A Different Rosh Hashana This Year

Usually the holidays are the focal points of the year, a grandma’s delight as she contemplates the smiling faces at the holiday table. Her excitement increases as she considers how the grandchildren have grown, how she will carefully plan the meal, arrange her buby’s fine linen, attempt to recreate her mother-in-law’s perfect gefelte fish, consumed with love and pride for her family. She imagines the approving eyes of the older kinder as Poppa solemnly chants the blessings over bread, wine, and the children grab at apples dipped in honey. She thinks about how the good glasses and the Rosenthal China that have come down from her own mother will sparkle and catch the light of the special silver candlesticks and how wonderful it feels to be surrounded by family, how palpable love is in this precious moment.

However, this year is different Just as Passover was interrupted by the advent of Coronavirus, we feared for Rosh Hashana. In March, we had scurried home from San Diego to prepare for the holiday, change our dishes  search for chumas. I  knew we would have to quarantine for two weeks , having spent the winter away, as usual, yet I anticipated that the virus would not shut down our Seder. But of course, some dreams do not come true, and our health and safety  must outweigh our rituals.For most, zoom meetings had not been fully inculcated into our daily lives so that  emails and phone calls stood in the place of actual hugs and squeezes and the awe surrounding the visit by Elijah. Where usually, we built our memories on those of our own bubbies and  zadies, cherishing them, wrapping ourselves in the warmth of reminiscences, the disruption by the virus created a huge hole in our lives.

And because my younger daughter and her four children live in a Philadelphia, I realized when we returned last spring from San Diego that they would not be present to dip their fingers in wine or shout  out the ten plagues. And yet, we thought that by Rosh Hashana, perhaps, we would be able to be together, to  gather. But earlier this summer, we had received word regarding High Holiday services that offered three variations on zoom programs.

Last year as my heart sang out,” They’re coming, they’re coming”, so overjoyed at the arrival  of my Philadelphia grandkids, I believed that we had established a pattern to be repeated throughout the years: my three children and all the grandkids together in one place on those magical nights, those wonderful nights when as Jews we share more than a meal:  a religious tradition connecting  us to our ancestors .

However, at our supper here this year, we may again use FaceTime or zoom, and include them, trying to share our delight at the beginning of a new year, attempting to virtually pass on those intangibles that have bound us , especially in tough times.  To three year old Georgia who continues to plaintively  ask, “ Will you come here after Coronavirus?”, I  respond, “ Of course, my love”, promising too next year’s celebration we’ll all be together. Hopefully before next year’s Passover…

But here we are approaching the NewYear and Canadian borders are closed to Americans. And likewise my dear Dutch friend who has lived in San Diego for many , many years will not be able to travel back to  Holland to celebrate with her daughter and granddaughter. As well at this time, my cousin in North Carolina has also been prevented from visiting his grandkids in New York.

Yearly my own dear parents would travel to the North where in Canada, the air often crisp, the autumnal leaves ripe on the trees, a kaleidoscope of colours. They celebrated the High Holidays  beyond our family gatherings. They might spend a day or several, driving through the beauty of nature, their thoughts far from the city. They were  free to traverse wherever, even crossing the border into the States should they decide, but now we must keep close to home, wondering when the numbers will rise,  are our masks tucked into our pockets, is that sneeze a warning of something worse , every move shadowed by the virus.

However this year, for the mishpucha who do live close by, maybe even part of the extended “ bubbles” , our Rosh Hashana may appear to precede as always.Yet with my remaining grandsons just back at school, it is most unlikely they and their families will attend. We will have to see.

Yes, I will shop the usual foods , cook the regular dinner, set my perfect table, ruminate between pink or purple flowers, and draw on the ghosts of the past to re- create our supper  and re-enact the rituals set in place by my parents and grandparents.  I will miss all of  them terribly at this time. I will recall  how at my grandparents’ house my cousins descended to the rec room to tumble. I will re-imagine the uncles’ borsalino hats tipped deeply while davening at dinner, the  sheen of pearls on the aunts’ best dresses, and my exhausted grandmother in the kitchen, grumpy and overtired, smoking.

