Notes from Public School - Day 154

For around 40 minutes each day, we have a writer’s workshop in my classroom.

If you know me well, you know this is my favorite time of the school day.

One of the main reasons I love to write is because writing helps me understand the world around me.

And one of the main reasons I love to teach my students to write is because their writing helps me understand them.

We are working on “small moments,” writing as clearly and detailed as we can about something that happened in our lives that we will never forget.

We will move on from the small moment to longer narrative pieces about our lives in the coming weeks.

Twelve of the twenty students in my home room are from Mexico, Central America and South America.

Though they are nine and ten year olds, they are aware (painfully so, I might add) of the anti-immigrant rhetoric and action in the United States over the past years.

They look to me as their teacher for comfort, courage and creativity to help them live life in Greenville, South Carolina, the South, the U.S., and the world in these times.

I am here for them.

“Some of you were born and lived in other countries before you came to the United States.

Some of you were born in the United States, but your parents immigrated to the United States and talk with you about the country from which they came,” I began the writing workshop today. “I would love for you to write about what you remember or your parents remember about your home country. I want to hear those stories. I want to read those stories.”

“Immigrants have done so much to help make America a great country,” I exclaimed.

Then I wrote an opening paragraph about my own experience as an immigrant to Mali in west Africa and what it was like to move back to the United States after living there for 3 years.

“Can you believe,” I asked, “That when I lived in Mali there was only one brand of soap I could buy in the market near my village? I loved it! It was so, so difficult to come back to the United States, go to a grocery store, walk down an aisle, and see that there were 10 or 20 different brands of soap. How was I supposed to know which one to buy?!”

They laughed at my dilemma.

Then they began to write.

One of my students is from Peru.

He has been in the United Stated for a little over a year.

How can I describe him?

He has a bowl haircut, and his bangs zig zag across his forehead in an endearing kind of way.

His eyes are the brown of the dirt paths that led up the mountain to his highland village home. They are deep and kind.

His smile is like the sunshine and his laugh is like a cool, refreshing breeze.

I just chose him as a Terrific Kid from my classroom, an award that I’m sure will bring out that smile and laughter for an entire day.

Everyone who meets him knows he is a special kid, one of those people who are born into the world to make it a better place.

I asked him to tell me his story so I could help him write it down.

“When I lived in Peru, I lived in a mountain village,” he said. “The ground was very rocky. We were all very poor.”

“It is good for us to live in America, because my papí and mamí can make a little money,” he continued.

“One time, my mamí went for a job and someone said, ‘No, we don’t want you here,’ and she came home and cried.”

“But I’m glad you want me here, Mr. Barton.”

My heart soared into the sky like a kite and sank off the ground like a lead balloon at the same time.

Has that ever happened to you?

It happens to me often as I read the lives of the students I teach and travel the road of life with them.

Notes from Public School - Day 153

Both of my grandpas were farmers. 

They held other jobs in their lives, did other work with their hands, but in their hearts they were always farmers. 

By the time I came along, they were no longer working 40 acres with a mule and a plow.

But they both had gardens, wonderful gardens. 

Maybe there was something about rising out of bed before the sun came up, or smelling the dirt in a freshly plowed field, or seeing a red, ripe tomato hanging on a vine, but until the end of their lives they loved to pull on their overalls, put on their caps, pick up their hoes, and plant themselves into those gardens among the vegetables, fruits, and land.

"Being a farmer takes 'lots of hard work and 'lots of humility," they told me at one time or another as I followed them down the rows. 

"It takes 'lots of hard work because each morning from spring 'til fall you get up in the dark, walk the rows with seeds, hoes, and buckets in your hands, plant those seeds, hoe the weeds, and fill those buckets with tomatoes and squash and green beans and strawberries...you plant, hoe, and pick until your feet look as if they have become a part of the ground, until the sweat from your body mixes with the dirt on the ground." 

They were farmer poets, my grandpas were, some of the last of those wonderful farmer poets who used to walk the farms and fields of South Carolina. 

"And it takes 'lots of humility because no matter how hard you work, you can't make the brilliant green bud pop through the deep brown dirt; you can't make the bright flower fold into a baby tomato; you can't make the rain fall to help the corn grow. 

Nope, when you lay down at night and close your eyes to the day you can only know that you have given as much of your heart, mind, soul and body as you can to the ground and that you will receive the produce as a gift.”

As I rise before the sun and make my way toward my elementary school, I often think of my grandpas lives and words. 

Like being a farmer, being a teacher takes 'lots of hard work and lots of humility, too.

All in a day in public school.

Notes From Public School - Day 152

This is the essence of what I hope to do and who I hope to be each day as a teacher and a writer.

small story

I walked with my abuelo across the fIelds of tomatoes.

