bury my heart at wounded knee

i don't want to sound like a broken record 

maybe i need a more creative way to tell this story

but from wind river canyon (shoshone land) and tensleep

rocks from the cambrian, precambrian, triassic periods

from thermopolis, the famous hot springs sold to congress in 1897 by chief washakie,

with the one caveat that 1/4 of the springs be always reserved for public use

(congress had been pressuring the tribes to sell for years, you know)

from the black hills carved with those four leaders (but whose leaders?  who?) 

to that towering deviled rock, rising 1280 feet off the high plains

from the bighorns to buffalo

and keyhole to custer (are we really still naming things for this man?)

i hear faint voices in the breeze, and i join in, bewildered, ashamed

this land is my land, this land is your land

well i don't know much about forced migration, gentrification, 

measles and casinos and drug cartels 

the manifold ways in which debt is atoned for, or forgotten

after all, who owns the colorado river?

but my heart aches for the blood in the soil,

the scarlet that stains my feet seeping up from our given, good earth

back at blue ridge

Today, when we are discussing ''Los opciones de Kelso (la rana) para resolver problemas grandes y pequeñas,'' we come to ''Calmate.''

''Cool down your chicken,'' Sirgio says, explaining the meaning of ''Calmate.'' I ask him if his mom says this, and he nods his head.

Of the same child, a bright reader, I must frequently request, ''Read it again please, this time nicely,'' as he lapses into funny accents almost without fail by the end of the first sentence on each page.

Later Seth raises his hand as la Maestra asks everyone to put their hands down. ''I was going to say something important,'' he declares.'' ''You have one second to do that,'' she responds. Esta maestra es una poca intensa.

''My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather died 10,000 years ago,'' Seth says.

First grade is about following directions; stomachaches and hard falls can be cured with an ice pack or drink of water. I've been working a lot on reading with these little ones lately, in Spanish and English. Teaching reading to a kid who struggles to connect sounds to letters is no easy task, not to mention that English has 1100 rarely reliable ways to spell 44 sounds for Spanish's 38 and 35 reliable ones.

If preschool and kindergarten are about concepts (time, family and community, spatial and mental categorization), and in grades 6-12 we teach content, then grades 1-5 are all about skills. Cutting, coloring, pasting, tying shoes, ordering, arranging, writing, reading, adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, problem-solving, observing... I guess I just never took the elementary teaching vocation very seriously, but think of where you'd be without these basis abilities?

Last week my Latino first grade teacher pointed out that the reason our afternoon block can be a little crazy with behavior problems is because we have all the English readers in one room at that time. ''You mean the behavior kids are white,'' I said, a bit boldly, knowing we were both thinking of the eight or so kids who consistently tend to act up. He nodded, embarrassed. He isn't trying to stir up anything, and culture plays a large part, but it's true.

So, there's that.

book review

The role of language and story was one thing that especially struck me in Ruby Payne’s book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, which addresses the hidden rules and understandings of poverty, middle-class, and wealth cultures.

Payne discusses discourse of language, explaining the five different registers we use: Frozen (liturgical, wedding vows); Formal (standard sentence syntax—for school and work); Consultative (formal conversation); Casual (language between friends, full of non-verbal assists, 400-800 word vocabulary); and Intimate (language between lovers or twins, language of sexual harassment). (27)

To participate in larger North American society, a person must learn formal register English, either through acquisition (natural immersion) or learning (direct-teaching/study). Formal register is the direct, to-the-point, correct and complete sentence syntax used for job interviews, in the workplace, at parent-teacher conferences, for standardized exams, and more.

Lacking the ability to access formal register, a person cannot communicate effectively in writing without non-verbal assists and will struggle to adequately speak the language of the middle class, setting that person outside of the middle class. (28)

Language also includes ordering of narrative and sequencing of story: the ability to spatially, chronologically, or otherwise categorize information. The problem with being unable to sequentially tell story is that information is received and processed in an associative, random way, which is okay sometimes, but makes it difficult to assign information to categories, or to weave a web of knowledge. (93)

Categorization essentially allows us to organize space, assign meaning and place in a narrative structure, and understand a coherent and truthful story of ourselves and of the world.

