The Empty Stage

I was asked to speak at our National Honors Society induction this evening:
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Good evening and welcome—to all of you—to all of the family, friends, and faculty who are here supporting and celebrating the induction of approximately 180 exceptional human beings into the National Honors Society.

I have spent a lot of time on this stage and others. I’ve performed, I’ve directed, and I’ve received honors like this one. All of that is wonderful, but I have to tell you: Every time I step foot onto an empty stage, I get chills. I walk across the floor, my footsteps echoing as I move into the space, visualizing the past, present, and future. I close my eyes and see singers, actors, dancers, and musicians. I see stage hands and techies. I see show stoppers. I see music and drama reverberating to the back of the theater. I see the shifting faces of audiences applauding through the years. I see it all. I stand at center stage, lights asleep, the sound of a generator humming gently, and I know that there is so much more to come. I breathe in possibility here, on an empty stage.

Today, I am deeply honored to be sharing this stage with such beautiful people. I mean that. And I’m not talking, the stylin’ new haircut you got this weekend, or that bright summer dress you’re wearing tonight, or the hot new kicks you’re rockin’. No. I’m talking about something else entirely, something far more important. When I look out at all of your smiling faces—go on, smile! There it is—you glow. Don’t they? You are glowing with everything you are, everything that brought you here to this moment, but more importantly, you are glowing with a beautiful spirit that is far wiser and far stronger than your young life might indicate to any of us.

When I look out at all of you, I can actually see the spirit of spring. And more than anyone else, we New Englanders appreciate the springtime. Spring is a season of new beginnings, growth, and waking up. It is a time when we stretch-out stiff muscles, open our doors, and burst out into blooming gardens, remembering and rejoicing all that is good and hopeful in the world. Spring is the light at the end of the tunnel, the time we all wait for when the dark, freezing-cold winters seem endless and unbearable. Spring is a time for awards and graduations, for ceremonies and celebrations, for recognizing accomplishments.

And here we are, on this stage, full of smiling faces now, recognizing you for being the whole package. Today, we celebrate your strong character, your leadership, your scholarship, and your willingness to serve. This is more than just making the honor roll on your report card. Today, you are making the honor roll for being a good person.

While we’re here in the springtime, in this moment of happiness, on this full and glowing stage, I would like to offer a challenge. I challenge each and every one of you to honor the empty stage, to honor and recognize endless possibilities. I challenge you also to honor the process—the beginnings, the middles, the endings and then the resulting new beginnings that follow. I challenge you to embrace the middle of the winter when everything is encrusted with dirty snow and it seems like the blue skies will never come back. I challenge you to honor all of the seasons, all steps in a process, no matter how difficult. I challenge you to do all of this and STILL be the beautiful, glowing, giving person sitting here today.

The true test is to embody all elements of your being when an award or recognition is not in sight. The true test will be if you can maintain the essence of the NHS throughout your life, long after you’ve forgotten what the four pillars actually stand for.

Congratulations! It’s on you now. It is your responsibility to share yourself and your beautiful spirit with the rest of the world. And I, for one, am so excited to see all the good you will do.

What Should We Teach?

I am becoming obsessed with all that is Eve Ensler. Working with and through her words, in The Vagina Monologues, was a powerful and opening experience. She slams readers and audiences with a dose of reality, one that we so often overlook or forget: the reality of women. I love her bravery and brazenness. I love her humor and her humanity. I love that she continues to create works and do work that defies ignorance or apathy.

This is the kind of plugged-in I want to be.

I've begun introducing my drama class to her newest work, I Am An Emotional Creature, which brings to life the wide variety but also the unity present in girls' experiences across the globe. I started with confidence, but now it is beginning to waver. Can I really work with girls in a public high school on a piece that talks openly about sex, about abuse, about teen pregnancy, about sex slavery, about about about??? Can I get away with this? Will a parent complain? Will I make one of the girls uncomfortable? Wouldn't it be easier to use material that doesn't hit this close to home? Shouldn't I stop now, before it's too late?

But how could I stop? Now that I've heard one girl call the work "empowering." An another girl came in yesterday saying, "Ms. G! I saw a boy crying today and thought of this class. We are emotional creatures, and you don't normally see that!" Others have openly said that some of the words and ideas are "awkward" and "surprising," but they also say that it's "deep" and "they will really remember these lessons and experiences."

