The Art of Living...

classroom scribble by Diab, g. 6

Life, it is has always been said, is the ultimate creation and I have recently thrown myself into it like there will be no tomorrow.
Instead of beating myself up for projects still unfinished, I realize that every interaction I have is, in the end, the ultimate expression. What if what occurs between two people, whether on a train during rush hour, or in the comfort of their own home is tantamount to experiencing the true essence of what it is that life has to offer?
That said, I really attempt to treat each and every interaction as an authentic expression of myself. This means not acting out of frustration, anger, or hurt but out of a higher plane of recognizing the magic inherent in another human being.
I am not always successful. But I try.
This means acting with grace when someone asks me something like, "Why do Black women spend so much time on their hair?" This means not wanting to slap the crap out of someone who rushes past me on the train, knocking my bag off my shoulder and not even having the decency to apologize! This means, not acting like a snob when I meet people who are ignorant to other histories and rather than get a titty attack (as we used to say back on Ocean), I take a deep breath and attempt to engage in dialogue. It's difficult no doubt, but I must move on.
My life has taken some interesting turns of late. The scenerio: Thirty-something old African American woman takes job at a an International school in Copenhagen. And I'm not talking elitist International, but down-to-earth International. Of people just like you and me who choose to send their children to a school which celebrates diversity.

These kids usually speak about 3 languages. These kids learn to make their way, with ease, through a variety of cultures-- like a party girl,maneavering skillfully through a series of cocktail hours. These kids have one foot planted firmly in their original culture and the other immersed in Danish culture. What they do with Danish culture is interesting and not unlike what African Americans do with American culture: they remix it, add some flavor, and in turn, make it their own. We're talking Palestinian boys dressing like Brooklyn B-boys and Iraqi girls sporting the fake Louis V bag. When I'm around these kids I feel like I've been transported back home to Flatbush. Thank God!

I remember when I was a kid my friends asking me, "Lesley, why do you talk differently when you talk to your parents?" I hadn't noticed it before. I was around 9 when my friend India asked me this. It was the first time in my life that I realized, although I could not articulate it, that the crux of my success depended on a seamless maneauvering between two cultures. When I was with my friends, I spoke like them, learned quick to play games like double-dutch and run catch and kiss. When I was with my family, I switched back to my mother tongue, which was by all accounts English, but with a whole different set of intonations, words and even gestures. In between these cultures I noticed differences and similarities: Take for example, schewpsing--that long, sucking of the teeth that many Black folks do no matter where in the world you go.


"Do you know the history of European schools?" My friend asked me the other night. I couldn't say that I did.
"Schools were built to keep children off the street. When there were no schools and kids were out in the city, they caused so much trouble that they had to find a way to keep them occupied during the day. School isn't about education. It's about conditioning. True education doesn't really begin until college, when you have the desire to study a certain subject and, out of your own volition, do it. Most kids don't want to be in school--it's a sort of prison."
Yesterday I saw the French movie Entres les murs and I loved it. What I loved about it was the back and forth between the teacher and students, the living proof of the dynamic mind.

What I love about my new job so much (besides the kids!) is how it forces you to be in the moment and how it demands quick-thinking on your feet. This is no sedentary job, and no amount of education or money will ever prepare you to face the firing squad of teenage energy. But in the end, if I can move my students, if I can reach them, I have, in some way, moved a mountain. And the successes, the failures, while there are many, each is as fleeting as the other. The dynamism of teaching is awesome.

When I think about my childhood and school going years, I think about how absolutely impossible I was.
I excelled academically, and could have done even better if I had not been so bored. In the 5th grade I cut school incesently, and walked, on my own, throughout the streets of Brooklyn, through stores on Flatbush Extension, past stores like Joyce Leslies and Brooklyn College, even making it up to Avenue H and back. I did this often, and luckily no harm ever came my way. Interestingly enough I never managed to get picked up by any truant officers as well. What I remember most about these wanderings was how invisible I felt myself and how empowered it made me feel. I liked that no one singled me out and that I was allowed to wander the streets entirely made up of adults. It was a world I had desperately wanted to be a part of, believing foolishly that adulthood was synonymous with peace.
I remember one day wandering all the way past Hudde Junior High School on Nostrand Avenue, where my sister used to go during the time there were these huge racial fights. As I made my way back to Ocean, I bumped into my sister who yelled at me to go back to school. She sent me on my way but before going back to school, I passed through Campus Quarters right by Brooklyn College and who did I find there? My brother! That day, all three of us cut school...
I had a pretty complicated childhood, made even more so by my tumultous spirit. I often think about how differently my life could have turned out and how happy I am that I took the path that I did. What I remember the most about my life, are the many cool teachers who guided me as best they could. I was really blessed to have a series of amazing teachers. Sometimes the amazing teachers in my life were not even teachers by profession. Very rarely did I have a teacher who really did not care.
I went to Washington Irving High School when I returned from Trinidad. Irving was worlds away from the all-girls Catholic School I attended in Trinidad, Providence Girls Catholic School. Although Providence was public, we had to wear uniforms as in every other public school in Trinidad. In fact, the best schools in Trinidad are Public, and the education system, although archaic, can encourage success in the literary inclined student.
Anyway, Irving was a far cry from Providence. Housed in a majestic yet dilapidated building on Irving Place, just a stones throw from Union Square, Irving was the deposit box for all the kids who could not get into their local schools. As a result, Irving students reflected the whole New York City area: from the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn to Manhattan. The population was mostly Black, Latino and Chinese. Since I arrived in the middle of the year, this was the school I was sent to.
Irving was the first high school in New York to get metal detectors. There was a heavy police presence outside the school, but to be fair, there was one officer who really engaged with the students--so it was not all that menacing. Things did sometimes get out of control at the school, the noise level was high, and rumors abounded about attacks throughout the school. But although we seemed to make it in the newspaper for all the bad things that I had only heard about, I have to say that it was not my experience at Irving.
I loved Irving. If you wanted to do well, there was an opportunity to do so. My teachers were really cool. There was a core staff of dedicated teachers there, teachers who wanted to be there, not just because they couldn't do anything else with their lives, and chose teaching as a last resort. Those are the ones you have to look out for.

It is not natural for kids to be locked up in a building day after day. But what is the alternative? Surely one must be found. But the overhauling of the Education system requires more--we need a overhauling of our entire social system.
A school with students who achieve high testing scores is considered a success. But is it really? I did well in school not necessarily because I was smarter than the other kids, but because I knew how to take tests. I excelled at it. I loved not having to listen to other people, I loved the quiet the exam instilled and I loved being undisturbed.

True success to me is having heart and imagination.

The other day, while we hurriedly drank our coffees during a quick break in the staffroom, there was something that caught my attention. Out through the window was something--a ghost? But I was not the only one to see it. There, right in front of our very eyes was a dangling apron, awkwardly hanging from the floor above us. At that point many of us smiled: Can you ask for anything more from life? To be able to participate in the spontaneity of life is the greatest gift of all, which is why they call it the present. Yes, this truly is the Art of Living.