Spilling Contents. by Patresa Hartman

I tell my students this, but I'm not sure if they believe my sincerity: I love what they write. I believe writing peels off a sticky lid and allows the author to spill her contents. Spelling and grammar, punctuation and sentence structure -- these are cosmetics. The value of writing, as I experience it, is a thinking process, a method of discovery, spelunking into the gooey center of consciousness. I don't always like what my students say, but I like that I am privy to it.

So many of my students come to me terrified of (or angry about) having to write. They have been told year after year of their weak mechanics, each paper bleeding red for all their ideas incorrectly composed. It is true that their papers are not lovely in form; but it is a shame what we do to thwart expression. There is a concept we discuss in my Communication Skills class: the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that our language influences our thoughts and attitudes. And so what happens when we clamp off our language like faulty spickets? Do we also clamp off our thoughts? And to clamp off the very action of thought, do we thwart our own evolution? So big, this case for writing is. Enormous.

At the Tuesday night writing lab I helm and in the regular classes I teach, I read papers with shoddy grammar and confusing structure. I squint through lumpy paragraphs and run-on sentences and decode cryptic vocabulary. But when I look past these cosmetics, I see a consistent pattern in student writing: Somewhere in the third quarters of their essays, they discover they have something to say.

The realization of something worth saying is incomparable motivation to keep talking.

I think the trouble is that many students are trained not to notice. If they recognize the emergence of voice and intent at all, it is too late; they have waited too long to complete the task and do not have time to revise or expand. Just as they finally warm up to start, they stop. They turn in their work with aborted ideas, only an inkling of the beautiful things they know and understand, sitting dormant under a flimsy layer of crud.

I am grateful for the opportunities I get to talk with students about their writing. It is my favorite part of my job, the one that makes me feel like I matter. I like to see the change in posture that occurs when I hold up a mirror to show them their own wisdom. "See here? What you said here is brilliant." The voice in their second paper is always more self-assured than the voice in their first paper, and I always wish we had more time. Just as we finally warm up, the semester ends and we stop.

3 Dimensions. by Patresa Hartman

I teach at a community college. The way I teach (or try to teach) is certainly infused with the way I be (or try to be), yet still I am the flattest version of myself in the classroom. My 3-D soul splats onto a paper-defined role called INSTRUCTOR and it never feels fully honest.

I do not know what happens in my sleep to make it so, but some days I wake up hyper-attuned to the space I occupy and the reflection I cast. I walk with a keen sense that who I am is foreign to how I seem. Few things make this clearer than standing in front of a group of 20 and then another group of 20 and then another group of 20 and then one more. The dynamics of me change with the dynamics of them.

I am at my best when the job description of INSTRUCTOR is large and amorphous -- when my job title becomes second to my human-ness. I am most grateful for my students who move with me, who grant me wide space to be: forgetful and disorganized, silly and a bad storyteller, disjointed and perplexed. I am their teacher, and I must do my job; I am also soul in flesh, and I must be imperfect.

I have some pretty terrific students this semester and am grateful for their willingness to recognize and embrace all 3 of my dimensions (which I mean in the most unpornographic way). Everything works better when we all agree to be flawed. We laugh together and problem solve more collaboratively. A micro-community establishes, and we are mutually supportive of our overlapping learning curves. With all channels open, we grow.

It doesn't always happen so. It is not universal, this understanding that a teacher exists outside the classroom and does not breathe for the sole purpose of providing a student "credit." The vibe of the room changes when we staple each other to pre-determined roles, narrowly defined. It feels tense and stifling, sometimes even hostile. It is easy to disrespect someone when you don't think they actually exist.

Those are challenging semesters and challenging classes. I fight the urge to hide and constantly question my competence. I slip into resentment and frustration, feeling forced to play a part that doesn't suit me. "Do they not understand that I am a person and not a robot?" I take things too personally. It is exhausting.

But the universe is kind and generous. Just as my confidence shakes, time nudges me forward. A new group of students enter, and they open the door wide -- an invitation to bumble and be ridiculous. There is nothing like the permission to be foolish that makes me feel more true.

Simple Possibility by Patresa Hartman

Today I am most grateful for the palpable boredom of my Wednesday morning 9:00 class. I am thankful for my students' blank stares and gaping jaws, for the monotonous lull of my own voice, for the imaginary tumbleweed that blew across our desks in response to my "discussion" questions. I am grateful for all the backpack zippers that pulled open and then closed shut five minutes before class ended and for the dozen necks that twisted toward the clock at regular 40 second intervals.

I am grateful for the self-consciousness, the impulse to flee, for the squirming discomfort I feel when I suddenly realize that what I'm doing isn't working.

As peace loving as I am, as content as I feel to sit and sit and sit, I notice how much I crave discontentment. I loathe it; but I want it. I don't know whether to be grateful for the dis-ease or grateful for the awareness of the craving. Do you know what I'm saying? It is natural, I'm sure, to invite discomfort as a license to leap, but I'm not completely convinced it's healthy.

I think it's a combination of friction and forward propulsion. At the exact moment the student in the back row swallowed the universe with his yawn, I decided something must be done. My pride would not survive four months staring at 20 students' tonsils. Cogs turned; my brain showered sparks: I would overhaul my entire semester plan. I would burn everything old and rebuild. I would start from scratch; it would be sparkly and new and relevant. I left class ready and invigorated. I left class with a project.