I've been as clear about my position as possible: I want to open a discussion about real and current issues affecting girls all over the world; I want to do this so that each of us can become more in-tune with our selves, our bodies, our decisions; I want to give them the opportunity, in a safe space, to define and strengthen who they are, something that has taken me a long time to do. I want to give them fair warning, a heads-up--you will have some difficult decisions and experiences ahead of you, but you are beautiful and unique and it is you, ONLY YOU, who can do what is right for your self.

I want them to know that if they are uncomfortable in any way, they can come talk to me. If we, as a group, decide there are some pieces we do not want to address, that is OKAY. I'm trying to give everyone the option of participating as much or as little as they need, so they can receive as much or as little of this message as they need or can handle at this time.

Is this wrong? Should we avoid sensitive material because it is too difficult, because it is too scary? And if so, what good are we doing?

Teachers inspire me.

A poem given to us at our last department meeting.  

After almost two full hours of debate and complaining and whining and griping (sometimes rightfully) about anything and everything that needs to get accomplished but can't because we are only human and can only be expected to do so much, I am so grateful to have received this piece of writing.  

Its simplicity and poignancy reminded me why I do this.  It's not the CAPT scores or the piles of  college recommendations or papers or duties or web portals or professional objectives or whatever else's.  It's the students sitting in front of us.  It is the faint recognition, the pieces of me I see sitting in front of me.  It is the lessons I struggled so hard to learn.  It is the lessons I learned the wrong way.  It is the passion I had then that was stifled too early.  It is the purity and innocence I see before me.  And before that innocence is lost, I want to do something, say something, or not say something to help that purity become what is possible.  

Even though I am tired everyday, I don't regret a second I spend with my students, for my students, because of my students.  This is a life choice.  This is dedication.  This is for them.  Because I was them, and if it weren't for a very small few, I might not have become the me I am now.  

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in my first year, when i teach geography to seventh graders,

one little girl's voice faintly

reminds me of one of my college friends and

i almost give her an A just because she's an echo

of someone who formed a vital layer in me.

over the years I have more students who drift into 

reminders of people in my past;

sometimes I recognize the resemblance immediately,

like the profile of the low appalachian ridge outside the window,

and sometimes it hits me mid-year and,

having created the borders of the connection, 

i then chart the inlands,

embellish and illuminate mountains, floodplains, and

valleys with memory.

i wonder if we all listen to our students for echoes--

in the lilt of a laugh, or how one's hair parts in the middle,

like the friend we had in thenth grade

who wore mega-sweaters and leggings.

or in the turn of a phrase,

the cadence of a question,

the way a hand is slowly raised like the long neck of a dinosaur

in those long-ago science hand-outs,

that smelled like sweet cereal and purple ink.

each september it's as if we have a new chance

to fumble through the past, 

to listen for echoes of ourselves that inexorably decay 

as they resonate and ripple

off the earthtone and crumbly layers

of time, of characters in books, of friends and old lovers--

--and sometimes of the dead,

who we unearth for an hour or so each day; 

time enough to quietly say hello,

how you doing?  I'm glad you're still with me

in this young mind sitting across the canyon, across the great divide.

--Simao J. A. Drew  (teaches literature and language at Liberty High School in Eldersburg, Maryland, and is a member of the adjunct faculty at Frederick Community College.  At the Gifted and Talented Summer Centers sponsored by the Maryland State Department of Education, he teaches creative writing.  His poems have appeared in literary magazines including Scarab and Sandstone Review.)

My *bad* College Essay

I found a manila envelope the other day, while going through my old stuff for a tag sale and trying to de-thing my life. In it were relics from my high school days: National Honors Society letters, Student of the Week notices, various awards and youth leadership invitations, and my college application stuff. (Yes, I was a total nerd! But I totally own that nerdiness. In fact, I am proud of it!)

Eight years later, I have gone to college--undergraduate and graduate--and I have begun working full time as a teacher. An English teacher, at that. As an English teacher--a composition teacher, at that--I am disappointed with my College Essay. To say the LEAST. I know I was capable of much much much more!

