¡Viva la CICIG!

Whoah. Amazing piece in this week's New Yorker about political murder in Guatemala. I mean, my own attachment to Guatemala (and to the CICIG) notwithstanding, it's just a stunning story. In "A Murder Foretold," David Grann recounts the unfolding investigation into who killed Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer who left behind a video accusing the government of his murder before being shot to death in 2009. I couldn't put it down, and as soon as I finished, I ran into the next room and chucked the magazine at Steve (who was diligently working to finish an assignment for his masters class) and demanded that he read it right away. He tried to ignore me and keep working, but stirred as I was by the content of the piece, I just had to ask: "Honey, if you were president of the United States, and for some reason, there was a law in the United States that said that your spouse could never run for president, and your term was about to end, and you had done some really good things as president, and you knew that the only one who could continue your leadership of the country was me, your wife, and I really wanted to be president . . . would you divorce me?"

I know what you're thinking. Good question. And this is exactly the question that has been facing President Alvaro Colom and his wife, Sandra de Colom, of Guatemala. So they're getting a divorce. You think that's crazy? You should read the rest of the piece. I won't give away the twists and turns in the investigation of one of the most outlandish murders in the history of political murder, but I will say this: The murder gets solved. And it's the CICIG that solves it.

The CICIG (la Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala - The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala) is a brainchild of the U.N. It's an independent investigative entity in a country that is so permeated by corruption that drug traffickers operate freely with the aid of former (and current) military and police. Guatemala's murder rate is the third highest in the world, and 97% of murders go unsolved. The purpose of the CICIG is to bring justice to bear on those responsible (the powerful elite) and to begin to restore rule of law, safety, and stability.

The CICIG almost didn't exist. In the summer of 2007, I had just finished a week of research on the murder of women in Guatemala with the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. Afterwards, Steve joined me, and we spent two weeks traveling the country, puzzling over Guatemalan politics (the country was in the midst of a heated and violent election campaign), and reading the newspapers every day to follow the fate of the CICIG in the Guatemalan Congress. Things looked pretty grim for the CICIG at that point. Why would politicians approve the creation of a body designed solely to investigate them for corruption? News commentators in Guatemala were skeptical, and so was I. After hearing from the parents of young women who had been tortured and murdered, after speaking with human rights activists, government officials, and indigenous midwives, I was convinced that the CICIG was crucial to ending impunity and improving lives in Guatemala. But I was far from convinced that the government, dominated by many of the same people who perpetrated the atrocities of the thirty-year civil war, would grant the CICIG the authority to operate in the country.

Then, on July 31st, the day before the Guatemalan Congress was scheduled to vote on the CICIG, the New York Times published an editorial about Guatemala entitled "Only the Criminals Are Safe." This turned the tide. The gaze of the American media must have felt pretty heavy on some of those Guatemalan politicians, because the next morning, Steve and I woke up to an incredible headline. The CICIG had passed! I remember feeling a surprising mixture of hope and relief. I felt hopeful that this signified a change in the direction of Guatemalan politics. I was relieved to have a sign that American involvement (awareness, media attention, international pressure) could have a positive impact on other parts of the world. (I had been starting to think that the US left only disaster and destruction in its path.)

So, the passage of the CICIG really inspired me. I wrote about in an article for Upside Down World, spoke about it at local schools and events, and visited my representatives regarding our country's involvement. Now, almost five years later, despite increases in violence, narcotrafficking, and poverty in Guatemala, the CICIG still gives me a reason to be hopeful about Guatemala's future.

In the past few years, the international press has suggested that Guatemala might be considered "a failed state." And in the New Yorker piece, David Grann addresses the critical importance of the Rosenberg case by quoting The Economist's response in 2007: "Whether or not Mr. Rosenberg's killers are brought to justice will show whether or not Guatemala is indeed a failed state." Thanks to the CICIG, the killers have been brought to justice. ¡Viva la CICIG!

