Sometimes, in the midst of an ordinary task, I am suddenly seized with longing for my life, the way it was on January 11th. That was a time when over 230,000 more people lived in Port-au-Prince - and their lives may have been hard, but they were full lives, lives of people who were surviving and thriving, and they were cut short without warning, and they left behind many who grieve for them. That was a time when I didn't know anything about the Richter scale, or about the USGS website where you can monitor aftershocks or about what it's like to watch people I know on CNN. It was a time before countless families had been torn apart, countless limbs lost, countless recurrent nightmares born. It was a time before every empty space in Port-au-Prince had become a tent city.
Sometimes I wish so much that none of it had ever happened that the wishing almost takes my breath away.
Happy Mother's Day to all the brave, beautiful Haitian mothers out there. Many lost children in the earthquake. Many lost their homes. Many struggle still to care for their families in their new situations. This song is for all of them.
I had some help with my translation of the lyrics from an alumna of our school, because there were several spots I couldn't figure out. She told me that she had help from her Moso Manman on some parts too! She also told me that Emeline Michel sang at her parents' wedding. Kreyol lyrics follow.
Moso Manman (Special/Rare Mama) By Emeline Michel Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I won't be able to pay you what I owe you Come dance my mama You have to smile my mama I make you sing for my mama I can't pay you what I owe Days pass by, we are now grown A lot of things we can say When I look at where I've come from its not only a miracle of nature This book of love surpasses me For the strength that you spent The house has a central pillar when you have a rare/special mama
Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I won't be able to pay you what I owe you Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I can't pay you what I owe you I look at your wrinkled brow All your hair has turned white O Father please give me more Days so that I can give you love Strut your stuff (walk around proudly and make a big deal) You're never grown for your mama This contract is a written in blood that lasts till time no longer exists woooooooooo Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I can't pay you what I owe you Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I can't pay you what I owe you Your door is wide open No matter what I may do in life Those who were here have left mama But you are still here Dear little mama You are a stroke of pencil without error (You are a perfect stroke of pencil) Ask questions, look for answers...mama is always right Can dance mama You are a diamond my mama I can't pay you what I owe you Come dance my mama Can dance my mama Can give you diamonds my mama I can't pay you what I owe you mmmmmmmmm (dance my mama) Dance, dance, dance my mama (dance my mama) Thank you mama, thank you mama ( dance my mama) Thank you thank you so much ( dance my mama) (Dance my mama) Your door is wide open No matter what I may do in life Those who were here have left, mama But you are ever here Dear little mama You are a stroke of pencil without error (You are a perfect stroke of pencil) Ask questions, look for answers...mama is always right Chorus Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I won't be able to pay you what I owe you Come dance my mama Can dance my mama I can give you diamonds my mama I can't pay you what I owe you Smile my mama (Dance my mama)
I can't I can't pay you I won't pay you mama I won't pay you Your door is wide open No matter what I may do in life Those who were here have left, mama But you are ever here Dear little mama You are a stroke of pencil without error (You are a perfect stroke of pencil) Ask questions, look for answers...mama is always right (Dance my mama)
Kreyol lyrics:
Vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen m'ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pap ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w vinn danse manman mwen fo'w souri manman mwen m'fe'w chante pou manman mwen pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w
jou file nou finn grandi ampil bagay nou va di le'm gade kote'm soti se pa selman mirak la nati liv lanmou sa depasse'm pou fos a fiel ki depanse kay lan gin yon potomitan lè'w possede moso manman wooooooooooooo
vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen m'ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w
m'ap gade fe'w ti vise tout cheve blan gintan pouse ou papa souple rajoute'm de jou pou'm ba ou lanmou pou mizèl fè gran panpan ou pa janm granmoun pou manman'w kontra sa ekri aksan jouk tan pa rete ankinn tan wooooooooo
chorus vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen m'ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w
pot tou gran l'ouvri kelkeswa sa'm ta fè nan la vi sa ki te la ta va di'm manmi ou menm ou la pi di ti manman cheri ou se yon kout kreyon san rati mande kesion chèche repons manman wa'p gin rezon
ka danse manman ou se diaman manman mwen m'pap ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w vinn danse manman mwen ka danse manman mwen ka ba'w diaman manman mwen m'pa ka peye'w sa mwen dwe'w
pot la gran l'ouvri kelkeswa sa'm ta fè nan la vi sa ki te la ta va di'm manmi ou menm ou la pi di wi manman cheri ou se yon kout kreyon san rati mande kesion chèche repons manman'm toujou gin rezon
(danse manman mwen) souri manman'm (danse manman mwen) m'pa ka mwen paka peye'w m'pap ka peye'w manman mwen p'ap peye'w
pot tou gran l'ouvri kelkeswa sa'm ta fè nan la vi sa ki te la ta va di'm manmi ou menm ou la pi di wi manmi cheri ou se yon kout kreyon san rati mande kesion cheche repons manman wa'p gin rezon
Book #23 was The Willoughbys, by Lois Lowry, which I read to my son. The book is a parody of "old-fashioned" children's stories, where orphans go through trials and tribulations and come out triumphant at the end. While I found the book funny (much of it made my son laugh out loud), I never quite forgave the earthquake played for laughs.
