Intention

 

I am often intending...

Intending to tell this story or relate that thought from my teaching, to do this lesson or that, to fulfill my mothering roles, or wife roles, caretaker for a paranoid schizophrenic thoughts, and share something I learned in those roles here, intending to paint or draw in an artist vein-to share that out. I wonder why lately I wanted to share this. But I originally thought it was important to witness. Until I was censored through work I used this site to meet some of those those intentions.
Today was kind of special for us as a family because we got a better car for my middle daughter, after an old one we had for her blew its head gasket a day or so ago. It is an Accord, better car than I have ever had, and I feel a sense of full circle around that. Now when she drives to work I just will feel better because the old car clearly was a danger. She certainly deserves it-and all three of my children will, one day, I hope have the same.

I'm making a meatless, cheeseless lasagne at the moment, for half my family and a meaty hearty one for the rest here on my mother's 85th birthday. Sophia is managing a really lush cake making, and the bread is rising. My mother's grandson (my son) made her this unbelievable card:

It's a large card and just stupendous. He says she is a bear. And believe me it's a remarkable insight. Luca Puglisi gets credit on that image!

My mother on her 85th birthday.
 

One of the things I intend to do is talk about Black History Month.

That has a strange connection to my Mom. Because, I suppose, she valued it.

Mom was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama when Dr. King did his work, she has had lunches with Coretta Scott King, and her degrees were in Social work from a time that meant something.  But I never took in til later in my life what that meant as far as how my opinions and beliefs were shaped.

Her gift to me.

When we moved ten or so years ago to Temecula in CA my husband took on being a Superintendent for a small school in the mountains of San Diego.  Of all the moves I ever made this one was the most difficult, partially because I was forgoing health coverage at a time I had cancer and the HMO covering him led to disastrous care for me. I seemed to have a full premonition of this. But I took on subbing for his district because we really could not afford for me not to work, despite what he said, and no matter how hard I tried I could not find a job in another District. Interesting and very difficult long term subbing job. I certainly had esteem at minus zero after it was over. I was on leave from my job, things worked out, but my intention for awhile has been to write about that year in the mountains. 

You might ask how does all of this have to do with Black History? 

In San Diego certainly I learned things were different. I was invited to shooting parties for Thanksgiving by my students. That, at the time, really upset me. I picked up on "traditional values" in certain ranch families language and attitudes as they used the term as code for hot button issues, in tensions with the tribal groups, and the rancher's position of power in the area. It was important going in to keep in mind that I was viewed through the contexts and the points of view of those in the area-and that reactions to my "intentions" were often reactions to their own experiences and opinions-if you will allow me to say it, their projections. I would offer by way of context that it was a small place, intensely isolated, and somehow magnifying. So I got set on fire in my first few days in for writing a letter to parents saying hello and stating who I was, my expectations for behavior. Nothing really. It blasted into a meeting with a tribal elder-a woman furious with my kind.  To her I represented whites that had sent her to a school long ago away from family, separating children from families, and she had no intention of taking it. I represented someone trying to "train" the Native out of the children. I represented those that were there once and remained in some of the power structures still. 

There were families that hated her and her kind. 

The children came in on buses to sort this out with a lot of things beyond my knowing.

My husband, very worried the day she came in, called me in to talk to her-I'm sure I insisted on dealing with that first blast by myself. And I still see his face as I sent him out the door, so she and I could talk the several hours we talked. I would wager he knew that two forces were tangling. But I learned a lot from her.

In the end I think I earned the trust of that part of the population, at least their respect, because the children eventually felt at home with me.

When February came I had come to terms with all the kids. More importantly they had come to terms with me. I had taken ALL my thousand of books up that hill into nowhere, so I thought very little about unloading the several boxes of Black History books I have out on the tables. I have a beautiful collection. They are old friends I can't imagine not having them at hand, especially in February. The next day the first grade teacher, a man (I should say I taught 3, 4, 5, 6 and one 7th grade) stopped me and said he heard about the books. At first I thought maybe he wanted to borrow one. I couldn't quite figure out what was up. But he was "confirming" I was "brave enough" to put them out. He "admired it." It turns out he "had never quite had the courage to do that there." So I thought-what toes am I on, what is this about? 

One of my students was black, adopted into the reservation, but he seemed to have no idea of his heritage. No one even spoke of the fact that he was black. One day I remember asking him why that was? In talking a bit with the children I sensed they wanted to know about Civil Rights, and there were pieces in the Houghton Mifflin sets we had gotten up there to suggest teaching this-certainly Standards and state expectations -this was a place with books from 1960-but we had brought in new reading series that supported this "modern" learning. I read different things with them I really do consider very tame. Books about Rosa Parks, MLK, about the Civil War, Lincoln. I showed the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. And ignited myself for the third or fourth time, as the parents of several children came in to the white school board to make "known" their feelings about teaching "Black History."

I didn't last there, no I didn't,  after that year and summer school an old, white board member made sure he tossed me out, but....I suspect he's gone now. And my husband, well, I required him to leave. For a year I do know Black History was taught. Especially for Willie,

and for Willie to those that he knew as peers or friends.

When people cannot share who they are, learn about others, be exposed to books, literature, points of view then, of course, we know the real purpose of censorship. It's always the mechanism of those that want to control thought-that have hating, or something dark and uncomfortable at the root. You hear the codes for this nonsense in those that were allowed to rear their heads over these last few years to try to remove voices, as we saw teaching Hispanic or Black History become something shadowy, and who got to implying these odd things-saying that this cultural knowledge is "divisive" when, in fact, it is actually about shifting our ways of seeing one another. As I type I'm listing to how Arizona outlawed ethnic studies on TV the strangest coincidence ever. How could ANYONE associate with this?

In that small scale microcosm I noted that the way I was addressed about the books was not directly. Power behind the scenes came into play. My husband was pressured,  strange racial  "suggestions" were made, and underlying it all was the fact that several families up on that hill were racists-they said things about those with African American heritage that were appalling behind closed doors and I observed that in my interactions. Somehow they felt their children should not go to a public school and be exposed to another frame other than their own.

I stood in the way.

I had no idea when I took out my book boxes that I was doing anything like this at all. Just getting set up for February. Just like when I got parent permissions to put artwork here on my blog and for years put up exemplary work- I had no idea a District or a peer would do anything but find that exemplary work and of great enriching benefit. But, I found out on that mountain-things are complex, and, in a way, not so complex.

Eventually I've come to know something I first thought about- it was really because my mother taught it. I was encouraged to read-in all cultures and all points of view. Encouraged into cultural valuing.  Mom liked people. We project upon individuals-our scapegoats. She understood this was in herself and in others. Something to keep in awareness and check. That's what she took away from being raised in the south. This is a true thing we can work on. When environments are encouraged to do so things feel differently than when fear and hate rule, when we develop rationals and then "use" a system, then we are corrupted. Diseased I think. And that ill system operates in a kind of creeping nightmare, afraid of exposure, critical, secretive, judging, hurtful, lying, distorting.

I saw it in that tiny setting. Oh yeah.

But I saw something else. Exposed to those books, films, researching, the students valued everything we did. They learned. They were open. Questions were ok. Hurting another-not ok. That was something as a bottom line I never wavered on. Their minds had the capacity to weigh these things. I hope that lasts there, and that today they have stepped forward over fallen back.

For what it is worth this is one reason WHY I value fiction so highly. And reading. I think reading Steinbeck helped my students, I think that they gained through exposure to my black history box.

Perhaps leading them all to a discovery of their own family. 

Who they once were and where they have come to now and how it might well be.