Gold Dots

Yesterday I went to the SDP's community budget meeting at South Philadelphia High School. The SDP's ostensible aim was to elicit community input on the budget, especially given our district's $500 million budget shortfall and the cuts that are anticipated in closing it. I didn't go in expecting that my voice would be heard; the general consensus is that these meetings are just for show and that the SDP will do what it wants regardless. However, I thought it was important to show up in order to send the message that people are angry about the District's lack of transparency, to follow up on the rallies of the past few weeks, and maybe even to learn a little about the budget.

Deputy Superintendent Dr. Leroy Nunery and CFO Michael Masch gave an informative presentation on the District's financial obligations and sources of funding. I hadn't realized, for example, that new charter schools are green-lighted by the state but must be funded out of the District's budget. In other words, the District has no control over how many new charter schools pop up in the city but has to fund them anyway without much assistance from the state.

Nunery and Masch asked us to consider a list of items that schools pay for with money from the central office - things like school counselors, Benchmark Exams, music teachers, and professional development. They explained that we would have the opportunity to "prioritize" these items in small group break-out sessions. I took this to mean that they wanted some input on what could be cut, and I targeted the Benchmark Exams, poorly constructed tests that give me and my students little to no new information about their skills and content knowledge. For example, the last Spanish 1 Benchmark Exam included a question about the nationality of someone from Guadalajara (correct answer: mexicano). Now, despite the fact that it is not required by the SDP's curriculum, I require my students to memorize all the countries and capitals of Latin America, and we were pretty proud to have achieved that (with some success) last semester. However, since Guadalajara is not a capital city, my students had no idea where it was. Neither did most other Spanish 1 students in the District. I'm glad we established that. Thanks Benchmark Exams. And what am I supposed to take from this data? That I should try to get my students to memorize ALL the cities in Latin America? Obviously I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that I got in touch with the person responsible for the creation of this test at the District level and made my concerns known. I can't say that she was terribly receptive.

Back to the meeting. We were divided into 3 separate rooms for our break-out sessions - one for staff, one for students, and one for parents/community members. In my room, the facilitator first collected "concerns," "things I want more information about," and "questions I have." Steve brought up the concern that we were not being asked to give any feedback on one of the most major budget items of the coming year: Promise Academies. Even as we face a budget crisis, the SDP is planning to move ahead with the planned "turn-around" of schools they deem to be failing. This "Renaissancing" of schools is an expensive and unpopular project. As such, the District took it off the table for discussion at this meeting. Steve was concerned. Why are we moving ahead with this costly, unpopular, and unproven intervention when our budget is in dire straights? "Very good point! Let's capture that!" exclaimed the facilitator as his helper scrawled some notes on the chart paper on the wall.

Meanwhile, I was patiently waiting (or according to Steve, "simmering") until discussion turned to the prioritization of the items on the list. When it finally came time to review the list and make our priorities known, we were each handed a shiny strip of paper - five stickers of golden dots - and told that we would be allowed to stick our golden dots next to any of the items listed on a giant piece of paper on the wall. This way, the District could look at our golden dots and see what we valued most. Golden dots! I have to say that this was a trigger for a somewhat surreal experience; in retrospect, I think my gathering frustration (building over the last few months) took over. I don't think I was ever rude or disrespectful, but I didn't feel fully in control. My hand shot up and stayed up until I was called on. "And when are we going to get the red dots? To show what things we'd like to cut?" I was immediately interrupted and cut off. "No one is saying anything about cuts! The purpose of this meeting is to prioritize." I responded that I felt that part of prioritizing was deciding what goes at the bottom of the priority list. They told me I could write my thoughts on the "concerns" chart paper. There would be no red dots.

Later one of the facilitators suggested that I speak with Dr. Nunery about my concern. I left the room to look for Dr. Nunery. He had already left - before the meeting was over. I spoke with someone from his staff who directed me to write down my thoughts on an evaluation sheet. Steve handed me a pen - "fiery red" - and I wrote them.

