Their lives are the fire; their words, the hammer; my heart, the anvil.
Today I’m…
Drained.
Overwhelmed.
Wounded.
Disillusioned.
Grateful?
For the first time in my teaching career, I was given the opportunity to run a full-time writer’s workshop this year. Each day, I have the joy of working with 100ish 12th grade students writing full-time. We have a semester to grow together. We’re nearing the end of our first “cycle” of writing (narrative writing, for the record) and we’re hammering our four weeks of work into college application essays. Their lives are the fire; their words, the hammer; my heart, the anvil.
One wrote, with frighteningly subtle imagery, about date rape. It was horrifying to read it; this kiddo lived it. How do I objectify the content (poor word, I know) so that I can make it a better piece of writing when it’s so raw, honest, and open, like a wound? As a piece of writing, it could improve, but who freaking cares? This kid needs help. How can I start a conversation about purpose and audience in the shadow of real trauma?
Another wrote about being literally torn from her abusive family by Children’s Services. She wrote about how she was scared, how she hated the thought of foster care, how foster care actually saved her life, and, viscerally, about how she still yearned to be with her mother and father, despite her analytical understanding of the damage they’d caused her. “The heart wants what the heart wants,” she shared through tears, “I wish it didn’t.” She took two crying laps around the upstairs hallway with my student teacher. I remained with the class drying my own eyes.
An athlete’s mom is on the, “slow path to hell.” A drug abuser her entire life, her health is failing and he’s moved out and moved on though he’s wracked by horrible guilt; his little sister has to wait to turn 18 (2 years) or for mom to pass before she can move out. In the mean time, he is working two jobs, possibly skipping his senior seasons, so that she has a safe place when the inevitable happens.
I have read so much trauma, lived so much horrible, heavy life through their work. My students know I’m a mandatory reporter…that is, I have to share safety concerns with the appropriate parties.
They don’t care.
They write.
Before this year, I could probably count on my hands the number of students I’ve cried with in 25 years of teaching. Another round would probably cover those I’ve cried over. This year might be too much for me.
All of these stories, they come from just one class. I read them all on one Wednesday afternoon.
How about an unexpected coda, a twist, if you will…like a knife in the back.
The class also has a refugee from halfway around the world. She wrote about living in tents and bamboo huts. …about waiting for the weekly water deliveries. …about feeling blessed that her last name is near the beginning of the alphabet because food and water was distributed alphabetically. She wrote about having a family cell-phone, but no electricity and having to wait for hours by a different kind of telephone pole…one where they would go and wait in line to charge their phone on one of the 8 plugs that served the entire refugee camp. …about what it’s like to go to the bathroom in a field. But mostly, she wrote about how grateful she was to have had the opportunity to come to America where she feels both blessed but also sorry. Blessed to be here, sorry for classmates who claim poverty but don’t truly know it.
Then there’s J. He’s an immigrant, an illegal. His language is limited, though we can communicate haltingly in a clumsy dance of English and Spanish. He was beaming on Monday when I installed the Google Translate extension on his Chromebook and showed him how it would change all of my assignments into Spanish on the fly. I thought HE was going to cry. He, too, wrote about the opportunities he has here compared to back home. He’s on the soccer team and was wearing his jersey when he stayed after class to tell me he wouldn’t be in class the next day. I thanked him for letting me know, but he lingered. I thought maybe he’d not understood.
“I maybe not come back,” he said. “I turned 18. I have my court.”
Immigration court. You know, for deportation.
Like I said, I’ve been a teacher for a long time. To be honest, I have always known these stories were out there.
Before this week, though, I’d rarely experienced them through the voices that are living them. I’ve mostly heard the detached, sometimes judgmental tones of lounge gossip, or the shrieking outbursts of untreated trauma exploding into our halls. The quiet inner voice, the contemplative, honest voice of a wounded human being, has been silent until now.