Book #24 was Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. More a series of short stories than a novel, the book presents vignettes from various lives that are interconnected because of location. Olive Kitteridge appears in almost every story. The stories are sad and lonely.
Harmon felt a rush of anxiety as she left. Some skin that had stood between himself and the world seemed to have been ripped away, and everything was close, and frightening. Bessie Davis had always talked on, but now he saw her loneliness as a lesion on her face.
And from another story:
Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became.
Book #25 was also about loneliness, but in a much more whimsical and less bleak way. It was Home Safe, by Elizabeth Berg, about a widow learning to live without her husband.
There's a place I pass often on my daily walks. It looks as though there used to be a road there, or perhaps a driveway to a beautiful home. Now it's all overgrown, but every time I pass I think about this poem.
The Way Through the Woods
by Rudyard Kipling
They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate, (They fear not men in the woods, Because they see so few.) You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods. But there is no road through the woods.
I remember reading this poem in high school but I had forgotten that Rudyard Kipling wrote it. I loved then, and love now, the mysterious feel of it.
I am getting focused on going home to Haiti, but part of saying goodbye to where I am now is appreciating how very beautiful it is here. I will miss this lush green, and the walks that are so peaceful and satisfying. Maybe a time will come when this interlude in my life will seem distant and hard to recall, like that road that used to be there in the woods, but is no longer.
Here's an episode of The Story from January that I missed. The second half is about Haiti. Dick Gordon speaks to Dr. Herby Derenencourt, with Catholic Relief Services, Kent Annan, Pastor Michelet Sainte Leste, whose church collapsed in the earthquake, and my friend Maggie Boyer, in her second interview on The Story.
Dr. Derenencourt is Haitian but was not in the country at the time of the quake. He remarks on how at first he heard numbers and statistics, and then gradually began to hear names. He says hearing names is so much different. How true this is.
In pastor Michelet Sainte Leste's church, five hundred people, including some of his family members, died. His church was a three-storey building on Delmas 64.
And Maggie. I have so much love and respect for her. It hurts me to hear her talk about the situation. Since listening to the last interview with her, I have had some conversation with her over email. Typically, she mostly talked about her concern for my husband and me.
This American Life did a show on Haiti and why it's difficult to make things better there, even if you want to a whole lot. It's an hour long but well worth listening to.
I got an email from a friend today. She said that we both have scars from what we have been through in Haiti, and she asked me whether when I look at my scars, I feel strong or crippled.
I have been thinking about her question all day.
I don't have literal scars, unlike some of my friends; mine are all internal. I like to think that they are fading already. Here on this blog I have been focusing on the positive more lately. I have been feeling blessed, and thinking about what wonderful gifts I have been given.
And yet, I think I am still more fragile than I want to admit. I see it in the way I fell apart looking at photos of my beautiful students. I see it in the way I cried off and on for hours after seeing my husband for the first time when he visited in April. There's no telling what will suddenly make me cry.
My emotions are still raw. Here I used the metaphor of sunburn, and that still feels right. Sadness and joy are both close to the surface. I love and appreciate people more. I am painfully aware of life's fragility and of how precious and irreplaceable people are.
Do these scars, these vulnerabilities, make me feel strong? Are they something I can point to and say: "Look! I survived an earthquake! I am strong!" Not really; not yet. I have learned that I am much weaker than I thought, and that any self-sufficiency I imagined I had was an illusion.
The last eight minutes or so of this episode of The Story is an interview with Roody Joseph. It's a followup to an earlier interview. Joseph talks about life in the tent cities.