And  over the years, distinct from my parents and grandparents, I , too, have made my own memories on the holidays. One year my son invited his university  friends to Rosh Hashanah dinner and I set myself the task of preparing  as many  kugels as I could find; from sweet potato with raisins to eggplant to zucchini and beyond, I scoured cookbooks that offered a plethora of puddings. Finally at table, we  chortled, attempting to identify the hidden vegetables that all began and ended with eggs, onions and matzoh meal. Since then, though, the meal has been pared down to only two potato kugels, one sweet , one plain.

And who can forget the year my daughter-in-law went into early labour that first night, declaring with such an overload of food on her plate, her second son had to vacate the premises of her tummy? The laughter, the camaraderie, the delight of being together, sharing a meal with friends and family , adding to a hopefulness of the coming year. Yet this year with two new grand babies, only one will be cuddled at the holiday table, the other alone in Philadelphia with only part of her family, fortunate perhaps not to  understand, as her brother and sisters do, what is missing.

We hoard those memories that remain vivid, heightened by the holidays: I,  recalling, the huge imposing book etched in blazing white chalk on the green board and my first year Hebrew School  teacher’s dark promise at Beth Sholom that some of us, quaking little girls, would be written into the Book of Life, the others in death.It was a frightening moment, serious and foreboding. But prayer and repentance might reverse the sentence. Yet here we are in these strange times, still quaking, but hopeful of a vaccine: should our prayers be answered.

But most of all, I will feel my mother’s arms around me as I entered my parents’ warm and fragrant house, engulfing and encircling me, promising that each year we could start again fresh, provided with new opportunities and chances to be better people. Her jaunty silk scarf at her neck, her honest delight at not just me, but  my sister, my children, all of her grandchildren will shine through on the nights of missing her. She stays in my heart, my amulet forever, that image arising each and every holiday, whether alone or together at table.

Perhaps we had forgotten that nothing can be written in stone, that life changes, and we must overcome hurdles and obstacles that mark the lives of humans. Did Sarah feel that way so many years ago, childless? Did she believe in her heart that a baby, Isaac, would come to her in her old age? And later, did Isaac ever doubt that he would be released from his bonds on Mt. Moriah, and replaced with a ram ? And what of Hagar and Ishmael? Did they ever entertain the notion they would have to leave the security of Abraham’s camp?

 But this insecurity is the way of all Jews, who had no choice but to postpone their lives during biblical days, the Holocaust, pogroms and persecutions. Yet  eventually  they reassembled, retrieved their lives and persevered to new lands, charted new worlds to fashion new stories, establishing new traditions but carrying on their backs, their dreams, but also the heavy  pekelah of their forbearers, bruised, but   stronger and wiser.

And so, another new year, full of challenges. We will survive and endure. We always do.

An English Teacher’s Take on the DNC

For the first time since the pandemic hit, I felt inspired.

This year’s convention coverage of cheering dancing crowds with funny hats,colourful signs and balloons from the time of preCovid were transformed into zooming, the wunderkind of technology. Previously the political displays held little fascination for me- save the speeches that nominated a future president.

Howard was on one of his perpetual calls. I was watching Amy Schumer’s attempts at cooking, but wandered off. Eventually I turned on the DNC convention. Hosting was Eva Langoria whom I remembered from Y&R as Paul’s wife, Isabella, and wow, she did look great, very polished.

A panoply of tiny heads from across the US reminiscent of the old game show, Hollywood Squares, were singing out from tiny boxes on my screen proclaiming the theme of the convention, We, the People. Kinda hokey.

Republican John Kasich spoke but I didn’t pay attention, his presence was enough to assert he had had it with Trump. Soon Bernie Sanders ,hair combed, nicely attired comparing Trump’s golfing to Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

I started to listen.

Bernie bellowed his great and scathing attack, trumpeting that under Trump “authoritarianism has taken root in our country.” He banged away at the restrictions and death to America’s democracy. He was powerful and passionate, directing his followers to vote Joe. His words blistering and apt. The verb “ root” rooting itself in my head.

Later, Bill Clinton drew on irony and sarcasm as he mocked Trump, lampooning, “If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he’s your man.”

And later, Michelle Obama, like Clinton, reinforced Trump’s reaction to the number of deaths by Covid with his idiotic throw away, it is what it is. Others too, like Susan Rice on Colbert juxtaposed Trump’s insouciance with Abraham Lincoln’s concern for the fallen, Roosevelt’s for World War II troops, not shrugging them off with a careless shoulder lift, and turning away. Strong comparisons with previous leaders to hammer a point.

