Behind Books and Bricks

by Raymond Pultinas

ORDERS

Witness something at our school

New heights of frightening disregard

(hatred of one’s neighbor as one’s self)

         not everywhere, not everyone

         But you who are impressionable

Speak about the depths of poverty

Violence is only physical

Food insecurity only a symptom

Diabetes only a disease

Obesity only a problem

of few resources and the desire for more…

Change the dialogue

Do now

Write about a time

when you witnessed your own or someone else’s

Blindness

Remain truthful

Reorient my identity

Be stalwart

amidst the torrent of rushing bodies

Step up

Four thousand students or more

         are sinking

What can teaching become?

Start with a poem I wrote that I recited when recently awarded the first “Creating Readers for Life Award” from Behind the Book, a non-profit organization that I’ve collaborated with to bring writers into my classrooms since 2005.  The benefit was held at the William Bennett Gallery in SoHo on October 27, 2010.  Ben Greenman was a delightful and amusing host and Randy Cohen, New York Times magazine’s “The Ethicist” shared a long piece on the joys of reading, riffing off of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader.  There was a silent auction in the gallery whose walls were covered in bizarre Salvatore Dali drawings. It was a wonderful experience for me to be in such presence and among so many passionate readers and supporters of books and young readers. For more on the event, please go to Behind the Book’s blog.

The mission of Behind the Book and its founder Jo Umans is to promote book literacy in public schools by facilitating author visits.  It has been joyful for me to work with this program, deciding what books and authors to read and teach, preparing my students and planning and awaiting the arrival of the authors.  Over the past eight years, Behind the Book has provided my students with thousands of books.  Writers like Francine Prose, Colson Whitehead, Russell Banks, Marion Nestle, Katha Pollit, Suheir Hammad and Martha Southgate (just to name a few) have all come to my classes.  They might appear to my students (and to me) as strange travelers from the outside world suddenly here to help guide us to deeper and greater literary experiences.  First imagine believing, as I do, that reading and discussing literature creates opportunities to practice empathy, critical thinking, reflection, judgment and moral reasoning.  Then imagine having the author of a book we've just read on hand to discuss the work.  Shouldn't every teacher have such opportunity?  The authors come in to my classes to participate in ongoing discussions about their work, their characters, and themes that they’ve captured in literature that we've all brought back live to the discussion. They sign the books that students get to keep, perhaps forever.  There has always been a magic to this transaction, it is truly transformative, what I often call an "out of school" experience. 

At first, I was afraid that the poem would be unsettling to some, I was apprehensive about whether to share the poem.  Such a positive evening, such high notes of excitement amidst pleasant talk - why read something that might bring people down?  Here I was again being the downer public school teacher poet.


It's been a most distressing year so far.  Many of the twenty or so year veterans like myself have never seen it so bad.  The local papers, like the Norwood News have covered the scene but no one seems to have captured the disappointment many of us feel to be in an environment that we have seen grow steadily worse over the last several years. Our school has been overcrowded now for almost ten years.  The recession has only made it worse - after school programs are the rare exception not the rule since faculty advisors are no longer compensated for time spent after school.  Copy machines are lacking or in poor condition.  As teachers we seldom have one classroom to teach in and wander around an enormous school with our overstuffed bags as if we carried our offices on our backs.  We have been under-funded and over stressed in so many more ways.  

Over the last several years, as a school, we have been forced to take on populations of students who do not qualify or are displaced from smaller schools.   The steady increase of more needy and less prepared students has coincided with an increase of security that is often perceived by students and staff at odds with the values of education.  Our school often feels like a police state.  Uniformed officers, entrance security, metal detectors, scanners, captive lunch - students are routinely objectified.    Teaching and learning should not be held in the context of fighting and violence and spectatorship but each hall passing holds the threat.  Almost 5,000 students moving from one class to another at the same time.  We go to our posts to maintain our presence in the halls, to help tame the beast that might at any time swell up and battle in the halls.  We have long been aware of a hall culture or culture of the hall, there has always been a temptation for students to cut and roam.  Now instead of loner strangers roaming the halls, there are loosely allied bands of youth sharing a willingness to lash out at all of this.  Rudeness, cursing, vulgarity and intolerance seem to rule the halls.


Earlier in the day, I had read a draft of the poem to my literary criticism students.  An earlier version of the poem was more specifically aimed at impressionable students, especially freshmen, who I knew had been swept up as spectators of the fighting, bullying and intolerant behavior that seemed to have reached a high point at our school during the month of October.  In my revising of the poem, I wanted to simultaneously address an audience of devoted readers, lovers of books, of the arts, of children, who I knew would be gathered that evening.  I wanted to impress upon all my concern for the future of our school, the future of my students and all students who attend neglected overcrowded schools.  Whether we like it or not, the many students who have taken so easily to violence and spectatorship this year are the future citizens of this city.  Over 4,000 students can't be swept under a rug.  I assume that we all want the citizens of the future to be adept and perceptive readers.   Isn’t this what public education is all about?  I wanted the Behind the Book audience to be aware of the conditions that have been created in one of our city's most famous and now last remaining large public high schools and how these conditions threaten to jeopardize a dream I think we all have of an educated and responsible citizenry. There was a time when a certain population of DeWitt Clinton was considered at risk.  Under these conditions, every student is at risk, not to mention every teacher, dean, aide, or security officer (SSA or NYPD).

Perhaps what bothers me the most about what has been happening in our school is not knowing what will happen next.   The fact is that the students in my classes are as motivated and excited about learning and as deserving as any I have ever taught.  I know that good things happen in this school and I feel as if I'm part of what is positive here.  I don't want the positive opportunities to end for my students or for me. 

The culture of the halls has not seeped into my literary criticism classes though we might hear it at times banging at the doors.  Just last week, my students engaged with Marina Budhos over the nuances of the characters drawn in her latest novel, Tell Us We’re Home.  Students could readily identify with the hopes, dreams, and desires of daughters of nannies and housekeepers, immigrants, outsiders with insight.  Our session with Marina was dynamic and intimate as students shared their own poetry and insights as "give backs" to an author who intellectually and physically entered their lives.  On November November 4, Bill Telepan, the celebrated chef and restaurateur who consulted with Michelle Obama about the Chefs Move to School program cooked our harvest dinner made from eggplant, basil, turnips, acorn squash, jalapeno and habanero peppers and oregano grown in our newly established school garden.  Students were inspired by witnessing this superb chef in action and I never thought I'd hear some of my students say "I love turnips!"  Read an article from the Riverdale Press and see more pictures in the Riverdale Press.  Alissa Quart visited the Witt Seminar twice to help students write convincing and powerful persuasive essays on issues that matter to them.  We had read and discussed her book Branded:The Buying and Selling of Teenagers and Alissa shared with us some of her life as a journalist but we also strategized together about how we might use writing to inform the outside world of our plight and help bring about change in our school.  In a couple of weeks, Mark Kurlansky, the author of the bestselling histories Salt and Cod will be visiting my literary criticism classes.  Students debated which of his books to read and then voted to read Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea.  As a setting for our discussions of the book, we've constructed what we've called "Walls of Hope" in our classroom .  I imagine our class as having become a kind of "thinktank" to generate ideas about how to actively oppose the violence we've been witnessing on a regular basis.  Behind the Book has helped keep our hope alive.