I am an erratic gardener
Pruning for efficiency
Always planning for maximization.
But to what ends was never programed
So an infinite loop is created
Always prioritizing a future that was never determined
Saving for a rainy day that had yet to be acknowledged.
18 children
And one teacher
were killed today
by an 18 year old school shooter.
(And maybe more will not make it)
The second major incident of gun violence to make it to my news radar this month.
And there were over 200 that never made it to me.
We have drills
We have trainings
We have debriefs
But we will never have peace of mind
And in hearing about this tragedy,
This unthinkable catastrophic normality,
I think first about where in my classroom would we go.
Where are the locks and the curtains and the heavy objects to use to barricade the door.
I think about where are the books for throwing in self defense
And where are the sharp objects I could use to break the window.
And then I think about how the news would reach my person.
And my people
And I think about how i would recover if this happened here
how this is community would recover
And I think about how would the situation change depending which class i was with,
and their dynamics, and their needs,
And how I would best protect them,
And how could we get through this together,
And
I think of of each and every one of them.
The 58 on my class rosters.
And the many more who are not.
I think of their faces
(Or half visible faces)
And I think of the goodness I see in them all.
And I can’t think of the world without them.
And
I try to think of anything else
anything besides the idea, the possibility, of this happening.
19 children were killed.
And 2 adults.
27th school shooting
212th mass shooting
1984 people killed by guns
In the United States of America
in 2022
so far.
And I have to say so far
Because there will be more.
For these irreplaceable,
individual, incredible human beings
who have taught me how to be a teacher,
i want more for them.
more than this never-ending barrage of preventable and catastrophic violence.
I want more accountability and action and shelter and healing and care for them.
and
i want more for me.
Sources: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/, https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101050970/2022-school-shootings-so-far
it is something new to show All of myself
past and present.
to be this
(all of this),
and somehow,
to not apologize.
i am terrified
to be loud
to be seen
to be thought about
to be memorable
to be recognizable
(no wonder i often feel invisible)
how fortunate then (i suppose)
that putting up walls and guards and protections and masks
is so exhausting.
When im running on empty,
the walls collapse
and i am able to to experience the open expanse
of just being.
Today, the Alabama House of Representatives voted to make it illegal for doctors to proscribe gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth (18 and under).
I am grateful for what a few representatives said in the battle that ended in a vote of 66-28 in favor of this bill.
Rep. England: “You’re saying this is about children. It’s not. What it is about is scoring political points and using those children as collateral damage”
Rep. Rafferty: “Its totally undermining family rights, health rights and access to health care.”
I was pretty numb while I read this headline at first. A protective numbness.
I was numb until I reached this quote in the article from Rep. Wes Allen: “Their brains are not developed to make the decisions long term about what these medications and surgeries do to their body,”
When I read that, I was angry. I was frustrated by the utter stupidity of it all. I wanted to storm down to that house and explain to this man that going through puberty ~naturally~ or whatever Is A Choice, and a choice with lasting, lifelong repercussions. I want to ask why he thinks the state should be able to make this choice for children: A choice that he states will have lasting effects on their bodies.
I have been fighting my body for years, and if I had been given the option at the beginning to not have to go through that, hell yes I would have picked that.
I’m not a better person for having had two puberties. I’m just sadder.
All I want is to be able to protect those kids in Alabama. I want to protect my trans students from the ricocheting pain I am feeling after this bill. And after all the rest.
I feel quite small today.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/07/1091510026/alabama-gender-affirming-care-trans-transgender
Subtitle: the story of how everything in my life is a metaphor for something else in my life
(Alternatively titled: A teaching philospohy)
In trying to understand who I am as a teacher
I found a misconception I had been holding on to:
I thought the pull to teaching was math.
(And I do love math
I am grateful to have it as a partner in this endeavor
I love its definitiveness and ambiguity
Give me good pattern any day of the week and I’ll be happy
Or an algorithm
a visualization
a comparison
a mapping
a graph
a prediction
a puzzle
Math is a language where you can express
both more
and less
than you can with words.
Math carries a precision that syllables and sentences never can
Yet fails to articulate the finest points of humanness)
But to say I am tied to teaching because I love math
is a knot that will unravel under tension.
I would not have ended up here if I had not accompanied a bouquet of trans folks
On legs of their expeditions:
Through crushing expectations
Through meeting themselves
Through glimmers of expansive freedom
Through letting the world in to meet them.
I teach in order to hold a place for these gender explorers and defiers
For these norm breakers
For these students looking for someone to see them, to know them.
I stumbled into teaching with my crochet hook and calculator
with enormous and hazy and overwhelming dreams
To chip away at these walls against which my back is pressed
To exist where they said we couldn’t
To make space
for us.
powerful people
Think that it is abuse
To let me feel free
They want our existence to be reported
Our support systems ripped out from under us
They want us gone
Because we make them question every lie they ever told themselves about how they were allowed to exist through the world
We make them confront the terrifying expanse that the universe becomes when you realize it is your right to define yourself boundlessly,
to be fully human,
fully unique and yet the same,
fully perfect
and yet never not fully a work in progress
There are people
Who Think that it is abuse
To help me feel free
But who refuse to see the enormously obvious, heart shatteringly painful reality that is
That their words rip open barely healed wounds
There will be unthinkable, unforgivable pain because of this
There will be lives broken and lost.
I want to hold a message of hope.
Of ‘we will prevail’.
But it’s hard to stay positive and be a trans person in a world where your right to exist continues to be questioned in new old ways.
I’m tired.
I’m in pain.
——-
Required afterthought:
But we will care for eachother
And we will care for ourselves
And we will be free
to acknowledge that I want a child is to acknowledge that my parents wanted me that someone wants me that someone thought the world would be better off with me in it that without me, something was missing. and for some reason my soul has trouble accepting that.
Reflecting (~7 months after originally writing this poem): i really want to be a parent someday. i want to be a soft place for a child to land when things get hard (i heard this phrase recently and its stuck in my head. it just feels nice). I want to be a safe space to be imperfect. i want the experience of parenthood. i think i would be good at it.
Critical Points (of a Multivariable Function) 