So as it turns out, I guess I did expect that my voice would be heard. Why else would I have gotten so angry? I was offended by the childishness of the gold dots. We are teachers and school staff - not 5th graders. I don't understand why we couldn't have just ranked all the items on the list. Or better yet, why we couldn't have ranked them in an on-line survey, the results of which the District could have shared publicly. As it stands, there will be no accountability for the "data" that was collected yesterday. When the District makes its decisions about cuts, I'm sure it will point to these meetings and say that whatever got cut didn't have enough gold dots next to it, and there will be no one who can challenge that because they will never actually share the results of the Great Gold Dot Experiment. They'll pretend they got community feedback, but they would never be so brave as to actually measure, share, and take into account what we think.

The Way Forward

I love book titles that are full sentences. There is something grammatically daring about including both a subject AND a predicate on the front cover of your book. Some of my favorite examples: The Way Forward Is With A Broken Heart by Alice Walker, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, and The Life You Save May Be Your Own (also the title of a Flannery O'Connor story) by Paul Elie. I agree with Walker that the way forward is with a broken heart. Until your heart has been broken (at least a little), I don't think you can really comprehend the full landscape (or find the way forward). In life, my heart broke sometime in college. In politics, my heart broke when George W. Bush was elected president a second time. In education . . . I don't know if I can pinpoint a moment. Maybe the day two of my students implied that I was racist? Maybe the day one of my students' parents suggested that I was failing her daughter? Or maybe it hasn't really broken yet. I'm still pretty optimistic, after all. I'm going to the PFT rally tomorrow because I really believe it could make a difference. I teach because I think it could make a difference. (And because, like Elie and O'Connor, I think the life I save might be my own.)

In education, despite the national hopelessness, I think there are a lot of ways forward. In his column today, Nick Kristof presents one option - paying teachers more. On the whole, I agree with him that our priority in education should be recruiting and retaining really talented people to be teachers. Pay is one part of the equation. But I disagree with him (and Bill Gates) about increasing class size. I don't think we can effectively mimic the Japanese model of "larger classes, but with outstanding, respected, well-paid teachers." I think the cultural differences between Japan and the US preclude the possibility of a single teacher commanding the respect and attention of 50 students here in America. Not to mention that developing relationships with students is a big part of the draw for people who become teachers (and it's a lot harder to develop relationships with 50 kids than with 20). I also think that working conditions are a big factor in recruiting talented teachers, and small class size is crucial to making working conditions attractive. Consider private schools. They're the ones who scoop up many of the "top third" college graduates who aren't interested in becoming doctors, lawyers, or executives. They don't pay that much, but they offer small classes and lots of time for preparation and collaboration. They also guarantee at least a modicum of respect from students, parents, colleagues, and administrators. To me, this proves that the quality of working conditions - not pay - is the most important determinant in attracting bright people to the profession.

However, I don't think we can trust that the model that works for private schools will work on the much much larger scale of public schools. We need to do more than scoop up that handful of bright young people who don't want to go into law, medicine, or business. In the end, we need to attract some of those people who want to make money. We do need to raise salaries. It's a way of showing that we value education. And although we do spend more than any other country on education in terms of absolute dollars, we rank tenth in the world in terms of percentage of GDP (source). But even more deleterious is the widespread perception in the U.S. that "anyone can be a teacher." Only by changing our policies (to something more akin to Finland's) can we hope to begin a cultural shift toward a more professional teaching force and more rigorous education for our students.

I wish my union were on board with this idea. As Kristof points out, it's not. Back when women dominated the teaching force, they traded competitive wages for job security and benefits, and the profession developed its "factory model of compensation," unique among American professions that require college degrees. I maintain some loyalty to my union, even if only because I see unions as the only viable counterweight to growing corporate power in the United States. But in my opinion, the way forward is not through protecting the old ways but through recruiting bright young teachers, training them well, offering them good working conditions, and paying them well.

