School Pictures

The Rodriguez family walks down the hall and turns the corner to my classroom for a parent/teacher conference.

“Buenos dias Señora Rodriguez. Buenos dias amigos. ¿Como esta ustedes? Bienvenido a mi aula,” I greet them.

We sit down together at a table in a circle of chairs.

“Could you translate for me if I need help remembering a word?” I ask the oldest child, a high school student. “I need you to be my teacher.”

“Sí,” she smiles. “Of course.”

I’m trying to learn Spanish but have a long way to go to become fluent.

In the beginning, I do most of the talking and Mrs. Rodriguez does most of the listening.

I describe her child’s progress in math.

“Do you have any questions for me?” I ask. “Do you have any comments you’d like to make?”

She looks at me with a shy smile and stays quiet.

I move on to reading, writing, social studies and science.

At the end, though, she does most of the talking and I do most of the listening.

“Our life is hard, maestro. My husband works out of town, wherever he can find work,” she said. “I clean motel rooms and houses. Are trailer is small and we are many. I want my children to learn so they can have a better life. Please help my children learn.”

This is how my heart grows bigger.

It grows bigger because Mrs. Rodriguez and I sit down with each other. 

We talk with each other. 

We see each other.

I simply saw her as a parent who trusts me to be a teacher for her child.

I simply saw her as a mom who cares deeply for her children, just as I am a dad who cares deeply for mine.

I simply saw her.

School Pictures

I’m a teacher and a writer in a Title I elementary school.

In the community around my school, many of the students and their families are from Mexico, Central America and South America.

I participate in their lives, I listen to their stories, and this helps me understand their migratory road more clearly and deeply.

When I browse a story about immigration on social media, hear an interview with an immigrant family on NPR, or read the reporting of a journalist who immersed herself in the lives of migrant workers (yep, I still love to read long form journalism), I close my eyes and see the faces of the Latinx students who fill my life with their lives each and every day.

When I hear the words ‘immigration’ and ‘immigrants,’ I see Maria and Jeremy and Hilcias and Patrick. 

When I hear the phrase ‘migratory road,’ I remember the stories they told me face to face and heart to heart about their journeys from their home countries to Greenville, S.C.

This seeing and hearing and remembering is of monumental importance to the way I understand my immigrant neighbors around me.

It’s why I wear a button that says “No human is illegal” on the lanyard of my school ID.

It’s why I reach out to the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center to offer my gifts and talents to their work with immigrant families.

It’s why I read read ‘lots of books and write ‘lots of stories about immigrants and immigration.

In the picture below, you’ll see some of the books on my writing table that help me become less of a ‘political issue’ person and more of a ‘human being’ person.

In the paragraph and poem, you’ll see and hear some of my own writing, some of my own voice, some of my own heart about our immigrant neighbors who are part and parcel of my life.

I hope it helps you become a ‘human being’ person, too.

                            

Migratory Roads

He traveled the migratory roads of migrant workers from state to state and farm to farm with his family when he was a toddler. He rode on his mamí’s back, tied with a threadbare piece of cloth, as she climbed ladders and reached up into the sky to pick oranges and grapefruits from trees in Florida, and as she kneeled and reached down to the earth to pick beans and tomatoes from plants in South Carolina.

The Things They Carry

(a poem for migrants)

Now

on

the land

migrants live

with holes in the floors

cracks in the walls, leaks in the roofs,

broken apart from years upon years of people

moving in, moving out, broken apart by owners using money for things other than repairs

yet held together by people like my abuelo and mamí, who will move into a used place, scrub the floors and walls with soap and water

repair broken parts with things they carry with them, patch them with grit, common sense and love

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2020

School Pictures

Maria is a second grader at my Title I elementary school.

Her parents fled the after-effects of the brutal civil war in El Salvador and found a new life on the farms and in the fields of South Carolina.

She is like those farms and fields, dark skinned the color of the ground, garden-hearted and producing love and joy as if they were tomatoes and beans growing in good South Carolina soil.

I have seen her hold the hand of a frightened kindergartner in the cafeteria line during early morning breakfast and offer her shoulder to a crying friend who scraped a knee on the blacktop during recess. 

She is a beautiful child, beautiful in the way Dostoyevsky meant when he wrote, “Beauty will save the world.”

At school, I can see her smile all the way from the end of the hall.

Sometimes, I can hear her steps from there, too.

On special days, she wears tiny high-heeled shoes that go click, click, click as she makes her way over the tiled floor. 

This always makes me stop and smile.

One day, I realized I had forgotten to send a check through the mail to the water company to pay my bill. 

I stopped by the Greenville Water building to make my payment in person after school.

Three-fourths of the residents of Greenville county must have forgotten to send in their payments, too, because the place was packed with people.

In the middle of that mass of humanity, I heard a click, click, click. 

I looked up, and coming around a desk was Maria!

She was pushing a stroller with a tiny baby inside of it. 

I could barely see her over the handles of the stroller. 

She was leading her mother, who was holding a toddler in her arms.

She saw me. 

Her face lit up with a Maria smile. 

She let go of the stroller for just a moment, wrapped her arms around me and said, “Oh, Mr. Barton! Buenos tardes! I am always so glad to see you!”

