Thinking and Writing

I just spent the afternoon tutoring a student, saying, “Write what you think,” after we had a discussion on the internet and social media. Yet, the last thing I want to do at the end of a day of teaching is to practice what I preach and sit down to write. I am tired. Bone tired. Cliched and drained, I feel I have nothing to say in new media which matters.

We filmed this week for my National Board Certification a unit on Civil Disobedience. The students had read an excerpt from Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody, as well as an interview with Howard Zinn. The students were to compare historical events with contemporary ones. Maria, surprised me by mentioning she had protested the teacher layoffs two years ago and had walked out of school to the district downtown headquarters. I was teaching at another school on the West Side at the time and had taken the day to be part of the human barricade Civil Disobedience protest where teachers sat in the street to be arrested. I was deeply touched by the students of South Central who had walked all the way from their school to Downtown. Here I am, one of the teachers teaching those students two years later.

In the beginning of the semester, Mauricio’s father died and he came to me to let me know his family had lost their apartment. I asked if it was all right if I made the announcement so we could give him emotional support as a class. Maria was so moved by his situation that she started a student collection for his family.

I have no desire to get into the politics of public education at the moment, even though it is impossible for me to avoid it, being in it. I question if there is such a thing as public education any more, since there is little transparency and many organizations out to profit from taking over our public schools. A teacher just thanked me tonight after I told her to advocate for herself since she was working many additional hours and not being paid. She said she wanted to stand up for herself, and yet, had the fear of being one of the ones they get rid of, as we have seen a few times too many at our school. During discussion a student said about Civil Disobedience, “Sometimes you have to do what’s considered ‘bad’ by going against something because it is not ‘good.’”

There are so many quotes about thinking and writing. Joan Didion’s quote is in the high school text I teach, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” As my students were writing on their own blogs today, I hope they discovered thinking through new media which matters.