I think the problem was the lack of instruction we received. I was never taught how to approach this type of writing. In fact, I don't remember ANY of my writing instruction between the 7th grade and my freshman year at UNH. Perhaps I blocked it out for various reasons, or perhaps it just wasn't there. I'm afraid the latter is true.

So here's the plan: I will rewrite my college essay, perhaps in a few different ways, and show my students the comparisons!

This could be quite amusing.
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My First Dance Recital
Written circa 1999

The first time that I stepped out under those bright stage lights and heard the music reverberating throughout the auditorium, I was addicted to dance. The attraction wasn't only to the dancing itself, but to everything surrounding the art. I fell in love with the studio, the dance classes, and the teachers. I was overcome with excitement when getting into costume and dancing for an audience. This all encompassing passion for performance has stayed with me ever since.

Dance and performance have been catalysts to my involvement in many other facets of the fine arts, including instrumental and vocal music, musical theater, and drama. I've also worked as an assistant dance teacher for my studio and student choreographer for school and town musical theater productions. Not only do I enjoy participating in these activities for myself, but I get an incredible sense of accomplishment from helping and teaching others in the areas that I love.

Performance has allowed me to utilize my bright and dramatic personality, as well as my talents for leadership and organization. For me, there is no greater satisfaction than the appreciation received for a performance, whether my own or that of my students. The only thing that comes close, is the unconditional and loving support from my students, mentors, and fellow thespians.

I would be incomplete without dance, theater, music, and performance. The course of my life would have been entirely different if I hadn't taken that first tap class and performed in that first dance recital.

My personal mission statement...

In an attempt to focus our goals, to identify the ways that we as individuals in an imperfect system might affect the larger whole, in spite of evils and powers seemingly greater than ourselves, I asked my students to create a personal mission statement for their lives. I asked them to identify the ways they could approach their life so that they could be proud and be agents of change.

It is idealistic in many ways, but is it so wrong to ask teenagers to get in touch with their idealism?

Here is what I came up with...
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The way I might personally better the larger whole is by working with young adults in a real and truthful way. Through theater and dance, I can teach students skills and encourage their artistry and teamwork. I can help young adults and adults work together toward a common goal. Through teaching, I can encourage students to explore and discuss issues pertinent to them and to the world they live in. I can use literature, past and present, to help students evaluate where we've been, where we are, and where we are going as a society; I can help them begin to define their place in a large and complex history. I can help them communicate effectively, through written and spoken word, and I can help them evaluate information to make them more literate social beings.

If, by the time my students leave high school, they have learned the importance of...

**Listening more, talking less.
**Thinking for themselves.
**Reading more.
**Expressing themselves clearly, uniquely, and truthfully.

...I will have succeeded.

Little nuggets of encouragement make all the difference.

My boss is an inspiration. She is the kind of leader I want to be, one that loves her work, that has purpose and drive, and that is constantly, lovingly involved with her staff. This person not only makes me want to be a better teacher, she makes want to be a better person.

In a post script to our first department meeting, she wrote:

"I read a poem by Marge Piercy (from Circles on the Water, 1982) this weekend that made me think of all of you."

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward.
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in the common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn,
are put in museums but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

More "This I Believe"

Writing prompts suggested for student writers as a pre-writing strategy. I plan to answer each of these questions for myself, working towards the composition of my own “This I Believe” essay. This is as much for myself as it will be for my students, if not more so. And I challenge any other writer out there—take a look at yourself long enough to decide what it is you believe.
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1. Most of us have been in a situation where we made a promise that for one reason or another we were unable to keep.

When were you disappointed because someone made you a promise that they failed to keep? Or when did you break a promise that you made to someone else?

2. All of us are works in progress with a long way to go before we reach our full potential.

In what skill or area are you still working to make progress?

3. Our society uses the word hero in many different ways.

How do you define hero, and who is a hero in your life?

4. We all tend to judge people by their appearances, even though looks can be deceiving.

Have you ever prejudged someone incorrectly based on their appearance or has someone ever prejudged you unfairly based on how you look?

5. Everyone has problems or challenges to overcome.

What obstacles are you proud to have faced and conquered?

