Student Stories: A New Orleans Classroom Chronicle

On Tuesday, May 6, the Recovery School District (RSD) superintendent, Paul Vallas, was 30 minutes late for a community meeting to discuss the school system’s plans for Douglass High School. Over 100 people attended, including well over half of the school’s faculty, who were eager to have an opportunity to hear directly from the superintendent.

Audience members encouraged Mr. Vallas to read the book The Long Ride, a history of social justice and civil rights history in New Orleans written by students from Douglass and two other public high schools in New Orleans. He did not agree to do so. We gave Mr. Vallas a copy of the book in August, 2007, so we did not really expect him to agree to such a request. But the offer is still there, and maybe he will read it now and let it inform his decision-making and his communications. Better late than never.

Frederick Douglass Writes a Farewell Letter to His Daughter
Dayoka Edmonds and Marlon Cross

Dearest Annie, My Youngest Child:

I can remember the first time you grasped my index finger. Fresh from the womb, your small voice cried loud as I held you in my arms. Annie, you were as beautiful as roses & daisies in a spring garden. Your voice spoke to me quietly in a language that I didn't understand. Inside my heart I knew you wouldn't have to slave for freedom as much as I did. My youngest love, my youngest life, you remind me of the ocean.

As I write you this letter, the waves rock this ship like your cradle rocked you when I was too busy with your four older siblings. I sit on deck and watch the waves. I think of your ways, soft and calm, at times, rough and fast, but always a wonderful sight to see. Just last month when you were drawing a picture of your baby doll, I disturbed you, asking you to pick up your shoes. The tone of your voice was sweet even when you didn't want to be bothered. Why, I would have done anything for you. I learned that from my own mother. She went through a 24-mile walk after work just to come see her son, your father. She worked in the fields on another plantation, while the other children and I stayed 12 miles away. She cared for me just as much as I care for you. I think of her long journey as I cross the Atlantic Ocean once again, placing my life in danger, weeping that your earthly life has ended.

How my heart wishes to walk into my residence to see the face of my Annie, those eyes like your mother’s that sparkle in the moonlight, those pretty white teeth that shine in the dark, and that graceful smile that to which no other can ever compare. I know that inside my heart everything happens for a reason. I am so sorry that I could not have been in your presence to adore you with my love, to kiss your cheek, as your soul passed to the next life.

You must understand why I was away the day you died, only eight years old. You won't know the name John Brown or the meaning of the words abolition and justice. But these are some of the reasons I was away. John Brown’s skin was white but his soul was pure. His heart was set on one goal--abolishing slavery. He too is now dead. Our country wants me to join him. I knew of his plot to attack Harper’s Ferry, take over the weapons there, and wage war against slaveholders. I told no one about this plot. For that this country, which declares itself a defender of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, accuses me of treason. I do not regret my silence about Brown’s plot. I only regret its failure, his death, and most of all my absence as you took your last breath.

So now I journey again. The water, the source of life, gives me little comfort. I return to your four siblings and dear mother. I return to a country stuck in greed and evil. I also return with the hope of freedom for all. I pledge my life to remain in this country, to die fighting for freedom for all people rather than to escape to another country. Your untimely departure tells me where I must remain. It reinforces my determination, my conviction that I will never be free until all my people are free. Thank you for this gift you give me on your leaving. Forgive my absence at your departure.

All Love Always,
Your Father,
Frederick A. Douglass

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Today’s entry is from Kirsten Theodore, who will graduate in June 2008 from Frederick Douglass High School, which she has described in a previous essay in this blog series as her dream school.

We continue to worry about changes in a public school system that happen without deep study of and respect for those of us who learned and worked and read our first books in that very school system.

First Book I Ever Read
Kirsten Theodore

I can remember the first book I ever read. It was about a woman traveling back in time where she happened to run into her ancestors. Ever since I read it, I’ve wondered about my own ancestors.

I was in sixth grade when I first received the book. A couple of Students at the Center (SAC) members and I had just finished performing a play about Homer Plessy and the fight for racial justice in New Orleans. All of the SAC members were in school at Frederick Douglass High, but I wasn’t. My cousin and sister were working with UrbanHeart, an after school program that involved Douglass SAC students helping those of us who were younger with reading and writing and performing.

After rehearsal one day, Mr. Randels was getting ready to take me home. We got into the car, and it was dead silent. “So Kirsten, what books have you read lately?” he asked.

What a way to break the silence, I thought to myself.

“Um The Cat in the Hat I think.”

“Well we got to change that. I got some books in the back, if you’re interested.”

“Ok,” I replied.

