Pardon me since I haven’t done this in a while, but I’d like to quote a bit of poetry from Steve Winwood:
Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is wasted time
Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine
Things look so bad everywhere
In this whole world, what is fair?
We walk blind and we try to see
Falling behind in what could be
Eleven years ago, Luz graduated from Columbia University with a degree in education leadership. Before we created our current life together, I was just a rookie teacher, observing a teacher leader transform into a building leader with baby blue tassel moving from right to left. She spent long nights reading assignments that didn’t necessitate such studiousness, reminding people about the difference the U and Colombia the country, and sharing stories about her new world view on leadership.
On occasion, I’d get to glide through the mahogany hallways of Teachers College on my way to see her, intrigued by the bustle of new college students and century-old edifice. Confident as I was, I’d drop a few words in conversation with her classmates about my classroom and what brought me to TC. One time, I even had the pleasure of watching a presentation in the chapel.
I’d sit in the back of that chapel, watching these future administrators watch a speaker, thinking to myself: “I know I’d love to get up there. Now it’s a matter of what it is I need to say.”
Eleven years later, I’m on that stage discussing teacher voice and social justice on behalf of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Eleven years ago, that felt far-fetched in some ways. A current teacher has the opportunity at an Ivy League institution to speak freely without a doctorate. It’s incumbent on me to put a wedge in the door every time I do this so the next few can get in. The door does not come down with one person. Naturally, I spoke about my past students, the ways they taught me to be a better teacher, how I used that energy to speak outside of the classroom, and why relationships matter more than content. Before I knew it, the time had passed and I brought myself back to Earth.
Humility is critical, because in a place like New York City, teachers have to wait decades to get recognized for the work. We have scores of people who get paid hand-over-fist to infer failure early and often. We have a department that deals directly with equity and access in our public school system, and a slew of administrators who believe equity means results and nothing more. We have colleagues who quietly cheer on their colleagues and others who loudly dismiss another, and everything in between. We discard words like disruption and differentiation like the plethora of photocopied passages and pamphlets from proselytizers who permeated our schools for thousands at a time. We have learned the art of nodding and dissent. We have measures. So many measures. So many of them objectionable, subjective, and inadequate all the same.
People reticent to allow educators of conscious platforms speak from places of jealousy perhaps, but definitely fear. Qualified experience and / or vetted research with corroborating stories beats obtuse and compromised deceptions in the ways we move communities.
That’s why so much of this work is about approach and content. It’s great when we develop work with precision and thoughtfulness. I also see how one needs to feel the work. The words we read need to pull sympathy from the believers, angst from the non-believers. When we hear people talk about “love for the work,” we’re not dodging comprehensiveness, depth, or progress in our students’ knowledge or what people outside of our classrooms need to know about our passions. We’re explicitly saying that, without this love, we might as well leave our voices up to folks with no desire to “deal” with children.
At this point, the handful of us who’ve spoken up about social justice have already laid the blueprint so they don’t need to gain those experience via poverty, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. They can “get it right” by looking at the metrics and move accordingly.
The love magnifies the narratives. These voices don’t come off the same because our voices oscillate between tremble and shout. Some might argue that human beings are easily deceived by preternatural oratory, which has some truth to it. However, I also believe people are slowly learning to feel inspiration from the fruits of labor. These works are the legacy we leave in our resistance to people who prefer us as marionettes. Why wouldn’t those of us who walk amongst the students know how to speak in front of adults with equal fervor and imagination?
In the chapel, spots of natural light penetrate the tinted windows, a small reminder to the students that, should they get lost in that labyrinthine college, they can find their way back in that space. From the back of the chapel, one doesn’t notice because we’re busy looking at the person on stage. From the stage, our perspectives change. The rookie from a decade ago quietly and actively listened to hundreds of folks from all walks of life, spoke pithily when prompted, and embraced the task of getting his life’s work aligned with his heart over and again. Oh, and eventually working with that friend and future building leader to build this partnership, this apartment, this wonderful child.
If that’s not higher love, then what are we thinking of?