Notes from public school - day 29

Notes from public school - day 29

Every morning at 6:45 AM, I put my backpack on my shoulder, pick up my coffee mug in my hand and walk out the door and down the steps into a new school day.

Every morning I am filled with the same hope for each one of the 40 students I teach.

I hope curiosity and song for them. 

One of my students looked up at me from a book she was reading. “Mr. Barton,” she said, “You know, I want to know everything about everything!” Then she went back to reading and humming Bach’s Minuet in G Major, a tune I hum again and again throughout the school day.

I want them to find one thing that peaks their curiosity and inspires them to learn as much about it as they possibly can.

I want their hums to be the sound of their learning.

I hope compassion and empathy for them. 

A new student came into my classroom in the middle of the school year. His clothes were tattered and torn. His face was weathered and worn, much too much for a 9 year old child. His life had been a tough one. 

At lunch, one of my students said, “Here, I saved a place for you. You can sit by me. My Mom made these cookies. You can have one, if you want.”

I want them to care for each other.

I hope mystery and endurance for them.

“Mr. Barton, you ask a lot of questions!” one of my students said.

I do.

“Questions make the world go ‘round,” I’m fond of saying.

I want them to struggle to find answers that lead to their own questions about the world around them.

I want them to learn to live with open eyes, open minds and open hearts in the mystery of life.

I wrote this small story as a part of a larger novel I’m working on. 

I’m like the old grandmother in the story, sewing life into my students.

                                   Taki

In a place that hadn’t been seen by many people, she hadn’t been seen by many people either. 

The Iñuit people knew from the beginning that every snowflake that falls from the sky is unique. 

No two snowflakes have ever been alike, are ever alike, or ever will be alike. 

The crystals that form and make the snowflake are so sensitive to the conditions around them that a breeze blowing over the ice, a cloud passing between the sun and the earth, or the vibrations from the heartbeat of a whale surfacing on the waters of the Chukchi Sea can change them into something new.

Taki’s mother and father knew that she was something new.

On the first day of her life, she was swaddled in a warm blanket in her crib.

Her Grandmother had sewed the three Arctic whales into that red blanket with yellow thread the color of the morning sunrise over the waters.

"With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and song into the life of the baby," she had whispered, "For the beluga look quizzical in the way they hold their heads and can sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.

With the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it's own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.

And with the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead's name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it's wonderful ways. Because of the cold, cold Arctic water it lives longer than any other creature in the world.

As she looked up into the weathered faces of her parents with her deep brown eyes, she whistled a beautiful song.

She was a beautiful song.

from Trevor’s brain - a small part of a novel in the making

Hilcias loved whales. 

He would walk beside his abuelo down rows and rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale stitched onto the front of it.

“A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”

“A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much.”

“A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it,” he whistled.

“Boy,” his abuelo would smile, “You must be whistling about whales.”

Now, as he sat beside his side of the Atlantic Ocean in a state park on Kiawah Island, something wonderful happened.

A gigantic tooth and a mysterious conch shell washed up with the waves onto the shore.

He was astonished.

The tooth was a sperm whale's tooth, of this he was sure.

The sperm whale was one of his favorite whales.

The first picture he had ever drawn of a whale, before he had visited the public library and checked out every book he could find about whales, was a picture of a sperm whale.

This was before he learned that the brightness of artificial light is measured by a lumen, which was simply the light given off by one cup of sperm oil and candlelight before the invention of electricity.

This was before he had memorized the field guide to the whales of the world.

This was before he had sketched a picture of how he thought a whale should look before he had ever seen a picture of a whale, and that sketch was a picture of a sperm whale.

He picked up the tooth with both hands. It was almost a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory. 

"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "Because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws, only slots that the teeth from the lower jaws can fit into.”

“If I could slice the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale as the rings of a trunk show the age of the tree.”

He gently laid the tooth beside him on the sand.

He picked up the conch shell with both of his hands, too. 

"What a wonderful shell,” he thought. “Look at it’s shape and color.”

The shape was a common shape in nature, formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, the Fibonacci numbers, a special shape that also appears many times in geometry, architecture, art and music.

