Notes from Public School - Day 75

I have the great honor of being the Teacher of the Year at Berea Elementary School for the 2022 - 2023 school year.

I accept that honor with a humble heart.

Like writing a book, teaching is not something you do by yourself.

Have you heard the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child?”

Well, I’m part of a creative, compassionate, committed village, for sure.

I’m so thankful to teach at BES.

It takes a village like ours to teach a child.

There’s another African proverb I love.

“I am because we are.”

This is certainly true for me.

I am because BES is.

I learned something in a book I read at the beginning of my life and work in inner city neighborhoods and schools titled Theirs Is The Kingdom by Robert Lupton.

Here is that something.

Care is the bigger part of cure.

It’s the thing I hope my family, friends, school, community, and world knows most deeply about me.

I care.

Here is a small story I wrote.

I wrote it with care.

It’s filled with kindness and love.

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.” - Salmon Rushdie

She held his hand. 

“For someone so small and frail, he has big, strong hands,” she thought as her fingers intertwined his.

When you're a migrant kid, and you spend most of your days picking peaches and tomatoes in a burlap sack as big as you in the hot sun, your hands grow like the fruits and vegetables of summer.

But the rest of your body withers away like vines in winter.

He squeezed her hand.

His heart beat in it.

She felt it deeply inside her.

She turned and looked at him.

“Little Salt,” she whispered, “I understand.”

He felt tenderness.

He looked into her earthy brown eyes.

When you're a native kid in the Arctic Circle, and you spend most of your life building and mending under the small sun of frozen days, your heart grows beautiful and mysterious, like the great bowhead whales under the ice.

You become light in the never ending night of winter darkness.

But the rest of you bends against the harsh, bitter winds of the Chukchi Sea.

They both turned and looked over the water at the setting sun. 

They knew kindness.

They felt the warmth of love.