students do better?

A third teacher, Karen Caruso, appears on the surface to be a model teacher. She was “first in the district to be certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In her spare time, she attends professional development workshops and teaches future teachers at UCLA.”

She ranks “among the bottom 10% of elementary school teachers in boosting students’ test scores.” Yes, the bottom.

According to the article, “Caruso set clear expectations for her students but seemed reluctant to challenge them…She dismissed the weekly vocabulary quizzes that other teachers give as ‘old school.’”

Nancy Polacheck, a veteran teacher of 38 years, takes a more traditional approach without the “old school” prejudices. In the top five percent, “her teaching style is a rat-a-tat-tat of questions, the most common of which is ‘why?’” She does not spend a lot of time socializing in the faculty room, eating her lunch alone in her classroom. Her colleagues “think her expectations are too high.”

What is the conclusion here, the logical through-line? Miguel Aguilar is a younger teacher, only 33 years old. John Smith is 63 and started teaching in 1996. Karen Caruso has been in a classroom since 1984, and obviously, Nancy Polacheck is an old hand at wrangling students. Young, old, veteran, newcomer, highly trained, naturally gifted?

Here is the plan. Cut the bureaucracy at the top. Why are we not laying off administrators and the dead weight at the top of most school districts? Why are we not dumping ineffective principals and administrators at the school who know little or nothing about the classroom? Many were failed teachers; that is why they went into administration. We need to stop cutting veteran teachers because we do not want to pay their salaries. Younger, lower paid teachers fresh out of education school may fit the fiscal model, but they lack experience. There is no way to cut the budget to success. Education costs, but it is central to the future of a first world nation.

But here is the most important thing. Promote teachers, real teachers, into administrative positions, and allow them the time to be in the classroom with their colleagues observing them teaching. Stand in a classroom for five minutes, or longer, as the Times reporters did, and the effectiveness of the teaching will be clear. You will not need to rely solely on standardized tests, a task force, or anything else. Veteran teachers who have a talent and passion for the craft, dropping in unannounced every day to watch fellow teachers working. Everything will be crystal clear. Those who can’t teach are out. Those who can, keep the job and are paid their worth in a culture that puts the education of children as its highest priority.

If we are to regain our footing as a world leader, it will take more than pretty commercials about the need for better math and science instruction. We need solid gold teaching in all subjects from professionals with the gift to teach. We are becoming a stupid country led by stupid people. And that is a far greater threat than any act of terrorism.

"The Sound of Trees"

I have written before about Robert Frost and his love of trees. One of his poems in particular keeps coming back to me these days:

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to your dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

Sometimes, we must listen to the silences. We must wait for the angels to lead us home.

Past and Present

I’m northbound on the 405 heading up into the Sepulveda pass, and I am screaming. The wind matches my howling through the open window of my tiny compact car. It is the moment, the pause in the universe, when I feel my life change. A single instant, and nothing is ever the same again. Such a moment of singular transfiguration, and I know I will never experience anything like it again. On the passenger seat next to me are a stack of textbooks: social studies, English, math, religion, spelling, literature, science.

I am a teacher.

I am a teacher.

The sky is the most amazing shade of blue on an early summer afternoon. There it is: St. Joan of Arc School. The iron letters line the concrete apron over the double doors. The playground, a kindergarten building—that’s new—the church hall, the asphalt parking lot, the old convent building. I walk up Gateway Boulevard to the doors and peer through the dusty glass. My old classroom to the left, the school office door on the right, but something is missing. No bulletin boards, doorways stand open, a ladder parked under an open light fixture. This is an empty place. Too quiet and dusty. I realize that the school is closed. It stands abandoned. Schools should not be so silent. They should be filled with young kids hustling to class, calling out to one another. Not today. St. Joan of Arc has no students, no teachers, no life. The building sits waiting.

I dial the phone number for the school the next day and get the disconnected-and-no-longer-in-service recording. I hang up and dial the church office.

“The school is closed,” a woman’s voice tells me.

“How long ago?” I ask.

“Last year.”

The call comes one morning as I am shaving. I hear the machine click on: “This is Sister Caroline from St. Joan of Arc School. I would like to speak to you about your resume. Can you please call me back?”