I think I must have been trying not to think about the seniors at our school. I am tired of feeling sad and tired of crying. It amazes me sometimes that I have any tears left.
But yesterday their kindergarten teacher posted 65 pictures of them on Facebook. I looked, and there went my composure.
Some of these kids I have known since Pre-Kindergarten. Many of them I taught in eighth grade. Their eighth grade year was my first teaching middle school. I didn't know what I was doing very well, but they were a fantastic class. Exhausting, yes; full of energy, yes; but so creative. They asked me to speak at their Eighth Grade Promotion. Few things in my life have made me feel as honored as that invitation. I talked about about how each of them was a poem written by God, each unique, each beautiful. I talked about their writing, and how each of them had made me laugh or cry or both. I told them that the world was full of beauty, but that sometimes you had to look for it.
Since then, I have taught some of them again, for French, or ESL, or Speech. I have spent time with some of them in NHS. I've seen the way they have responded kindly to middle schoolers as they have worked in Student Council. I've read through college application essays and offered some suggestions. I've seen all of them around the campus daily, and enjoyed watching them grow into adults.
Now the class is scattered; ten of them will be graduating in Haiti. They have seen tragedy and devastation and they have responded in a way that makes me proud and breaks my heart. Those who had to leave make me proud too, and my heart breaks for them that they will not be able to share this moment with their class.
They are going to graduate on Saturday, and I won't be there. If I were there, I would cry while looking at their slide show, and while hearing the speeches, and while watching them go back down the aisle into their future. Graduation is a time for tears, as well as for joy, every year. But this year's class is special. This year's class has already seen a lifetime's worth of sorrow. They have seen their country destroyed in a moment. Yet they are strong, and brave, and beautiful. I love them, grieve for them and pray for them. I am also filled with hope because of them. The world will see great things from these kids. They will go out and show everyone what Haitians, and expat lovers of Haiti, are made of.
Book #20 was The White Queen, by Philippa Gregory. I enjoyed this first book in a proposed trilogy about the Wars of the Roses. I still think my favorite Gregory book so far is The Constant Princess (the link is to my review).
Book #21 was We Need to Talk about Kevin, by Lionel Shriver. I heard Shriver on the BBC's program, World Book Club and wanted to read this book as a result. Even though you know very early on in the book that Kevin is incarcerated because of his role in murdering several people at his school, Shriver manages to fill the story with tension and suspense. Kevin's mother, Eva, narrates the story in a series of letters to Kevin's father, Franklin. While Shriver does a masterful job, I was not completely convinced by Franklin's refusal to believe anything was wrong with Kevin's behavior. I felt Eva's frustration and powerlessness but didn't buy that this was really the way the events would have played out. This is a horrible story and parts of it are very difficult to read. Shriver doesn't have any children and doesn't want to, and you can't blame her if this is her idea of what parenthood is like.
After that one, I needed something lighter, and this next book, #22, Writing Jane Austen, by Elizabeth Aston, was so light that I felt I had to hold on to it firmly, lest it float away. Georgina Jackson has written a literary novel which got critical acclaim but didn't sell at all. Now she is working on her second book, and things aren't going well. Her money is running out and she doesn't know if she will be able to stay in England (she's American). Then she gets an offer to finish a Jane Austen fragment that has been discovered. But shock! Horror! Georgina has never read Jane Austen! She is supposed to be an intelligent author with a PhD (though I didn't believe it for a moment), and yet she begins by reading about Austen's life, traveling to sites connected with her, and speaking at a Jane Austen Society meeting (huh?). Why doesn't she just read the books, already? There are only six of them. I found myself feeling very stressed out for her. Finally she reads them and is, of course, converted to love for Jane Austen. All sorts of nonsensical events take place and there's a happy ending. Aston has written several Austen-related books including Mr. Darcy's Daughters, but I don't think I will be reading any of them. I did enjoy the portrayal of Jane Austen fans who travel around visiting the places where the movies were filmed, Austen's birthplace, and anywhere she ever set foot.
I enjoy Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry. This one was new to me this week. It's the story of an uncle. I love it because it is about such a specific person, and yet, like so much of Nye's poetry, about being an immigrant. And then also, a little bit, about me, saying "I cannot tell you - " but then, trying anyway.
My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Serum of steam rising from the cup, what comfort to be known personally by Barbara, her perfect pouring hand and starched ascot, known as the two easy eggs and the single pancake, without saying. What pleasure for an immigrant— anything without saying.
