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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Some Nights (What We Stand For) | The Jose Vilson

Some Nights (What We Stand For) | The Jose Vilson:


Some Nights (What We Stand For)


fun., “Some Nights”
Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck
Some nights, I call it a draw
Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle
Some nights, I wish they’d just fall off

But I still wake up, I still see your ghost
Oh Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for oh
What do I stand for? What do I stand for?
Most nights, I don’t know anymore…

Dear You,
Confession: Some nights, I know why I do any of this, either.
Six years ago, I wondered if teaching actually made any sense for me. The constant bombardment by people who hadn’t been in the classroom in a while complaining about the unopened boxes in the classroom, my unorganized and hastily done bulletin board, and other nitpicky nonsense that wouldn’t help anyone as an educato.
The difference between an S and a U was all a matter of whether I acquiesced to their demands for a pretty classroom, never mind that students generally wanted to come to class because I cared more about making them feel welcome than whatever a checklist somewhere deep in a manual told us.
I didn’t believe, then, that teachers should only follow their hearts and minds when they taught. Yet, the students always made me feel like I was on the right track, and I just drew on my own intuition to address what I believed