Some people called the shape God’s blueprint, for it seemed to be the blueprint from which God made the world.

It's color was a common color in nature, too. 

It was three shades of yellow. 

It's spine was the brilliant yellow of the sun that rose that very morning. 

It's siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in early August. 

It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a field.

He raised it to his tiny ear. 

Someone had told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean inside of it. 

"I wonder if it's true," he thought. 

"If it is, I can take it home to our bus and bring the the great whales with me, too."

He expected to hear only the ocean. 

Boy, was he surprised. 

The sound he heard inside the shell wasn’t just of breaking waves and rolling tides. 

Within the sound of the sea there was a song.

It was the most beautiful song he had ever heard. 

He closed his eyes and saw the notes dancing before him. 

“This song comes from a humpback whale,” he thought.

“I...understand it. I understand it!”

The whale sang to him in his own language, with his own whistles!

They were notes of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation, and understanding - all of the notes he whistled, all of the notes that made up his life, all of the notes that he whistled to the world but that the world couldn’t understand.

All of those notes came back to him in the song of the humpback whale.

A tear rolled down his cheek, and then he wept as if all of the hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness, sadness and loneliness poured out of him onto the sand and into the vast waters of the ocean.

“I hear you! I understand you!” he whistled into the shell.

To his great surprise he heard, “I hear you, too! I understand you! Finally, we’ve found you!”

A sperm whale, a humpback whale and a blue whale surfaced out beyond the waves.

“There’s a story we tell along our migratory routes,” sang the blue whale, “About a boy on land, a boy who can sing our language, a boy who can understand our songs, a boy who is hope.”

“You’re that boy, Hilcias.”

“Me?” 

“You.”

“But, how?”

“We’re looking for the world’s loneliest whale,” sang the blue whale.

“We call him 52 Blue because he sings at a frequency we cannot hear.”

“We think you’ll be able to hear him.” 

“And he’ll be able to hear you.”

“And we’ll be able to help him find a family.”

Notes from public school - day 28

Have you heard of sand mandalas?

They’re created by Buddhist monks.

It takes years of study for the monks to learn all that needs to be known about sand mandalas.

A group of monks work together to create them.

The group chooses a design and sketches it out with ropes and rulers on a table.

Then they use simple tools to form the mandala with colorful grains of sand.

They place the sand almost grain by grain onto the design.

Isn’t that amazing?

The design takes days and days to create.

The finished mandalas are colorful, wonderful, beautiful, and full of genius.

And the monks are finished with their creations...they take brooms in their hands...and sweep their mandala away.

Can you believe it?

All of that time and effort swept away.

The monks simply gather the swept sand into their hands and drop it into water as a blessing for the world.

Then they begin working on another sand mandala.

Wow.

Writing is like building a sand mandala, you know.

I pour yourself into a small story about a student from El Salvador.

I use words to paint a picture of her human face.

I write of her earthy brown eyes full of hope for food, shelter, clothing, health care and education.

Full of hope for love.

I use words to fight injustice.

I write against the ones who would deny my little student her human rights.

I use words to paint a picture of a human life.

I pour myself into a small story about Patrick.

He and his family are from Peru.

He has been in the United States for one year.

Today, his friend Alexander got hit on the side of the head with a soccer ball.

“Are you okay, Alex?” I asked. “Do you need to go to the nurse?”

His eyes filled with tears and he burst out crying.

“I’ll take him,”’said Patrick.

He put his arms around Alex and held him.

“Come on, Alex, I’ll help you,” he said.

Then Patrick teared up and began to weep.

He’s such a kind, caring kid he feels the hurt of others.

As an elementary school teacher, I’m a witness to miraculous moments.

Moments like the life of Patrick.

A human life.

 

I try to create something beautiful in those moments.

Then I sweep it away.

I drop it into waters of newspapers and social media sites, offering it as a blessing to the world.

Then I pour myself into the next story.

The human faces, the human lives, are all around me.

If only I have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart to write them.

A friend from high school, BonniecBaxter, sent a message to me this morning.

“The world needs your stories,” she wrote.

That lifted my heart as if it were a basket under a hot air balloon set free to rise into a blue, cloud dotted sky and float gently over the good green earth.