Our skin was wrinkled and worn like weathered pairs of leather shoes. 

We worked the land, bent down over new plants, built up soil around their stems, tenderly told them we were there to help them grow into tomatoes, tenderly told them we loved them.

“Nosotros estamos aquí, nosotros estamos aquí,” we sang to the plants at sunrise.

We walked and worked, worked and walked, until our feet took on the color of the dark brown soil.

We knelt over the last plant in one of the never ending rows.

It was smaller and weaker than the rest of the plants, for reasons we did not know.

“Maybe it’s because it didn’t get enough nutrients or sunlight or water to help it thrive,” I said, “But only enough to help it survive.”

We didn’t take the small, weak plant into our hands and tear it out of the ground and toss it aside because of it’s smallness and weakness. 

No, we didn’t do that. 

Instead, we caressed the little plant.

We patted extra soil around it.

We sang to it gently in Spanish.

“Ah, amiguita, pedacito de nuestro corazón, te atenderemos, te cuidaremos, te ayudaremos a vivir y crecer.” 

(Ah, little friend, little part of our hearts, we will tend you, we will care for you, we will help you live and grow.)

We looked closely at the little plant, so closely the sweat on our foreheads dripped onto the ground around it like soft rain.

We listened carefully to the little plant, so carefully the beat of our hearts moved the little leaves of the plant, ever so gently, like a morning breeze.

Our amiguita went on to grow the most beautiful, wondrous tomatoes we’d ever seen and tasted in our lives.

We saved its seeds and planted them again and again, season after season, until we shared the fruits with a thousand neighbors who became a thousand friends.

Notes From Public School - Day 151

I learned in my college writing classes that a writer should strive to show and not tell.

Here is a small story to show you me 🙂

One thing you need to know about Hilcias is that he has a big heart. 

Literally.

One day he fell at the end of a long row of tomatoes and hurt his ribs on the corner of a big rock. 

His mamí and abuelo took him to see Dr. Maria at the Free Medical Clinic in the evening at the end of the workday. 

His abuelo put a giant, calloused hand on his chest to monitor his breathing and help him keep still. 

He took quick, shallow breaths because his whole body hurt if he breathed deeply and slowly.

“Wow!” Dr. Maria exclaimed as they looked at the x-ray with her. 

“His ribs are just bruised, but, my goodness, look at the size of his heart! 

I’ve never seen a heart so big in a child so small.”

An echocardiogram confirmed it. 

“It’s rare in children,” explained Dr. Maria, “But his heart is enlarged because his heart muscle isn’t squeezing as well as it should and his heart is growing bigger to compensate. 

The good news is we can treat him so he can lead a nearly normal life. 

He’ll just have to use his heart for something other than professional soccer.”

Later that night, when the old abuelo was reading a book to Hilcias, he said, “I want you to have a broad mind and a big heart, mi niñocita, and it seems nature is helping my hopes come true.” 

Then his abuelo kissed him tenderly on the forehead. 

“Te amo, Hilcias. 

Te amo.”

As Hilcias drifted off to sleep, he remembered that blue whales have the largest hearts that have ever beaten on earth.

Their hearts are so big, he’d be able to walk around in one and go through the swinging doors of it’s ventricles without lowering his head.

This thought comforted him.

“I have a blue whale’s heart,” he thought.

And he did.

Notes from Public School - Day 150

As is often the case on a Friday afternoon, I’m out of gas.

“Please tell me it’s Friday,” I asked a teacher friend of mine in the lunch line, “Because if you tell me it’s Tuesday, I’m gonna break down and cry.”

I’m out of gas.

But my heart is full.

And I’m smiling.

All because of the picture below.

 

It’s a picture of Daniel helping Rigo read a part in a readers theater called “Evan’s Earth Day Lesson.”

Both boys came to Greenville into my classroom and into my heart from Honduras.

Rigo just arrived.

Daniel has been here for a while.

Rigo speaks less than 100 words in English.

Daniel speaks a wonderful mix of Spanish and English.

It’s a moment within a million moments in a school year.

A tender moment.

Look at Daniel’s face.

See the commitment?

See the creativity?

See the compassion?

All the things I hope to teach my students.

All the things I try to nurture in myself.

I showed the picture to Daniel this afternoon.

“Look at you,” I smiled. “I’m so proud of you. Thank you for helping Rigo.”

“Oh,” Daniel smiled back at me, “That was me in kindergarten a few years ago. I had just come here from Honduras. Appolonia helped me because she could speak Spanish and English. I’m just paying forward the kindness.”

Paying forward the kindness.

It’s what we do.

It’s who we are.

All in a day in public school.