Then she took hold of the stroller again.

I heard her voice, her sincere, serious voice, rise above the noise. 

“Excuse me,” she said, “but could you help us pay our bill?”

And there was Maria, 7 years old, translating for her mother.

Helping her family.

Sharing her life with the world.

beautiful losers

Have you seen the documentary Beautiful Losers?

You can watch it now on Amazon Prime.

It was created by filmmaker Aaron Rose and is about an underground, outsider, creative movement called the beautiful losers movement.

It has in-depth interviews with artists who help us understand what it means to be a beautiful loser.

It is a heartfelt, quirky look at 14 artists who use graffiti, skateboarding, street music and other mediums like these to help us see and feel the world around us more clearly and deeply.

You might know of Shepard Fairey’s work.

He is the street artist who created the iconic HOPE poster of Barack Obama that became the picture of the 2008 presidential election.

Do you know any of the other artists?

Some are graffiti artists, some are photographers, some are directors, some are painters and some are sculptors.

They are bound by a common philosophy that inspires me - Make something from nothing.

As you hear their stories, you learn that they were considered "nothing" and "losers" when they first began creating their art, but then became "something" and "beautiful" by joining together into a community and encouraging each other to keep on creating.

Their stories and art remind me that genius is found in amazing people and surprising places, and that I can find this genius if only I have eyes to see and ears to hear.

I encourage you to make something out of nothing.

Create art every day.

Be a beautiful loser with me.

Morning Prayer

God

Here

I am

Barefooted

Empty handed, walk

With me, write with me, migrant God

Dust on my feet, callous on my hand, is you, God here

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

School Pictures

As a public school teacher, I listen to the stories of my students’ lives. 

Geraldine was one of those students. 

Small in stature, she was big in heart and mind. 

I can still see her pushing her baby sister in a stroller walking with her Mom beside our school in the late afternoon. Her hands are above her head as she pushes, because she is smaller than the stroller! But if you could see the grit and determination on her face as she pushes that stroller up the hill, then you would know what kind of person she is.

One day, she was reading a wonderful book called Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy.

“Oh, Mr. Barton,” she giggled, “I’m just like Ophelia in the story because she’s a curious kind of kid and I’m a curious kind of kid because I want to know everything about everything!”

Suddenly, though, she became serious.

“But she’s a nervous kind of kid, too, because she’s had a hard life and I’ve kind of had a hard life, too.”

I looked into her earthy brown eyes and thought about the land from which she came, for she came from the farms and fields of Mexico with her family.

For the first time, I noticed the faintest of dark circles around her eyes, the slightest of a downward turn at the corners of her mouth, and a hint of sadness that shouldn’t often be on a 10-year-olds face.

“What is your life like, Geraldine?” I asked.

And she told me her story.

“I share a room with my brother and sister and two younger cousins,” she began. “My mamí works very, very hard.”

As she talked with me about the book and about her life, a tiny tear appeared in the corner of her eye.

Did it come from giggles or sadness?

I caught the tear in my hand as it rolled off her cheek.

“I’m here to hear,” I said.

“I’m here.”

School Pictures

I love to receive letters.

When I was a little boy, I lived on a straight street where I could see the mail truck coming from a long way down the road. After the mail person stopped in front of our house, I ran with hope in my heart and wings on my feet down our front walkway, between our two giant maple trees and across that street to our mailbox. Would there be a letter for me? Was someone in the world thinking of me?

One day last year, it wasn’t the mailman, but a second-grader on the school playground, who delivered a letter to me.

I unfolded it.

Dear Mr. Barton, hi it Odeth from 2th grade I miss you a lot I wanted to know about you so much I am being good I am in 4th grade Do you miss me.  I live in __________  I go to school in __________  I hope you will come to my school…can you come visit me in school ask for my name…I am 10 year old I want you to come to my school.

Your best student,

Odeth

Ah, to be remembered by a student.

Odeth was in my very first class during my very first year as an elementary school teacher. I will always remember her big dimples, her contagious giggle, her deep brown eyes and her inquisitive mind. Later that afternoon, when my classroom was calm and quiet, I sat down at Odeth’s old desk and wrote a letter back to her.

Dear Odeth,

Hi! Your class will always be special to me. Do you remember the geometry lesson when you made that brilliant design of a yellow flower from the shapes I gave you? It was brilliant like you. I still have the picture we took of that flower. Do you remember how we talked about you becoming an architect and designing beautiful buildings? I wonder if you still enjoy designing things. Do you remember how you liked to talk and how I told you that you should think about becoming a lawyer? I know you’re being the best you can be and doing the best you can do. I miss you, too!

Mr. Barton

 Odeth and her family are first-generation immigrants from Guatemala who are trying to make a better life for themselves in South Carolina. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center report “Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South,” many Latinos in the South encounter widespread hostility, discrimination and exploitation. Here in South Carolina, there seems to be many people determined to use destructive, demagogic and dehumanizing language and political policies to harass and hurt families like Odeth’s.

Is America a place where she really can become an architect, a lawyer or anything she wants to become?

Odeth is a living letter to me and to you.

Her life asks an essential question - “Are you thinking of me?”

Yes I am.