I reached into the back and grabbed the stack of books he had sitting on the seat. I went through all the books, and one stood out to me, Kindred, just because it started with a k. I decided that this would be the book that I wouldn’t read.

We arrived in front of my house. As I was getting out Mr. Randels said, “that’s a good book you chose.”

“Ok, thanks.”

I went inside to my room and threw the book on the dresser with no intentions of reading it. A week passed, and I didn’t even look at the book. That next Tuesday I got punished for skipping school. So I was stuck inside with no TV. Since I had nothing to do, I had to find ways to occupy my time. First I tried exercising, but I got tired too fast. Then I tried cleaning, but the bleach was getting to me. Finally I tried studying, but I lost interest. So I just flopped on my bed and counted the dots on the ceiling. Out of my peripheral vision I saw the book. I went over picked it up and started reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred.

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Prior to Katrina, community involvement at Douglass High School was building and took a variety of forms. One of the most important was the weekly adult math literacy class hosted by the Douglass Community Coalition in collaboration with the New Orleans Algebra Project.

But students at McMain Secondary School have benefited from the Algebra Project’s important work. Today’s student writing is by Marleesa Thompson, a 2007 graduate of McMain, who explains how her training in the Algebra Project would benefit her work as a math tutor and teaching assistant for younger students at McMain.

Taking Up For Algebra
Marleesa Thompson

“I’m actually taking up for Algebra. Somebody pinch me, because this can’t be real.” Those were the words that crossed my mind as I sat across the circle, defending the one subject I could not stand. Somewhere between “I liked the Algebra Project, but I don’t see how it fits,” and “the Algebra Project was great, but it’s no use to my future goals,” I felt the urge to speak up. It came so fast, like vomit.

“Well the Algebra Project was extremely beneficial to me. I was an intern this past year in an Algebra 1 class at McMain, and the methods I was taught from the Algebra Project could have been used so that the students could connect math to more real life situations.” Once the mouthful of words fell into the circle, I was able to breathe. It was like I could not just sit back and watch the Algebra Project fall under the cracks beneath the chairs of the individuals who surrounded me.

Coming into this workshop, I had no idea that my love for math would be established. In the past, math was something that I never liked, but I did it because I had to. I never saw its use with anything outside class. Math was brought to life during this workshop. Numbers became words, and words became numbers. It was an intertwining language.

Our bus trip and our stops through the stomping grounds of Homer Plessy became a number line. City-building activities transformed into functions. It was like a whole new world that I was exploring. Many of the teachers as well as the students constantly wished that they were taught math this way. In the Algebra Project, no answer was wrong, as long as you had a logical method or approach to your answer.

Part of the reason I believe math has become so appealing to me is because I was an intern this recent school year. Upon entering Ms. Welch’s Algebra class, I had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that I had to deal with rambunctious eighth graders. When I started the internship, I was amazed at how much I enjoyed working with the students. But what was more amazing is that as I progressed through the internship, my math skills grew sharper than ever before. As I participated in the daily work along with the students, I was learning easier methods to approach problems. I was able to spit out math calculations like a calculator. My ACT math scores even improved four points from the start of my senior year to the fourth month I was an intern.

My journey to taking up for Algebra started when I actively participated in educating younger students. And in the end, everybody benefited.

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This week has been busy with responses to the April 7 announcement of the impending closing of Douglass High School.

Separate But Equal
Crystal Carr

“It is only temporary. It shall not be long. It is only temporary.” These words echoed through my head as I walked through the halls of Frederick Douglass for the first time. The walls were falling. The floor was coming up, and many of the windows had been broken. Puzzled, I marched toward my first period class in order to find a familiar face.

Frederick Douglass was not the most intellectually stimulating school or even the most fun. My years at Douglass can only be described as a reality check to my innocent mind. Douglass taught me that everything is not peaches and cream in the ‘hood; it taught me how hard it is to survive. This school, my district school, showed me how to connect with others from my neighborhood at a greater level. My year at Douglass brought many smiles and many tears, yet in the midst of it all I still survived.

The books there were torn, written in, and abused. I thought, “who could learn without good books?” I wondered if adults in the community and people who make policies that affect our students knew about these conditions. I don’t think they did. Most were blinded.

I had my eyes opened and my mind filled in some classes there, despite the lack of books. In my Students at the Center (SAC) writing class, taught by Ms. Patterson, we learned lots about black people and community. One of the most memorable things she said was, “This is not a school but a learning community and in order to bring scores up, we must focus on community.” The books we read, the essays we wrote, the critical thinking we developed were all part of movement and community building. My classmates and I wrote a play, Inhaling Brutality, Exhaling Peace, that we performed not only at our school and in a neighborhood church but also for teacher training workshops, a national conference on youth leadership and the arts, and the Centers for Disease Control. We read essays and stories by writers such as James Baldwin and Edwidge Danticat. We wrote about these stories in relationship to our own lives and adapted them to the play we developed.