My uncle slid into his booth. I cannot tell you—how I love this place. He drained the water glass, noisily clinking his ice. My uncle hailed from an iceless region. He had definite ideas about water drinking. I cannot tell you— all the time. But then he’d try.
My uncle wore a white shirt every day of his life. He raised his hand against the roaring ocean and the television full of lies. He shook his head back and forth from one country to the other and his ticket grew longer. Immigrants had double and nothing all at once. Immigrants drove the taxis, sold the beer and Cokes. When he found one note that rang true, he sang it over and over inside. Coffee, honey. His eyes roamed the couples at other booths, their loose banter and casual clothes. But he never became them.
I walked in the mist this morning, and my feet played the refrain, "Thank you, thank you, thank you." So much to thank God for; so many blessings.
I feel lucky.
Before you start formulating theological comments, I know, I know; I don't believe in luck. I don't believe the universe is a random place. And yet the other words available don't fit either: fortunate still has that idea of randomness, of the wheel of fortune, not the game show, but the medieval idea of good things ebbing and flowing, sometimes in your favor and sometimes not. Blessed? Yes, that's the right word, in my world view ("Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows"). And yet, I'm still having trouble with that one. Because if I am blessed, what does that mean about the others who are in terrible circumstances, in Haiti and everywhere? Did God choose to give me good things and to deprive others of them? I struggle with that (in common with much of the Christian world throughout history).
Everything good and bad in my life right now reminds me of those others. I am so blessed/fortunate/lucky, and yet others suffer. I am living with my parents in a comfortable house (so many have nowhere to go). I am parenting my kids by myself (it's temporary; so many are separated permanently from their children's other parent, whether by death or divorce; some can never have children; some have children who are dealing with terrible illness; most of all, my children are alive). I am lonely and miss my husband (so many never have a happy marriage like mine; for so many, their spouse is never coming back). I eat well (so many don't). I receive love and kindness from friends (so many have nobody to talk to). I miss my job (some people never find meaningful work that they enjoy). I walk through the misty morning (some lost their legs in the earthquake).
I had never heard this song before yesterday. (Who is this Jason Mraz fellow? And what is this reference to stealing things?) I saw it on Facebook, where someone had posted it as an encouragement to a woman whose husband is deployed. I keep thinking of the words. I don't really believe in luck, but yes, I am so blessed to be in love with my best friend, to be going home again, to have someone who makes it easier when life gets hard. Our island is a little the worse for wear, and my hair is a little short to put flowers in, and no, I know it's not random luck. But I still feel lucky.
I am reading The Willoughbys to my son. I shouldn't be surprised any more, but this book has an earthquake in it too. (I already told you about The Trumpet of the Swan, where there is some talk about an earthquake as an example of a catastrophe, and Paddington Here and Now, where Paddington's uncle disappears in an earthquake.)
In The Willoughbys, the parents go on vacation and send back a postcard to their children which reads, in part:
Though slightly bruised, we have survived quite a lovely earthquake (you may have read the headlines: THOUSANDS KILLED).
The book is full of dark humor, rather reminiscent of the Series of Unfortunate Events books, so this scene is supposed to be laughed at. I love Lois Lowry, but this isn't funny. (Other than that, my son is enjoying the book.)
You who live in heaven,
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth,
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt.
Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread?
Did You forget about us after You had flown away?
Well I memorized every word You said.
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get.
You who live in radiance,
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin.
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was;
Still, we do love now and then.
Did You ever know loneliness?
Did You ever know need?
Do You remember just how long a night can get
When You are barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat?
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?
And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain,
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained.
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know...
Is if You who live in eternity,
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time?
We can't see what's ahead
And we cannot get free of what we've left behind.
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret.
I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led.
And so You've been here all along, I guess;
It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get.
On the first Thursday of January, the secondary staff at our school gathered for our regular devotions. My husband was leading, and he talked about Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. (Yes, my husband is the type of person who discourses on Kierkegaard at 7:20 AM on a school day to a bunch of bleary-eyed teachers. That tells you a lot about him, right there.) After my husband finished talking, another teacher raised his hand and told about his dream the night before; he said he kept seeing the number 1, and I think a voice said something about "one thing." Wow, that's a coincidence, I thought, and then went into my day and didn't think about it much more.
