trevor’s dictionary of lost things

Because I’m an elementary school teacher, I know a little about a lot.

One day, I wondered, “What is one thing I can study, one subject I can pour myself into, so I can know a lot about a little, so I can become a genius about that one thing?”

Whales. That was the answer to my wondering question. I would learn everything I could learn about living things that are not only a lot, but are the ‘lottest,’ the biggest, creatures to have EVER lived in the world.

My wonder of whales began when I was a boy. I was a little, inquisitive, kind kid and my heart was drawn to whales, who were similar to me in their inquisitiveness and kindness, but different from me in their, well, in their ‘lottness.’

“What would it be like,” I thought, “To be friends with whales? To be protected by whales? To be in the peaceful presence of whales?”

Since that time, I’ve learned that humpback whales hold seals on their chests to protect them from killer whales. 

Blue whales have hearts the size of Volkswagen Beetles and sing to each other over thousands and thousands of miles. 

Narwhals place the tips of their long, hornlike teeth into the broken ones of hurting narwhals to assuage their pain.

That’s what whales do.

That’s who whales are.

Around my school, I’m known as the whale genius, not because of my deep and wide knowledge of all things cetacean, but because of my curiosity about them, my love for them and my passion to be like them - protective, present and peaceful in the world.

That’s what I do.

That’s who I am.

That’s the lottness in my littleness.

That’s my genius in the simple.

That’s me.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

Today at school, one thing made me laugh and one thing made me cry.

This is common during a school day, feeling your heart both rise to the clouds and sink to the bottom of the sea.

Such is the life of a helper/teacher.

Here is the thing that made me laugh.

I was sitting at the lunch table with my students, eating my lunch - mac and cheese, raw baby carrots, a plumb and half of a bat shaped brownie. (You can tell I’m an elementary school teacher just by the lunch I eat, huh?)

One of my students looked up from his mac and cheese with a serious look on his face.

“Mr. Barton,” he asked sincerely, “How do you think giraffes mate?”

I nearly choked on my bat shaped brownie and dropped a baby carrot into my mac and cheese.

Being a 4th grade teacher, I’m used to random questions.

This is the first time, however, I’ve been asked this one.

“Very carefully,” I answered matter-of-factly, and moved on to, ummm, less awkward topics.

And here is the thing that made me cry.

I was rocking in my rocking chair with my students around me, finishing the novel The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.

“Who do you most identify with in the story?”

I love to cast out this question among my students after we finish a great story, because I’m teaching them to put themselves into the shoes of the characters we meet, teaching them empathy.

One of my tough boys raised his hand.

I was surprised because he usually chooses to remain quiet and thoughtful during our book talks.

“Sistine,” he answered.

“Oh yeah?” I continued, “Why’s that?”

He’s the kind of kid I expected to identify with the tiger in the story.

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright/

In the forests of the night/

What immortal hand or eye/

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?/

In what distant deeps or skies/

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?/

On what wings dare he aspire?”

says the poem in the book about the tiger.

It could easily be a poem about my student.

“I chose Sistine because her father made a mistake and she can’t see him, and my dad’s in jail and I can’t see him.”

Dang.

Life.

Life is real.

Being a teacher keeps me real, too.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

Her arms and legs 

are branches 

of maple trees.

Her hair

is sky 

on moonless nights. 

Her voice 

is the dawn

of early mornings.

Her hands and feet

are the soil

of farms and fields.

Her brown eyes 

are stars

in rivers.

She is earth.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

It’s morning, an early South Carolina low country morning.

A cool breeze is blowing off the ocean.

Sparkling dew drops are in the grass at my bare feet.

It’s the dawn of a new day and a new year in my life.

Today is my birthday. 

I was born ten years ago on a Friday the 13th.

“Your birth changed Friday the 13th from an unlucky day to the luckiest day ever, Little Salt,” says my abuelo every year. “You’re a lucky rabbit’s foot for the world.”

He always smiles like the sun as he says it, and that makes my heart feel like the sun, all warm and bright.