Payne’s words have made me think of language as resource and the privilege of access to paper. Literacy is a huge tool to own, though so easily taken for granted. What presumptions do I bring to the table in my interactions with others? That everyone I know also came from a house full of books and has parents with multiple college degrees? That access to fancy personal technology, that goldmine of information, is a given? What language am I speaking, and what language do I assume will be spoken to me?

At Blue Ridge, where a large percentage of the parents I see are pajama-clad, poverty, at least based on income, is the culture of 93% of the students. When many of the teachers come from a middle-class background, a lot is lost in cultural translation between teaching-style and learning receptivity. Maybe we would be better teachers if we spent more time developing strategies to speak the culture of poverty and teach the language of the middle class, to help provide more opportunities to our kids and point them to a door out of poverty.

wishing to share a cup of chai with you

It's interesting how easy it is to skirt real conversation in life. I don't just mean by using email, texting, or brief messages, but I also mean in our actual interactions with each other.

T.E. once told me how rare he found real, actual conversation, you know with two people actually doing a somewhat balanced amount of sharing and listening (not just story-trading or topping!), of give and take. I remember sort of being surprised when he said that, like, well, maybe you're just too quiet or something... but I think it's true.

I think real conversation takes work, maybe more work than most of us are used to in our addiction to instant-gratuity, and I also think it's kind of scary for people, to actually open up about their lives and thoughts and questions and allow another person access and even, on some level, say. Because to really let someone in is also implicitly trusting them to judge you fairly, to not write you off if they disagree. To keep listening and practicing empathy and also telling you the truth.

We have made our own stories so cheap, resorting to them before we have practiced the long art and discipline of conversation with another person, and so ascertained him/her desirous/deserving to hear; R. told me once after dropping a big piece of hers onto a new acquaintance how she thought, ''Wait--that is a pearl! I want to be careful.''

K. was telling me Sunday about a dinner she just had with a boy. She said something about a documentary she had seen in class (in an interested, informative, curious, moved-by, sharing way), and he immediately got defensive and closed-up, like he took it personally, when she was just trying to reflect.

Why do we do that? Why do we get uncomfortable and shut down when someone says something we disagree with? Especially in a public place, I think that can feel really unsafe... when some kind of opinion is presented as the Obvious Right, and so we are afraid to publicly think differently. And I always jump to, ''Well, this conversation is just honestly lower than what I'm interested in, so I'm not anti-these people, I just don't want to participate.'' Like it's a lost cause or something.

I don't know what I'm trying to say, except that I wish I could go to some kind of group of people, of friends, who didn't show up with the assumption that everyone else feels the same way as them about things, or that trace attitude of being the Enlightened or Right one. A people who want to talk and listen and ask and share (platicar, I always think, though the google translation of that word is terrible) about faith and life and the meaning and narrative they see or long for and the questions of why and who and for what? Why are we all so afraid of this?

Both my friends who call truth by the name Jesus and my friends on the search for truth, for the divine, it's like we are all so quick to be offended, to shut down, to refuse to engage in conversation. I count myself. I think part of the reason we can't talk about politics and questions and beliefs is that we don't know how without feeling we have to establish ourselves or feel directly attacked by someone else's opinion. And sometimes we even let our opinions sound like attacks. So we talk about sports and the weather and work and gossip instead. Or we attend awkward meetings where we are in the closeted minority and so don't/can't engage and feel alone.

And why do we even have to have an opinion on so many things?

I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. To try to learn from everyone what I can. I want conversation to be more relaxed again. I don't want to live my life arrogant and enlightened and making other people feel unsafe when I say what I think. I want to live as someone who invites others to share, who listens well, who provides safety, and who tells the truth as best she can in a way that furthers conversation, the wanting.