Notes From Public School - Day 149

Notes From Public School - Day 149

Today, I wore one of my favorite t-shirts to school.

I’m a graphic t-shirt, comfortable khakis and Chuck Taylors tennis shoe kind of guy.

You have to get past my grumpy clothes to get to my curious mind and tender heart.

The color of today’s t-shirt was green.

That’s my school’s color.

Down the front right side of the t-shirt were the letters L, I, F and E. 

Life.

That’s what happens at my school every day, in all it’s myriad shapes, sizes, colors and expressions.

I’m thankful to be a part of that life.

Down the front left side of the t-shirt are six precepts -

1. To See The World

2. Things Dangerous To Come To

3. To See Behind Walls

4. Draw Closer

5. To Find Each Other

6. And To Feel

You might recognize those six precepts as the mission statement for Life Magazine, and you would be correct.

Still, if some asks me, “What would you like to be when you grow up?” I answer, “I’d like to be a writer for Life Magazine.

I’m kind of a modern day Walter Mitty.

I’d just like to be the journalist instead of the explorer.

Or maybe I’d like to be an exploring journalist.

Hmmm.

But, you know, playing dodge ball with a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds every day, and learning about Louis Braille with them, and teaching them to write stories is being an exploring journalist.

I may not be a writer for Life Magazine.

But I am a writer for Life.

And I’m thankful to be able to be and do that.

human face

I write the human face.

I cry tears from deep inside me, from a place a kind, old priest calls, “Aures cordis,” the ears of the heart.

I hear from there.

I write from there.

I write brown eyes full of kindness.

I write brown skin beautiful.

I write hands and feet calloused.

I write tattered clothes and battered shoes.

I write smiles/sonrisas, the sunrise.

I write rosaries, repaired a thousand times, a reminder that God is in every person in every moment of every day.

I write with hunched shoulders that make me a human question mark.

I write with deep wrinkles on my forehead and around my eyes.

I write with a broken heart that heals.

I write in the morning light.

I write in the nightly darkness.

I hold life closely.

I write the human face.

Trevor Scott Barton, Left Foot Poems, 2022

small story

(this is the essence of what i want to do and who i hope to be each day) 💛

I walked with my abuelo across the fIelds of tomatoes.

Our skin was wrinkled and worn like weathered pairs of leather shoes. 

We worked the land, bent down over new plants, built up soil around their stems, tenderly told them we were there to help them grow into tomatoes, tenderly told them we loved them.

“Nosotros estamos aquí, nosotros estamos aquí,” we sang to the plants at sunrise.

We walked and worked, worked and walked, until our feet took on the color of the dark brown soil.

We knelt over the last plant in one of the never ending rows.

It was smaller and weaker than the rest of the plants, for reasons we did not know.

“Maybe it’s because it didn’t get enough nutrients or sunlight or water to help it thrive,” I said, “But only enough to help it survive.”

We didn’t take the small, weak plant into our hands and tear it out of the ground and toss it aside because of it’s smallness and weakness. 

No, we didn’t do that. 

Instead, we caressed the little plant.

We patted extra soil around it.

We sang to it gently in Spanish.

“Ah, amiguita, pedacito de nuestro corazón, te atenderemos, te cuidaremos, te ayudaremos a vivir y crecer.” 

(Ah, little friend, little part of our hearts, we will tend you, we will care for you, we will help you live and grow.)

We looked closely at the little plant, so closely the sweat on our foreheads dripped onto the ground around it like soft rain.

We listened carefully to the little plant, so carefully the beat of our hearts moved the little leaves of the plant, ever so gently, like a morning breeze.

Our amiguita went on to grow the most beautiful, wondrous tomatoes we’d ever seen and tasted in our lives.

We saved its seeds and planted them again and again, season after season, until we shared the fruits with a thousand neighbors who became a thousand friends.

Trevor Scott Barton, stories for brown eyed girls, 2022

trevor’s easter homily 2022

I walked with my abuelo across the fIelds of tomatoes.

Our skin was wrinkled and worn like weathered pairs of leather shoes. 

We worked the land, bent down over new plants, built up soil around their stems, tenderly told them we were there to help them grow into tomatoes, tenderly told them we were there.

“Nosotros estamos aquí, nosotros estamos aquí,” we sang to the plants at sunrise.

We walked and worked, worked and walked, until our feet took on the dark brown color of the soil.

We knelt over the last plant in one of the never ending rows.

It was smaller and weaker than the rest of the plants, for reasons we did not know.

“Maybe it’s because it didn’t get enough nutrients or sunlight or water to help it grow and thrive,” I said, “But only enough to barely keep it alive.”

We didn’t take the small, weak plant into our hands and tear it out of the ground and toss it aside because of its smallness and weakness. 