I don't know what this means to be grateful for projects -- if it's the creator in me (something to celebrate) or the restless wanderer (something to fix). But, I like blank pages and blank screens. I find them inspiring. I find them motivating -- miles thick with possibility.

And so today I will suspend any self-analysis on what it means to be addicted to forward thinking instead of grounded in Now. I will reserve today for the simpleness of Possibility. And that will be quite enough.

Delivery by Patresa Hartman

I started to write my gratitude post earlier today. I started to write something deep and profound. I started to write something deep and profound while sitting in the developmental reading class I teach at the community college -- while waiting for my beautiful and interesting students (who come from all over and bring all things and always always always remind me that there is much more to every story) to finish their reading placement test. And that we are all stories. That is the post I started to write.

But then class ended and I moved through my schedule to the next thing. And then that thing ended and I moved to the next. And there were several more Nexts, and I moved through all of them wearing brand new shoes that are purple. The purpleness of them made me happy in the store, so happy; but despite their happy-inducing purpleness, they are new and therefore unfamiliar with the contours of my feet and the length and rhythm of my stride. And so they hurt very much and a lot.

And although I eventually landed home, there was more to do, as my sweet dog cannot walk herself. But wouldn't that be nice? If she could, I mean. Wouldn't that be something if I could open the front door and say, "Do a few laps around the neighborhood. Stay on the sidewalk, would you, Dear? And look both ways. Here is a bag for your poop." But she cannot because she is brimming with Wild and has not forgotten her wolf roots like the rest of us.

But it turned out to be a good thing. We walked, she and I, connected by woven leash. My tired energy and my headache buzzed down the fabric line while her So Much Joy energy buzzed up, and together we balanced. I told her how perfect she was, and I meant it.

Back in my kitchen there was food to worry over. I just cannot tell you how tired the thought of it made me. Of pulling open refrigerator doors and cabinet doors and pantry doors, of lifting plates and cups and forks and cutting things and running water. I cannot explain to you the weariness of turning on burners or even pushing microwave buttons. The effort to peel an orange would break me for certain. This body of mine, please understand, is still my summer body, not yet transitioned to all these Nexts stacked shoulder to shoulder.

And so now, as every single thing that makes up me is aching and yawning, the thing in the world I am most grateful for, at this exact moment in time and place, in the world, of all things hurtling through the galaxy, is sweet and sour chicken from Taste of China's friendly delivery man.

The Dedicated by Angie Ledbetter

A great man has passed on this week. Fr. Joe was 93 and lived his entire life in service of his church, congregation, and two campuses' worth of students and staff he dearly loved. Daily, no matter the weather, I'd see him shuffling around the large Pre-K through senior high campuses where I work. Even when he felt bad or his old feet were hurting, he never failed to make the journey. He did it every day, he told me, "To pray for all the kids here. Ya know...some of them don't have anyone else praying for them."


Fr. Joe's many kindnesses and selfless actions were admirable and memorable. I asked my fifth and sixth grade students to write a little something about this dear priest yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of thought and work they put into their papers. Many mentioned how much Father meant to their lives; his sense of humor; his love of football; but most often, how they just knew he was continuing to pray for them from heaven. What a fine tribute to a man with a servant's heart!


I work with several dedicated teachers and school staff personnel. Among my closest friends are those who give a great deal of time to volunteering, giving to others, and working for causes that move them. My father, President of Istrouma High School's Class of 55, maintains contact with all his classmates and helps organize reunions, get-togethers, and now city-wide 50s functions with other high schools' alums. These, and several more I haven't mentioned, inspire me to watch over the organizations, groups, beliefs, and people I believe in. They role model for me (and others) the importance of being truly dedicated, because none of these people see the fruits of their labors or rewards of their tireless work.


But, like Fr. Joe, their legacies and stories will live on long after their passing. Just ask anyone who had the good fortune of knowing or working with them. I extend my gratitude to these people who stay the course and continue their work long after most people have folded up their tents and gone home. Bravo and amen to you!

Terrific Teachers by Angie Ledbetter

“Modern cynics and skeptics...see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.” ~ John F. Kennedy

Teachers – where would we be without them? Working with special education students for the last three years, and now with “regular” ed. teaching Religion, I can say I’ve never met a bunch of harder working people. To teach, at least in my state of Louisiana, is a labor of love. Not a single person in this field is putting in 8 hour days (and then sometimes 4 or 5 more at home) for the fabulous paycheck. Teachers plant ideas, knowledge, and love of learning into fertile minds every day, and strive to keep things interesting in the classroom. I won’t mention the “unfertile” minds these masters of the schoolhouse have to deal with, because this is supposed to be uplifting and positive. *smile*

From Pre-K to college, it is teachers who keep kids’ brains from becoming totally absorbed with all things video and digital. Without teachers, I wonder if there would be continued book sells. Who else teaches our kids the importance of reading and literature? Who else does so much for so little? Teachers rarely get to see the fruits of their labor, and when they do, it is decades before a grown student returns to express his/her thanks for a job well done.

With increased incidents of horrifying campus killings, teachers should be earning hazardous pay instead of barely-above-poverty-level wages. And at least in my area, the three month summer is a distant memory. We don’t get out until mid- or late May and return on August 4th!

So, today I salute teachers, tutors, mentors, and all who impart knowledge to others, and do a great job...for the love of teaching. THANK YOU!