Five days later, our whole world fell apart, and everyone suddenly had a new role. Plans counted for nothing; job descriptions became useless. Staff and students scattered; those who stayed delivered a baby in a classroom, distributed food, interpreted at hospitals. I spoke to my husband on the phone one day from my new home in the United States, and he told me that that day he had worked on arranging an airlift for a patient with a broken neck. Not exactly what he had on his calendar.
One thing? How could anyone will one thing? We were scrambling to catch up, to survive what had happened to us and to the country we loved. We were thinking of many things, mostly things of which we had no experience or knowledge.
I have been thinking a lot about that devotional, and wondering what that one thing is, the Good that we must will, and I know the answer now, even though reading Kierkegaard is not my idea of entertainment. It's not anything original or new, and it is something I already knew was central to the Christian faith. But I know more about it now, after this dark and difficult time.
It's love.
Nothing new. "They'll know we are Christians by our love." "Love one another." "The greatest of these is love." I have known this always - I have, after all, been a Christian for almost forty years. The difference was that this time, I was the one that needed the love.
Of course people have shown me love before; I have many people in my life who love me and do a good job of showing it. I have a wonderful husband and a great family. I have many dear friends. And of course I have had trouble before, and needed help. But I had never been so needy before. I had never been in such desperate need of other people.
And the other people came through for me. They showed me love. My family took my children and me in and fed us and cared for us. Other people called and wrote and listened and cleaned out their closets and sent me packages and took me to lunch. They showed me love not in a dutiful way but so beautifully, caring for me and suffering with me. Everywhere I went, people told me they were praying for me - and they really were. I know they were.
I appreciated it so much, but I also felt bad. I didn't want to be needy. I didn't want to be so desperate to talk to people, and I definitely didn't want to be crying all the time. I wanted to be strong.
When the earthquake happened, I was reading Ezekiel in my devotions. For the first couple of weeks afterwards, I couldn't read the Bible at all. When I started up again, I went back to Ezekiel, and I persisted in that for a while. Finally I realized that all the destruction of cities was too much for me to read about, so I moved to the New Testament. And after a while I came to Philippians.
I have read Philippians many times, but it had never struck me before just how much the book is about human relationships. Paul is talking to people he loves. He isn't just telling them to behave, he is telling them how much he misses them, how much they matter to him. "It is right for me to feel this way about you all," he says, "because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace....For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus." Later when he talks about the Philippians helping him, he says he didn't even need what they sent him, because he can live with very little, but he tells them, "it was kind of you to share my troubles." It isn't the stuff he needs; it's them. He loves them; they are his "joy and crown." He talks about the "encouragement in Christ" that people can share with one another, the "affection and sympathy." Paul needs them. He isn't too tough to need them.
And those people who were still in Haiti, working twenty hour days to help make things better? They weren't doing it in some impassive, dutiful way. They were grieving deeply for the suffering; they were showing love to people who were in desperate need.
The one thing we are here for is to love one another, and receiving love is as important as giving it. We need others; we need them desperately. Now that I have been on the receiving end in such a dramatic way, I think I am better equipped to show love to others. I understand better now how just being there in the middle of the pain is terribly important; you don't have to have answers or be able to fix the problem.
Here's what Kierkegaard says:
Only the Good is one thing in its essence and the same in each of its expressions. Take love as an illustration. The one who truly loves does not love once and for all. Nor does he use a part of his love, and then again another part. For to change it into small coins is not to use it rightly. No, he loves with all of his love. It is wholly present in each expression. He continues to give it away as a whole, and yet he keeps it intact as a whole, in his heart. Wonderful riches! When the miser has gathered all the world’s gold in sordidness -- then he has become poor. When the lover gives away his whole love, he keeps it entire -- in the purity of the heart.
My One Little Word this year is LOVED. I have never felt this as much as I do now. I am loved by God and by others. I want others around me, whether here or in Haiti, to know the same thing. Everything else is secondary to that one thing: love.
As I'm thinking about moving on, and back to my life in Haiti, I keep coming back to Dave Pollock's thoughts about leaving well. (I don't know if it is original with him but I heard him talk about it several times. You can find it, and more of his wisdom and the wisdom of Ruth Van Reken in their book Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds.)
Dave said that to leave well you needed to build a RAFT. The letters stand for:
R - Reconciling conflicts. Whatever unfinished business there is in the place you're leaving, deal with it before you go. Otherwise you'll keep dealing with it in your new place. A - Affirming relationships. Take some time to appreciate the people you will be leaving behind. Let them know what they mean to you. Think about what you love about the place you are leaving. F - Farewell. Say goodbye to people, places, pets, and possessions. T - Think destination. Think about the place you're going. Gather information. Try to be as informed as you can.
