The Heart Shaped Box
The Heart Shaped Box
Often I ask people what they think or remember of school.
After 30+ years teaching public school in areas of poverty--some of the “worst,” apparently, in the nation--it interests me what the answer will be. Most often it has to do with a relationship between a student, a teacher, and the student’s feelings of recognition of a gift, talent, ability, possibility. This is how hope operates in a real-world context. The stories usually celebrate what assisted that person to try to “make it in a tough world.”
I call these the echoes of my work.
Sometimes I ask teachers too what they remember about their work teaching. These stories highlight relationships--serious stories, ones that are hard to look at in the present ‘accept no excuses’ culture. It's hard to look openly at what teachers know when they are simply labeled "excuse-makers". We cannot look into the eyes of the children, these traces of our nation's public work, people alive within their teacher hearts, from a
