Mi sobrino es un artista!

Yeshua Amaru is an artist...

Just like his grand-father...

Just like his grand-mother...

And just like his auntie...

I swear the more things change, the more they actually stay the same...

Selah...

Weldon Irvine - Morning Sunrise

Grown folk shit........

Black Love IS Alive and Well...

Living and Loving welll.... I can DIG IT!





At Our Best We Are All Teachers...




Young brothers of Urban Prep Academy (Chicago, Illnois), of which the entire senior class went on to college this year!

          
I once heard a motivational speaker say that the two most important days of your life were: One, the day  you were born, and two, the day you realized why you were born...  In my case, I'm still working on fully understanding the latter, but I'm pretty sure I'm headed in the right direction. I teach in a Title-One (majority of student body is considered low income) school just outside of Atlanta. For those out there not akin to public education terminology Title-I would be defined and viewed as poor, low-income, marginalized, undeniably in need of support and resources. And although many of my kids are from low-income neighborhoods, have a certain "swag" in their walk, and speak with a youthful maturity that tends to mask their chronological age. They are still just babies (for the most part), still in need of warm gestures, of adult reassurance and acceptance...

         I am sincerely proud of them when they say and/or do something amazing, and I cry for them when I see how quickly some of them move from public school's main form of punishment: out-of school suspencion to the more deafining silence that is state incarceration. However, this blog is not a sad one, but more about how grateful I am to be in a position to affect lives in a productive way. How good it feels when one of my kids transfers back to my school and yells out "Heyyyyyyyy Ms. V!"  from clear down the hall and comes running to give me a hug. It's about rousing in their spirits a will to not allow anyone's label be the defining factor of who they are. Low-income, single parent home, title-1, urban, education gap, unkempt, special ed, inner city... or whatever society and myself included do erroneously attempted to define them by...

        You see, although I'm paid to teach them Literacy, Science, Social Studies etc. My goal in teaching them goes beyond the four rooms of my classroom, its more about helping them find their own consciousness, their own intellectual threshold, their own voice, so that they can remove themselves from the social boxes us adults sometimes try to place them in... because, in truth, there was never a box there to begin with :-)

Kua...

Eat, Pray, Love, and What I Know to be True...

My nephew Yeshua Amaru and I


In the Interim...

I've come to believe in something called, "The Physics of the Quest"...
A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of the gravity...
The rules of Quest Physics goes something like this:
If you're BRAVE enough to leave behind everything that's comforting...
Which can be anything from your house, to bitter old resentments...


And set out on a TRUTH seeking journey, either externally or internally...
And if you are trully willing to regard EVERYTHING that happens to you
on that journey as a clue...
And if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a TEACHER...


And if you are prepared, most of all.
To FACE and FORGIVE some very difficult realities about yourself...
Then the TRUTH will not be witheld from you...

I can't help but believe it, given my experience...

A Cool, Tall, Glass of Water...




John Legend: Beautiful is as beautiful does...



                                                    "Maxine's Interlude"

Random Thoughts from an Extra-Ordinary Day (Oldie but Goodie)

"Boys" By Gordon Parks

"Who is the judge?




The judge is God...Why is he God? Because he decides who wins or loses not my opponent ...Who is your opponent ?



He does not exist....Why doesnt he exist? Because he is a mere dissenting voice of the truth i speak !!"



"The Great Debaters"



So I spent today with some amazing fam... they are a part of what I call my circle of sisterhood. My godmother... my godsister... and myself. It really was a typical day, an early morning trip to the gym, matinee tickets to the movies... munching on left over christmas food and sitting around watching Katt Williams ( he's a wild boy). It was a comfortable, familiar place, like the smell of your boyfriend's cologne or the taste of your grandmother's banana pudding. I relished in the thought of how familiar it was, how safe it felt... to converse, listen intently, and bond with women who have over the years become my family...



However mundane and routine, typical days are so extraordinary in the sense that they will never happen again... Every moment, every second, is like none other before or that will ever be... For in each moment is the seed to start things anew, correct a misguided step... the oppurtunity for reflection and discovery... I am learning to think of my days as not only "good days", but "God's days" ... I am inspired by that notion, that as much as things change... as much as they tumble over themselves and fall apart, crumble, or build bridges beyond the walls we create, they actually stay the same... The Ordinary becoming the Extra-Ordinary... "Good days" deriving from "God's days"...



Minus the bullshit... Life really is Great...



Nita Bita ;-0