6. There is a famous adage: “To err is human, to forgive is divine.”

When did you feel divine because you were able to forgive someone for their mistake? When did someone act diving by forgiving you when you were wrong?

Hmmm. I see a new project a-brewin.

The Original Invitation from 'This I Believe'

This invites you to make a very great contribution: nothing less than a statement of your personal beliefs, of the values which rule your thought and action. Your essay should be about three minutes in length when read loud, written in a style as you yourself speak, and total no more than 500 words.

We know this is a tough job. What we want is so intimate that no one can write it for you. You must write it yourself, in the language most natural to you. We ask you to write in your own words and then record in your own voice. You may even find that it takes a request like this for you to reveal some of your own beliefs to yourself. If you set them down they may become of untold meaning to others.

We would like you to tell not only what you believe, but how you reached your beliefs, and if they have grown, what made them grow. This necessarily must be highly personal. That is what we anticipate and want.

It may help you in formulating your credo if we tell you also what we do not want. We do not want a sermon, religious or lay; we do not want editorializing or sectarianism or 'finger-pointing.' We do not even want your views on the American way of life, or democracy or free enterprise. These are important but for another occasion. We want to know what you live by. And we want it in terms of 'I,' not the editorial 'We.'

Although this program is designed to express beliefs, it is not a religious program and is not concerned with any religious form whatever. Most of our guests express belief in a Supreme Being, and set forth the importance to them of that belief. However, that is your decision, since it is your belief which we solicit.

But we do ask you to confine yourself to affirmatives: This means refraining from saying what you do not believe. Your beliefs may well have grown in clarity to you by a process of elimination and rejection, but for our part, we must avoid negative statements lest we become a medium for the criticism of beliefs, which is the very opposite of our purpose.

We are sure the statement we ask from you can have wide and lasting influence. Never has the need for personal philosophies of this kind been so urgent. Your belief, simply and sincerely spoken, is sure to stimulate and help those who hear it. We are confident it will enrich them. May we have your contribution?

Adapted from the invitation sent to essayists featured in the original 'This I Believe' series. Excerpted from 'This I Believe 2,' copyright © 1954 by Help, Inc.

From images to words...

More activities from writing courses. I provided the students a series of black and white photographs, asked them to list observations, and then asked them to freewrite a scene. These are starts that I did with them...
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Notes:

hot sticky air
stagnant
until a train blows through
suctions the air
shakes it up for a moment
then it settles back
smothers
fluorescent lights
makes faces glow/look flat simultaneously

Freewrite:

The ground rumbles. Babies cry. Nameless faces crackle under fluorescent light. The air is stale. It is hot, sticky, stagnant. It settles over me like a down comforter in July. I drop my bag to the ground, ignoring the inner voice, probably my grandmother's, "Do you have any idea who or what has been on this floor?"

Doesn't matter, Gram. My arm is falling off.

I watch the people across the tracks. As they rush into the underground station, they screech to a halt at the end of the platform. An inconvenience. A forced halt in their day. They avoid eachother's eyes. So many people, so many stories that few will ever know. They stand there willing the minute hand to stop, to slow down, to give them a moment's reprieve from the ceaseless deathnell of their day.

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Notes:

wheels cutting through puddles
water splashing
muffled sounds
misty rain
not quite raindrops
enough to know they're there

Freewrite:

Everything changes when it mists. Not rain, mind you. Mist is different. The raindrops are indistinguishable from each other, but you know they are there. Like a premonition, like one of those lurking bad feelings, the mist makes its presence known.

My footsteps echo on the cobblestone, sounds muffled, street lights glowing. And as a car rolls by, I jump to the side. My ears tell me I should be soaked, but there's not enough water. Instead, everything is thinly veiled by the omnipresent something that let's us know we're alive.

My ghosts...

Something I wrote as a model for my students. The goal was descriptive writing, using sensory detail, metaphor, and simile, all mashed together illustrating one of the steps in an epic hero's journey. Now, some of it may be corny (or undeveloped, at the very least), but it deals with some real things. Things that have not fully happened yet. Things that should happen if I'm ever going to let go and move on...
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My green Honda civic crawls to a halt and I yank the emergency break a little too hard.

Just breathe, Tina, I have to remind myself.

