Dance Like a Wave Upon the Sea

It’s true that millions of teachers devote their hearts, minds, and passions to students in American public schools. One may see this devotion when educators write in the public square to contribute to the on-going conversation about the great American experiment: democracy and public schools.

In fact, Jody Stallings passionately writes in support of his students in his recent Op Ed, “Teacher to Parent-The Educational system is abandoning the concept of stringent, objective consequences.” He defends “plain, ordinary children.”

However, too often, claims for more school-yard discipline service the status quo rather than seek to understand and solve systemic causes of bad behavior. If teachers mistakenly advocate serving the majority of students instead of our entire community of students, the great experiment will have been put on pause.

Some argue, our great democratic experiment of equality for all is not even for schools to dabble in. More than just a few in the US have felt a deep need to return to the “America my parents remember.” These were the days of control: strict discipline and punishment. Students were expected to be quiet, sit in rows, listen, and behave.  Of course, these were also the days of Jim Crow, segregated schools, restaurant and drinking fountains inequality, and voting rights regulations, as noted in “Commemorating South Carolina’s Civil Rights History.”  Now, some understand that these folks do not call for inequality but a time of nostalgia—of perceived innocence and lawfulness. The problem is, of course, that for too many, justice was denied. It was a time of neither innocence nor fairness.  Consequences were neither fair nor appropriate. “Consequences” simply did not produce the imagined results for all. Our great democratic experiment had been in pause.
In the year of my birth in Richmond, Virginia—1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed to address systemic injustice. Some teachers played a role in this monumental American change, and the great democratic experiment pushed on, as cataloged by Derrick Alridge’s project, “Teachers in the Movement” at the University of Virginia. However, Stalling’s claim to serve the status quo in a “pipeline to success” ignores the systemic, root causes of troubled behavior and threatens the experiment, as a result.

Many teachers rightly point out that bad student behavior not only threatens the learning environment in the classroom but also potentially places other students and even teachers in physical harm’s way. This is true. I have taught in classrooms in South Windsor, CT in the late 1990’s with students who had police-authorized ankle bracelets after having been arrested and having been restricted in travel. These classes were very difficult to teach.

We all can agree that respecting the dignity of others around us is central to pluralistic life—and students must learn this. And we must help them to learn it. We all must learn responsibility to all others in order for our democracy to thrive.

However, a focus on consequences misses important questions: what resources should teachers clamor for? What do teachers need that will support all students, given the challenges of growing up in the 21^stcentury? How do we write curriculum that engages students authentically with content and context? With past, present, and future? What aspects of the status quo in our schools have inadvertently helped to perpetuate incarceration? Studies, such as those by the American Bar Association warn about the focus on consequences, which has helped produce the school-to-prison pipeline, and folks who yearn for disciple as a central strategy miss this point (Redfield).

Of course, those same folks would advocate that a focus on “the concept of stringent, objective consequences” does not miss the point. Stallings writes that a focus on “the consequence is there to help disparage the student from going to prison.” He believes that consequences heaped by adults upon struggling students are currently lacking. Unfortunately, he does not detail how this actually works or why it is the solution. Instead, his mistaken use of the word “disparage” reveals the underlying problem with his claim. Incessant, unfocused, and biased punishment does disparage students. This approach clearly spells out to students they are of little worth. It is a superficial, conceptual strategy, given the complexities of students’ lives, especially in the 21^stcentury. It screams, we don’t have the time or money to deal with you, so out you go. We love you but get out of the classroom and take your punishment.

More, looking to Parkland as an example is a grave error, as the violent perpetrator of murder and unmeasurable pain and suffering on others has himself suffered for years. The consequences of suspensions, movement from school to school, and, yes, Mr. Stallings, expulsion (Haag), were ineffective. Records show the perpetrator had been suspended at least sixty-seven days over less than a year and a half in middle school. No, this is a terribly misguided analysis to advocate for the very same policies that knowingly have resulted in people of color being pipe-lined to prison. As a result, I urge we avoid servicing the status quo at the cost of others’ education–

I applaud Mr. Stallings and all other educators who take the time, effort and care to bring their voices to discuss how to work towards excellent education and healthy communities for all. Educators know too well the sad protection given to schools’ images and other status quo definitions of success that leave marginalized students behind every time. We know of too many superintendents’ rejection of teachers as equal partners in working to serve all students. We know of too many principals’ focus on school numbers. We know of too many student and family struggles against violence, substance abuse, racism, and American cultural strife.

