I have an adult daughter who lives in San Francisco. She’s an actress, and she got involved with a street ministry called the Faithful Fools when she began performing a one-woman show called The Witness. I would have little understanding of what a street ministry was if she hadn’t sent me a book, Bearing Witness, by Bernie Glassman, which is about a community of social activist Zen Buddhists.

I’m proud of my kid for having the pluck and the desire to follow her instinct to learn more about herself and those who are daily shunned by the rest of us. She walked the talk by taking the courageous and deliberate step to go on a week-long street retreat in San Francisco. I’m happy to report that she is back home and thoughtfully reflecting on what I imagine would be one of the more powerful experiences an educated middle-class young woman might have. It makes professional development workshops for teachers seem kind of wimpy, when I think about it.

Glassman founded the Zen Peacemaker Order, whose basic tenets are:

  • Not-knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about self and the universe.
  • Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world.
  • Healing self and others.

A couple of examples of their activity that I recall from the book included a journey to meditate in a Nazi death camp, and the practice of doing street retreats, in which they live among the urban homeless as a way of gaining insight into the common threads that join people.

The Faithful Fools provide a quote from a book by Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings that helps to explain the value of service to others.

“Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred…Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected. All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy…Service goes beyond expertise. Service is another way of life. Service is a relationship between equals…In helping, we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving, we have an experience of gratitude… When we serve, we discover that life is holy…Service is closer to generosity than it is to duty…Over the long run, fixing and helping are draining but service is renewing.”

This message is powerful to me because it emphasizes the need to maintain a positive outlook, and to nonetheless remain mindful of the suffering that we encounter each day in many of our classrooms. Sometimes the job seems overwhelming, and I ask myself how I could ever have imagined that I had anything to contribute. In the face of problems so great as those that some of my students have already experienced and continue to suffer, I wonder how I could hope to make a difference. But then I read these words from people who offer me a new way to look at what I do. New faith. New hope. New resolve.

Another example of bearing witness presented itself recently in a comment by Rachel Armour to one of my blog posts, The Achievement Gap. Rachel told an amazing tale of living in the Chicago Housing Authority and attending Chicago’s public schools. I don’t want her story to be buried in the comments, so I’m pointing to it directly. Rachel’s tale is profoundly moving, and should be read by anyone interested in education reform. She offered a bit of advice for teachers on the subject of healing.

I spent about 9 years in the Chicago Public School System and my memories are as clear as day. I remember the good teachers who encouraged me and told me “Black is beautiful,” and to “be yourself.” On the other hand, I remember the teacher who called nearly every child in class, “dumb and stupid.” I really needed the reassurance that my dark skin was beautiful because I was constantly taunted by other children. Of course kids will be kids, so my self-esteem was as low as sub-freezing temperatures….Making a child feel they are valued makes a huge difference in the way they view you as an educator and the way they view themselves. We should start overcompensating for what our children lack at home. It may not be in our job description as educators, but it must be in the prescription to medicate and cure our children from a plague called the achievement gap.

What kind of story am I telling on Borderland? Is it a reformer story? I suppose, yes. But I hope that it’s more than that. I want to shine a light on problems so that we can perhaps begin to understand them and grow from that knowledge. I want to discuss implementation, as well as reform because literacy is a doorway to the self. Self knowledge is what students remember us for. I firmly believe that students remember teachers mostly for how we made them feel, and not for what we tried to teach them. I want to celebrate our humanity, and to urge that we look to one another for reassurance that we’re doing what is necessary to bring the world forward out of darkness, fear, hatred, and suffering comes from forgetting who and what we are. We don’t need tests’ results to tell us that, unless the tests are the kind that can be read in the smile on a child’s face, or in the sound of laughter, or an “Aha!” moment, all of which are magical to a teacher. I’m writing to simply bear witness to my experience as a teacher, whatever that might mean.