The Darling Buds of March

It's March, so I should be coming out of my annual hibernation from running around now. Today it was in the 50s, and Steve and I borrowed a car to drive to the Valley Green for a run. What ensued was a very low point in my running career. I took one of the trails and was quickly defeated by the first hill. Then I tripped on a rock and fell. The second hill defeated me too. And the third and fourth. Then came the mud, thick and slimy, sucking at my sneakers. Eventually, I decided that this was going to be less of a four-mile run and more of a four-mile gambol through the woods, a mix of running, trotting, walking, and just plain standing. So it wasn't much of a work-out, but it kept me warm enough that I could take off my long sleeves and feel the cool air on my arms. I started paying close attention, tracking spring again. I heard the sounds of early spring: buzzing, twittering, my licra-coated thighs swishing against each other with each stride (Spring - will you please lighten me of this winter weight?). With each step on the trail, I also heard a faint crackling in the ground under my foot. I really have no idea what it was, but I imagined it was the earth shaking off the winter, stretching and flexing after sleep. I imagined my footfalls prodding the hillside awake. I heard the cry of two wild geese - harsh and exciting - and watched them fly down into the valley. I made a turn and suddenly the only green in the valley appeared - the creek, lying verdantly in the cleft of the hills. From above, it looked like a fat languorous snake, slowly bearing spring into the raggedy woods. Once I made it down to the main trail and up close, it seemed more lively. I stood on a rock that jutted out into the water and watched the geese swim against the current and the sunlight dance on the ripples. I had an urge to jump in, to feel the rush of the water, to smell it right beneath my nose, to bob along the valley floor like the geese. Instead, I kept running along the main trail and soaked up some sun. The broad main trail was flooded with light, and it was not that "certain slant of light on winter afternoons that oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes." It was morning light, spring light, strong enough to get under my skin and into my blood.

Among all those trees, I geeked out a little and resumed my study of buds with even more intensity. Every so often, I stopped and examined a tree branch, looking for signs of life. I wished I had a camera! A good one that could really show the different personalities of all the buds I saw. Lacking that, I snapped, tugged, or twisted a few branches off their limbs and carried a fistful back to the car. While I was waiting for Steve, I spotted a few sprigs of green pushing up from under a pile of rocks. Crocuses! I snapped a shot of those with my phone. I also visited a very friendly horse in a pasture by the road. He (she?) is getting ready for spring too; his/her coat shed like crazy when I pet her, and she was covered in dried mud.

When Steve returned, I showed him my collection of buds, and he identified them immediately as "the darling buds of March." And they really are darling. Once I got home, I couldn't resist taking a few photos.

















So, I'm not very far along with my training for Broad Street, but I did have a lovely morning. Give me a few years; instead of the slender runner you know now, I might be a fat botanist.

With Patience

The title of my last entry was a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've found that any time I am teaching Shakespeare, a few lines from the play always tend to worm their way into my consciousness and stay there, echoing in iambic pentameter through my thoughts and my days. When I teach Romeo and Juliet, I'll come home and get in the shower or start making dinner, and suddenly, I'll think, "Turn thee, Benvolio! And look upon thy death!" How weird, I know. "Full of vexation come I" started echoing lately, and I wondered where it came from. I'm not really teaching Shakespeare right now, so I suspected it was from MacBeth, which I saw with students a few months ago. But when I looked up the true source, it made sense. The Drama Club and I have been working on an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the past few weeks. We don't do much actual reading of the play; my students decided it would be more fun to do a re-write with modern language ("Why you tryna play me?"), a modern setting (a corner store), and more modern props (a "spicy chicken slurpee" instead of "a little western flower"). My students were right. It is more fun this way. But despite the switch, that one line lingered.

It is isn't echoing as loudly today as it was in my last post. I'm not as full of vexation. One reason is that school politics are looking up (we're forming a new leadership team, and I'm on it!). Another is that I heard Dr. Leon Bass speak at the Youth Holocaust Symposium yesterday. And another is that my students keep giving me reasons to have hope.

The new leadership team is part of an effort to improve our school before the lease on our building ends in 2016. We have five years to increase test scores and student achievement and to prove to the School District of Philadelphia that it can't afford to close us. For me, it also represents an opportunity to put some decisions in the hands of "our least-consulted experts on education" - teachers. Thanks to a democratically-minded principal, the teachers on our leadership team will help determine the direction of our school over the next five years. Instead of just being blamed for education's failures, we want to have a say in how to improve things. I know it's only on a small scale, but it's a good start in a district where teachers are systematically intimidated rather than empowered.

