In first period English we read a poem, from the August Regents Exam
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Our
house is at the crest
of
a mountain formed
by
a fault line that’s still
doing
its work. We’re up
over
five thousand feet,
and
probably, slowly, the spot
that
we sit on is going
to
get higher and higher.
So,
at some point, the house
is
coming down, shaken
to
bits, I suppose, and what
we’re
banking on is that
we’ve
chosen the right moment
in
geologic time, a sweet
spot
between cataclysms.1
And
that’s what Annie and I
hope
for generally,
and
what everyone seems
to
want—some forgettable
moment
between great wars
or
typhoons or plagues—to have
timed
it just right, so we’re
in
just the right place between
what
we read about in history
books
and the moments after
which
history won’t matter much.
—John
Brantingham
from
Earthshine,
November 2007–December 2009
Conan
is worried about passing the exam.
He
should be – I ask him what the poem is about
and
he says something to do with plates.
So
we read it many times. Conan is serious, he concentrates.
We
talk about a lot. The exam says we should use the ideas from the
poem to write a paragraph about uncertainty.
But
Conan is confused. He writes that the poem is about a man who hopes
his house does not fall down.
Which
of course, it is, but unlike the campaign commercials that made me want to
throw something at the tv (just how vulnerable are flat screens?-they
probably don't break into the star-shaped shatter- so popular in the
cartoons of my childhood,) the poems speaks to me more and more each time I read it It speaks to me. I worry a lot..
And
then Hurricane Sandy hits.
Neither
Conan nor I suffer the terrible damage. The school community, so
recently devastated by a automobile crash that killed four students,
is spared the loss of life
But
many have lost homes, and cars and the sense of well being.
On
Monday when we return, I tell Conan I thought about him and the
poem, during the week- at first he is not sure why, but Pablo reminds him that a typhoon is like a hurricane.
Tuesday
is Election Day.
Wednesday,
a snowstorm only half as bad as the Hurricane hits. This time our home loses
only half its electricity.
The Teacher's College Writer's project people, tell the story of the classroom and the first snow. The teacher invites the class to come to the window and observe the first flakes of the year. From the back, the cynic yells out, “Don't do it, she'll only make us write about it!”
We
watch the snow and calculate how long the commute home will be. It's
high school. We don't write about the first snow.
So
it's not until the end of the week that I do make them read about the
election.
We
read
Hope and Change Part 2 by Thomas Friedman.
We
talk and talk about what it means.
I
have been taking a lot of criticism in our small group professional
learning community for suggesting that I use New York Times pieces
with the student in the Resource Room. I am told over and over that
the reading level is way too hard for them.
I
am under no illusion that it isn't difficult reading with difficult
vocabulary, but the material interests me and they are mad
close
to being fully grown adults, so I persist.
We
slog or way through Friedman's analysis of what went wrong for the
Republicans. And in the end Pablo says, “What if its just that
Romnney had bad luck?”
Conan
says elections don't have anything to do with luck. Obama was just the
better choice.
Maybe.
Or
maybe he was kind of lucky that Sandy hit and blew the campaign right
off the front page of the paper and the nightly news.
Maybe.
Uncertainty.