Although it may be a surprise to most people who only look at the scores and the sensational stories that the media covers, I learned a lot at Douglass. The teachers taught me things ranging from how to survive in the streets to how to honor my culture. I applied this knowledge and skill to my life.

McDonogh 35, the city-wide access school to which I earned admission as a 10th grade student, is quite different. This school doesn’t have off campus lunch or anything I would call fun. It is a lot of work. Getting into McDonogh 35 and staying there in my sophomore year was pretty easy. Now in my junior year I am learning the importance of knowledge. Most teachers are so busy preparing us for tests that they only teach us what to think. My English teacher, Mr. Ogle, is like Ms. Patterson; he teaches me how to think. He makes me question many things and gives me a deeper desire for learning. In his class, it isn’t learn this or learn that but realize this and confront that.

At McDonogh 35, however, I am also taught to stay away from the community. Our purpose is increasing our knowledge, not interacting with the community that surrounds the school. The only time we really spend in the neighborhood is during fire alarms or on our way in and out of school. Even though I have been attending McDonogh 35 for two years, I know none of the names or the faces of those who stay around the school. Ever since one of our McDonogh 35 students was injured in the leg, everyone has been too scared for us to even set foot in the neighborhood. I now wonder how things might have been different, if we had interacted more with the neighborhood residents, even started a community non-violence program together.

This situation reminds me of the section of Barbara Ransby’s biography of Ella Baker that we just finished discussing in my SAC class as part of our study of the 50th anniversary of Brown and the 40th anniversary of the freedom schools in Mississippi. Shaw University, where Ella Baker attended high school and college, actually forbade its students from interacting with the black residents of Raleigh, North Carolina. This rule created a separation that Ella Baker later fought against in her civil rights and black power work.

I miss my community-based learning and home at Douglass. Yet I also love the education I receive at McDonogh 35. I feel stuck between the two. I do not want to go back to Douglass, but I don’t want to stay at 35. I feel stuck between the two. Sometimes I wish the students and visions of the two schools were not so separate. I wish 35 was more like Douglass and Douglass was more like 35.

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Yesterday we learned officially that Frederick Douglass High School will close within the next two years and maybe even next year. This decision came without input from students, their parents, teachers, or community members.

Vinnessia planned to read this essay last weekend at the College Composition and Communication Conference. She was unable to read it because her family members had just received word that they had to move out of their current residence. Vinnessia was packing rather than presenting.

Who’s Holding the Gun?
Vinnessia Shelbia

Leaving out of New Orleans was hard, because there’s no other place like it. But living in New Orleans post Katrina is just as bad, because there’s nowhere to live. There are places to sleep, but nowhere to live.

When I came back to New Orleans after living in Georgia for one year, leaving my immediate family behind, I went to stay with my relatives living closest to New Orleans. That was my father’s mother whom I had never lived with any of my life. My grandma stayed in Jefferson Parish, but it only took me three buses from her house to get to New Orleans.

Staying there didn’t last long, but what could I expect: 12 people living in a one-bedroom, one-bath don’t add up. Plus being falsely accused of stealing and dealing with other people’s stressed out drama wasn’t working.

“Yeah I know she got some of my sister jewelry.”

My eyes opened, and I turned over and lay in the bed fully woke but not well rested. And I knew I wouldn’t be going back to sleep no time soon, because grandma Tilly had to call everybody she know, telling them something is missing from her sister’s house and she knows who got it.

As I lay and stared at the bed above me, and she went on and on, I realized that the “she” was me. My father had stolen some of his aunt’s jewelry, and my grandmother would bet her life that I was the one he gave it to. That night I stayed up crying and thinking.

I remember getting up early one morning and just cleaning. I was in the kitchen washing dishes, and my grandmother came in and said,

“Somebody must have told you to clean up.”

As if I don’t clean up, which I would always do. But by so many different people going in and out, sooner or later the house would get back dirty.

So I turned to my last resort: A homeless shelter. None of my relatives lived in the city. I had only one close friend from middle to high school. I couldn’t stay at her house. It was over crowed with her family members. If you would have asked me where I saw myself in the future, I wouldn’t have said a shelter.

