5-17-08
Yesterday was the second-to-last day of school. A couple of the kids that I work with won’t be back for the last day so yesterday was the last day that I will ever see them again. One of the kids is one of my favorites and I almost cried at the end of the day when we were taking pictures. This kid cracks me up. He comes up to me and carefully pushes the hair out of my face when my bangs swing forward. On the first day he started poking me in the face which freaked me out until I figured out he had just read “My Teacher’s an Alien” and he was trying to figure out how to take my mask off. I told him it was far too advanced for him to figure out and we got along ever since. He was sad too. He asked to sit by me at lunch and reminded me about eight hundred times to make sure to take pictures. I got some of the greatest pictures I have ever seen of these kids and I’ve already flipped through them many times. I literally get tears in my eyes when I see the joy shine from these kids and the humor that they bring when I know what is going on in their lives. I know that Monday is going to be incredibly hard for me. I have come here for just a couple of weeks and I’ve connected to these kids so much that leaving now makes my heart just break every time I think about it.
Just a side note: we’ve run into some amazing last names here. Some in my class are Sitting Up, Black Lance, Whirlwind Soldier, and Medicine Eagle/Iron Heart. Some other names are Kills Plenty and Respects Nothing and Burning Breast. I can’t get over the names- I just feel that they are emblematic and gorgeous. These people wear their hearts on their sleeves. I went to a naming ceremony/eighth grade graduation today where traditional names like these were given to the graduates. People close to them chose these names especially for them and read them in Lakota first. One name that I remember is Strong Woman with Smile.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
5-10-08
I have been working in my classroom for three days now. I feel like I’ve been there for years. These students are so wonderful I can’t even explain it to you. They are finishing their final project, a memoir. As third graders you wouldn’t expect much from their writing, maybe the occasional gem. But these kids are amazing. They see through all of the crap in the world and write what they see; they tell it like it is. Of the twenty students three are writing about suicides that have happened recently in their family and several others are writing about deaths. I can’t imagine being in third grade and having to live with all of this and go to school and do homework.
One boy found out that I have no cousins and told me that he would be my cousin. The next day he asked me if he was weird. He said that nobody likes him and he has no friends. It broke my heart. He’s probably my favorite in the class and it physically hurts me to hear that from him. I just want to take him away from all of the crap in his life and give him the encouragement that he needs but I can’t. For him to succeed he is going to have to get through all of this and learn to stand on his own and that just kills me. I want to protect all of these kids from the things they have to deal with.
We drove around this weekend. Today we went to a Sioux pottery place, Custer State Park, and Deadwood. I took Benedryl this morning and functioned in a haze, light-headed with buzzing in my ears. I fell asleep on the way to Deadwood and woke up in the middle of the Black Hills. I saw snow dusting the ground, red dirt spilling into red mud, pine trees rising up until the hills turned black. The road wound around following a river and each turn brought us to a different section, more memory photographs. I didn’t want to take out my camera because I didn’t want to miss seeing the magic of it with my eyes. You don’t get the same gut-wrenching vision through the lens of a camera.
I’m just going to leave with the final lines of a third grade memoir about a great-grandmother’s death. She said, “My grandmother was sweet like honey and warm like chicken soup. I will love you forever.” How is that not poetry?
5-11-08
The Badlands. The rock behemoths lie on the ground, gently striped, waiting to shake their craggy shoulders and rise with elbows outstretched. They are from an alien land, gorgeous with shadows playing across the features of old wrinkled and timeless ancestral beings.
I can’t describe their beauty or their hold over me.
Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse are man made wonders that don’t hold a candle to this natural creation in front of me.
I have been working in my classroom for three days now. I feel like I’ve been there for years. These students are so wonderful I can’t even explain it to you. They are finishing their final project, a memoir. As third graders you wouldn’t expect much from their writing, maybe the occasional gem. But these kids are amazing. They see through all of the crap in the world and write what they see; they tell it like it is. Of the twenty students three are writing about suicides that have happened recently in their family and several others are writing about deaths. I can’t imagine being in third grade and having to live with all of this and go to school and do homework.
One boy found out that I have no cousins and told me that he would be my cousin. The next day he asked me if he was weird. He said that nobody likes him and he has no friends. It broke my heart. He’s probably my favorite in the class and it physically hurts me to hear that from him. I just want to take him away from all of the crap in his life and give him the encouragement that he needs but I can’t. For him to succeed he is going to have to get through all of this and learn to stand on his own and that just kills me. I want to protect all of these kids from the things they have to deal with.
We drove around this weekend. Today we went to a Sioux pottery place, Custer State Park, and Deadwood. I took Benedryl this morning and functioned in a haze, light-headed with buzzing in my ears. I fell asleep on the way to Deadwood and woke up in the middle of the Black Hills. I saw snow dusting the ground, red dirt spilling into red mud, pine trees rising up until the hills turned black. The road wound around following a river and each turn brought us to a different section, more memory photographs. I didn’t want to take out my camera because I didn’t want to miss seeing the magic of it with my eyes. You don’t get the same gut-wrenching vision through the lens of a camera.
I’m just going to leave with the final lines of a third grade memoir about a great-grandmother’s death. She said, “My grandmother was sweet like honey and warm like chicken soup. I will love you forever.” How is that not poetry?
5-11-08
The Badlands. The rock behemoths lie on the ground, gently striped, waiting to shake their craggy shoulders and rise with elbows outstretched. They are from an alien land, gorgeous with shadows playing across the features of old wrinkled and timeless ancestral beings.
I can’t describe their beauty or their hold over me.
Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse are man made wonders that don’t hold a candle to this natural creation in front of me.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
As we drive it is almost like driving into another world. The ground starts to roll into hills dappled with light and shadows and the pavement skips from black to pink asphalt. We started to walk around this town, Mission South Dakota, and for one of the first times I am truly the minority. The entire town knows that we are here, we the unfamiliar aliens are intruding on their beauty, their lives, and their hardships. And they have made it clear that we are not here to judge. We the alien do not have the authority to come here and stir around with their beliefs and dreams.
I saw a little girl today. I was told that she wants a father so badly that she pretends that any man she meets is her dad. She doesn’t care what the guy looks like, just as long as he is a man that she can claim as her own. To some people a father is a commodity to be desired. A father is something almost as foreign as these busses of white kids from Michigan who think they know what they are talking about. When I was talking about it later I almost started to cry. I forget sometimes how much I am blessed with what I have been given. I have been given a family with so much love and I have been blessed with enough resources my entire life. I cannot even fathom how much my heart would hurt to live in a dorm two blocks from my house just so I could get three meals a day or because I have problems at home. This little girl to me was the first real face of the pain that people go through.
I saw a little girl today. I was told that she wants a father so badly that she pretends that any man she meets is her dad. She doesn’t care what the guy looks like, just as long as he is a man that she can claim as her own. To some people a father is a commodity to be desired. A father is something almost as foreign as these busses of white kids from Michigan who think they know what they are talking about. When I was talking about it later I almost started to cry. I forget sometimes how much I am blessed with what I have been given. I have been given a family with so much love and I have been blessed with enough resources my entire life. I cannot even fathom how much my heart would hurt to live in a dorm two blocks from my house just so I could get three meals a day or because I have problems at home. This little girl to me was the first real face of the pain that people go through.
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