Dear Mama and Daddy,
I talked with the birthday girl earlier this evening - what a pretty picture of her and Daddy and Jimmy and Nancy out to dinner with candles in their desert bowls. She reported that she thinks she'll only feel older when she sees a change in the mirror, and that she feels a lot wiser than she did on her ninth birthday, citing the fact that she knew the names and capitols of 36 states, as well as their nicknames, year of induction and abbreviation. Maybe before her 11th birthday she'll learn the other 14.
Today was the Christmas program at school - my second grade chess player performed "Jingle Bell Rock" with his class. In one section all the kids had to dance. He was very enthusiastic, jiving well until he tripped off the step. His lip trembled for a second, his enthusiasm dimmed, but he finished the song with a big grin. I told him he was the best one up there, and he was.
The fourth grade was positively angelic, I credit it this to the fact that some of them brought down books to read. Subversive, yet highly effective.
Folks, I'm ready to be home, ready to see something besides endless concrete and boarded up houses. And yet, there's something to be said for knowing that I'm making a difference here.
I particulaly looking forward to New Year's Eve. I've told people several times over the years that I would hate to spend that night a way from you. There's something powerful about our long tradtion of banging tin pie pans to beat in the year, and I wouldn't feel right if I didn't start the year by saying a prayer with my family. It sets the tone. I knew 2007 was going to be tough, and it has been, but there's been a lot of goodness too.
I feel good about 2008 though, Baltimore is more behind me than in front and I'm on to the next adventure.
I'll see you tomorrow, folks. Not the best writing I've ever done here, but it fit my 15 minute deadline. As of now I am G.T.T.
Love,
Elizabeth

A Developing story:

It's the morning here, clear and crisp and full of hope.

"A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." ~ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

All territories require dreams of some sort, and today starts the finding out of what does happen to a dream deferred. I've got my own suspicions friends, but we'll not delineate them now.

For now it is enough to know that I go with hope, it's all any one can do.

From the mouths of real, live fourth graders:
"Can we through Juan out the window?"

While working on a capitalization worksheet:
Student: I don't know if it should be capitalized or not...
Ms. Alsup: Well, what do you think?
Student: I'm just so torn, it could be.

Student, very excited: Ms. Alsup, I'm having an abolitionist day.
Ms. Alsup: Do you mean abyssmal?
Student: Oh yeah, abyssmal.

"Ms. Alsup, why do you have such high expectations?"

"Ms. Alsup, what is an expectation?"

Student, while reading: "What's goat droppings?"
Ms. Alsup: Show me the context - ah, droppings in the goat shed. Do goats live in the shed?
Student: Yes.
Ms. Alsup: What would goats drop in a shed?
Student: Oh

Student: Can we go to the bathroom?
Ms. Alsup: No
Student: Oh, that cruddy.
Ms. Alsup: Cruddy? What's cruddy is not getting smart.

And my favorite, an explanation of synonyms and antonyms:

" 'synonym' and 'opposite' are antonyms, but 'antonyms' and 'opposites' are synonyms."

What can I say, I work with some smart cookies.