The Youth Holocaust Symposium at St. Joseph's University yesterday wasn't all good. Some of my students had the disturbing experience of being racial outsiders for the first time in their lives. During one small-group session, they were the only African-Americans in a room of white, suburban, private school students, and they felt it pretty intensely. They felt eyes staring at them and heard unfair assumptions about their intelligence, and finally, they got up and left. Looking back, I'm really disappointed that the organizers didn't make a better effort to include a diverse group of students. The aim of the Symposium, after all, is to increase tolerance and respect for difference among young people.

However, the key note speaker, Dr. Leon Bass, was excellent, and my students and I really appreciated hearing him speak. First, he told his story: He grew up in Philly, trained for an all-black regimen of the army in the deep south, liberated Holocaust survivors at Buchenwald, returned to the US and earned his teaching degree on the GI Bill, joined the Civil Rights Movement after taking his students to hear Dr. King speak in Philly, and eventually became the principal of one of the toughest high schools in Philly. My students thought he was a good storyteller and a wise and passionate person. He speaks all the time and all over the world now, but I never lost the feeling that he was speaking directly to us and with the strong intention to inspire us to be better people. I know my students heard him. And when he was talking about the long way we have to go, I heard him too. I heard him say that we need to do right, to speak out, to work hard, to listen, to "learn to love the unlovable," but what really stood out to me was that he said we need to do it all "with patience." So I'm trying to let that echo around in my mind a bit too.

As for my students, I'm really glad they felt comfortable talking with me about the experience they had in the small group. I tried to be sympathetic (although I'm not sure I really know how it feels to be a racial outsider), and I promised to address the issue with the organizers of the event. On the long bus ride home, we talked about it some more, and they agreed it might be a good idea to write about it as well. Afterward, even though I was a little angry, I was glad that I had the chance to leave the classroom and face one of the world's challenges with my students. Their encounter with another world was disturbing, but it was real, and it prompted a real response. I hope I can find some more positive, less threatening ways to engage my students in these kinds of real examinations of the world.

One place I'd like to do this is in my playwriting class. Today, a visiting teaching artist was leading a brainstorm of different issues (global, community-related, and personal) that might inspire a play. One issue that I raised about our community was the pending school closings and school take-overs in Philadelphia. I showed the students a flier calling for a student walk-out during the PSSAs (high stakes state testing). I was surprised by the overwhelming interest in this topic, and I hope we can explore it further. My goal for the semester is to develop a collaborative, journalistic play (in the style of The Laramie Project) on an issue that the class decides to pursue. What appeals to me about this project is the possibility of all kinds of encounters during the process and all kinds of outcomes at the end. Of course, this is also what terrifies me about the project. Taking risks in the classroom can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also have unpredictable consequences for students and for the teacher. I've seen teaching experiments (other teachers' and my own) lead to hurt, anger, and the erosion of trust in the classroom. Not to mention the case of Hope Moffett. Her class's authentic conversations about their school's take-over led to the teacher's termination and to a heartbreaking situation for her students of almost 3 years. In the last crucial weeks before the PSSA, they are stressed, embattled, and without their teacher.

I heard Hope, along with one of her incredibly talented students, speak at a rally a few weeks ago. Both of them addressed the crowd eloquently and showed inspiring tenacity and aplomb. I really love the image I have of the two of them standing together before a throng of people in front of the School District headquarters. It reminds me that I need to stand with them, stand with my students, and stand with myself. I need to keep fighting for the right to have authentic conversations in my classroom, and I need to have some faith that my students and I will be able to figure things out how to do this. With patience.

Full of Vexation Come I

Hope Moffet is going to be fired. She is going to be fired even though she is a good teacher and even as terrible teachers keep their jobs. Que vergüenza. An embarrassment, a shame.