No, we didn’t do that. 

Instead, we caressed the little plant.

We patted extra soil around it.

We sang gently to it in Spanish.

“Ah, amiguita,” we sang together, “Pedacito de nuestro corazón, te atenderemos, te cuidaremos, te ayudaremos a vivir y crecer.” (Ah, little friend, little part of our hearts, we will tend you, we will care for you, we will help you live and grow)

We looked closely at the little plant, so closely the sweat on our foreheads dripped onto the ground all around it like soft rain.

We listened carefully to the little plant, so carefully the beat of our hearts moved the little leaves of the plant gently, ever so gently, like a morning breeze.

Our amiguita went on to grow the most beautiful, wondrous tomatoes we’d ever seen and tasted in our lives.

We saved its seeds and planted them again and again, season after season, until we shared the fruits with a thousand neighbors who became a thousand friends.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2022

My first published chapbook of poems 💛

It’s National Poetry Month! If you would like to open the window to my heart, climb in and walk around a bit then I’d love to share my first book of poems with you.

 

I think you will find beauty in the plain, genius in the simple, wonder in the ordinary and courage in the human in these poems in which I have tried to look closely and listen carefully to the world.

Just e-mail me at trevorscottbarton@gmail.com or text me at 864-525-9530 if you would like a copy.

I can mail your book or hand deliver it to you.

They are $15.00 a copy.

10% of all sales will go to the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center.

Thanks!

belly of a whale

trevor’s good friday homily 2022

Have you ever thought of the inside of a school bus as the belly of a whale?

 

I do.

At night, as I stand inside the old, gutted bus that is my home, I think about being in the belly of a whale.

Darkness with a hint of light.

Shadows of knapsacks holding all our belongings in the world.

Quietness with a whisper of deep breaths from ship sized lungs.

Echoes of the world. 

Small pieces of sounds.

The end of the day of life and work of migrant workers on a Johns Island farm.

Stillness.

I feel the words rise up inside of me that my abuelo taught me to say when it is dark and I am afraid.

“I am salt.

I am light.

I am made from the dust.”

I sit down on the floor in the belly of my whale.

A feeling covers me like the old blanket my abuela made for me years and miles ago.

Gently.

Tenderly.

“Why am I here?” I think.

I hear a still, small voice in the belly of my whale.

"To be, Tomás.

To be Tomás.”

https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/migrant-workers-theyre-really-vulnerable/article_d70f7035-79d4-5b65-963d-25fc4d6e9f26.html

Notes From Public School - Day 147

Trevor’s Precept - April 14, 2022

This afternoon, I received this e-mail from my co-worker and dear friend Lynn Vines.

“Thank you to you, Mr. Barton, and your two astounding classes. Olivya and I both enjoyed our time with you today! We appreciate your kind invitation to your classes.”

Let me give you some background information 

about Ms. Vines and Olivya.

Ms. Vines is a teacher to exceptional children at my school.

She used the word ‘astounding’ in her message to me, and there is no better word that I could use to describe her.

She is astounding.

If you could spend one day with her in her classroom, you would understand what a good human is.

Olivya is an exceptional child in her classroom.

Born blind and autistic, she came to our school as a kindergartener and will leave us this year for middle school.

She is astounding, too.

She has known my voice for 7 years now.

I say, “Hello, Olivya,” and she knows it’s me, no matter the time or the place in the school building.

As a matter of fact, I dress up as St. Nicholas each year and bring presents to our exceptional children but no matter how hard I try to disguise my voice, I can’t fool Olivya’s keen sense of hearing.

“You’re Mr. Barton!“ she always exclaims.

“You’re always right!” I respond to her. “But let’s keep it our secret so we can bring laughter and joy to the other kids.”

She’s my partner in this bringing of laughter and joy, and I just love it!

So when my Reading class started the book Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Boris Kulikov, I immediately thought of Olivya and Ms. Vines and invited them to my classes to teach us about braille.

And boy did they teach us.

Olivya came to my classroom with Ms. Vines, her walking stick, and a book written in braille and read to us.

My friend an co-teacher Emily Muldrow said it best.

“It not only brought tears to my eyes to watch Olivya read and the students give her their rapt attention and applause, but it also touched my heart that she was showing them that you can overcome obstacles to learn to read.”

Teaching at a Title I school, we know those obstacles and understand how difficult they are to overcome.

Ya’ll, there are some days when being a teacher fills you with beauty, ingenuity, wonder and courage.

Today was one of those days for me.

Ms. Vines and Olivya, you are astounding!

I’m thankful we’re a part of each other’s lives.

You make the world a more human place for all of us.

¡Muchas Gracias!