Around this time in their lives, other teenagers are happy and planning their senior year, but not me. I was worried about will I get raped by one of these homeless men who are sleeping right on the other side of the room. And because these worries are keeping me up, will I be rested enough for school tomorrow. And while I was thinking about school, I’d also worry how will I get there, since there are no more bus tickets that permit me to ride the bus for free. The yellow school busses comes when they want, for whatever reason that is. So many school days go unattended, and my teachers ask why. . .and where’s your mother?

Well my mother has finally pawned everything that she can to feed my brothers. And she has filled out so many applications. But for what? The people who take her applications have no direct contact, since she can’t afford to keep a phone on. I can remember times when I was in New Orleans and I would have to call my brother’s friend and hope that he was at my mother’s house so I could talk to her. My burned-out mother did the only thing she knew: Sell everything in the house to get tickets back to New Orleans.

Writing this makes me angry. It makes me wonder what kind of world do we live in when children no older than 14 are experiencing these things.

Even though my mother came back recently, we remain homeless because the prices for rent are outstanding and standing out. So now my whole family is homeless: Mother and sister at a woman’s shelter and a week later my sister Angela gets put out because she can’t find a job and that’s one of their requirements. So luckily Angela found a shelter that was not over crowded and was taking women without children.

My youngest brother Savion was living in Boy’s Town. Maybe once out of every three weeks I would talk to him, and he would ask me the same thing:

“When moma gon get a house?”

I would tell him what she would tell me, “Hopefully soon.”

I didn’t know, and she didn’t know either. Those conversations were like a reality smack, waking me up so see that we were just hoping and wouldn’t be getting a house anytime soon.

New Orleans really is the murder capital, but now who’s holding the gun?

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Our SAC team shared this essay last night in one of the sessions of the College Composition and Communication Conference, at which our school-based writing community presented at five different conference events for college English professors from across the country.

Ashley temporarily moved from New Orleans this spring. She is pursuing a master’s degree in an out-of-state university. She plans to return to New Orleans to work with us in the summer and after she receives her degree. She hopes to teach in New Orleans. We hope by then that consultants and superintendents have at least more actively listened to recommendations that she and others like her are making.

Honoring Community
By Ashley Jones

In the summer of 2005 I had the rare privilege to see an ancient community working together to make themselves stronger. In this community -- where people sit in a circle on the floor -- there were expert hunters, farmers, and medicine men. Each person had a skill to share, and in the event that the medicine man was absent, people did not die because everyone was taught the healing properties of certain herbs and plants.

This ancient community was part of a play by students from Fredrick Douglass and Chalmette High Schools, both schools in neighborhoods severely devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Chalmette, a predominantly white high school, is in St. Bernard Parish, just across the parish line from Douglass, the all-black New Orleans public school where I was working. As part of the State of the Nation program, a project of the Douglass Community Coalition led by coalition member Artspot Productions, these students dealt with the problem of inequities of public education, specifically starting with the New Orleans public school system.

In the six weeks that we convened to create this play, a group of black and white students -- who wouldn’t otherwise be affiliated with each other -- became a community. I’ve seen them with my own eyes, learning from each other’s strengths and each one growing stronger herself. As much as it made me happy to see this utopia of learning and understanding and community development, it was also heart crushing. Because in the real world -- a world where the individual is more important than the group -- this type of community learning would not be awaiting them at their respective schools, unless they were able to be a part of a program such as Students at the Center, a school-based writing program that links community to school and develops youth voices and leadership.

I know of no other program that encourages students to learn through their own experiences, which means that everyone can be a teacher in his or her own way. How well you do in the class is not dependent on your grades or whether or not you can pass a test, but on how well you can connect your experiences to the current events, policies and decisions that affect your life. Students at the Center equips each student with the ability to be leaders in their own schools and communities.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, the students from Chalmette and Douglass high schools have both suffered devastating losses to their communities. The good thing is that all of us who care about New Orleans and the surrounding parishes have the opportunity to learn from the SAC community. We can make our school system reflect true equality and community cooperation that could generate significant economic and technological growth as well as great self–reliance and sufficiency.

One of the first and most critical steps to having a public school system that works for each student is to break down the barriers that divide communities. These barriers include selective admissions schools that have the ability to design their student body based on admissions test scores or simply self-selection by students, their families, and their teachers.

Separating students who can achieve on certain levels from those who may not be able to achieve on those levels hurts and weakens all students. Instead of creating a system that allows students from the same neighborhood with varying degrees of knowledge to learn and help each other be better students, these selective admission schools rip vital human resources from their own communities while discriminating against others. But these “others” are also vital human resources.