The issues are complicated, and the problems are difficult to disentangle. I hear the fears of the marginalized trapped by the status quo; I hear those students’ cries who want an excellent education; I hear the demands of the status quo; and, I hear the clarion calls of teachers who yearn to teach. I hear America crying.
As a result, the 242-year-long experiment in democracy for all should not be put on pause. We should argue with voices raised high to claim the resources our students and their families deserve. We should argue in the public square why we need those resources and how they would be used for our younger citizens to learn to be vital threads in the woven fabric that is our great American experiment in democracy.

Work Cited

Haag, Matthew and Serge F. Kovaleski. “Nikolas Cruz, Florida Shooting Suspect, Described as a ‘Troubled Kid.’” New York Times. February 14, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/ 14/us/nikolas-cruz-florida- shooting.html. Web. June 30, 2018.

Redfield, Sarah and Jason Nance.  “School-To-Prison Pipeline: Preliminary Report.” February, 2016. American Bar Association. https://www.google.com/search?q=school-prison+pipeline+studies&oq=school-prison+pipeline+studies&aqs=chrome.. 69i57j0l5.17921j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. Web. June 30, 2018.

*Stallings, Jodi. “Teacher to Parent-The Educational system is abandoning the concept of stringent, objective consequences.” Moultrie News. June 27, 2018. Web. June 30, 2018.

Dear Mr. Ginsberg

 

Dear Allen,

May I call you,

Again,

Allen?

 

You answered me

When a student called

 

He was blown

away by your words

against authority.

You were polite,

asking “Please.”

Ironic.

 

You answered me, too

I think I know you

after sitting together

You,

blasting words of Plutonium,

wonder.

I wonder how to counter

Culture

of war, violence—

how to call it ignorance

 

You answered me

When another student heard you

Howl—

 

She needed you at

that

moment

of

time (to call her body her own).

 

 

Dear Allen,

May I call you Allen?

I feel like I know you, so I will call you again.

 

Much Madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-
Much Sense-the starkest Madness-
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail-
Assent- and you are sane-
Demur- you’re straightway dangerous-
And handled with a Chain-

 

Emily Dickinson

December 10, 1830- May 15, 1886

By Derick Edgren, Blog Correspondent (reprinted with permission from both author and The Adroit Journal)

‘PLEASE MASTER’
Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem
Defenders of Connecticut teacher David Olio say one mistake shouldn’t have cost him his job. But why is the work of a towering figure of 20th-century American poetry out of bounds?
David Freedlander
DAVID FREEDLANDER

05.28.15 5:15 AM ET
It was the kind of moment teachers covet. An Advanced Placement English class focusing on poetry, and a student brings in a poem that caught his eye, hoping to discuss in the waning moments of the period how the poet uses language in his work.
The teacher, David Olio, a 19-year veteran of the South Windsor School District and winner of Connecticut’s highest award for teaching excellence, didn’t know the poem in question, but he took a look and walked the students through it in the remaining time.
The poem the student discovered and brought in was “Please Master,” an extremely graphic account of a homosexual encounter published by Allen Ginsberg in 1968 that begins: “Please master can I touch your cheek / please master can I kneel at your feet / please master can I loosen your blue pants.”

