Everything is Incredible

It is no small thing, doing exactly what you want to do every day of your life. It makes up for the 5 am alarm, the bleary stumble across the wooden floor to the bathroom where my fingers grope toward the thin chain to pull and bring my eyes to light. Makes up for the Charbucks coffee that steams in my tall silver thermos all the hours I pace back and forth in front of the whiteboard. Makes up for 137 essays graded last week, for trying to compile progress reports for 6 classes this week. Because I am somewhere that I don't have to follow the script. Where instead of punishing the student leaning across the aisle, whispering, then coming back with a paper crane, I can say "Did you make that?" and he can point to another student in class, and when someone says "Can we all learn how to make them?" I can say, "Sure, put your books away. Ben is going to show us how to make paper cranes."

Because I see English not as just Lit, but as How to Respond, as The Language We Think In. And I see photography not as How to Work a Camera, but Learning How to See. Because it is not just the kid who tells me everyday that this is his favorite class, but also the kid with the mohawk who keeps getting suspended for being a troublemaker but gets nervous reading in front of his peers, or the one who fiercely believes the Rebel flag is his heritage not a symbol of racism, or the ones who are brave enough to answer my question "Have you ever believed in something that other people thought was foolish?" after we watch the short film on Agustin, a Honduran man with polio who's been trying to build a helicopter with parts he salvages from the dump for over 50 years. Because of my student who makes a joke out of how poor he is in almost every class, how his parents keep moving and he always ends up getting behind in school, how he doesn't have a computer or internet.

Because I give a damn, and I am now in a place, in a school, in a job where giving a damn isn't uncool.