On the third night, Elizabeth Warren’s made it personal as she related her own little story of Aunt Bea who came to help out familial demands. Her tone was engaging, warm, literate and empathetic. Connect with your reader, we preach to the kids.

Later Barack Obama seared, inflamed, and was ignited by the antics and inabilities of Trump to lead. Phrases such as “ custodian of democracy…the weight of the office…our worst impulses unleashed” all combined to highlight the heavy importance of the position. And again, it was the power of those carefully chosen words, attacking with language.

No silly slurs, cheap shots, narcissistic praising. You could shut your eyes and just listen to how words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs can make meaning, taking you deeper, into ideas, beliefs and thoughtfulness. As my grandson told me describing Obama’s plea, “ the long pauses gave me time to reflect.”

And then, there was Michelle Obama.

And, I had reason for hope. When she addressed us, she meant it. Michelle Obama looked us directly in our eyes and connected much like your favourite aunt or your closest friend, someone who knows you, believes in your best self and the possibility of life improving, even providing you with workable strategies .She even stipulated no nonsense examples of ensuring how to vote.

Admitting too many have gone “ low” during these terrible times, she expounded on the way to make life better is STILL to go high, allowing our better nature to rise : “…because there is always a chance for renewal and betterment. [When] we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.” Words that know how to appeal, hit the target :note how many times “degrade” is used. And that expression, “ drowning noise”, that onomatopoeia. Oh my. Shivers.

Words, metaphors, alliteration, rhetorical devices, providing concrete examples, selecting verbs and adverbs carefully, all the devises we teach our students to put into play that promise and can result in persuasion to incite change, to move mountains or even Trump out of office.

Michelle Obama quoted John Lewis’s words ,”When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone..” the theme of We, the People reinforced by including all of us: possessive pronouns posed for inclusion: you, ourselves…our. Much like Jane Fonda who stood at the doors of Trump supporters, not attacking them, but listening to them thoughtfully, respectfully, encouraging them to see we are all in this together.

Michelle stated that Trump is not the president we need him to be, “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us,” she said. Colloquialisms, direct straight forward words: wrong…over his head…need, posing the rhetorical question: what do we need?

In this way, she put the blame where it belonged, not necessarily on the followers who blindly followed his lies, but making me see in my head the painting of Pieter Bruegel’s The Blind Leading The Blind who land up in ditches.

I thought too of Mary Trump’s book in which she noted that Trump’s followers are not the people Trump would ever even deign to sit down with, not fit for his fancy golf clubs or island parties. They are chumps to him, many many workers he has cheated and refused to pay when six times he filed for bankruptcies, saving himself with Fred, his father’s and bank’s monies. He scorns them, delights in his trickery.

Adding to her comments by overshadowing with fear , Michelle Obama warned, “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can, and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.” Having enumerated with proof in numbers and examples, she once again ( repetition is a great device) referenced his lack of empathy as he “watched New York suffer” without learning from it. Like Nero fiddling. Bernie’s words echoing throughout.

I was struck by her direct approach but above all, her language.

One of the many things I deplore about Trump is his derision of people, for example, Elizabeth Warren sneeringly referred to as Pocahontas , the insults, the put downs, the laughable malapropisms, how seriously he takes himself and his truly awful careless use of language to deride and impugn. His stupid misspelt twitters.

Here at the DNC, there was elevation. I didn’t even have to look up at the people speaking, I could listen to articulate, well crafted, sensible, intelligent words, this alliteration nicely finished with a simile, “Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you’re trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards.” So said Bill Clinton. Here stood speeches to demonstrate to our children the possibilities of speech that proved the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword.

And although the participants arrived to a mainly empty stadium, they were smartly dressed in suits and clothes that announced this was important and worthy of looking their best because you will see my best because that’s what I want to give America they seemed to proclaim: the best leadership and the best democracy and the best freedom.

And then there was Joe.

The press agreed, this was the best speech of his entire career, and perhaps most importantly, best delivered. He introduced his rebuke with images of dark and light, and subtly but carefully reinforced that metaphor throughout his speech, the leitmotif threaded throughout, bringing together his thoughts by weaving light and dark throughout.