Clearly, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” this wasn’t. But the students were 17- and 18-year-olds, some of whom were taking the AP course in conjunction with the University of Connecticut and receiving college credit.
One day after the class, Olio was placed on indefinite, unpaid leave by the district. Seventy-two hours later, the district began termination proceedings against him. Three weeks after that, he agreed to resign.
Reading the poem in class, the district found, showed “egregiously poor professional judgment,” Olio’s termination letter stated. “By so doing, you violated the trust placed by the Board of Education in you as a teacher, you brought discredit upon the South Windsor Public Schools, you undermined public confidence and parent trust in you as a teacher, and you put the emotional health of some students at risk.”
The unceremonious dismissal of a beloved teacher has thrown the town of South Windsor, population 25,000, halfway between Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts, into tumult. The local newspaper denounced him in editorials. Alumni, town residents, and Olio’s current students crammed into Board of Education hearings to testify on his behalf.
One alumna said she was embarrassed to say she was a graduate of the high school. Olio’s church minister testified that “every time David talks about teaching you can see his face brighten, his hands start to move, and the energy emerge…This is my preacher talk now, but I believe this is what God has created David Olio to be and to do.” The student who brought in the poem testified how Olio inspired him to become an English educator. Parents lamented that a single, tragic mistake could end an otherwise sterling career.
But was it a mistake? That has been the line of many of the parents, students, and teachers who have rushed to defend Olio—that he made a single error in judgment, one he should not be forced to pay for for the rest of his life. To many, Olio’s case points to a changing culture around education, one in which teachers are on a hair trigger vulnerable to losing their livelihoods because of declining union protections and the rise of high-stakes testing. According to some members of the school community, the controversy began when one student in the class begged off a test in a different class the next day, claiming he (or she) couldn’t concentrate because of the reading of the poem. The story quickly blew up on social media in the town before the local press picked up on it and disciplinary proceedings began.
“I also feel sorry for the remaining teachers who will undoubtedly feel like they need to censor themselves, even at the collegiate class level, in light of the one strike and you’re out policy we appear to have adopted,” wrote one parent of a student in the AP English class in a public blog post.
But to call Olio’s reading of the poem a mistake—a poem a student brought to class and asked to be read—is to say the reading of a work by one of the towering figures of 20th-century American poetry is out of bounds. “Please Master” was written in 1968, just before the Democratic convention in Chicago would erupt in riots. Ginsberg had already been put on trial for obscenity in 1957 for his poem “Howl,” which with its casual depiction of gay sex and drug use, and lines like “The asshole is holy,” was considered far outside the bounds of what was considered good taste. A judge, however, ruled that the poem had “redeeming social importance” and was unlikely to “deprave or corrupt readers by exciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desire.”
In the series of poems written around the time of “Please Master,” Ginsberg was trying to explore every aspect of the human experience—intellectual, egotistical, spiritual, and sexual, no matter how messy or unpleasant. Like Walt Whitman, he was attempting to catalogue every aspect of the self, “even those we normally hide from ourselves in order to feel better and flatter ourselves and to make ourselves feel like important people,” said Steve Silberman, a San Francisco-based writer who was a student, teaching assistant, and friend of Ginsberg’s for 25 years.