Two maple saplings are in front of me, one to my right and one to my left, at the end of the dirt path that leads to the hollowed out school bus where we stay.

My abuelo planted them for my birthday.

“Little Salt,” he whispered early this morning before dawn, “I planted two trees for you.

I planted two so they will never be alone.

Every year, they’ll take in sunshine and rain.

They’ll grow tall and broad and strong.

Every year they’ll face hurricane winds that might break them apart in the ground.

I planted them so they can give tired campesinos a place to sit down and rest when they’re hot and tired from a long day in the peach orchards and tomato fields.

I planted them so they can give niños a place to climb and laugh and swing.

I planted them so they can give birds a place to perch and sing for the people.

I planted them for you.

Mi nieto, look at me.

When you look at them, remember.

You are loved.

Love in return.

That’s the best gift I can give you for your cumpleaños.

And that’s the best gift you can give to the world.

Love.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

What am I?

I am a pencil. 

I am the yellow color of the pencil that is the yellow of the early morning sun that rises each and every morning as I make my way to school. 

I am the eraser that rubs out mistakes students make in my classroom, mistakes that I correct and forgive until there is only a hint that they were there in the first place.

I am the graphite students use to write their stories for the world.

I am notebook paper.

I am the blank pages on which students write what they’re learning about the world.

I am lines that keep students organized and headed in the right direction.

I am textbooks.

I am the area model to help my students understand multiplication instead of just memorizing numbers.

I am the planets.

I am human rights.

I am a teacher.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

They migrated to the United States when things in El Salvador got so bad.

There was more death than life for them there.

So they made their way through Guatemala and Mexico to the border on a train called The Beast. 

A kind priest listened to their story and led them to an Underground Railroad that carried them to a church in Brownsville that gave them sanctuary. 

From there they migrated across the south, dropping sweat and blood onto the plowed ground until they found themselves in South Carolina, many thousands of miles and heartbeats away from where they began.

They picked tomatoes and peaches near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean around Charleston, living in an old, broken down school bus.

Little Salt knew they’d move down the coast through Georgia to Florida as summer changed to fall changed to winter, and that they’d move back up the coast along that same migratory road as winter changed to spring changed to summer again. 

He used to despair the migrating until he learned that whales are migrants, too.

This brought hope to his heart.

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

Every school day just after 2 p.m., Sandra pushes her cart into my classroom to clean the bathroom and empty the trash cans. 

She is the school custodian and my students love her. 

I love her, too.

When we hear her squeaky wheels in the hallway outside our door, we listen for her kind voice and contagious giggle.

 

"Ms. Sandra! Ms. Sandra! Can I help you empty the trash? Can I help you?" they yell out with their hands waving in the air.

"Jennifer,” she says, “You look so cute today! How you doin' VicTOR? Francisco, baby, you look like you're doing a good job for Mr. Barton. You come on over and help me today. Anna, honey, that's okay, you can help me tomorrow." 

She knows all of my students by name.

One day, I asked Sandra something I’d been wondering for a while. 

“What do you like best about working at our school?" 

She put her hands on her hips.

"It's the kids!  Hmph. I don’t take home much money. I barely make enough to cover food, clothes and rent, so it's not the money. (Note to self: someone who works so hard for 8 hours a day shouldn’t struggle to make ends meet. What can you do, TSB, to help fix that?) I work second shift, so it’s not the hours. And people look at me and see a janitor, so it’s not the way I'm treated. But I love the kids. It’s the kids.”

She does love the kids.

 

Last Friday, one of our second-graders was having a tough day. 

I asked him to pick up trash he’d left at the table during lunch.

“I hate teachers!” he screamed.

He threw his tray onto the floor, stomped over to the corner of the cafeteria and refused to budge. 

He fell apart.

Sandra helped put him back together again.

 

"Now, you know you can't act that way,” she said in her precise, slow, southern drawl. “I know your momma. I'm gonna get out my cell phone and call her and tell her you're not actin' right." 

Soon, she had him cleaning up his tray and washing the table where his class had been sitting.

On another day, I saw her give an extra milk to a student.

