Take This Broken Wing And Learn To Fly
The toughest part of having taught twenty some years ago in South Central was kids died.
And other kids knew it.
Even as young as in the 4th grade. Younger.
But I taught 4th at 93rd Street School, and it came into my overcrowded, underfunded, bookless, supply-less daily job with 38 kids as stories of what was happen' out to the brothers.
Kids died of drugs and gang violence.
Our leadership demanded we "not talk like that." In fact the Assistant Principal an inch off my face told me shouting, after an intruder with a knife in my room departed, that this was not a gang issue -that was what happened in the valley she bellowed, she seemed at the time an irrational being. I was looking at it.
But the kids did know. And when they told you it was with a fury and accuracy and a voice unlike any you could deny or squeeze back into silence. If you would listen, you would learn.
I had no choice, my job was to teach. And to do that I did not have the luxury of illusion, distance, denial, or scripting. I worked within the reality that the children were in a war zone.
And sometimes I couldn't understand the kids in my class, their language was so distorted.
Or so a part of the neighborhood I went into to teach. Everyday we learned about one another.
I was young then, and had no children's library of my own, and my room had nothing. But if I could have a book to take back to then I really would like this one. It's called "Bird" and it's a good book.
by Zetta Elliott (Author), Shadra Strickland (Illustrator)
I can imagine it on Reading Rainbow. Except they eliminated the show from PBS instead looking for something they call letter skill or whatever that was. It would be perfect for LeVar Burton to use. I can see it followed perhaps by a piece on birds, or on bird keepers, or on artists that draw from nature or children doing a bird study. I can hear and see a show in my mind. From 'back in the day, when we wanted to talk to children or hear them in their lives. When a story ran through it.
It's a smaller picture book, Bird is, and in it a child is facing the loss to the forces of the streets of his brother Marcus, and his Grandfather two months later dying perhaps from the strain of it all. What you learn as you read is that the narrator, "Bird", likes drawing, and drawing is helping him define himself, helping him to understand a very tough reality where he lives, and a kind of sanctuary for him too. He is younger brother to a kid who really was an artist-slowly we see him grieving his brother-honoring him-talking to him in pictures, he looked up to that boy who fell into the cycle of drugs and lost. He, "Bird", tells his loss simply, without a lot of gorier detail that might not fit a kid's picture book format, but he does share his sadness, hopes, and his naivete, his lack of understanding of what was happening-that's there too, as well as his understanding as it grew of what drugs does mean there. Things like Marcus needing a "fix" lead him to ask how they can "fix" Marcus. Things that I might have liked to say long ago to those kids, or have a format for discussing, this book gently allows this.
I suppose what I like is that the book examines the choices that this narrator has, how art helps him, informs him about himself, and how he has to carry on with this incredibly sad situation. It's funny but there is something in the way it ends, talking of the flight of birds, souls, broken dreams, possibility, that would have been very useful to me then.
In that time, long past, (that drives me even now both to care and to see), I recall the power of art, making, creating. I recall the times I spent a little of an almost nothing salary given the cost of my living, and the seeing things the children were able to express creatively and how little they had by way of creative experience. No crayons, coloring, museums, books, no connections to their own cultural beauty. It was so harsh, so scarred, so defaced, so war-like in that place at that time. It was so fulfilling to have arts for them. Music meant so much.
I wish I'd had this book. When I look at the pictures of the makers-they might have been infants then.
"Bird" is named Bird because of how he looked as a baby- but he does love birds, sees them in his hood, he watches them with his now semi-guardian Unc Son. There is something in that. I don't know how to express this, I find myself where I work now in a pretty ugly prison over school, sad looking school-hopeless, often looking at the birds. There is something of the metaphor of flight, soul, spirit, hope that the author and illustrator are touching.
When left to so little, in such circumstances, looking to these animals as they inhabit free in a way, symbols, in some kind of relationship to speaking to how we are as we are there-it brings some message. I find myself wanting kids to do bird studies, watch birds, understand nature with the nature flying into to watch us. I do a lot with this, my husband at his school does more. The book connects to something in me -that I felt down in very difficult situations a very long time ago-this connects to tying that to some hope there, always some undefinable possibility.
So it's a book that can be added into classrooms and libraries, shared with children to talk not only about their reality, but the reality of other children, and I cannot say this enough this is why we read, to understand one another and to introduce children to this.
I would have reviewed on amazon, but I cannot. There are folks there that place unkind comment, votes, notions that twist meanings, and have political and personal agendas of intolerance and greed, race and lack of real world work or understanding, that review for rating and ruling, and frankly I don't think good books should have to be looked at with those that might fail to get this book would help children. So it is too what I do reviewing is share personal experiences and I am blasted for that at times by folks that are intolerant of whatever it is they won't allow me to do. And I've been ganged up on there, and having taught in climates of that, seeing that, knowing that in the real lives of kids-I cannot put this book and what I have to say there.
Think of donation to a library, reading with your kids, including in your classroom, sharing with budding artists. Talking about birding. The truth is, I think children that are born into poverty, and difficulty, and isolation-it is an issue, but misunderstanding it is too. And that seems to be an epidemic right now. Teach children with material like this to care about one another so they might never shove another down. And not admit to the hurt they are doing.
If I had not worked within the schools and situations I have worked in, I might hold many of the narrow and faulty assumptions I see spouted like founts so often....anyway....just thinking I suppose.... this book would have helped those kids, then, who must be the parents there now, oh my, and I hope that the fact "Bird" exists means that there has been much forward positive improving. Of that I don't know nor understand well enough, being removed, hoping always for kids there. I hope that over these past 25 years things improved. That lawsuits like the William's Act got them some text books, that class-size went down, that they got AC to cool 109 degree rooms like I experienced. But then I know what's coming down in CA now, class-sizes are soaring, massive amounts teachers-friends- are losing jobs, supplies are cut, budgets are being hacked,here at the UC level it is a gutting. What I know is a 6th of our population lives in this state's economy and our rank to 48th in the nation in spending in ed, means that the poor here then represent a very huge number of folks that will be cut further from opportunity and hope.
I know that.
I'm a teacher. I've worked in a lot of situations in my career, seen a lot of dangerous, difficult, damaging reality. Gave my time to it. My health and heart. Seen kids born into this.
And we've seen the generational issues, the issues for poor immigrants arriving into it, seen the issues for children coping with economic, social, racial, and other troubles. Seen the outrageous violence and crime. I am a teacher that took all that on as just a kid too. Just wanting to make a living, try to build a life.
Now I'm out on leave with a severely broken, herniated back.
I think of kids I taught that make me cry that remind me of Bird.
I remind me of Bird.
It's a good book. For a troubled soul.
I notice it recieved a Coretta Scott King Award, good choice. I made a decision recently. I think I'd like to recommend it, we could try it together. Every month ( no stress if it's every season) I'm picking a book, kid's book, buying it, taking it and giving it to the PUBLIC library. No fuss-just when my kids visit. I'd like to donate similarly to a school-but the new systems seem resistant to reading books with kids. Especially outside a script.
So at least there a child might, possibly, connect if there is someone like Unc Son in this story, talking to them, connecting, taking them, and showing some interest in their lives and in story.
I see that in my neighborhood sometimes.
posted by Sarah @ 12:49 PM
4 comments
links to this post