“Allen thought that by bringing material into poetry that were previously considered unpoetic, he enlarged the poetic occupation,” Silberman said.
Read literally, the poem is about Ginsberg, presumably, describing his sexual abjection before a lover, in this case usually considered to be Neal Cassidy, a bisexual sometime lover of Ginsberg’s and the hero of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. But there are other readings. Silberman puts the piece in the long tradition of religious poetry that crosses all faiths and which involves a submission to a figure who represents the divine. It can be read, too, as a metaphor for a society that represses and marginalizes those who engage in the kind of acts described.
Helen Vendler, one of the nation’s pre-eminent literary critics, sent a letter to the school board on Olio’s behalf.
“To add Ginsberg’s poem to school-censored works of Twain, Faulkner, Whitman, etc., is to deny freedom to read what one likes, and share what one likes with others, which is the basis of intellectual life,” she wrote. “Given what students are already exposed to via TV and film, Ginsberg’s poem, which concerns a well-known form of abjection (whether heterosexual or homosexual) reveals nothing new.”
And many who have followed the story inside and outside central Connecticut have wondered whether those same forces were at play here. If the poem were narrated by a woman, after all, it could be mistaken for Fifty Shades of Grey or a scene from Game of Thrones.
“I am certain that most of these students are watching things on their home computers that are more violent, more truly horrifying than this poem, but this poem describes a sex act between two men,” Silberman said. “With the widespread acceptance of gay marriage, people’s ‘ickiness’ with the acceptance of gay people is finding new places to come out of hiding. They can express their revulsion at gayness and homosexuality in way they couldn’t before.”
South Windsor is reliably liberal turf in an increasingly blue state. The town regularly votes Democratic in presidential and gubernatorial elections and sends Democrats to Congress and to the state House. But some have noticed a creeping if quiet social conservatism entering the area. Two years ago, there was an effort to remove Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami from the district’s reading list, citing its overtly sexual content.
“It’s this confusing mix of spoken progressive ideals but often a quiet conservatism underneath,” said Courtney King, a planning and zoning commission member in the town and a former student of Olio’s. “There has been a definite tonal change since I grew up here. It makes me think of Mrs. Flanders from The Simpsons: ‘Will no one think of the children??’ I mean, if there are parents in town who think their teenagers don’t know what a blow job is, they are sorely mistaken.”
Because of his termination agreement with the district, Olio refused to be interviewed for this story. But people who know him say it is unlikely he was attempting to push an accepted boundary or tweak the administration.
“I think he really thought the students would be able to handle it,” said one friend. “He is an extremely earnest guy. Perhaps to a fault.”
Gary Weinberg and Cathy Ryan are documentary filmmakers who travel around the country documenting master teachers in action for the Teaching Channel, in order to instruct other educators on best practices. They spent most of a week in Olio’s class last year, and according to Ryan, “He is one of the most impressive teachers I have ever witnessed.”
Asked to comment, the school board sent along a statement that said the district, Olio, and the local teachers union had “mutually agreed…to resolve the recent dispute that has divided the community” by Olio agreeing to resign.
“Mr. Olio and the other parties have reached this agreement because they do not want to further distract parents, students or staff from their important work of teaching and learning,” the school board added. “During his tenure at South Windsor High School, Mr. Olio has made many positive contributions to the school district.”
Olio’s former colleagues say it will be difficult for him to find a job teaching again. There may be some upside, however, according to King, the former student.
“In defense of this whole imbroglio,” she said, “at least it got people in this town reading Ginsberg.”

How do you spell Aleppo? Is it with one l?  Two ps? Oh, wait, Ahmed told me:

حلب  Halab

How much do we Americans know about Aleppo, Syria? We certainly know it was at the center of presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s geographical and political mistake in the summer of 2016: he could not place the name; so, people railed against his lack of knowledge, but how much do we know? How much do we really know about a place that has been all but leveled by war? How much do we know about the residents of that place, both present and past? How much do we know about the people of Aleppo? More importantly, how much do we want to know?

There seem to be two competing political and cultural narratives running in our country over and over, like a Lord of the Rings movie. One says that Islamic people are inherently a threat, and that we need to “find out what’s going on.” The other says Muslim people are already our neighbors, but all people have some bad eggs. Unfortunately, these are only competing narratives that reveal our identity as Americans, so the debate misses fundamental questions: are we curious to learn about other people in our world? Are we learners or are we so steeped in our own assumptions that we will not assume a stance of growth and understanding? Have we pinned our selves between two competing narratives in an interminable movie of conflict?

Today, I drove with a member of my church to a house in greater Hartford, where a refugee family from Aleppo, Syria has just moved. They arrived in the late September heat and have been trying to settle into Connecticut life. The family has three children, two of whom are enrolled in elementary school.  The third is four years old, too young for school.

My friend Barry from church and I arrived to drive them to register for ESL classes in a local program. The parents seemed exhausted but focused.  On the way, we passed a store, Halal Meats—“halal” roughly means “permitted” for Muslims, but it means so much more. My colleague pointed it out and both parents raised their eyebrows and nodded. They remembered the store from an earlier sighting.

We all arrived at the school. And, we waited in a small hall to register. I found a seat for the mother. It was hot, and she had a headache—I think from the stress of having to take a test in a school setting that she had never experienced.  Imagine.  Never having been in a school. I know some will apply one of those narratives, but I could not help wanting to know how she felt.  What were her fears? What were her hopes? She had to have hopes, to even be there. I recalled a different kind of movie: Shawshank Redemption.  And I recalled Andy’s advice: “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.” I wondered if her hope for an education would survive.

