the shack.

in july i returned to the delta after being in texas for five weeks, training for the years ahead. Mom and Dad flew in shortly thereafter so that Mom could see the Delta and so that they could both help me get settled. It was while they were here that we first saw the inside of what would become my very cozy delta home.

my home is probably about 300 square feet total. It is situated back from the road in a nice neighborhood in Indianola. i think that its distance from the road is the only reason the very affluent neighbors let it continue to exist on their street. it is a bit of an eyesore. the white paint is dirtied by the shit of flora. There are haphazard wires bringing electricity through the attic. There is a certain spookiness about the shady darkness.

the place simply called to me.

the tiny size reminded me of grandma's cabin. the fact that i wouldn't have to deal with roommates sold it totally and completely. did i know that i would be sharing my home with a petting zoo's worth of attic creatures? no. do i have fuzzy mold growing on my kitchen cabinets? usually. do cockroaches crawl over my face while i am sleeping? probably. but i am the only decision maker in the entire home. i can wear as much spandex as i want and nobody gets mad about the mess except for me (and only after there is a dramatic increase in the number of roaches due to the pile-up of dirty dishes).

and then we watched "chalk"

and it was so funny that i cried. tears running down my face, cannot breath funny.

and it was funny only because there is an awkwardness that only first-year teachers can harness and use for the entertainment of other first-year teachers. it is what we do every friday evening at the mexican restaurant in Belzoni. we aren't making fun of our students nearly as much as we are making fun of ourselves. we laugh at how useless we are in the crazy situations that arise in our classrooms on a daily basis.

if you watch the mockumentary on netflix (you can watch it instantly), don't be led to think that it is a window into the global experience. the kids are really well behaved in the classes. if i gave my students 5 minutes of free time at the end of class it would turn into an all-out brawl/dance party. my classroom would be destroyed and i would be ready for a huge Coca-Cola from mcdonalds. huge.

we also don't have a teachers lounge.
or lunch breaks.
and our kids are a lot more hilarious.
and much more central to the whole teaching experience than the movie would lead one to believe.

i guess my next post wasn't on the joys of "the shack" after all. oh, the necessity of adapting.

then i realized that getting desensitized will lead to far less growth than remembering

and thus i started to blog. i am sitting on a red couch, enjoying my sunday, in a state far removed from colorado. so far removed from colorado that i visit both mcdonalds and walmart on a regular basis. so regularly do i visit, that i might be considered "a regular" at both places. the woman at the mcdonalds drive through windows reminds me to give her my latte punch card every morning so that i will save money. the greeters at walmart smile maternally at my cloth shopping bags, knowing that there is something foreign about my guilty avoidance of plastic bags. it i the very fact that the guilt is hardly there anymore that scares me. the fact that i consume at walmart with only minimal guilt truly freaks me out.

far more disturbing than the desensitization over shopping habits is my desensitization about everything else. all of those things that i can actually only comfortably discuss within the circle of padded chairs during a diversity conference in fort collins, colorado. only comfortably discussed in that setting because i had no real concept of the WEIGHT of what we were discussing. i felt it deeply, but only analytically. now i feel it emotionally and personally. and yet with great distance. and now, i will try to disperse with the ambiguous phrases and talk more concretely about what daily life is like.

i wake up at 5:30am every week day in order to prepare for work. i carpool from indianola to belzoni (22 miles away) with a couple other first year teachers. i dread the upcoming day all the way to work. i dread my own lack of competence at this job that is so important and so difficult. the face in my mirror is likely one of three white faces i will see in the entirety of my day. it is no longer shocking that in a county that is nearly 50/50 black to white, i teach only two kids that that are "bright skinned" (as my students call me). the rest of the white kids are enrolled in private "academies." every county has at least one and they play the "important" role of maintaining the segregation of half a century ago. four months ago, i was shocked by the preservation of segregation. now i just go to work to teach my individual students. that is what scares me.

my first class starts at 8:52am (because i am lucky enough to have first period for planning) and i teach six classes straight through until the bell rings at 3:07ish. even lunch is spent monitoring my students, trying to get them to stop playin' (hitting each other). after school i either have duty or tutoring. either way, i will be around my students until at least 5pm. i stay at school until 6pm, ride or drive home for 30 minutes and lesson plan (while watching the most liberal channels i can find) until 10pm when i go to bed.

i will work on having a purpose for my next post. maybe a story line or a key point. for now, i will just summarize by saying, i fear being desensitized to the point of losing the force of emotions i deem to be important for social change (such as disgust, worry, and a drive to find answers).

next post: my house ("the shack").
then: football games
sometime: prayer
maybe: a diatribe on cockroaches