I know this because I attended McDonogh #35, a selective admissions school. Yet my relatives and friends in my own community attended Carver, Booker T. Washington High, and Douglass High Schools, all of which are considered low performing schools. Although I didn’t initially understand some of my family’s resentment of the high school I chose to attend, somehow I did feel like I was a part of the abandonment of not just those in my family but in my community. I understood that my education was somewhat better than theirs, but why? Whenever I walked into my cousin Eddie’s room when he was doing homework, he would stop immediately and throw his books aside. I knew he was having trouble because his mommy told me so. Even though we were cousins, for some strange reason the fact that he attended Carver and I McDonogh # 35 made it hard for him to come to me for help, even when I was clearly offering my services.

Imagine if all of the medicine men, all of the hunters, musicians and farmers decided to create their own communities, excluding or rarely dealing with those with other skills? They would notice that their communities would become gravely destitute as musicians realize they know nothing about hunting, the hunters can’t heal the sick, and the medicine men starve to death because they know not how to cook. The ancients understood one thing we fail to realize: you can’t be a community by yourself. And even if you find a group of people who are just as smart as you, or can play an instrument just as fine as you can, there are skills that the group lacks and desperately needs.

If we are serious about creating a better New Orleans and we understand that a better school system is an important factor in that, then we know what we have to do. There is only one way to eliminate low-performing schools for good: Get rid of those schools that separate and destroy the potential of community.

The vision that we created through the State of the Nation play last summer was a vision of community. So when a student is trying to decide whether to attend Easton or Douglass, the determining factor should be as frivolous as liking the color of the uniform. It should not be a choice to abandon your whole community to better yourself.

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New Orleans has some new winter and spring rituals for public education. Starting in January, our streets are lined with signs advertising different charter schools. A month ago, a couple of local organizations sponsored a major school fair on a Saturday. Yard signs, email announcements, and flyers at schools abounded. But on the day of the fair, more school representatives than parents were in attendance. In fact attendance was so poor that the deadline for applying to schools was pushed back a few weeks.

Today’s essay is by Jade Fleury, a senior at McMain Secondary School, which switched from a selective admissions to an open admissions school after Katrina.

I Don’t Know Why You Care So Much
Jade Fleury

“Jade, I don’t know why you care so much anyway.”

“Umm could it be you’re my boyfriend and I care and I know you’re too smart to be going to a stupid school like John Mac?”

“Man look, all I’m trying to do is graduate. And you know we’re not going to be doing any work, so I might as well go to the Mac and make it easier on myself.”

“Whatever Keith, that’s all on you.”

Getting into minor arguments about where my ex-boyfriend, Keith, should go to school after Hurricane Katrina was not uncommon. He had his idea of what he thought would be best for him, and I had mine. These ideas were never the same. He’d often tell me why he should go to John Mac versus going to McMain. “Man look, if I go to McMain, I’m bound to get put out anyway. I don’t fool with nobody who goes there, and I’m not trying to do no work. So it’d just make more sense for me to go to the Mac.”

After hearing those similar words after every argument, I began to keep my mouth shut, but not my ears. I would always hear him say how much fun he’d have at school, how all of his friends were going and that he couldn’t wait for school to start. But never did it seem to cross his mind that he’d get a better education if he went to McMain. Or maybe it did, but he was more concerned about having fun. Or could it have been that he never had intentions of going to college, so going to a school like McMain that would look good on applications to college didn’t matter. I often wondered why his mother didn’t push him to go to a better school. She, just like me, knew her son was capable of the work. But never did she step in to say, “Keith should go to a better school than John McDonogh.”

Besides, many people of my generation could care less what high school they attend. What are they to do? They don’t have adamant parents pushing them to do better, and most of their peers feel the same as they do. Should we continue to go on and forget about other young people like Keith?

Being around my ex-boyfriend and other close friends, who also like Keith chose to go to the lower performing schools that are not based on “choice” and are now run by the state after Katrina, has made me realize that as long as the school system provides them with two very different atmospheres, there will always be segregation within New Orleans school system. Continuing to keep us apart is slowly destroying the gender relationships between us. For example, in my Creative Writing class at McMain we learned that out of the 7 females in the class, only 1 of them would consider dating a male from McMain. It’s obvious something is missing. Why is it we’d rather date a guy from John Mac or Sarah T. Reed? The separation is making many females like myself stray away from the males that we attend school with, slowly tearing apart our social networks and future families.

Who’s to say I can’t benefit from Keith? Perhaps he knows something I don’t, or vice versa. We should be able to collectively put our ideas together and help one another. Bringing us together will then show the system that it is very possible for both Keith and I to attend school together and learn. Who knows? Maybe the adamancy I posses about school will rub off on people like Keith and motivate them to do better. If this is so, why are we developing more and more separate schools and school systems and not more neighborhood schools that the whole diversity of young people in a neighborhood attend.

