It is easy to teach my students the basic elements for the art of storytelling. The beginnings, the middle, end. All stories derive from this stem.  The conflicts. The resolutions. The characters. It is accessible because the students can find themselves as a character on the continuum. Oh, I see Ned! So it’s like when my stepmother moved in, when the berating, beating and alcoholism began and when my father finally manned up and got his second divorce. Sadly, yes. Oh, or like when I realized my father left with no one knowing his name, when I found out I am not a registered member of my tribe because of this and when I committed myself to anger and depression.

Of course, these students never actually speak up like this. But I can see their wheels turning. But I know when I ask them to connect their learning to their own life, a critical element of transference at our school, I am likely opening a recently healed wound or adding the salt as most teachers unknowingly do. Most students have experienced trauma at some point of their lives before they set foot in my classroom.

A bit of perspective for this is a tale my aunt told me. My cousin was in fourth grade and his parents were seemingly happily married. His peers, at least the majority of them, were from the often mislabeled ‘broken home’. He innocently asked his mother, why aren’t you and daddy divorced? Why are we different? The confronting of such childhood tragedies is not uncommon. In fact living in a household with two parents led my cousin to question why his family was an outlier. To note, they have since divorced and now my cousin can add foreshadowing to his understanding of how a story is told.

I have been trained to know that something so commonplace, such as divorce or parental estrangement, can give a child Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We see this played out in our schools and doctors offices and prisons each day. Young people misplaced, misled and misdiagnosed.

So I decided to help them write their way through their drama. We teach our students to introspect slowly over the four years they attend Vista Grande. And in doing so we hope they graduate as a somewhat realized individual. By their senior year, a Vista Grande should be able to communicate at a highly mature level with people of all ages and background on a variety of topics. They understand the politics of education. The culture of borders in our community and abroad. The opportunities for sustainability in Taos County. The consequences of mining our planet for consumer products and energy and monkeywrenching that system. The power of their voice when they see themselves as experts on the nature of substance abuse and dependence in our community.

But most importantly they know themselves. With the help of existing curriculum before I taught Senior English and the unique study of Plato’s Apology from Codman Academy in Boston, I have created space for my students to envision their life as a path and themselves as the author of their story.

For two years I have been teaching students about Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey. We talk about what the word journey means. We envision ourselves as heroes called to fulfill our destiny. We know there will be descents into darkness and aid from the people we would least expect it. There may be fear, missteps, deceit and tragedy. But we learn, on this journey, in this life, we have immense worth and power. We are meant for something. And anything that has occurred in our lives, whether it is from our doing or an instance outside our control, can be used to transform us.

By studying Ancient Greece and the Trial of Socrates, we know there will come a time when our truth will be questioned. When the cosmos conspire and the spotlight is on us. We are called to defend ourselves. How we have acted. Why we have hid. What our scars represent. Eventually we must answer for who we are. For why we love how and what we love. For why we would have the courage to corrupt the youth and help them shape their stories.

So my students answer the writing prompt: What has made you who you are today? Who is responsible for this human being before us today? Where are you headed? What darkness have you seen? What light have you fought like hell to keep shining? What demons are still at your throat? What heroic powers do the next classes of Vista Grande students need to make it out of teenage hood alive?

If this were the only class I taught, I would be an eternally fulfilled teacher. I have received songs of joy. The litanies of regret. The poetics of young love. The chaos of substance abuse. The passions of murder. The cold eye of distrust. The childhood bruises of fear and the resilient healing. So many stories to carry with me. This should be mandated curriculum for all high school seniors.

These students have become my teachers in what it means to be a hero. The retelling of a girlfriend witnessing her boyfriend shot and killed. Her struggle to realize she should not have joined him in death. That he will forever be her story. Her strength aided by grief groups and counseling. Her commitment to love in all its crushing absence. She is a hero.

Or the young girl passed between foster families and her journey of self-acceptance. The orphan boy who learned to trust and then love his adoptive father. The sixteen year old on the path toward drug addiction empowered to get clean despite the withdraw and trauma of drug related loss. The Pueblo boy caught between two worlds that, like his elders, leaves wisdom in what has not been said.

This process of owning their stories through writing them is the most beautiful accomplishment I have made as a teacher thus far. They have turned personal tragedy and trauma into strength. They are my heroes.

The tragedy of teaching, in this context for me, is the yearly release of these young people. Those whom I have come to love now walk away. My participation in their formative years has ended. They are closing chapters. They are scripting fresh beginnings. All ready and emboldened to live their life as a journey.

And teaching is the greatest instructor of humility. Ultimately, they are ready for something greater than myself. I can bear that happily. Though the sadness is not knowing whether I will ever learn of their heroism again.

Good luck to the 2013 graduating class of Vista Grande High School. I love you and you will be missed!

(additional reading for all teachers…Will My Name Be Shouted Out by Stephen O’Connor)

I wrote this piece almost two months ago after a February 23 day of training. That day I was working, but I didn’t see any students. Two trainings, nine hours. Today I attended the second session of this four day Common Core professional development. Enjoy the read. Remember, I love my job. I love the challenge. I hope you find the humor in my writing because I really enjoy sharing. I also hope you find something to think about and discuss in your circles. Share away.