Without syrupy nostalgia, overstatement or hyperbole, he used his life, his relationships, his family and the actual words of his parents as the bulwarks that have guided and sustained him throughout his life. He laid out his middle class life, his stuttering, the deaths in his family and how he struggled through, believing his healing path was to make the world a better place. Tikkun Olum, or fixing the world as prescribed in the Torah.

He used his words, as parents implore their children from earliest ages do, use your words, they demand. He demonstrated through language a clear purpose. He built his attack on “ this president”, never mentioning the scoundrel’s name because naming something gives it power.

His sentences were varied. A tapestry woven of experience that dramatized his hard work, intelligence and empathy. He did not glorify himself or bill himself as an ego that needed feeding. Rather, he included himself as the “ we” of America, personifying his country, aligning himself with everyone else ( We, the People) who deserve a better America, citing the specifics of universal daycare, healthcare, increased pay, supported tuition, fresh, clear air, etc.etc.( details, details, details)

He did not shy away from providing plans for a new vision of America, not an aimless boat in a storm of violent winds, our Joe. He addressed the need to stop outsourcing goods, cosying up to despots, standing with white suprematists, the need to wear masks- putting flesh on the bones of his arguments, going from particular to generalizations and back, addressing his viewers, manipulating voice and mood, drawing on all these tools we teach the kids – to Build Back Better. Ah, How I love alliteration to make the words stick in the brain.

Just as I responded to Michelle, I responded to Joe, my heart melting as the thirteen year old, Brayden Harrington, on the fourth night related that Joe had told him he himself had practiced the poems of W.B. Yeats before going to bed. (Did I mention Yeats is my absolute poet guy?) And then to sum it all up, Joe spoke the words of poet Seamus Heaney,

“but then, once in a lifetime / The longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme.”

All words to gladden the heart of an English teacher. He gets A+. Hopefully it will be enough.

Simple and Not So Simple

What does any person truly need?

I try to chortle when I see the ads interspersed that creep into my Ipad. There are fabulous jewels, expensive clothes by designers offered at Saks, Neimans, Holt’s and a load of others . Extreme beautiful strange concoctions, all right if you are attending galas for hospitals or art galleries. Laughable to us in sweatpants and loose shirts who move mainly about the house, maybe still snatching a walk here or there outside, or darting out to grab some groceries before lines appear at Shoppers. There are over- the- top makeup depictions of models with excessively rouged cheeks and pumped lips, pouting. Charlotte Tilbury is one of the worst. And even in the days before Covid, one might take a second look and ask, “Really?”, who aspires to pump up their lips to make sensation impossible. Besides the multitude of masks offered, there are descriptions of exotic places you should visit and offers of idiosyncratic Airbnbs such as treehouses and floating shacks. Really?

Similarly at the birth of a precious new grandchild, I imagined a garden party. I would plant more white lilies and roses, ensure the garden was full of blooms. I would set out those small impractical tables for drinks and small bites; I would find a new dress, not too fancy, but one that spoke to my delight at hosting one of these rare events. I would create a small oasis. I would address my invitations with calligraphy I had self taught for my sister’s wedding more than forty years ago.I might sketch or embroider on the words, finding a vellum or parchment, all creamy white. I would choose my guests, my dear friends carefully, all those who knew of the journey that resulted in this darling baby. I would plan and plan, creating a few hours of perfection, then withdraw to the kitchen or a friendly corner, to watch and observe and “kvell” as Jews say, drinking in the joy I felt at my friends and family coming together.I, the magician, who had fashioned a puff of smoke that would slowly dwindle, leaving a sweet fragrance in the air.

The ads, the pitch, the dishonesty of commercialism continue to blare in our faces and lie to us, about what we actually need. I admit I used to so enjoy a dress up with good clothes and painted face on Saturday nights, a date with hubby, a point of distraction for cool adult conversation, marking a difference in my weekly days. I dressed for it, planned for it. I confess I liked that other me, who looked better, relaxed more.

All of these desires are, of course, icing on the cake and not the main event. Yet, as an wannabe painter, I enjoy the colours, the choice of brushes, the canvas, the creation of something. Is it necessary? For most, perhaps not. For my soul, yes. Like putting my feelings on paper, expressing what is dark and hidden and repressed? Yes. For sharing.

No, it’s not bare bones. As my grandfather used to declare, “How many suits can you wear at one time?” And what do we need to actually survive?