I am shaking as I dial the number on the pay phone at work. “This is Paul Martin. I am returning your call.”

So I leave my apartment at five o’clock for a 7:30 appointment on a late summer’s evening. I sit in the car sweating, waiting for the clock to hit the appointed time. My faded corduroy pants are my best; my shirt is wrinkled, and I screwed up the knot on my one and only tie. My clothes do not fit properly. I remember how my Catholic school teachers dressed; I do not look the part.

Sister Doris answers the convent door. She smiles at me; she is polite, but cautious. “Sister Caroline is over at the school,” she says, gesturing toward the building a few doors down. “Just knock.”

Just knock on the door of the rest of your life.

Sister Caroline and I sit on opposite sides of her desk, talking about my history. I am so nervous I can barely control my hands. “You will teach all the subjects…sixth grade…thirty students.” I am trying very hard to listen, to think of questions. “Here is your contract,” she says.

I look at the legal jargon—words, words, words—and then the bottom line. “This contract begins August 31, 1987 and concludes on June, 30, 1988. The teacher will be paid the sum of $15,500 in ten monthly installments commencing on September 30, 1987 and concluding on June 30, 1988, with each installment paid on the last working day of the month.”

Fifteen thousand dollars is double my security guard salary. I feel there must be some mistake. I did not want to tell Sister Caroline that I would gladly do the job for free.

We go upstairs to the sixth grade classroom. The room smells of pencils and paper, old books, school supplies. The bulletin boards are blank, waiting for my inspiration. The chalkboard has been cleaned for the summer. In one corner is my wooden teacher’s desk. Thirty student desks sit in rows. My classroom.

Sister Caroline helps me carry the books to my car. “Welcome aboard,” she says, shaking my hand. “Now all I have to do is hire a first grade teacher.”

Inspiration strikes me like a fist. “I maybe able to help you out with that,” I say. My wife has never expressed an interest in teaching, but before I realize what I am doing, I offer her name and sketch out her work history.

“Have her call me tomorrow,” Sister Caroline says.

We both end up at St. Joan of Arc School.

And Sister Doris who answered the convent door? She becomes our mentor teacher. This tiny nun with a quick sense of humor and an iron will teaches us everything we know about teaching. We use her lessons, her attitude, her techniques to this day. I sit in my classroom and Google her name only to find her obituary.

“Sr. Doris Marie was a person small of stature but large of heart. Her personal charisma and authority could easily control a classroom or an entire student body. No one had to wonder where she stood on an issue or what she did or did not want to do. But, under her ‘in charge’ exterior was a gentle, compassionate woman…Besides her love for her students, Sr. Doris Marie was a faithful friend and confidant to young sisters and lay teachers whom she mentored…In her last moments she was surrounded by the loving presence of her sisters as she slipped peacefully into eternity.”

Sister Doris has been gone seven years now.

Sister Caroline, the first principal I ever worked for, had a stroke during my second year at the school.

St. Joan of Arc School is gone. No more first days of class on a crisp, fall day, no recess, no classes, no bells.

I exist here in the present while I watch the past slip away. It is a habit of we who are middle aged to reflect upon what has come before, how we came to be where we are, and the mistakes we made along the way. When I look around me, I see people who lack the values, the foundation, the ethical grounding of those who taught me to be a teacher. There are no more like Sister Doris.

I am a teacher because I believe in the power of education to change a person. I am a teacher because I dream of a better world, and I cannot think of another profession that does more to shape the world of which I dream. Most of all, I believe that we are all on a journey from darkness into light and that I am charged with helping my students find that light. But I also know that our fate is to slip away back into darkness when our journey is over.

I began my teaching career at a school named after a French woman who heard voices, and came to call them her counsel. She told the judge at her trial that they were saints, and that she saw them as plainly as she saw the judge. She fought for her country, for what she believed was right, and in the end, she was put to death for her beliefs. Her ashes were scattered on the river Seine. She was canonized a Catholic saint by another Pope Benedict in 1920. St. Joan of Arc School opened its doors in 1947. Those doors closed in 2009.

These days, her school echoes with the ghosts of long gone students and teachers. I hope the school will one day rise from the ashes like a phoenix. I would like to be there to see that. In that way, the voices would be real, and St. Joan of Arc would be right again.