Reading LA: After/Image by Lynell George and the Upcoming Teacher Strike

I have had Lynell George's book After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, sitting on my coffee table since I read it this summer and we moved to our new house in South LA.

It's a perfect coffee table book. It's pages contain gorgeous images of our city, but the essays also draw you in, make you ignore dinner party guests around you and demand that you enter their world. Then, upon looking up, these words help start a conversation about gentrification or displacement or neighborhood politics.

That is what this book did for me as I packed up our condo of 12 years and made a move from one LA neighborhood to another. 

George’s writing illuminates Los Angeles in many of the complex ways I have come to love and hate this city. It is about the beauty you have to look inside cracks and through buildings to see. It is about the change in this city that comes from power and money and in the name of development and not from the people, the community, the history of this place. 

Last year Colson Whitehead’s quote, “Be kind to everyone, make art, and fight the power” helped me through the year. This year the quote ringing in my ears is from Lynell George:

“How do you protect not just a neighborhood’s unique character, but the people and their imprint, their story, and their struggle. [...] How do you want to contribute to the story of the city? How do you want to influence and shape history?”

As much as moving and this book got me thinking about the history of our city, I couldn't help think about how much of LA's history is tied up in our schools. Los Angeles public schools are some of the only structures that have managed to hold their ground, to refuse to be uprooted and demand the city evolve around them. I teach with teachers who attended my school. I teach kids whose parents went there. And my school, which opened in 1939, isn't even close to one of the oldest public schools in our city. 

But as the teachers of LA ready for a strike, as our public schools endure yet another attack from privatizers, these historical spaces are at risk. Holding onto our communities is about our homes and our streets and our schools. The work educators and public education advocates are doing to save schools that have struggled to serve our neediest students shows their willingness to shape and influence LA's story. 

As we head into the new year, I urge my Angeleno neighbors to read After/Image. Ask yourself some of its hard questions, and then stand with our schools, our city and all of its people this winter. 

The story of our schools and our city waits to be told. What will we say? 

12 Days of Blog Posts: An LA Version of a Snow Day

There have been many a winter day here in LA when I wished for a snow day. I prayed for snow days growing up in Oregon, hoped that the thermometer would drop over night and the clouds would give way to several inches. I turned on the radio most winter mornings hoping to hear that school was canceled. I didn't get many snow days growing up, but the few I had were some of the most glorious days of fun in the snow, or lazing around the house while looking outside to say, "Wow, it's really coming down out there. Do you think they'll cancel school again?"

Today, on a cold but sunny Southern California morning, David and I woke up late. We'd had a long night with Gabe waking up around 1:30 convinced it was morning. Although he eventually fell back asleep we were both tired and woke up later than usual. But the kids were both dressed for the day and I was about to hop on my bike to head to work when the text messages started coming in.

LAUSD schools may be closed today.

I couldn't believe it. I was getting a snow day.

David took the kids to daycare and I watched the news for long enough to realize that there was very little to report. So we started to take care of all those last minute errands: shopped for gifts, mailed the holiday cards, and finished the baking. We checked off our list of to-dos and didn't even have to worry about shoveling the driveway or putting on chains.

I am incredibly thankful that the threat posed ended up being empty. But I admit, I found the timing suspicious. Was some super-smart calculus student out there pulling a prank because he didn't want to take a final? And then, partly in jest, I wondered if closing LAUSD schools, (Because they NEVER close) meant the terrorists had won. David and I joked about what trouble our students might be up to home alone on a snow day, and we wondered about this new normal: where school gets cancelled due to threats.

I guess this is the world we live in, one where threats are taken seriously and I appreciate the caution. Even though I have lots to do when I get back to school tomorrow, I'm thankful I'm safe and breathing, and one day closer to winter vacation.

Here's a snow day excerpt from Through Eyes Like Mine.