But life has dwindled drastically and even as we begin a slow ascend from the months of quarantine, we look circumspect around at our world that has crumbled even more than by virus. Perhaps it is the outright exposure of racism, police brutality in streets or the evidence of our planet’s decline that have increased the trauma of the last months. We cannot look away or deny privilege.

Yet, too , there are movements that raise questions that require questions and debate. On Bill Maher’s Real Time, he highlighted Cancel Culture which- apparently- is the practice of withdrawing support /canceling support for public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. The brainchild of social media, its payback finds its form in group shaming. Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Letter on Justice and Open Debate published by Harper’s Magazine set out the issues.

In his letter, one hundred and fifty “elites in academia and media” such as Margaret Atwood , Salman Rushdie, ,JK Rowling, Noam Chomsky agreed, with Williams saying “… this stance has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor ( sic) of ideological conformity… censoriousness is also spreading more widely …: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty…Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.”

Williams continued in his open letter, “ We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement…The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away… We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”

Truthfully, we are more aware, made more sensitive of appropriating culture and why, for example, Joseph Boyden should not have written his novels as he did. But do we all rise up and scream at all writers for experimenting, shutting down every expression that suggests divergence from the norm?

Even further back, my art history classes addressed Picasso’s use of African masks in Desmoiselles d’ Avignon, and the Impressionists, Monet, others, mainly white guys, using or outright stealing the techniques of Japan and China to propel their works. Likely, they were taking what they thought was theirs to reuse, with a sense of that colonial arrogance, that has marked too many eras. Clearly, they were not indigenous people of the cultures they were commandeering, but maybe curious and interested in seeing from a perspective other than Europe’s. I can’t say. Yet, this appropriation built on the bases of another’s culture opened the eyes of art viewers and historians to fresh understandings, almost inevitably, unthinking from where that new perspective was derived, but one that helped dismantle traditions of looking at art: assimilating and transforming it.

But of course the rub remains, the question is: would the world have suffered from the loss of using the masks and continued on painting realistic vases with realistic flowers in realistic landscapes( not that is always tedious!) .In deed, it is troubling both ways.

And just last week my sister enquired how I felt about Colum McCann’s book, Apeirogon. He’s neither Israeli nor Palestinian, yet he tells their stories. I explained Mc Cann had the permission of both men, yet his introduction tells he has ventured beyond the stories.

What actually belongs to us, what are we allowed to talk about, if it hasn’t been our own lived experience?Are we even afraid to address these topics: to express a idea? To imagine the lives of others? Have writers not always veered through the imagination into worlds in which they cannot lay claim as their birth rite?

The impact of this virus that threatens to stay has dampened all of these small pleasures, these things that enhance life beyond the strum und drang. Yes, we have shelter, food, the odd stolen hug although no kisses. We have been reduced to the bare ness of who we were are, who we once were.

In the evenings I can disappear into the streets of Baltimore in The Wire or fly with the matchmaker in Indian Matchmaker, visiting places and homes I am forbidden in this virus, eschewing flytime with tvtime. I can travel with them and put away aside my masks and weariness at being too close on the sidewalk. I’m grateful for the minds that have given me the arts, the books, the videos so I can rest my troubled head. I can imagine what my garden party might have been like.

Yet the seriousness of the issues that have arisen, previously hidden, ignored or censored, speak through. As Caliban, we wish to return to sleep and dream our sweet dreams,

“..; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.”

Back to School?

It is rumoured that  teachers may go on strike in the US, fearing for their safety in returning to school. For many, the fears are legitimate as depending on  the individual state, precautions are muddled.The importance of the teacher is vital, truly the stabilizer and support of kids in society.

As I’m still deep into The Wire, watching former cop Mr. Pryzbylewski figure out how to interest his Baltimore students impresses me. He stands as a model for teacher education. Faced with kids of poverty, from nonexistent and broken homes, underfed, violent and abused, he searches for stimulating ways to wade through through their disinterest, scorn and negative influences. My younger daughter reflected that watching the show again for her is in deed troubling as she worked as a social worker at University of Maryland with this population in Baltimore years ago, verifying that what you see in this show has its basis in reality; some of her child patients even “ acting” in the show. I recall her anxiety years back as she told us that one of them was present when a parent was shot down before her own eyes, many grandmas left to raise traumatized children who had witnessed the horrors of drugs, crime and their aftermath; others abandoned to the street.