I learned the father has the equivalent of a ninth grade education from Syria, and his wife, of course, has no formal education. She has never attended school–never been to school. The heat had no ill-effect on them, as we waited in a crowded elementary school hallway to register them. Neither speaks English, although the father has a smartphone with Google Translator.  I learned that Aleppo is called Halab, as a result of that technology. I also learned of their birthdays, as I helped fill out their forms.  She was born on January 1^st.  I learned, too, about the work this medium-sized city does to offer adult classes for a wide variety of topics, but ESL is one of their proud offerings.  These classes help adults learn English so they may help their children as they go through their own education—and help them improve their lives.

After we left, the humidity persisted, and so did they.  Their four-year-old son put up a fierce battle in the back seat.  My colleague called it “pitching a fit.’ We all shared a smile and a chuckle, for after a glimpse at the father’s smartphone, the translation informed us the boy had rejected the seat belt. I remembered my own children’s battle with the car seat. So, on the mile-and-a-half drive back home we sat satisfied, having learned we all can laugh at frustration.

 

I’d like to thank Pam G. for inviting me to speak tonight.  You know, this is the first time that I have publicly spoken about a class that had become a news cycle item and that resulted in my dismissal from South Windsor Public Schools. It’s difficult to revisit, but silence in the face of cruelty costs far less than the advocacy for educators faced with challenges to the most important civic duty: fostering citizenship for democratic communities.

Have you ever played Jenga?  This is the game where wooden blocks are stacked neatly and firmly in a rectangular tower to begin.  Then, each player takes a turn by removing one of the blocks and placing it on top.  As each player pulls a block, the tower becomes increasingly unstable.  At some points in the game, the tower teeters, looking as if it will fall, but the players always pick a next block to pull with the goal of keeping the tower from tumbling into a scattered mess on the table. Until, at one point, a player pulls a block that does topple the tower.

I’d like to offer the game of Jenga to you as a metaphor tonight for teaching and learning to help tell my story and communicate the challenges that your educators are facing: here in East Hampton, here in our state, and in our country—in fact, one of my main goals tonight is to encourage you to support your educators in doing the work that is so important to our democracy: educating all students so they may exercise their civic duties.  My story is about a daunting environment facing teachers and students who work toward that goal. I’ll come back to the Jenga metaphor as we go.
First, for those who are unfamiliar with my case, please let me offer some basics: On February 25, 2015, from 9:00 to 10:40 m I taught my period 3 AP/ECE Literature and Composition class at South Windsor High School.  Now, this class comprised seniors who signed up either for Advanced Placement credit, earned by passing an exam and/or University of Connecticut, Early College Experience, credit, earned by a C or better for the year.  For students who signed up for UConn credit, they were officially enrolled in a college class, which results in a college transcript: 149 schools in CT offer ECE credit. In fact, East Hampton is part of the dual enrollment program.  Both the AP curriculum description written by College Board (who runs the PSATs, SATs, and AP programs/exams) and the University of Connecticut curricular documents expressly state that the perfect Jenga tower shape at the beginning of the game is imagined.  Instead Literature and language offers a full range of human experience that is not stable, consistent, or predictable.  Readers, writers, and thinkers in these programs are required to develop habits of mind that seek out the inherent contradictions and ambiguities in language and in life. In other words, education in these courses looks like a teetering Jenga tower.  In fact, The University of Chicago expresses this shaking Jenga tower as necessary.  Students are actively to seek out those perspectives that decenter, destabilize, or otherwise challenge their own points of view, to complicate and then negotiate new ideas: engaging in scholarship does not imagine a world of a perfect Jenga tower where people have or agree upon the same values, beliefs, ideas, etc.

