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For twelve years, I was an elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
One hundred eighty school days each year.
Five years teaching kindergarten.
Six years teaching fourth grade.
One year teaching fifth grade.
The simple definition of teacher is one who teaches. But the reality of what it means to be a teacher is so much more.
Read MoreThe head of the Communications Department, Janine, fixes her big eyes on me and says, “I want you to think about whether you are really sick, or just tired.”
Read More“Hey Ref! You’re making calls out of your aaass!” the father of a nine-year-old kid in a game I was officiating yelled at me at the top of his lungs, adding a two-handed, open-palm slam against the glass for emphasis.
Handing off the puck to my officiating partner, I skated to my designated position, which happened to be a spot on the ice fairly close to where that parent stood, still pressed against the glass. Slowly, deliberately, I leaned forward with my hands on my knees, focusing on the impending puck-drop—and giving that parent a good look at the region from which my calls were coming.
Read MoreI donned an orange safety vest and sparkling new hard hat fresh from its cellophane wrapper and trudged up the wide, steep incline under a blazing California sky. My gait was off-kilter, too much weight in the front of my steel-toed boots. The Sony camera slung across my body hit my back every step I took, like a stranger trying to get my attention. I shoved my small notebook and pen into my jeans back pocket and swung the camera around, securing it with my right hand. Up and up the bridge deck I climbed, all the way to the end, halfway across the San Francisco Bay.
Read MoreOne of my students, a poet, works at a gas station by night. I picture her under the fluorescent lights, composing sonnets and slam poems (her favorite), reading them aloud to the empty store in rural New Mexico, where only a few cars pass by. When the door chime rings, she stows her notebook under the counter and straightens the array of potato chips next to the cash register.
Read MoreAt the end of the summer of 1986, I stepped into the elevator and traveled alone from the forty-sixth floor of Chicago’s Mid-Continental Plaza to the ground for the last time. For four years, I had worked in that gray rectangular office building that spans a full city block. Its exterior resembles graph paper—gray metal and concrete run up the building vertically and around it horizontally, forming squares. In between that metal and concrete, set back ever so slightly, are windows.
Read MoreThe day after my husband brought our first batch of piglets home to our farm, they escaped. The forty little black creatures that had seemed so content gamboling in our barnyard throughout the morning had, by noon, slipped out of their fencing and assembled under the ornamental crab apple tree on the lawn.
Read MoreDear Past Me,
I’ve never written a Dear Past Me letter before. It never occurred to me. A Future Me letter makes more sense as I can store it away for you, me rather (Argh, confusing!) to read when you’re clearing out the cupboard, or that box under your desk where you put all the papers that have no proper place anywhere else in the house.
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