Dear Mama and Daddy,
Supposed to snow tomorrow. Much as I hate the cold, there's still enough Texas kid in me to get excited for it.
The first time I saw snow was in Houston, it was the lightest dusting but still enough to cover the old Weber charcoal grill. I think we had an old black charcoal grill. Did I just make this memory up? It doesn't seem like it.
Then I wanted to play in it, and in a moment that is perhaps more indicative of my life's attitude than previously realized, we booked a plane ticket to Grandma's hill. Sledding, angels and snow cream. Sheer delight. If you want something bad enough, you find a way to make it happen. What an audacious thing for a Texas girl to say- "I want to play in the snow," but I don't think it occured to me that it wasn't a possibility.
One of my last days in Columbia, there was a terrific snow. I had to be on campus early and it was snow quiet. I met up with a friend and we had a tremendous snow fight, darting between the columns, leaving tracks through the snow pelting each other and yelling like banshees.
It's been some time since I've had a moment like that. I read a book one time where the character said he had "heavy boots," to mean he was weary.
Baltimore gives me heavy boots, makes it hard to remember playing in the snow. I've started untying these boots, and I'm getting ready to leave them behind for some sneakers.
I don't know where I'll land. I hope in D.C., I'm growing to love that city like I loved London, and that's saying something. Like to see the chess players in DuPont circle, like the folks riding the subway - teenagers, and college kids and people from the work-a-day world. Like the folks dressed to the nines going to a gala, like the guy in the Chinatown window making noodles. Like the Presbyterian church my friends attend - they even have a book club that reads Flannery O'Connor, clearly a place I could enjoy.
I guess that's what I'd like in the next place I land. I remember Dad, you wrote me a letter in London and said that I got my wanderlust from you, but someday I'd learn that you don't have to go far from home to have an adventure. I'll be honest and say that Baltimore was more of an adventure than I bargained for, and much more than I wanted. It'll take more than a minute to take these Baltimore boots off.
But snow's on the way, and the outlook surely can't be as grim as it seems. I'd better get on and fix dinner.
Love,
Elizabeth

Well friends, it's another week in Baltimore with the Light Brigade (see Crimean War, see Tennyson.) However, the balance of time has tipped and I'm looking toward the light at the end of the tunnel. And that feels awfully damn good.

A couple educational thoughts:
If we want to change schools for the better we've got to ensure that school principals are qualified and effective administrators and managers. Too often the emphasis is on them being superior teachers, but that doesn't transalate to being able to, in effect, run a small business. One of the downfalls of the industry is that there is little room for promotion, seeking an administrative role is one of the few ways to achieve a higher status and pay rate in education. Why on earth, though, would you want master teachers removed from the classroom in order to go to a job they may not have the skills for? It doesn't make sense - a recurring theme in education.

Furthermore, parents have got to realize that as consumers of the public school system they have power at the ballot box, among other places. Parents can be easily cowed by educational blowhards spouting off about all sorts of pedagological mumbo-jumbo. Parents are afraid to trust their common sense. At the end of the day, the parents need to ask "Is my child receiving an adequate education? Can they read intelligently? Can they perform basic math skills? Are they learning to think critically? Does their classroom sound well run?" Parents have the greatest power to hold teachers and school systems accountable, and yet they don't, fearing that their lack of an education degree makes them unqualified to question. Too often, schoolto parent relationships are disastrous and antagonistic, this is of no use to anyone.

And in another blow to teaching children not to fight, a parent walloped and bloodied a staff member at my school last week. The staff member by all accounts taunted the parent, and got in the parent's personal space and the parent wasn't having it. So now two adults whom children regularly see, a staff member and a parent, have shown these children that physical violence is an appropriate way to deal with problems. See above entry about effective principals and empowered parents: as a manager seeking to deliver a service to customers why would you cotton to an employee whose actions were in direct opposition to your mission, as a group of parents seeking a service why would you allow a principal to think that employing such a staff member would be appropriate? As we say at the Radiant, "It don't make no sense, no sense 't'all"

Today, I watched a kid walk away from a fight. He might fight tomorrow, or the day after, but today he walked away. That counts.

There's street and school, I say. What works out there won't work in here. So show me the people you want to be. You can leave the fourth grade ignorant or you can leave smart. Your choice. It works, the kids sit up straight. Even my little boys who fancy themselves gangbangers.

They don't think I know - about street, or gangs. And what they don't realize is that they know much more than I. When I asked C why he was talking 'bout bloods, he asked how I knew. "What, one of your family in a gang?" he said.

Every once in a while, much more often this year - things click in the classroom. And I catch a glimpse of why dedicated teachers choose this career. When I see my kids choose school over street, I know why teachers stay.