In order to engage in the inquiry that is at the heart of civic life—asking questions of each other—we can not expect the imagined, steady Jenga tower. But that’s what happened after my period 3 AP/ECE class.   You see, we were finishing a unit on poetry. Students had selected a poet to study after I had brought them to the HS library to browse and choose from over 100 books of poetry.  They would read that entire book, select four poems representative of the poet’s language, style and themes, research the work, and then present their reactions, analyses and thinking in small groups.  I designed the presentations so that students rotated through each group and presented to every other student. Students would have heard 19 different presentations.  One student, Steven, had been inspired by Trish’s presentation (I use their real names as they have given me permission.) She had selected Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, a book of poetry that landed City Lights store owner Shig Murao in jail for selling an obscene book in ’57—during an era when many people tended to believe in the perfect Jenga tower—you can see and hear that imagined steady world, for example represented in old shows like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best.” Now, the case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled the poem is not obscene, but in fact has “redeeming social importance.” Well, Steven was so inspired by the work in her presentation that he went and read another of Ginsberg’s books—the mark of a great student. He then had brought that book with his many question from his house to class, and, with about 12 minutes left, when we were looking for a poem to finally process as a class, he offered the book in charged excitement.  Specifically, he had questions about this one specific poem. I looked at it, and we had a brief conversation about the phrase “gratuitous language”— unjustified, using language without purpose—and then agreed to read and examine the poem.  The student had engaged in a high order of scholarship, for reading on our own and then asking questions fosters deep learning.

Steven found not only the poem online on poetry.com but also a YouTube recorded version of Ginsberg reading the poem. We then had an academic discussion about the poem: its use of narrator, use of anaphora—or the repetition of a single phrase–, pronouns and considered Ginsberg’s anti-institutional work Patricia had presented as a quality of work.  We discussed the use of language, and we talked about Ginsberg and the age’s rebellion against militaristic, gendered and sexual norms of the 1950’s, and students made connections to today, to Fifty Shades of Grey, for example.  In short, we had an academic conversation—and wrestled with a difficult poem.  The bell rang, students submitted their work and left for their next class.  No one had expressed any discomfort, either physically or verbally, and that afternoon after school, while conferencing with four of these students about their 30-page senior thesis papers, one student came by to say he would not be in the next class, as he was going to visit Virginia Tech and potentially commit.  He asked, “Mr. Olio, had you read that poem before?”

“No,” I shook my head.

“Wow.  That was incredible what you did with it.”

“Thanks,” I nodded.

And he left the room with his excitement of going to Virginia Tech spilling off him.

Students face a complex world, with Jenga blocks sticking out all over the tower.  It wobbles. In fact, an increased shift in American life in the 21^st century undeniably pulls Jenga blocks at a seemingly quicker pace. And that shift is deeper and wider than even Lake Pocatapaug—

Really, though, I’m sure you know that new technologies have dramatically shifted almost every aspect of American life.  From calendars, contacts, cameras, on your phone and computers that hold more and more of our memories to Twitter, SnapChat, and blogging that channels our civic conversation. Our very way of communicating and even thinking about ourselves and the world is shifting. That’s uncomfortable for many. But, educators are striving to help students succeed in Jenga.

In fact, the world has rapidly expanded as a result of the changes in technology.  Your car insurance claim rep may initiate your claim from India.  Employers may likely collaborate with others, say, in Oregon, who work from home, in an on-line meeting to plan a product release. Still, manufacturers may have to travel to China to oversee the production of parts they will use in their own manufacturing here in East Hampton.  And, new customers may emerge in, oh Montreal—one of the worlds most diverse cities.  This means, of course, that our experiences in our civic and economic lives are increasingly among people from whom we are different.  This summer, I’ve been writing for a law firm in Montana, an Orthopedic office in Missouri and a real estate company in LA.  All I need is an internet connection and my laptop, and I can write for anyone in the world. But, that means technologies are increasingly engaging us with varied cultural habits and beliefs. Indeed, people in the United States are finding they must interact with new cultural practices, and habits, and linguistic traits. Unusual accents and word usages underscore communication.  All this may be uncomfortable for many.