When I enrolled at Salisbury University, I figured to graduate with a degree in secondary education and history. Just like I had told everyone in high school. Just like my picture assumed next to the yearbook caption: “Most Likely to Become a High School Teacher.” Sadly, I felt the sails wrinkle and deflate with my student teaching experience. The department head at Wicomico Middle School had one piece of advice for a promising young pupil. Don’t go into teaching. The testing requirements are handcuffs and the students are, increasingly, a mess. Today, ten years later, dude was right. And no matter how much he deserves me hunting him down and telling him he forgot his asshole card at his retirement party, I think of him too often. Especially during a cold February Monday when completely removed from the classroom, I am drowning in professional development to meet the challenges of both student and assessment.

It’s impossible. The embryonic stage of Standardized Testing as curriculum is over. The gargantuan love child of education capitalists and distant politicians is teething and learning how to walk. Unlike my experiences within the Expeditionary Learning network, Profession Development is always a bit of a passive process for most educators led by state employees who have been trained by curriculum hucksters. Common Core State Standards seems like an effort to stimulate the economy with tech support, bureaucratic positions, testing coordinators, textbook salespeople, evaluators, brainstormers, legalese consultants, analysts, and unicorn breeders (anything but more teachers) as much as it seems a genuine effort to help American children close the achievement gap.

This day, I learned how to invest in these Common Core paradigm shifts. The quantifiable gains (of which, if implemented in perfect harmony with unprecedented rises in student motivation, caloric intake at breakfast, and reading levels) may be seen in five years. The average teacher, by this time, will either be pursuing a more lucrative career or perhaps grasping for the placebo of merit based pay tied directly to the impending dip of test scores due to the increasing rigor of CCSS tests. Further reading: http://www.teacherintherye.com/the-common-core-state-standards-are-setting-schools-up-to-fail/

Yet there I sat, learning of the intended increase of challenging texts my students will be forced to grapple with. I do accept this as a challenge. I will motivate my students to beat the man, as we say at VGHS. But this training does not help me grapple with students who are at risk of alcoholism as 14 year olds. Children born of the cauldron of domestic abuse. Children of rape. Children of the addicted, or mentally disabled. Children of IQs below the median temperature of a Santa Fe summer day. Children of no glasses, no showers, no fathers. The majority of my students come to me comprehending below Middle School reading levels. We are talking about 16 year old freshmen who are more adept with wielding a spray can, a blunt or hand gun than a pencil.

Eventually the training ended. Now equipped with new tools to help my students achieve their academic horizons, I headed not home, but to VGHS to attend a training about Gang Violence and our ‘population’. I hate that term. When I say it, I fear my participation in the school to prison pipeline. I am desensitizing myself to the lives and personalities I pledge to honor. I fear I am ready to become a bureaucrat pencil pusher who used to teach. I fear I have cemented my path to head the Wicomico MS History Dept.

But our population is threatened. 20% of our school is gang affiliated or intrigued by the lifestyle. Every year we have had members of Brew Town, Surreno, Northside, whatever, come to Vista. And in the past these students, despite strength in numbers, have weeded themselves out (again, I hate my way of naming). They drop out or go away. This year, each neighborhood gang is well represented and, somehow, getting along swimmingly. Everyone is happy together talking about Red parties, Blue parties, fights, drugs, and how life would be easier for us teachers if we politely, collectively, decided to fuck off and leave them alone.

Every day is a battle of wills. How far do our rules stretch? How many times will that teacher ask me to do work before I don’t have to ever be asked again? How many people can I intimidate into submission, silence, or respect? How brazenly can I defy gravity with my pressed khakis below my hips? What is the perfect balance of absenteeism and passivity one can strike before a truancy report is made?

This is learned behavior. The families are dealers. Getting ranked in can be a birth right. Perhaps some of these youngsters are the products of overmatched parents or grandparents. The cultures of violence, bigotry, misogyny, class struggle, identity, and addiction are well rooted in Taos.

The fact of the matter, in order to address the burgeoning gang influence in our student body, we need to recognize we are up against a familial structure that is a pillar of the town and Taos culture. No matter how shambled the edifice upheld by this pillar. And quite, luckily, the kids are getting along. They enjoy each other’s company. They enjoy wreaking havoc on our school culture. Knocking back a few airline bottles of liquor at lunch. We are simply seeing a generational decay of drug use, affiliation and addiction play out in a handful of students.

The depressing part of our battle for minds is the fact these people are cool enough to garner admiration from almost anyone in the school. The lifestyle choice of illiteracy over education and any general sense of citizenship is winning. That says as much about our school as it does the town, the age group, the economy, the media, the country. The challenge waits daily for our faculty, most at wit’s end and ready to let it all go (read it as: the profession, the calling, the youth). Yet our students, show up. They receive as much positive reinforcement of their potential as we can muster. They are supported as young people. Our school is more the symptom of a greater affliction. But we are the organization faced with the consequences. Watch these kids. Ride them into the ground. Raise the test scores. Get them to graduate.

And in leaving school for the day, I was reminded that every color of the rainbow is affiliated with some street gang. Mexican Mafiosos are now in Taos. Everybody has a nickname, tag, tat, gat, shoelace and swag. And I am responsible for the clowns graduating from circus school. Appendages, credits, test scores and all. Good luck!