pt at large

A country illuminated, one street at at time

A COUNTRY ILLUMINATED, ONE STREET AT A TIME
Guest commentary by Paul Tamburello
September 20, 2001

Halfway down my street, I started to cry. The primitive emotion uncoiled right from my gut, rose through my throat and out my mouth. Tears, runny nose, contorted face, all within seconds. A well of emotion that had been forming since Tuesday morning had been tapped and rushed to the surface like a geyser. I was relieved that it was dark, but knew that if any of my neighbors had witnessed these Friday night tears they’d have understood at once.

Let me start at the beginning, which was Tuesday September 11, 2001, a day America was changed forever. No need to go into the details, you know them all.

Friday, after days of assessing whether my fourth graders had been traumatized by the extraordinary pictures of death and destruction, and after holding an elementary classroom version of a Day of Remembrance and Mourning, I just wanted to sit down in familiar comfort of home, and let the metaphorical dust of the past days settle without my watching it or listening to it. I needed to unplug. There had been nowhere to be free of the images of destruction or the conversations, so surreal in content.

The school day had been book ended with our morning meeting and a minute of silence at the end of the day. I welcomed the hours in the middle as a pilgrim welcomes an oasis. I poured myself into having my fourth graders learn the names of the chambers of the heart, find prime numbers in their multiplication charts. practice cursive writing, and see how to write a declarative paragraph. Even indoor recess due to rainy weather was a respite.

Elsewhere else reality had been bent out of shape and I had been bent with it.

There was no where to avoid the topic. The endless loop of videotaped carnage I had been seeing since Tuesday had slowly crossed the border in my brain from nightmare to reality, a nightmare come to life. After school, at a physical therapy appointment, I was asked how the kids were taking the scenes of death. At my health club, a fellow member recounted the previous evening’s memorial service for his friend who was on Flight 11. At my local gas station, the Libyan attendant, with whom I’ve had friendly chats for two years, railed about the ruthlessness of the terrorists. In the back of my mind I prayed that this kind man from North Africa wouldn’t be targeted by hateful citizens seeking retribution for the barbarity in New York.

By the time I walked up to my porch, I was in desperate need of refuge. Stuck in my front door was a small note reading
Dear (Oliver Street) Neighbors,
Tonight at 7 PM, please join our neighbors on Oliver Street by lighting a candle on your porch or outside your door. to grieve for those who lost their lives and for all of us whose lives have been forever changed by the sad events of September 11.
Others all over America will also be lighting candles. We are all a community of Oliver Street, of America, and of the world, even with people in the Arab nations.

I walked into my kitchen, too drained to participate. Then I recalled that just that morning I’d told my students how citizens derive strength in times of duress by using symbols, the country’s flag for instance, to provide comfort and resolve in times of sorrow and grief. Wearily, I got up, found a candle, lit it, and put my own little symbol in the front window.

An hour later, rejuvenated by curiosity, I decided to walk down my street to see whether anyone else had complied with the note.

Halfway down the hill I realized that my little street had indeed connected with other communities in America, in some kind of nocturnal communion. Every house but one had candles in sight. Large candles, small votives, solitary candles, massed candles.

The emotional dam I’d built to contain uncertainty, loss, and grief, burst. I cried for me, for the country, for the families of the dead and missing, and for our assumptions about life in America which were blown up with the World Trade Center. But my tears were redemptive as well. I could see that my little neighborhood was surviving on its own, in its own little way, and was part of other little streets across this great and flawed country surviving and regenerating in the same way.

I never thought I’d see anything as powerful as the fireball I saw on Tuesday. Somehow, in time, the small glow of those candles on my neighbor's porches is going to outshine that horrible sight.

Paul Tamburello is a teacher and writer who’s taught fourth grade in Brookline since 1970.

Day One

I taped this essay for airing on WBUR's Morning Edition on September 7, 2000, the 31st "Day One" of teaching career.
The essay was published in the Brookline TAB on September 6, 2001 and in the August, 2003 issue of Instructor Magazine

Paul Tamburello

They are mine. They arrive in all sizes, shapes, colors, temperaments, and dispositions. And in these first tentative minutes of the new school year, something happens between me, a veteran elementary school teacher, and the children who will become my new charges, my new fourth graders.

It makes me think of the process called imprinting in which certain birds, after pecking their way out of their shells, assign the first living thing they see the role of parent and care-taker, the force that will rear them and then send them off into the big world. For me, these first minutes launch the process in reverse. At first sight, I'm the one bonding with my young students, taking them under my wing to nurture them, lead them, and create a unique community with them. Total commitment.

They are mine. Their excitement ripples to the classroom walls and returns to wash over us again. How will it turn out this year, for friendships, for accomplishments in this grade which they’ve heard features probing questions, longer books, and lots more writing. And in fact it's the same with me. I, too, am hopeful and excited about how it will turn out for us.

They are mine. When I assemble them in our first class meeting, I am at once looking at who they are now and who they will be in June. I know our destination, and I know that we must map the route and build the road there together. On the way, the lessons I teach will have as much to do with how to live life as with the fourth grade curriculum, and be useful to them beyond the horizon of this June. They’ll have me with them only that far. After that, they will have only my compass. They’ll fly away on their own.

They are mine. And here’s the irony. In fact, there are several fourth grades in our school. As I walk by those other classes of ten-year-olds, they pale in comparison with mine! My own students always seem to have more personality, to be more creative, more energetic, more sociable ... yes, more lovable. I’ve been challenged at times to do it but I can find something to love about every single one of my students. The irony is that if on this first day, one of those other classes of children had pecked their way out of their summer shell and into my care, I would have forged the same connection with them! A blind but potent force of nature is at work here.

They are mine. They will win me over with their accomplishments, delight me with their bravery as they take on the challenges I set before them, and they will warm me with the pride they feel as they experience their own growth..

They are mine yes, ... and I am theirs.