When will Keith and I learn together in the same school? What system of schools will make that choice possible?

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This is the time of year when students begin to select courses for the next school year. Students at the Center classes have always been open to any student at the school. In some cases students choose our classes. In other cases, counselors simply place them in our classes for reasons we as teachers never know.

Today’s blog features an essay by Nantrell Malveo, who will graduate this spring from Frederick Douglass High School. In the essay Nantrell explores how she found herself in a Students at the Center class and how her thinking about the class and the program has changed over time.

Students at the Center Creative Writing Class
Nantrell Malveo

When I first got to Douglass, I thought that I was just going to go do what I had to do, graduate, go to college and never look back. But what I didn’t know was that I was going to be in a writing class. When I first got to this creative writing class also called SAC (Students at the Center), I thought it was just another English class, and I was going to pass it just like all my other English classes. I was dead wrong. In this class you have to sit in a circle so everyone can see you and introduce yourself every time someone new comes. You have to write a story sometimes about whatever you want or most of the time Mr. Randels gives you a topic like “Your first experience with a gun or a dead body” or “Inhaling Brutality, Exhaling Peace” to write.

Then you have to write or type it and then read it aloud in class. Then your classmates give you their opinion on what they think you should change or keep. But that’s not the worst part. Then you have to revise it and read it again and again until you get every detail perfect; then you get a grade. I told my mom “these people want too much from me. They all in my business.” I was happy when my 9th grade year was over. Now I was closer to my dream of leaving.

My sophomore year came and went. It was bittersweet but more bad than good. Because of Hurricane Katrina I kept bouncing around from state to state, school to school. But the good thing about it was that I didn’t have any classes like the writing class where you’re always judged by what you write, the way you write, and unlike in writing class you don’t have to come up with the answer—you just have to study. But most of the time I was too sad about losing all my stuff like my photos and my elementary and middle graduation dresses to care.

It wasn’t until a year after Katrina, my junior year when I was back at Douglass, that I realized how much I really like SAC. And even though you have to write a lot, most of the stuff you write is about you, so there’s never a wrong answer. And it’s better to write stuff down than say it, so that no matter if you forget or something happens to you, your writings will always be around, and like I say “even if some people judge you, your pen and paper never will.”

And unlike most classes SAC is a place to express what’s on your mind and just tell people your thoughts on stuff whether it’s stuff at school, in your neighborhood, or just stuff in your life. That’s why SAC is something that I want to be a part of now as well as in the future.

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Our students at both Douglass and McMain have read Toni Morrison’s Beloved this spring. Many of them are in the middle of working with some of our staff and graduates to develop a play that incorporates their writing about violence against women and their reading of Beloved.

Hearing them talk about the writing they are doing calls to mind a writing that Brittany Philson, a 2007 graduate of Douglass and Students at the Center, completed last year when we were discussing Toni Morrison’s novel. Brittany’s essay, featured in today’s blog, represents another of the many ways that our students write in response to class discussions about the literature they read.

My Dream (Pass Me Over)
Brittany Philson

It’s cold; I’m sleeping and singing to myself. The only reason I’m asleep is because it was boring today. I was kind of upset, because someone didn’t invite me to her birthday party. I guess she was having so much fun that she forgot about me. So I just went to sleep.

While I’m deep in sleep, I’m trying to think of places to go for Thanksgiving. My sister, Centrelle, called me a lil’ while ago with an invitation to come help her cook for turkey day, but I don’t know if I want to have good food with no conversation to go with it. And besides, Baton Rouge is just too boring for me and my wild ways. So I decided to just wait and see if I got any more offers, excluding the ones that I’d have to work for food.

Then it happened; someone violated my silence.

My “Me” time.

My Brittany vs. herself session.

I was awakened by this woman whom I first thought was Della Reese from the TV show Touched by an Angel.
She was standing over me with light shining from her body like someone was standing behind her with a flashlight. She looked surprised that I was actually looking back at her.

When I rose up to give her my attention, her eyes popped open real wide like she hadn’t seen me in ages.

Now I’m standing here wondering, “Who’s this lady who just woke me up and is staring at me like I’m a brand new car she brought home from the car dealership?”

I think she wants to say something.

I hope she says something, since she woke me up.

It must be important.

It better be important.

I gave her a few more seconds to give me a once over, since she couldn’t stop looking and wouldn’t start talking.

Then I started to do the same thing she was doing to me, except I would glance at her. And every time I got a good look, I would see a certain thing that she had that would remind me of this special lady I knew when I was younger.

