Please, just listen.

"Only a teacher would keep being a teacher with the way this country treats and talks about teachers." (--the truest words ever, spoken by my friend K.N. today.)

Today is, I suppose, as a good a day as any to dust off this space. I've been quiet here lately, not because I have nothing to say, but because I have too much. I've had to channel it into other places: two writing workshops, which allow me to be focused and to experiment and to get a lot of feedback. Letters to my senators. E-mails. The journal that isn't open to the public. Letters to my children, because someday I want them to remember how we felt and what we did about it. I want them to know how very much this matters, and I want them to know that their mother cared about showing up. (And I hope that when they show up for other people, when they act on what they believe is right, that they will always know I am so proud of them. That if I am not there in body I am there in spirit. I never want them to doubt this.)

And this, the this that matters, is so many things. It's everything. It's the Women's March, which was an incredibly powerful experience, and one I'm sure I will write more about; it's the day I realized I am not alone, no matter how lonely I feel. It's the Muslim ban, which has my students scared and sad. Today it's Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation left me utterly depressed. I wasn't really shocked; how could I be any more shocked? I still wake up hoping all the days since November 8 have been a dream. But I was, and I am, deeply, horribly depressed. One more senator. We needed one more senator willing to stand up for what is right for kids instead of pledging party loyalty. It's not even so much about fear of what she might do, although there is that. It's about what she represents in a country I feel I no longer recognize.

Pat Conroy, perhaps my greatest inspiration as a writer and as a teacher, said "the whole nation seems at war with the very essence of teaching...and [teachers] suffer from the lack of respect and honor due them for their choice to spend their lives teaching the children who are sent to them." That's right, all of them, BETSY. I don't need accolades; most of us don't. What we'd like is solidarity. What we'd like is for people to listen to us like we learn to listen to our kids. What we'd like is someone in Betsy DeVos's position who doesn't fucking hate public education, who actually does care about all of the kids who show up in our classrooms. What we'd like is for those who think she doesn't sound so bad to actually ask a teacher what it actually means for students. For all of them. For mine. And to listen.

Just listen.

***

Today was our second snow day in a row, a rarity when one lives just up the street from the shore of Puget Sound. We didn't have any fresh snow, but the streets were dangerously icy. (My first couple of years here I used to scoff at that; now I don't. We can handle the snow in Montana, but we don't have to drive up so many steep hills encased in ice just to navigate our neighborhoods.) Yesterday the kids were wriggling into their snow pants before eight o'clock in the morning, Matt stayed home, I read most of a novel and tried to take a nap, and the day was everything I thought my heart needed. I went to bed early and slept better than I have in days. This morning, after the district called the day, after I'd made my daily calls (oh hey, Kellyanne Conway, yes the phone lines are clogged by real people calling), after I'd read the news, after I'd felt my heart sink (again; how much lower can it go? How many times can it sink in horror and disbelief?), I knew that I'd have to stay off the Internet or I'd be drinking before noon.

So I cleaned.

The night Donald Trump somehow secured the presidency I didn't sleep at all, and I gave up even trying long before dawn and furiously, tearfully, scrubbed my bathrooms before I had to go to school. Today, though, I had time. Time is no friend to a restless mind with access to the Internet, so I took on bigger projects: I scrubbed the inside of my refrigerator, for starters, emptied it out and scrubbed it with soapy hot water and threw away the expired things (with Matt in the house that's not much of a worry, but occasionally I'll find a jar of something tucked in the back). That felt good. Then I noticed that the top of the fridge was looking a little grungy, so I refilled my bucket and attacked that. Which led to emptying out the cupboard just above the fridge and scrubbing that, which required some precarious climbing. Which led to emptying out all of the other cabinets in my kitchen, and every single drawer.

People, I scrubbed my spice rack with a toothbrush.

I don't have a huge house or a huge kitchen (and even in my modest kitchen I cleared out a bag of things I don't use, which felt so good). Anyone who knows me knows I generally stay on top of housekeeping because I get a little mentally ill if I don't; when my environment is cluttered, my mind doesn't work well. It still took me four hours to go through every drawer and cupboard. So even though I know I'll have to make up this day in June, I don't care. Because when I finished with the kitchen I moved on to the dusting, and then I cleaned the bathrooms a day early (I clean those on Wednesday!), and then I washed the floors, and that added up to a lot of hours that I was not on the internet, because today I just could not. I am not someone who avoids the news because she's "not political." Because we don't have time for that privileged bullshit, and the kids I serve do not have time for me to say I'm "not political." We live in a world that requires showing up. But today, today, I just had to clean my kitchen. Tomorrow, I'm going back to school, where I show up for kids, many of the same kids who hear loud and clear that they are not welcome or wanted. I don't think about politics when I'm at school, because I have kids in my room freaking out about their IB orals, or kids who need a safe place to cry for a few minutes, or kids who haven't eaten since yesterday who know where I keep a stash of granola bars and almonds. I don't think about politics because I'm too busy trying to figure out why, when one freshman walks across the room to sharpen his pencil, another freshman's arm flies out to shove him. (Spoiler: neither one of them have the vaguest idea, either.)

This is really all over the place, isn't it? Well, so is my mind. But my heart isn't. My heart is firmly rooted in what I do and the kids I serve, the ones who will suffer under Betsy DeVos and the Republicans in my own state. My heart is in my classroom and with my colleagues, and damn I am privileged to serve alongside them. I wish I could go back in time and un-watch every stupid inspirational teacher movie, all the Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers Diary, any movie that shows that one heroic young teacher battling a sea of apathetic and hostile teachers. Because it's not like that. If you are someone who has ever said a kind thing about me as a teacher but secretly think I'm some grand exception, please hear me right now when I tell you that this is an impossible job to do alone, that I work alongside the fiercest, most loving, most passionate people in the world and I would be lost without them. Without them, I would have left teaching long, long ago. Please hear me when I tell you that my kids are worth it, including the kids who will be left behind if people like Betsy DeVos have their way. Please hear me when I tell you that if you are someone who enjoys my stories about my students, I expect you to stand up for them as well, even if they don't look like the kids you visualize when you read my amusing anecdotes on Facebook. Please believe me when I tell you that if you have ever said you wish I could have been your teacher, you will also support the colleagues who have inspired me. If you've ever thought we didn't need teacher's unions, please ask me how much I have valued mine.

And please, just listen.