A poem for my son-shine who is five

The other day you doubled backas you were piling into the car to go to school with a shark-patterned backpack

You heard the tap tap tap of me waiting by the window and you bee-lined as on an important errand

Mutely you blew kisses and threw hugs and the motion of your throwing hugs mimicked a flight attendant directing passengers to the exit rows

And isn't that just how I feel as my heart goes soaring above clouds on this sweet ride of knowing you at five I am abruptly ushered to the exit row

Because this sweetness of you doubling back to bid adieu to your mama before school is not a round-trip ticket

I'm still going to enjoy my window seat.

Sorry I burned your dinner; I was looking for the right emoji

What follows is a bit of satire for your pleasure... I’m sorry about the lasagna. I know you don’t like it quite so crispy, especially on top.

Believe it or not, while it was baking, I was texting you! I was making lasagna--your favorite. 💗 But how to put that all on 📣 to you without using too many words, because I know you said you hate to scroll. Gives you carpal tunnel while sitting at🚦.

So I figured emoji would be my friend! 😆

That’s why, the message read, “Making 🍝”--but then I thought that was kind of misleading. I mean, why would you leave work before 10 p.m. for spaghetti? So I went searching for an Italian flag emoji to elaborate.

Which is, I guess, when I neglected to hear the timer going off. 😮You know how immune to that I’ve become to the sound of the oven timer, especially after all the times you would tell me to set it when we’re about to have a 😡😡 because you didn’t want it to last more than 10 minutes. Of course, even when the timer was going off, you’d still be waxing on about how it’s all my fault; yet I’m supposed to just be all 😶 and 🙆 and 👸.

Basically, while I was searching for the Italian flag emoji, I ignored the oven timer. So, I just sent the text and then followed up with “🔝means lasagna, lol.”

That was partially a lie. I wasn’t actually laughing out loud. I wasn’t laughing at all. Because that’s when the smoke detector started blaring. I wanted to send you a text not to come straight 🏡 but I didn’t want to panic you. The whole 💥💭💂😖💨was my attempt at saying, “Gotta go.”

Now that I look back at that message, I can see why you immediately called and asked if a Russian spy had tried to kidnap me. That’s when I literally did LOL, except only for a moment because then I smelled burnt cheese ♨ and the kitchen started seriously 💨💨💨.

I started another text to you, but then I realized my time would be better spent calling 🚒

The dispatcher was prepared to walk me through using the fire extinguisher. 💦I looked for it under the sink and to my surprise, discovered your small but fine collection of women’s 👙👙👙. I suppose you never thought I’d be looking for a fire extinguisher since I myself am, as you say, “not exactly a nine alarm 🔥🔥,” but now it looks like there had already been a few in the house. ㈫🏡 ㈫

Sorry about the lasagna. 😂😂😂LOLOLOLOL.

A college professor responds: This American Life #562, #563

The recent two-part This American Life program "The Problem We All Live With" generated a lot of buzz. More than being buzzworthy, though, the investigation offered a real solution to education in America, however difficult it has been and may be to employ. It's so hard for journalism to not offer a thesis statement in order to appear balanced. But this program did more than peel back a few rotting floorboards on schools, which is oftentimes what education reports tend to do. It offered listeners a well-tested theory, a theory that seems so basic that it's laughable: Integration is the most powerful way to bridge the achievement gap between underresourced and well-resourced schools. Period.

It's much easier, one reporter noted, to dream up fixes for failing schools than it is to try to dismantle the systemic racism and classicism that rendered certain schools a failure.

I can get behind this. Even though I've spent less than 10% of my entire student life in public school. I believe in integration not just as an ideal but as a cornerstone of effective education.

I teach at a private university with roughly 40% students of color. It's a pleasure and a privilege to teach this mix of students. We build circles of trust in classes, in residence halls, in intramural sports, in clubs and the hope is that those circles enlarge to spheres much greater than our little campus. Prior to this gig, I taught at a diverse, urban community college. Most--not some--of my students spoke English as a second language. I taught English composition which was a delight since so many students could empathize with one another in the struggle to master another language. My classes came ready-made integrated. College is obviously elective, unlike public schools grades K-12 in which teachers must educate every child. Still, I agree with the findings of TAL: integration is the clutch in the manual car driving us toward educational reform.

But as TAL's reporting demonstrated, integration is the hard-fought battle, often trying to sell school integration without attaching it to the stigma of busing and without tokenizing students. Ayeeee. Hand me that magic wand....

The reason I believe so much in the power of integration goes well beyond my time in the classroom, however. I identified especially with TAL's coverage of parents expecting so much of schools that they "hand-picked" them. Parenting in America has swung so far to extreme protectiveness that schools seem to get stuck in a holding pattern of incubation rather than true education. Are parents in 2015 truly excited about the heightened challenges of their kids' classes or about the independence their children are gaining through projects and extra-curriculars? It does not appear that way, from the little I've gauged. Parents do their kids' entire projects for them. They "coach" by teaching their kids the position for which they want their kid to specialize. Rather than have their child experience the chagrin of sloppy penmanship or the pride of a job completed by hand--the pervasive attitude for parents seems to be akin to the LA Police Department: serve and protect.

Schools have become like restaurants rated on Yelp.com. Friendly service and immaculate facilities will earn high marks. High expectations of students and varied social dynamics are not always comfortable for patrons. Maybe the place down the road will be better--I hear they have even have a Groupon.

Universities are regarded as country clubs that exist to furnish four-star accommodations and luxury amenities. My students will rate me on the ease with which I grade assignments, the accessibility of my lectures, the availability of me in my free time. It is not enough to teach; teachers must aim to please.

Which is why I think TAL's program sounds the battle hymn for every teacher. We are helping to prepare a generation of students who will need to be problem solvers--solutionaries, if you will. These students will need to experience integration, which may (gasp) entail discomfort. These students will need to learn how to resolve conflicts and stand up for their beliefs. They may even need to learn to innovate using a limited budget, versus waiting for their parents to find something suitable on Pinterest to copy.

It's never our goal to fail: our kids, our schools, our communities. But there's an awful lot to learn through failure, largely so that we don't make the same mistakes--systemic and microscopic alike--again.