My Teacher's Manifesto

“If you don’t know the kind of person I am,

And I don’t know the kind of person you are

A pattern others made will prevail in the world,

And following the wrong god home, we may miss our star.…

    - William Stafford: Excerpt from A Ritual to Read to Each Other

 

I don’t drink coffee, but each day hold an empty cup in my hands and sip slowly, energized by the caffeine of the vision that has sustained me, surprisingly and somewhat miraculously, my whole life. A vision that began with rejecting so many of the patterns that have prevailed in the world, so many of the wrong gods that so many have followed to their home. The gods of power and privilege and prejudice, of greed and groveling and groping to be above your neighbor, of machines and money and Manifest Destiny. All of which narrow us down to a sliver of our promise, grind down our initial greatness to a fraction of our possibility, build fortresses around the heart, dim the light in our minds to a flickering distraction, the bulb sullied by our chosen ignorance, reduce the elegance and grace of the body to a plodding clod of bone and muscle bent over by the weight of our failures. 

 

But thought it may start there, Vision is never built by rejection alone. It sings itself into life through our efforts to fully embrace Life, to dance through the whole catastrophe and plant our flag firmly in the field of beauty, of wonder, of gratitude beyond reason for the mere grace of being alive. It gathers strength through our daily choices and rises up stronger when thrown down to earth by those who don’t want to be reminded of what they have given up or given up on. 

There are myriad paths to the Golden Land— like music, for example. Or cooking. Certainly walks in the woods or work in the garden. It helps to be around children. It helps to be around elders who have never abandoned their childlike selves. Reading is good, writing also and reciting poetry. Any work that brings you fully alive and causes no harm to others. Hanging out with people who welcome your whole self. These the building blocks of vision and when they tumble and fall, why, get back to work and start stacking again.

 

As for me, all of the above (except that garden work) is my yellow brick road I tred on daily. 

So if I'm working in your school, I want to know if I can bring my whole self to work here. I won’t be following any scripts, be it from the Left or Right, but promise to meet each child with my unshakeable faith that there is a hidden genius in them that I’m here to try to discover and help reveal. And that means deep affirmation when they let out a sliver and equally deep rebuke when they run and hide from their radiance or try to dim the light of others. Yes, and sometimes a firm hand if the occasion calls for it. 

Though it’s unpopular these days with the lawyers circling, I’m in the Billie Holiday School of Child-raising. She talks about gathering together all the kids no one wants at some place in the country and dreams: 

 

…I’d take care of them, feed them, see to it the little bastards go to school, knock them in the head when they’re wrong, but love them whether they’re good or bad.We’d have a crazy big kitchen with a chartreuse stove and I’d supervise the cooking and baking. I’d always be around to teach them my kind of teaching—not the kind that tells them how to spell Mississippi, but how to be glad to be who you are and what you are.”

 

So here I am and this is what I have to offer. Shall we dance?