My eyes are pinched shut and my fists grip the wheel. I fumble through my purse, searching for my Burt’s Bees and for an extra moment before the inevitable. To my right, on the passenger seat where loved ones should sit, is the dried rose—once a deep, pulsing blood red, but now a shriveled leaf brown—the one Mom and Dad saved from the funeral that I couldn’t attend. With a trembling hand, I bring the flower to my nose. It smells like autumn leaves, fallen to the ground, dead, kicked around, forgotten.

I step out of my car and slam the door. The crisp, cool October wind whips into my body, and sends my hair flying. I lift my eyes and, through blurred vision, I see the stones sitting there, an army of them, in rank, at attention, eternally patient—waiting for me. Well, at least one of them is.

It’s been entirely too long, I think, and I feel my feet pulling the rest of me forward, as if they know I can’t do it on my own.

Amidst my indecision, I feel a flurry of wings above my head, as a dove, a perfect dove, leads me to her stone, to the stone. The bird lands and waits. My feet, now like lead, finish the journey for me.

And there it is: In loving memory—Deborah O’Briant.

I drop to my knees. A solitary tear rolls down my cheek and tries to run away from the unfinished hurt in my heart. The fibers there remain unhealed. The scab there threatens to rip away any progress I’ve made trying to forget and forgive this woman, this woman’s husband, this woman’s child, and this woman’s niece—me. And I sit there, fierce in my determination to keep the scab intact, to finally move past this grief. Three years have passed and this is my first visit to her grave. My mouth is bitter with guilt.

Coo, coo…I look up. The dove cocks her head knowingly, as if she knows me.

Coo, coo…she repeats, and I close my eyes. The wind is gentle now; it has lost its bite. It circles me, dries my tears, and calms my racing heart.

My skin tingles, and I feel her here. My aunt, she’s here.  But it’s not just her.  It is her and it is everyone else buried under the ground.  It is the dead and it is the living.  It is everything visible and invisible.  It is the feeling we have around us every day, but we rarely notice.  It is the breath of fresh air as we leave a crowded space.  It is the ever-present knowing, the essence of everything and nothing. 

My skin tingles with the feeling of that something we can always count on, like a mother’s touch or a lover’s kiss.  Like a shiver and a sigh.  Like the longing and the loss.  Like the comfort found cuddling in a down blanket or spooning with your dog. 

My skin tingles, and I wake up.  I start to remember, to realize all of the things I forgot. 

It’s time to stop this, Tina. I don’t just hear these words.  I feel them seeping through the pores of my skin.

Now is the time for forgiveness, the feeling tells me.  Remember that I love you and that I’ll always be with you, but let me go.

Let this go.

The dove swoops down, takes the dried blossom that has fallen from my hand to the brown grass, takes one last look at me, and flies away.

She’s right. It’s time to let this go.

I take a long, deep breath.

This time, though, I don’t have to remind myself to do it.

From a trip long ago...

Spring '03, to be exact.

Version one...

The air is thick. It has substance. As we walk through it, we have to push, putting forth considerable effort to get through. My long, baggy pants--"Made in India" but "Bought at Buckland Hills Mall, Manchester, CT, USA"--cling to my legs. Jasmine suffocates the city--insense that I would later buy at that same store in the mall and try to recreate at home. Rickshaws whip past us. Bare feet, cracked, dirty, and needy bustle around the crowded streets...and our leather sneakers.

Children with deep wells of experience in their eyes, much more than I had at their age, watch and inquire silently. What are they thinking? Hoping? Dreaming?

With hands outstretched, palms up, they demand rupees. I wonder if their screaming bellies let them think of anything else.
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Version two...

"Aunty, aunty," she mumbles, almost inaudibly. Her eyes, deep wells of experience that I never had at her age, or ever.

"Rupees, ruppees." Her feet bare, cracked, worn. Her skin coated in dust, sticking to her with air that acts as adhesive, that chokes if inhaled too deep. Her frail body wrapped in a crimson sari, the threats fighting to stay together, clinging to her for support.

Around her Calcutta swirls, blurs into a cyclone of senses. Daring you, taunting you to make sense of her. Begging for you to give her just one moment of relief, one reason to believe that this is not all that she is. That this is not all she can be.