Yet I love how Mr. P introduces math to the kids, explaining probabilities with dice, drawing on their familiarity with games. He sees the inconsistencies in the system, the ridiculous mandate of teaching to the tests that offers no real learning for the kids. Sound familiar? He’s sensitive to a reticent, withdrawn boy, Duquan, keeping his clothes in his locker; otherwise, his parents will sell them for dope money. When Duquan’s family is evicted from their house, they merely disappear: forwarding address unnecessary.

Mr.P is caught between fulfilling his mandate as a teacher, especially in proving himself in his first year, and boring the kids with pretest examples, forgoing an inroad into their curiosity. In spite of their rowdiness and his expected test preparation, he eventually quietens his class and develops relationships of trust.

When I taught in Jane- Finch in my first year, there were degrees of similarities. Unlike Mr.P, I hadn’t observed as a former cop in the streets, so I was awfully naive. But the backgrounds of my students, mainly from rough public housing and those newly displaced from their countries of origin did not exhibit a great interest in school either. The school had a bad rep, teachers punched out by students in auto shop, and I, too was apprehensive when a 10^th grader followed me into the art cupboard. Along with five other art and English classes, I was given grade 9 tech boys for more than an hour of art daily.

Some days I managed to create a venue for learning, record player blasting, projects carefully chosen.On the day of my evaluation two years into my teaching, I chose to introduce Leonardo da Vinci’s machines. Even 50 years later, I recall the boys literally climbing overtop one another to see da Vinci’s whirlygigs of helicopters, his battlements, his moving parts construction. The boys’ mission was to create their own machines on paper: that was the assignment. Later I would write a piece where I described the twenty five or so of them as “ hair gel and hormones”.

I was so proud. I had kept their focused attention for at least  15 minutes of instruction, and in spite of tripping over one another, they had returned to their desks and every single student had become motivated  to imagine and create on paper, fulfilling the specific parameters of the project.

Was it a particularly clean room? Were they all quiet? No. Did some bop up and down and jostle their seat mates? Yes. Did one or two call out to the strange man in the room while trying to trip him and one another? Yes.

This was Jane- Finch in the 70’s , a wasteland of empty space with the exception of one lone crumbling strip mall. These were the days of open classrooms in junior high where kids wandered off and in high school in one of my classrooms, there were no desks, just rows of bleachers. In that Grade 11 class, I used Beatle songs to promote the lessons, thoughtfully considering the outbursts of a young man who had thrown down our poetry text and announced, “This is garbage!” But as well, there was the insight of an Grade 12 who after studying Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, Pied Beauty, proclaimed” Maybe weeds are flowers to Nature.” My weeds were blooming too.

But although my Grade 9’s were far from the ideal class, I had captivated them, caught their attention, used their fascination of machines ( although likely they had been streamed into tech, talented or not) from their daily lives to an art history science icon and from that, they had produced work that was new, and challenging, learning while they enjoyed themselves, building confidence, too.

Awaiting a sterling report, I was shocked to discover that the superintendent had to be persuaded to give me a second chance; he would do my principal a favour. His criticism of my class that day focused on the fact that the pictures on the wall were not hung straight. No comments on the enthusiasm, work ethic, engagement, etc.

With trepidation, I planned the second observation, unsure how to go about securing my certificate. My department head ensured the kids’ work on the walls hung perpendicular, and I did what I always did. Hey, that was my modus operandi. And so far it has felt pretty successful.

The kids knew something was up when the superintendent reappeared for a second day. They looked from him to me with enquiring eyes. As the cops would say in The Wire, they ain’t no fools. I felt doomed, lacklustre, a sacrificial lamb, tied to my gut’s comprehending what actually worked in a specific classroom.

The kids must have twigged because they did not call out or whistle to him as in the first class under observation. They listened to project two and sat quietly. Silently, I believe, appraising the situation and maybe even rooting for me. The record player was turned lower, my manner of instruction the same, the superintendent’s eyes -as in the first class looking away, suggesting as well, there were bad smells nearby, not happy to be in the Jane Finch corridor with kids who were hardly considered elite or candidates for honours.

When he met with me later, I had passed. He finally made eye contact and demanded, “ You don’t think you changed a thing, do you?” Of course, I had not . But I replied lying” Of course, sir.”