She was a fairly tall woman with the best chocolate skin I’d ever seen on a woman of her age. The aroma that came from her body was the familiar smell of someone who would spend hours in the tub on a Saturday morning with vanilla lingering behind her with every move she made. And I couldn’t help but notice that her fingers were just as long and narrow as mine. Her wardrobe looked very similar to what my mama was wearing when she went to church that Saturday morning and wasn’t home the next day to cook Sunday’s dinner. She was well groomed and seemed like she had never worked a day in her life. Her character seemed free from the hardships of life.

The last thing I remember that I was thinking before she spoke was, “I hope I look like her when I get to her age.” I’ve never seen anyone look this perfect in person, except for the celebrities I’ve seen on TV. They don’t even have anything on this angelic woman standing in front of me.

The first thing that came out of her perfectly shaped lips was “Brittany.”

“Yeah,” I responded while rubbing my eyes, making sure that I was seeing correctly.

“Do you remember me?” she asked, smiling ear to ear.

“I don’t know.”

“Why!”

“Am I supposed to remember you?” I said a little too violently, not meaning to sound that way. It must have been my body telling me to get rid of this stranger interrupting my beauty rest.

“You don’t have to be so mean to me,” she said while cuing me to sit down next to her on my bed.

“So how are you doing in school? Still making A’s on that report card like you’re supposed to?”

Even though I didn’t know her, I felt the need to lie to her because she knew me. So I told her, “yeah,” knowing I hadn’t seen an A since the ninth grade.

“I know,” she said, staring me in my eyes.

“You know what?” I asked, looking at her like she was crazy and hoping that she did not just respond to me, when I was thinking to myself.

“I know you haven’t been doing your duties in school lately, and I know you’ve been hiding from your Marine recruiter. I know you’re desperately trying to give up and run away from the two things that mean most to you, because you think no one cares about what you’re doing for yourself.”

Then I slowly turned my head towards the floor, wondering who told her this, feeling like I’d just been busted for a criminal offense. I know I would never tell anyone that I’m basically trying to screw up my life. Damn, where did she come from, and why is she spying on me?

“You’re right, you didn’t tell me. I’ve been watching you. You can’t get away with everything. You do know that, right?”

Then I looked at her. I laughed because by now I caught on to her listening to my thoughts. Then that laugh soon turned into a despised look when I suddenly realized that, if she’s listening to me now, then she’s been listening to me think when she’s not around. I wanted my thoughts to disappear like Dorothy did when she tapped her heels three times. Something told me to sleep with my shoes on. I cracked a mischievous smile.

“You’re just like your father with your own inside jokes to yourself. I can’t help but laugh at you when I see you laughing for no reason.”

That was nice of her. Comparing me to the man who didn’t call me for my 18th birthday. She really hit a soft spot there. Talking about watching me, you should’ve been watching him, making his ass suffer. Reminding me that I was living in a world with a worthless father.

“Brittany that’s not my child, and besides you never cared for that man anyway.”

I wanted to laugh so badly. Because she knows me better than I know myself.

She was right, but he could have called.

Now I’m sitting here stuck within the conversation, not knowing what to say next. I don’t want to give her false information, so she can bust me in my lie.

My mind just started to feel different, like someone was knocking on it, telling it to pay attention. Something deep down told me to ask myself if this was her: The woman I promised myself to never forget.

I felt her hand touch mine. She was looking at me again with joy in her eyes. I think she was happy that her slow-minded child finally came to her senses.

I don’t wanna cry. I’m not gonna cry. I don’t want her to see how soft I am over her.

“It’s too late for that you big crybaby,” she said, laughing her eyes out at me.

“What are you talking about? I’ve never cried for nothing a day in my life.”

I felt grateful that god had finally answered one of my 4,017 cries to let me have just one more memorable conversation with my favorite lady.

Looking at her, I was surprised that she was actually sitting there laughing at me. That moment made me reminisce about the last time I made her laugh.

“Yeah! You wouldn’t cry over something somebody did you, but you’ll cry like there’s no tomorrow when it comes to me.

“You remember that day you were crying because you missed me terribly. You was in the bathroom on the floor between the toilet and the tub when you asked me why did I leave you here, why didn’t I take you with me because you didn’t like being in this world with a bunch of people who don’t understand you.

“Or the time when you was sleep, and you started to cry because you was wishing that I was there with you.

“And my favorite one yet was when after you read the story you wrote about me, you went home and cried, because you didn’t know you were ready to let the world know how I left my baby here alone so suddenly.

“Ooh, and you know what else I know?”

“What else?” I replied anxiously, wanting to hear more from her since she was making my spirit rise with every true word she spoke.

“I know exactly why you didn’t mention my last request in that story.”

