Sunday, May 5, 2013

Rather a Brief Manifesto

It has been awhile, but I am here once again. 

I am better and more relaxed with taking standardized tests than when I was younger.  Saturday morning I took the certification exam for my state in early childhood, and if I passed it will be added to my middle grades and high school English certification. 

I am planning to re-enter the teaching job market here in the USA full-time.  I feel I am needed, so here I am.  I will not return idealistic like I was as a youth.  I return a realist and pragmatist, so therefore I might be able to survive this time.  I will be up against a lot, so God give me strength.  The familial decay, especially in the African American community, and the overall social degeneration that was evident when I was a young teacher, is three or four times worse now than it was when I hired for my first job as an educator.   

I am not sure if I passed the exam yesterday, but I don't think I failed either.  At my old high school, I finished all 120 multiple choice questions and four short essays in less than the allotted four hours.  Many many people were there taking exams.  I was relaxed and used the tactics for doing a standardized test I actually learned from teaching my students strategies for the TOEFL exam in Turkey five years ago. 

The first time I took a teaching certification exam near the end of my graduate studies, I passed it, but I knew few less back than about test taking I did this time.  In the past, I was a very nervous test taker.  I don't think I even studied for my first teacher's certification exam, yet I passed. 

In the last 12 months I really started to ponder how can I be of use to my people here.  I go to Walmart (don't particularly like it, but I go)  and see some of the elementary school kids I work with through substitute teaching, and some of them come up to me with hugs.  I get hugs from black, white, and Mexican kids, and I'm not even their regular teacher.   There is one little wide-eyed Mexican girl that even if she is with her mother or father at Walmart she leaves them and comes up to me with a hug.

Nowadays so many children are falling through the cracks.  It almost seems to me that a lot of people are in denial of this.  There is so much apathy and denial.  Kids aren't little birds or other baby animals who by instinct can strike out on their own early.  They need good parents and good teachers who guide them. I don't think a lot of kids get any love from their parents. The parents themselves don't really know what love is.  I don't agree that teachers should be surrogate parents, but the society we live in is forcing teachers to change diapers in early Headstart classrooms and teaching morals in first grades.  I see it in my town, and I wonder what the devil happened, but I don't have to really wonder.  I know.  

I see the society collapsing, and I know the problems are too big for me, but what is the little bit I can do right here in the place of my birth?  So I hope to come back and be a servant (teacher). 

I was also talking with my mother yesterday saying I am thinking of doing the research on how to run for mayor of my town. LOL Yeah, I'm really thinking about it.  Getting involved in politics is not my cup of tea, but what else can I do around here to help?  I am not bragging, but I'm not your typical black woman or woman in general. The people who know me are aware this is the case.  I was always different.  I will die a person who isn't afraid to be my true self. I've had a lot of experience with people of many races and various cultures.  I am a cultural hybrid, West and East, but I am more a person who leans towards the outlook of my African side and see things like an Eastern person.  What can I bring to the table here in this place? 

I'm something of a news and political junky but the stress?  The corruption?  Me mayor of this small city with a huge university and a rather exceptional public library?  But who knows?  At least I can do the research and then decide if I might take on such a challenge. 

Most of the population my small Southern city is black.  Outside in the suburbs where I live the population is more mixed.  However, the city  limits has seen some gentrification in the last few years for the renovation and building of housing and flats geared towards university students who don't want to live on campus or can't find space there.  My town has never had a black mayor to this date.  In recent years, all the mayors have been white women.

I keep asking myself what can I do, and with my sometimes not so great health, am I tough enough?  Mom in all her wisdom even said that running for mayor is very stressful.  She doesn't know what the first steps to take are, but she is right that it is a stressful proposition. 

For sure I want to bring back the idea of the public servant. The day of the leech, parasite, and mafia needs to come to an end.  But then again sometimes I just want to drown or bury myself in poetry because I really don't like the lime/lame light at all when it comes down to it.  hehehe  The lame light has led some folks to an early death...  #randoms

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