After school today, I met Steve on Market Street and walked home, spitting and cursing the whole way. FULL of vexation. Not just about Hope (and other dismaying news that Steve brought from his union meeting) but about my own school. I'm so invested in my school, so ready to work hard to see real changes - in my students, in the quality of education we provide, in the role of teachers in our country, in myself. And initially, this new investment - won only after I finally started to feel confident in my teaching - brought so much exuberance. It's exciting to have something to believe in, to have a worthwhile goal to chase down. But with the exuberance come these sharp pangs of disappointment. And vexation.

I am vexed that no one seems to have the first idea about how to improve education in our country. I am vexed that even at my school, a place full of smart, dedicated people, we can't get our act together to make a sound plan for improvement. I am vexed at all the stupid, self-righteous people in the world parading around without the slightest hint of how destructively, intolerably stupid they are. And the more I invest myself, the more hours I spend on new ideas and plans and meetings, the more vexed I can become. I start thinking "This school/this district/this country/this world deserve what they GET!" I imagine myself storming out with all my vexation.

So, I feel very lucky that Steve listens to me and understands me (especially lucky that he understands cursing-spitting me) and that he lured me back to this school/this district/this country/this world with fajitas and cuba libres. I took a calming walk around the neighborhood while he chopped peppers and mashed avocados, and I came home more grounded. But I don't see myself divesting any time soon. In fact, I'm sure I'll keep investing like a mad woman, like a crazy Wall Street junkie. I'm addicted to big investments - in relationships, in jobs, in places, in ideas - and I haven't learned yet how to back down from opportunities to invest. That seems like the kind of thing only a baby might teach me. So until I get schooled by my baby, look out. Full of vexation come I.

The Way Back

A few weeks ago, Steve and I were walking home from a pub, kicking at the last nasty piles of snow and wishing it were spring. It was a warm enough evening that we could start dreaming of cook-outs and camping. There was a gusty wind that made me feel like spring was trying to bust up winter's cold hold on the air. Steve said, "I know we have a long way to go, but still, I feel like we're on the way back." He meant the "way back" the way he means it when he's talking about a run. All our runs have a way out (the first half) and a way back (the second half). The way back is a lot easier because you're finally running towards home instead of away from it. And no matter how tired you are and how bad you want to walk, you just keep running because it's the fastest way home. And in the case of the seasons, warm weather is home. Now that it's March, we're finally on the way back.

Right now, my winter clothes are about as appealing to me as a crusty, discarded locust shell. I can barely bring myself to put them on. Earlier this week, in a rash protest of winter, I decided to boycott my sweaters, my thick socks, even my coat. I dressed in an airy sleeveless top, dug out some cute pumps from behind the boots and clogs in my closet, and threw on a light jacket on my way out the door. And of course it was freezing. And of course the bus was about 20 minutes late. Apparently, winter is like a Wisconsin governor - he doesn't care about protests.

During this time of year, I am starving for signs of spring. Every time I'm outside, I feel like a stalker, tracking spring down. I look for green, for buds, for anything pushing through the cracks in the sidewalk. Last weekend in Maryland, I saw a little crop of purple crocuses in a lump of dirt and almost passed out from joy. And as much as I prefer the city to suburbs, I felt jealous of the friends we visited in Havertown last Friday because they have the raw sound of singing bugs and the smell of wet dirt right outside their house.

The city is a bit stingier with signs of spring. Still, I went running this morning, and my eyes were glued to the trees. The branches have changed. In the depressing dead of winter, they remind me of claws, scraping at the gray sky. Without leaves, all the trees look about same - dark, spindly silhouettes. But today, the branches snapped back into my consciousness because they are covered in buds. There is no green yet, let alone pink or purple or white, but there are buds. And each tree seems to have its own way of doing buds. Some cluster along the branch like rain drops; some look like tiny umbrellas, stuck out on stems; some are tough and knobby; others are smooth and plump like little pregnant bellies. I can't wait for the leaves they will become, the soft parachute of green that will cover the city for the summer.

And after months of hibernating, breathing and re-breathing the stale air in my apartment, hiding from the elements, I was happy to get rained on this morning. I took off my long sleeves so I could feel the cold pricks on my arms, the assurances that spring is coming. It always comes.