Poking my eyes out with the 2nd Ammendment:
I'm just watching a little bit of the Republican Youtube debate - it would be great if they debated, but it's like a competition where the winner is the man who can stay on message and mention multiple platforms - i.e. I believe in guns and having a mom and dad, while maintaing a fiscally responsibility government. Moms, dads and guns keep our borders secure - okay that might be a hyperbole, but it's not far from truth.

An Open Letter Home:

Dear Mama and Daddy,

“The North wind doth blow, and we shall have snow,” soon enough. The winter is bearing down, and as the city hunches its shoulders against the chill the recesses of my soul turn to a house opened to summer, ice tea on the table and that Alsup laughter which buoys up so much. How I wish to be telling stories with you all.

I went to church this week, and had the same thought I have nearly every week – “Train up a child in the way [they] should go…” and I haven’t departed from it. There was a family in front of me, and both the kids had a dollar to put in the basket, and I remembered when I would get a dollar to put in the basket. A whole month of Sundays have I sat between you, and it leaves a lasting impression upon me.

I was very cynical last week about my time here and my place here. I left college very much believing that the good you put into the world makes it just a bit better, any small act of kindness tips the balance towards a better place, so I thought. It’s easy to be disabused of that thought here in Baltimore. Some days it doesn’t seem like there’s enough good in anyone to change this city. Most days it doesn’t seem like there’s enough kindness to even start. There’s just too much brokenness and hurt; it’s hard to even begin to know where to fix that.

But the world doesn’t need another cynic. As a friend told me last year, cynicism is unbecoming. I return to what I know to be true – that I don’t know what difference I’m making, but if at the end of the day I can say that one kid in Baltimore left my classroom smarter, kinder, and more ready to use their brain then their fists, then I believe I can call that a good day. Maybe they’ll remember what I’ve tried to teach them longer than I expect.

I was thinking about all the towns in Texas that we’ve been through: Abilene, Amarillo, Parker, Austin, West, Lubbock, Houston, Corpus. Especially about driving out to Abilene for music auditions – whatever I expected for my life then is certainly not what the reality became. I couldn’t have imagined Baltimore, or this great compassion that my better angels encourage. If you had told me then all that would happen, I would have called you crazy.

But here I am down the road. Your wandering child with perpetually itchy feet – there only seem to be roads that lead me far away from those I love. I hope the road will circle back someday and soon.

A lot of my kids don’t have much of a recognizable concept of family, nor that they are representatives of their name. I don’t think there was ever a time that I didn’t know my name, or what you and Mamma stood for, what I was expected to uphold. Even now, I carry it with me. Hard work, concern for others, care for you family, sticking always to the right thing, deep integrity. Train up a child, and they’ll walk that good path.

It was a long day, as are all a teacher’s days. Up on your feet, no break, and it isn’t as though the children ever let up. They’re kids, they need a lot. We had chess, and then I tried to teach music at the rec. Three kids left me today knowing where middle C was on a piano, and who doesn’t know but that the knowledge might spur them to greatness. I sure hope it does – Baltimore’s got enough people to stand uneducated on corners, we could use some musicians. It was a full day of work.

I wonder at times what it would be like to commit myself to this city, to building a life here, working to beautify this ancient, fading belle. I admire the people who do, but I’ll be shaking the dust off my feet in 211 days. Whatever of Eliot’s mermaids are singing in Baltimore, they are certainly not singing for me.

I’ll move on what is sure to seem like greener pastures, and I will relish it. I’m hungry to beat the pavement again with a memo pad in hand, telling the stories of a community. I might not be able to change much inside a city school system, but I’m sure I can make people care about it, and maybe that’s the beginning of change.

Time’s drawing nigh here, a sliver of moon in the sky and all too soon I’ll be in my classroom waiting for the kids. And it’ll be another day where I start from scratch trying to make sure that each student leaves me a little different than when they came – Truly a work that’s never done.

Miss you as always, but know that I carry you close in my heart. Glad you’re my folks. Christmas is coming soon, and I’ll be beating a path home.