 

"Sometimes, I buy my lunch and sit beside a child I know is hungry," she told me. "Then I can say, 'You can have some of this if you want it, or, ‘You can have some of that.' Children can't learn if they're hungry."

When she leaves my classroom, she walks across the hall.

 

"Hello A," I hear her say. "Look at those new glasses on you. They make you look so handsome."

 

She knows all of the names and stories of the students in that class, too.

"Mr. Barton," she said to me during a quiet moment after school, "I know 'bout these children because I come from where they come. Are you feelin' me? Sometimes, they need somebody to talk to them who understands them."

I see the way Sandra loves our students, the way she knows their names. How she talks to them and helps them.

When I look at her, I don’t see a janitor.

I see her.

“I'm glad you're in the world,” I told her. “What would we do without you?"

Here’s to all the Sandras in our schools and in our world!

trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

Over half of the students at my Title I elementary school in west Greenville are from Mexico, Central America and South America.

I love them.

I have a button on my lanyard that reads, “No human is illegal.”

One of my little students from Honduras read it and looked at me with big, brown, questioning eyes.

“Do you believe that, Mr. Barton,” she asked.

“With all of my heart,” I answered. “With all my life.”

She smiled at me and went about her 4th grade business.

Later in the day, at dismissal, she handed me a letter.

BE FRIENDLY WITH PEOPLE - MR. BARTON it read, with two little hearts inside of a big heart on it.

Wow.

This is what I hope all of my students remember when they think of me.

John Steinbeck once wrote, “In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand people. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a person well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.”

My little student understands.

I teach and write in hope that we will all understand.

In the small story I wrote below, my little student is like Carter and Carver.

She is light.

She is green.

She is soil.

She is.

                         Soil

When my little brother Carver was three, we were sitting together under the old apple tree in the far corner of our yard.

- Carver, be very quiet, look very clos’ly, and listen very care’fly, okay?

- ‘Kay!

- What color is the grass?

- Gween!

- Yep! Do you know what's special about the color green?

- Gween is special?

- Yeah, it's special. Look under you. Look out over Poppa's fields. Look up in the trees. Green is under our feet. Green is all around us. Green is over us. Green is everywhere.

- Gween is evweewheyah.

- Uh huh.

I put my hands on the ground, pushed my fingers into the soil, and pulled away a patch of grass.

- What is this?

- It's duwt.

- Well, really, it's soil. Poppa taught me the difference between dirt and soil and now I want to teach you, okay?

- 'kay.

- The word “dirt” comes from the old, old word “drit”, which means “excrement”. “Excrement” is just a big word that means “poop”.

- Poop!

- Ha! Dirt is the bottom part of the ground. It's used to make a road or a floor.

The word “soil” comes from the old, old words “solium” and “solum”, which mean “seat” and “ground”.

Soil is the top part of the ground. It helps plants grow. It's black and brown. It's made up of helpful things.

Are you lis’nin’?

- Yep!

- Well, I want you to remember that ev’rybody in the world is like the green grass. We’re all the same. We all have hearts and minds and souls and bodies. No person is better than another. We’re all good and we’re all green on the inside.

- ‘Kay! We’ew aw good and aw gween on th’ inside!

- Yeah, but if it’s hot ev’ry day and it don’t rain for weeks and weeks, the grass gets brittle and ugly. Some people are like that on the outside. Life just dries them up and they do ugly things. You gonna’ see them and hear them when we go to town with Momma and Poppa. They gonna’ tell us that we’re dirt, that we’re only good for being used, that we’re no better’n “poop.” Ev’ry time that happ’ns, I want you to remember that we’re not dirt. I want you to reach out and hold my hand, and when you feel my hand I want you to remember that we’re soil, that we he’p the earth grow, that we’re good in the world. Can you do that? Can you hold my hand? Can you remember that? Can you remember that we’re soil?

Carver reached out his toddling hand to me. I took it gently into my own little hand. 

We are light. 

We are green. 

We are soil. 

We are.

We are green. 

We are soil. 

We are.