One of the things that made leaving Haiti difficult (other than the earthquake, the trauma, the lack of sleep, the destruction, that is) was that we didn't get to leave well. We didn't have enough time to say goodbye or to wrap up anything. We just left. Now we have more time, and we want to leave well. So we're building our RAFT.
Before my sudden and unexpected move to the United States in January, I had had no first hand experience with Accelerated Reader (AR). I had, however, taken a course in which I was required to read several articles about the program and evaluate its effectiveness. You can find much of the criticism of AR online, and you can also read the studies done by Renaissance Learning, the company that produces AR.
Now my child is in a school that uses AR. She is twelve years old, and to say she is a reader would be like saying Mozart was slightly interested in music. She probably averages four books a week, and when her pile is getting short, she starts to panic. She carries a book with her everywhere she goes. Obviously my daughter needs no program to encourage her to read. She's going to read, no matter what.
For her, the way AR works is that she reads stacks and stacks of books, and then when she goes to school she finds out which of her books, if any, has an AR test with it. If it has a test, she takes it, and gets points. She had to set a goal of many points she would earn. Since she had no idea, she asked the teacher for advice and was told that she shouldn't aim too high - perhaps 100 points? This goal-setting is important because part of the reading grade is calculated by whether the students reach the goal they set.
A couple of weeks ago, the teacher asked my daughter if she realized that she had surpassed her goal. Since we arrived here, she had earned 500 points. She was eligible for all kinds of prizes and would be invited to a party for all the kids who met the goals they had set for themselves. She would have a lot more points if she had taken tests for all the books she had already read this year before we came to this country. Also, many of the books she reads, including the Discworld series, to which she has recently become fanatically devoted, have no AR tests, so she can't get any points for them. (She does have the option of writing a summary of a book with no AR test and getting some points, but she doesn't care about the points enough to do that.)
The prizes mean nothing to her; she calls them "goofy little prizes." (She makes an exception for chocolate.) She doesn't want to go to the party. She just doesn't care.
The number of points available for each book (and my daughter has no idea how many that would be) varies according to the length of the book and what the reading level is. The books in the school library have stickers on them indicating their reading level. These are calculated very closely; a book might be a 6.5 reading level, or a 4.1. If a student chooses to read a book that's a lower level than her tested reading level, her average level goes down. Unlike my daughter, most kids wouldn't choose a book that looked interesting if it wasn't an AR book. It's all about the points.
I asked my daughter if she thinks that the AR program motivates other kids to read, kids who normally wouldn't read at all. She said yes, probably it does, because meeting their AR goal is part of their reading grade. But once they are out of school, why would they keep reading, if getting points is the only reason they are reading?
AR has been explained to me as a good idea because it's a way you can check for comprehension if you have kids choosing their own books. That's great, except that the tests are mostly factual and don't get into any kind of true comprehension of the issues or ideas in a book. Conferencing with kids seems as if it would be more effective, at least in addition to an AR test if not instead of it.
The title of this post? That's what my daughter calls AR. She's not really a fan.
Elizabeth Bishop's beautiful poem about the art of losing has been running through my head this week. You can't love a person, place, or thing without fearing its loss or without suffering greatly when you do lose it. The poem says that the art "isn't hard to master," but then enumerates loss after loss, large and small, demonstrating how very hard the art really is.
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
...
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
It's not possible to break up a poem like this well; for one thing, it's a villanelle and the rhyme scheme is a joy to behold. It all needs to be read together. Here's the whole thing. In the sidebar, there are links to "Poems About Difficult Love." What other kind of love is there? And yet, the idea that we could lose what we love makes that love so much more intense. When I think of how easily I could have lost my husband on January 12th, I love him more than ever. As long as we live in this world, love and loss are linked. The older I get, the harder this art becomes to master.
I've been privileged to live in three of the world's great cities (Nairobi, Port-au-Prince and Asunción, Paraguay) as well as spending time in many others (including nine weeks in Paris as a college student). I just moved to a new city: Kampala, Uganda. I've also lived in smaller towns in three countries. In all of those places there have been difficult days, but I've never found a city or town yet where God is not, and I don't anticipate finding one in the future, either. The name of my blog comes from the song "Love is Always There," by Carolyn Arends.