Love,

Elizabeth

I'm going to go on the record and say that today was a less than radiant day in the fourth grade.

I lost my voice in the middle of the day, a hoarse whisper was all I could do. Not surprisingly, it was difficult to control the 10 year-olds with the power of my mind.

But as a comrade of mine would say, "Ain't nobody die."

There's also a very annoying child in one of my classes. He's often absent, for example the last two weeks, and these leads to us forming a comfortable routine without him. He enjoys attention and drama. All this to say he was there today in all his, "come say it to my face, I didn't do nothing, at least I got a good body not like a hippo," and of course he cries at the drop of a hat, at everything

No less than three other children asked if they could hit him. One little boy tried to bargain it down to a pinch. Another little girl said she would just feel so much better. What was my brilliant, compassionate response?

"I totally understand, but all your life you'll have people you don't like, and you can't go around hitting them. The bottom line: We've got to make through the next hour and 20 minutes without violence."

Some kids are just annoying. And yes, I have tried to encourage this boy to be less so.

C'est la vie.

In other news Baltimore City Schools have abandoned their efforts at getting lead out of the water pipes, and is simply providing bottled water for staff and students. This after high lead levels were found at at least four schools.

Just another week in Charm City.

Board of Dreams:

Nine students today, and my co-worker. We are a team. We are commanders of armies on a field of 64 squares, from the oldest to our second grader, who moved the toughest, roughest middle school boy to laughter today.

We groan when it is time to go. We are learning to play strong chess, to castle early, to think before we move, to keep the hands back from the board, to control the center.

I set the boards up, and the students come, and our team starts asking to meet two days a week. And roughest, toughest asks about going to tournaments, and I am already planning who I will take to the first one.

I walk my team to the door, knowing from their talk that they are thinking about chess outside of club. Double T makes me promise that no matter what I will play him next week. And our second grader promises to take down my co-worker. We are chess players all.

Still here

There were eight students at Chess club this week, and more are on the way.

Five middle school boys.

Two fourth grade girls.

One co-worker, one grandmother of a middle schooler.

And one round and eager gentleman from the second grade.

They groaned when it was time to go home. And for a second we felt like a team, united in a purpose - to play a game of war on a board of 64 checkered squares, manipulating armies across of the field of play.

There's a lot of noise in a school, particularly in an urban school. A lot of frustration and grief. It's hard to hold on to a center of quiet, but you dig down and you find something to get you through.

It's raining here in Baltimore. I was on my way to bed and I got caught up in the lightning. Watching it crack against the sky over Baltimore, where the air has been full for days of storms waiting to burst.
Some jazz crackling through the stereo, and storms rolling in. And maybe things will:
cool off.
slow down.
mellow out.

Maybe I'll
worry less.
rest more.

My days at school are mostly good. Hectic, yes. But mostly good. It can be a wearing place to be, but that's not the kids fault. I understand why teachers go back every year. There's such great need.

Chess club met for the first time today. Three kids came. That is a start. It went well - two had never played before, and one had just learned how. we introduced the pieces - it is a game of kings and nobility I told them and we will conduct ourselves as such. We talked about the lowly pawn, brave footsoldier he, the bishop sneaky and mean, the knight, gallant and quick, the rook, solid and protective, the queen all powerful and the stately, treasured king.

The school needs security cameras for two blind spots on our grounds - I'm in the process of looking for grants and funding for this- if any of you have any suggestions, I welcome them.

The community rec center attached to our school is finally getting up and running. I hope our chess club will be meeting there soon. There is a non-profit organization running it, and I think good, good things will come of it. I've already shown my face round there, and said I'm available to teach music lessons to kids - apparently there's a lot of interest in that.

And so hope starts to grow. The kids have a place to hang out after school, a place that will only get better, things seem to be going well at school. This is how communities turn around - hope begins to grow.

Go well, stay well.