(I just watched the movie Up...can you tell?)

The world needs my stories.

Wow.

They are stories.

They are sand mandalas.

I hope the little grains of sand of them are blessings to the world that can make it more human for everyone.

Notes from public school - day 27

Kindness.

I see kindness every day.

Elementary school kids have a knack for it.

Sometimes they show it with sparkles in their eyes and smiles on their faces as they hug, high five, handshake or fist bump their way into the classroom in the morning.

Sometimes they show it with words. “Mr. Barton, you’re the best! You’re the smartest teacher in the world!”

Oftentimes they show it with pictures.

Such is the way of Emily.

“She never stops talking,” said my 3rd grade teacher friend who taught her last year.

She was kidding.

I have another student who says more in one minute than Emily says all week.

I’m not kidding.

She is so quiet.

She is a sunflower in a field, following the path of the sun.

There is beauty in her silence.

She works so hard.

She pours herself into the school day, trying to be the best person she can be and do the best work she can do.

I know why she’s quiet.

Her Dad is in Mexico.

She is here.

She wants him to be here with her.

That’s why she’s quiet.

Every Friday, I give out a student of the week award.

I look for students who are kind, hard working, and well behaved.

Last Friday, she earned the award.

I wish you could’ve seen the sparkle in her brown eyes and the brightness of her smile when I called her name.

The other students clapped and cheered for her.

I handed her the award and gave her a fist bump.

She didn’t say a word, as is her way.

On Monday, she hugged me as she walked through the classroom door.

She put her backpack down, opened it and took out a yellow folder.

Inside of the folder, there was a picture...a drawing she had created for me.

I can see a lot about her life as I look at that picture this afternoon.

The paper on which it is drawn is tattered and torn. 

Her little family is very poor, so there’s no money for sketch pads and art pencils.

The character is smiling.

This is the miraculous thing. 

The smile of the character is like her smile on Friday when she received her award.

By drawing this picture for me, it is as if she is saying, “I’m carrying a deep sadness inside of me, but you seeing me, you believing in me, brought me a moment of happiness, a moment of joy.”

Such is the way of Emily.

Such is the way of a teacher.

Such is the way of kindness.

Notes from public school - day 26

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

This quote from Atticus Finch from the words of Harper Lee in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favorites in all of literature.

I’ve tried to put it into practice in my life.

Try to see things through other peoples eyes.

Try to feel things through other peoples hearts.

Try to walk around in other peoples shoes.

Today I put on the Chuck Taylor tennis shoes of my nine and ten year old students and stepped onto the asphalt and into our Wednesday dodge ball game.

Usually, I’m a thrower.

This time I was a dodger.

I wish you could have seen me run back and forth along the court, dodging the throws of the students and teachers.

“Everybody aim for Mr. Barton!” they screamed.

I was too fast and agile for them!

Until 3 minutes before recess was over.

Shelsea grabbed the ball just as I turned to run the other way and slung it at me.

Pow!

I was out.

There was thunderous applause.

“We got Mr. Barton!” everyone giggled.

One by one they came to me to give me a high five, a fist bump and a pat on the shoulder.

“You did good, Mr. B! Thanks for dodging with us. You’re terrific!”

As a teacher and a writer, I try to walk around in my student’s shoes.

“What would it be like,” I think, “If I got evicted from my house and had to sleep on the couch of a neighbor?” when I learn this happened to one of my students. “What would it be like to walk through the door of the classroom on the first morning after that happened?”

“What would it be like,” I think, “If I traveled thousands of miles through Mexico with my Mom and Dad to escape violence in Honduras and saw the sights people see and live the life people live (and die) on the migratory road toward the U.S. border?” when I learn this happened to so many of my students I teach each year. “What would it be like to sit at one of the tables in the classroom and learn the comparison model in 4th grade math after seeing and experiencing that?”

“What would it be like,” I think, “To be one of my students?”

Chekhov once said, “It’s not the novelist’s job to answer questions. It’s their job to ask them.”

I ask much and know little.

I know one thing, though.

Climbing into my students shoes and walking around in them puts me on the path to understanding.

And understanding puts me on the path to kindness.

Even when I get hit with the dodge ball.