“Why?” I looked at her confused, like she was a foreign language that I was getting tired of trying to learn. I wished she would just tell me.

“Because you already knew all I wanted for you was to live right. And besides that, I also wanted you to know that I love you no matter what you choose to do, so stop letting simple things get to you. Now stop crying for me and be the strong young lady that I know you are.”

That’s her. She’ll break you down and pick you up while doing it.

There was no need for me to open my mouth and spoil the moment.

She got up, looked at me, smiled and shook her head, and kissed me on my forehead.

“Good night Brittany.”

She must know what I’m about to ask her.

Walking off, singing a song, reassuring me that she heard what her daughter wanted.

I wanted to see her again.

So I lay back down, excited and disappointed at the same time, like I was one of those people who was going to be waiting in line for a big Christmas sale after the Thanksgiving Holiday.

“Mom I want to tell you one last thing,” I said turning towards her while leaning on my elbow.

She stopped dead in her tracks and stood tall like she was about to be announced the winner of a million dollar award.

I smiled at her proudly and told her:

“Happy Birthday,” and Thank you for keeping (My Dream) alive.

Posted by Jim Randels at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today’s blog introduction is written by Jennifer Harden, an 11th grade student at McMain.

Reading The Scarlet Letter
Jennifer Harden

“Wow!” The first thought that came in my mind when I heard my classmate Ayrion Miller’s essay about her mother and inspired by The Scarlet Letter. I’ve done lots of things after reading a book: journals, book reports, outlines and analysis papers, all the typical things you would do in an English class. I have never really heard things so personal relating to our topics in any class since I started school. I always thought literature was supposed to be this boring stuff you read and never understand what the author is really trying to say.

But in my AP English III class taught by Students At the Center at McMain, we actually talk about the book in relation to real-life situations. It helps a whole lot. I think it makes no sense to “teach” things that I can’t connect with the real world. I thought that was the whole point of coming to school anyway, to prepare me for the REAL WORLD. I’m sure finding the spot where commas go in a sentence about Jan going to the store for grapes will one day come up. But where’s the girl named Keisha who is pregnant at 19 and has a baby daddy who wants nothing to do with them because of the “look” he’s trying so hard to achieve? Sounds a lot like Dimmesdale not owning up to Pearl.

Over the Christmas break, we were instructed to read The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this piece, Aryion Miller, also a junior, wrote about how she related to The Scarlet Letter. It’s definitely not an ideal English essay, but it helps to be able to relate to real situations. After we heard the essay, it made me think about The Scarlet Letter in a different perspective, almost as if it was written in today’s time inadvertently. It definitely adds to the enjoyment of the book. Her essay helped me to connect it with things that really happen.

No Clue (Like Dimmesdale)
Ayrion Miller

“Who is that man Hester? I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him, Hester!”
--Pearl speaking in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

On June 28, 1997, my sister, brother, and I were all asleep in our rooms. My dad had gone out to look for my mother, because she hadn’t come home the night before, so we were home alone. That morning we received a very disturbing call. The phone rang, and both my brother and sister jumped out of bed to get it. My brother got to it first, and they began to argue over the phone. My brother being the oldest and biggest won and answered the phone. The lady on the phone, whom I believe was a relative, had called to tell us that she was sorry about our mother.

During all this commotion with the phone call I was still in my room. My siblings had no idea what to do or think. They had just found out that their mother was dead. Soon, my aunts and uncles were over at our house. They attempted to calm things down. My dad had never returned home. My aunt picked me up and carried me down the street to her house. I didn’t know why though. In fact I had no idea about what was going on around me.

Later that day, my dad finally came home. He gathered my sister, brother, and me all in the den to talk. Even at six years old, I could tell that what he was about to say was hurting him. He told us that my mother had been shot and killed. I didn’t know then and I still don’t know why someone would do such a thing to my mother. To tell the truth, I never even asked. I couldn’t ever bear to bring the topic up. Especially with my dad, because I didn’t know how he would react.

Well, I still didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, I was only six at the time, and I had never experienced death before. My dad tried to explain, but in the back of my head my mother was still alive. She had just gone away for awhile.

As I read The Scarlet Letter for my SAC English III class and considered situations in which characters didn’t understand situations they were in the middle of, I began to think of this incident. Just like Dimmesdale, I had no clue about what was going on around me. In The Scarlet Letter, Chillingsworth was trying to get revenge on Dimmesdale, and Dimmesdale had no idea. He was blind to the evilness surrounding him. For a long time, I was blind to the fact that when my mother was shot and killed, so was the normalness of my life.

Posted by Jim Randels at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)