Friday :: July 25, 2008

Teaching the Universal Subject: A Manifesto

by Paul Jaussen

Educational reform, like death and taxes, seems to be always upon us, a collective fantasy evoking all kinds of incompatible wish-fulfillments. Nearly everyone is sure that we must improve our educational system, yet almost no one agrees as to how, exactly, that improvement is supposed to come about, or, for that matter, what is wrong with the system to begin with. Consider the following contradictory stock-phrases of “educational reform”: We should require more arts, because creativity will keep America competitive in world markets. We should teach more science and math, because innovation will keep us competitive in world market . . .

Monday :: July 21, 2008

Ocean Children

by Misty Anne Winzenried

At the beach
brave children
hunt for crabs.
Waves chase
shells onto the sand,
and their white foam hands
play catch with fish.
Their fingers
rearrange the earth.

The sea beyond stretches
to the edge of anything,
pulled tight like cloth,
where only a dim line
unravels liquid and gas,
blue and deep blue.

The children and the waves take turns
carving their initials
into wet sand
with their toes.
Nearby tide pools capture
sunken treasu . . .

Thursday :: July 17, 2008

The Second Text

by Jan Lee Ande

One ordinary morning I walked into the park
past maples, elms, the ancient pines.

Pigeons were davening, pious among the bushes.

A few words fell from the Book of Nature
(that other text written by the finger of God)
their letters scattered along the path.

The squirrels went rigid, seized by the spirit.

Silence. A sudden shudder in everything—
rocks, brown pond, creatures, the sky.

I knelt to observe what letters I could.

Words sprouted and grew from the world
behind this world (its stem and seed).
< . . .

Tuesday :: July 15, 2008

Looking for a Light Switch: Scenes from an Urban Classroom

by Greta Bergquist

I am not a crier.

In the movie An Unfinished Life, Robert Redford’s character, a gruff, crotchety old man, asks someone, “Is this something we’re going to have to talk about?” and I laugh hysterically, because I know exactly how he feels. I do not like discussing my innermost feelings. They are my innermost feelings for a reason. And I rarely cry when moved by emotion. In deep crisis, in heartbreak, my eyes are dry.

But a few years ago I taught at Patterson—an inner-city Baltimore high school of 1,700 students—and met hundreds of kids who changed my life.

Monday :: July 14, 2008

Words Wearing Their Pontificals

by Jan Lee Ande

Inside the sacrarium of a dictionary
inside the black and white alphabet of the book
words put on their pontificals.

Clerics of the sacred college of language
dressed in vestments. Robes and trappings.
Transfixed at the moment of ritual.

Read blood—the blue fluid sanguine
drips from each thornprick and piercing.
Juice of the grape, sap of the plant.

Cold blooded, warm blooded, all of creation
carrying its own flow and stream, its coursing
current. The flood and drift revisited.

Read dove—and a b . . .