No matter how hard I try to remind myself that I will not have to teach forever, or how much I try to remember all I have to be thankful for, somedays just feel like Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward
All in the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...

'Forward the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die.

Then there are other days when I take a line from Bob Dylan and say to Baltimore:
If I'd known had bad you'd treat me
Honey, I never would have come.

Some days are all King Henry V and once more into the breach, and we few, we happy few, we band of brothers we and these things shall the good man teach his son.

Other days still, are just standing on Boo Radley's front porch and walking around in his shoes for a while and trying to understand.

And so it's another Monday here in the East - the same East that James Gatsby and Quentin Compson did so well in. Monday here in Baltimore where the fog hangs low with heat and heaviness in the second week of October, in the second year of my being here.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.

Washington Morning

Saturday morning, October sun falling on the rough pavement twinkling, blinking up at passersby.
Old songs on the stereo, nearly empty coffee cup, the remains of an apple pie on the kitchen table and a comfortable trio of friends reading the paper making lazy plans in lazy ways.
Existing where one's feet are, sheltering in Sabbath rest, laughing and jiving and singing and playing.
Coming round a table, walking on the street, shoes off on the National Mall tossing a white frisbee in the shadow of Smithsonian structures.
Metro rumbling, sidewalk shuffling, Saturday morning in an old pair of shoes, with an old pair of friends in an October sun.

It may surprise you, gentle reader, but I was a precocious child of eccentric tastes. Raffi’s Baby Beluga was fine, but for my money I dug the Broadway Cast Recording of Evita starring Patti LuPone in the title role. I am not making this up. By the time I was 5, I had the entire piece memorized.

When my niece was about 3 she had a real thing for the Beatles and Eleanor Rigby was her favorite song. I always found it disconcerting to hear those lyrics coming out of her 3 year old mouth (all the lonely people, where do they all come from?). I can only imagine that the lyrics of Don’t Cry for me Argentina (So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all) emanating from me were equally disturbing to my family.

We owned this recording because my Dad saw the play, with Ms. LuPone, in New York. In a theatre so small he could smell the smoke from Mandy Patinkin’s cigar. He has always said that the show “was great.”

She won a Tony for that show, she originated the role of Fantine in the London production of Les Miserables. Most recently she was in the outstanding 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, in New York. When she is on a stage she commands it, her voice able to navigate deep gravity of emotion as well as delicate comic turns.

I heard the orchestra director at Mizzou say that as musicians, we must absolutely walk the very edge of disaster, must be willing to walk to the very edge and then that tiny bit more – if we don’t walk that line then we are serving neither our art or our audience. It stirs no great response to give a perfectly safe performance. And this is the kind of performer LuPone is – you can hear it in every recording she has ever made.

In her turn as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, LuPone at once inspires revulsion and sympathy for a character who by all rights is disgusting. The audience, despite Mrs. Lovett’s obvious flaws, does want her on some level to get a house by the sea with Mr. T.

Tomorrow night I will hear LuPone in person. She will sing and I will bask in the presence of one of the all time great performers. And it will be a wonderful evening.

Woolgathering:
When the little girl, who often struggles with classwork, saw her paper on the board with a sticker and a one hundred on the board - that was a good moment.

When my student stood in the line to go to lunch with a book in his hand I asked him what he was doing with the book. "I want to read at lunch," he said. That was a really good moment, and read he did - I saw him.

Other thoughts:
Good weekend - books and card games and songs and lots of food and sweet company. I heard Ken Burns speak at the National Book Festival and it was really eloquent and inspiring.

Further thoughts:
Patti LuPone on Friday - get excited!

Misguided, but funny
This week the children and I read part of Sarah, Plain and Tall. This is what one of my students put in answer to the question:
How do the chilren first recognize Sarah? (the correct answer is that she is wearing a yellow bonnet)
The children first recognize Sarah because the see her on page 51 and that's when she was introduced.