Most important for my story, our nation’s demographics are changing. And here’s where I believe the abandonment of an educator can topple the Jenga tower.  With the shifts that began with the United State’s inception, as immigrants from Holland and England began, we have always had waves of immigrants, such as those from Scandinavians in the 1860’s, the Irish and Italians in the 1890’s, Latinos in the 1960’s, and now people from the Middle east and the Pacific rim… new cultures bring new beliefs and values. More, changes in our understanding about gendered identities increase the differences.  And here’s the rub: a person’s identity is connected with their values and beliefs.  We imagine our selves as a result.  We create our selves—we create our identities. And, little else makes some people more nervous than an attack on their identity.  And some see these differences as an attack on their way of life.

Okay, that’s some heavy stuff, but imagine, then, working in a classroom, with new technologies, new means to communicate, new physical environments, new occupations for students that have yet to even be invented, and access to new, almost unfettered ideas.  Add, now, changes in demographics, where even more diverse citizens are part of our social fabric. More families moving into our towns from outside the United States.  They look different.  Have different habits.  Eat different foods. Dress differently.  And speak differently.  All this difference can make some uncomfortable. But educators must embrace those differences.  We must embrace all students, no matter their creed, their histories, their values, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation.

But, in some areas, some folks respond to that uncomfortableness by saying that we should have a straight, perfect Jenga tower.  They imagine that controlled tower is the way the world is supposed to be.  The two parents who complained, the principal of South Windsor, the assistant superintendent, and superintendent, all imagine this perfect town—an image of their own agreement and an image rooted in an imagined past. The superintendent would release a public statement condemning the poem and move to terminate me in three business days without even speaking to me first.

Certainly, many people disagreed, and rushed to support the work of educators—to support me.  Colleagues, former students, leaders in town, members from my church all wrote letters.  One colleague wrote a letter to the Editor in the Courant supporting my work.  Helen Vendler of Harvard University, a leading scholar on poetry wrote in my defense, as did other university professors.  Indeed, five students from that class had the courage to speak to the Board of Education in my defense.  The other people who spoke to board that night, who wrote letters, and who generally came out in support –all understand the complexities of human experience that a senior English classroom addresses—and the honest work educators do in those classrooms.  They also recognized the homophobia that underscored the claims against me and against Ginsberg’s work.  Now, these supporters didn’t need to “like” the poem while supporting me, but, two national journalists, one CNN and from Daily Beast, and a parent of as student in the class, fundamentally questioned the education that would result from such treatment of a poem and teacher.

In short, it was a cruel betrayal. Both my wife Teresa and I were crushed.  We simply could not believe my administrators had abandoned and sacrificed me. I had taught English at SWHS for almost twenty years, teaching more than 19,000 lessons, working with over 2,000 students.  I chaired district committees, wrote curriculum, advised the Culture and Diversity Fair where students presented to 1000 students and community members a year.  Exemplary evaluations year after year.  No demerits in my file, whatsoever.  I was late once, in 2005, after a flat tire on my van.  But other than that… No, I believe the administrators succumbed to a fear associated with difference.  I had worked with wonderfully difficult literature for my twenty-two years in the English classroom. Believe me. Educators work tirelessly.  I see it on a daily basis. They believe in learning.  They believe in the freedom associated with an excellent education.  Unfortunately, those people who imagine the perfect Jenga tower and expect others to keep it that way undermine rather than support educators. That includes silencing ideas.  It includes censoring books, responding with silence to instances of prejudice, when, for example, students who are not Jewish go to West Hartford for a soccer game and sing the Dreidel Song, knowing many Jewish people go to school there.  Of course, disciplining teachers for fostering student inquiry and working with the content of their discipline ultimately undermines an academic environment.

I share my story with you today because, while it’s too late for my professional career in South Windsor, it’s not too late for organizations such as The East Hampton Rotary to advocate for educators to do the difficult work that helps shape citizens capable of thoughtful, open, and democratic conversation.  It’s not too late to support your educators in your town who invariably are dealing with rapid changes in students’ and families’ lives by questioning and having conversation. I hope this organization serves ALL of its citizens—no matter their creed, their histories, their values, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation.  I hope you strengthen your civic fabric by supporting the work your educators do each year, and I believe your economic lives will benefit and grow from an egalitarian society—the great democratic experiment that does not embrace one perfect Jenga Tower but the diverse, complex and beautiful world we inhabit.   Thank you for listening.