A bit more literal than was needed.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates.
I wasn’t going to go to prayer on the lawn this morning at my school. Every Monday morning there is a small prayer group that comes for Morning Glory and I have the same internal dialogue each Monday.

“You best get yourself to prayer.”
“I’ve prayed already this morning and I could really use this time in my classroom.”
“You best get yourself to prayer and start this week off right, don’t matter if you already prayed, pray again.”
“But I need to prepare.”

And then sometimes, the voice of one my co-workers comes through the ceiling intercom, not unlike one might imagine, the voice of the Lord from the heavens, and says “Ms. Alsup, you coming round to Morning Glory, it’s starting.” Translation: “You best get yourself to prayer.”

“Be right there,” I answer.

This morning was Prayer on the Lawn, inviting the members of the community, parents and children to pray with us.

It was a small gathering, and the Eastern sun rose over our backs and lit the faces of the ministers and the pray-ers and the Amens rose up to the sky. Hallelujah, yes Lord Jesus.

We prayed over the students. We prayed over the parents. We even lifted up a prayer for the facilities and for the cafeteria. Hallelujah, yes Lord Jesus.

A minister in a snappy brown suit and fedora led the service, introducing community members. Another minister, so frail he looked as though he might blow away and with a voice like a wispy breeze, prayed in fervent tones. The Amens rose to the sky. Hallelujah, yes Lord.

The congregation swayed to each prayer, hallelujah yes.
And then the bishop of a local church came to give the benediction. “I have a two minute thought for you from Psalm 24 this morning.” And those familiar with a Baptist church know that it is never just a two minute thought, and the congregation dug in its heels for the haul and began to warm up to the subject.

“Lift up your heads O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”
“Yes Lord.”
“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”
“Hallelujah, yes.”
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” the minister implored us. “Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.”
“Amen”

The sun lit his face and his smile, and he leaned forward to give his message to us.

“We’re going to do something different now, brothers and sisters, we been bowing our heads all morning, but this time we are going to lift them up, lift up our eyes to the heavens.”

He went on to say that life can bow your head, that life will bow your head. Troubles come and we bow our heads and we get so low we forget to lift our eyes up to the hills. And his voice started a long crescendo and the congregation began to sway a little.

Lift up your eyes he said. Life will bow our heads, and our students’ heads. And it ain’t always the devil, friends, it’s just life and its trials and troubles. So teachers: we must help our students lift their heads, and parents: we must help our students lift their heads. And teachers you got to keep your heads so up so that you can lead your students.

The crescendo rose, and the congregation swayed one foot to the other; the Amens rose to the heavens. Hallelujah, Lord Jesus. A woman in a gray hat clapped her hands together, and said “Come on, Holy Ghost,” as though exhorting an athlete to get warmed up and really let us have it.

And community, he shouted through the speaker over our small number to the sleeping houses beyond, We gotta Lift. Up. Our. Heads. Amen. Amen and amen. Praise Jesus. If you get up every morning, and you take time to talk to Lord, He will lift up your head If you get up, even while the dew is still on the roses, He will lift up your head. Mmm, yes Lord.

And the swaying slowed, Amens fell to murmurs and in we went to welcome the students, heads up and eyes on the hills. Morning and afternoon, a whole school day; I believe the Lord saw it, and I believe He declared it was good.

And all God’s people said: Amen.

14 Days till Ms. LuPone:
Ever since I was a wee musician, I have known that there are just some performers one should go see. Musicians who are such consumate talents that they define genres - my list is relatively short, though I add to it occasionally.
Wynton Marsalis - saw him at Jesse Hall.
The Count Basie Big Band - done in Dallas.
Sonny Rollins - still trying to get myself to New York.
Patti LuPone - 14 days and counting.

I am way pumped.

And now for something completely different:
In a departure from its usually meaningful content, Bears and Penguins brings you things that make Sara laugh out loud. (Admittedly it helps to be familiar with Wuthering Heights)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0vgZ2UNS54