30x30

 Nine hundred square feet. That’s thirty feet by thirty feet. About the size of your standard apartment but unlike your average living quarters it’s not meant to be a permanent home. Yet sometimes it is. A home for thirty different minds, one for each of those square feet and let me tell you they take up every square inch. As they should. As I’ve ingrained in them to do. As have many others before me and I pray many after me will continue to do so. Each mind carries its own body along with its own baggage. Some more than others. Baggage they are willing to check at the door although sometimes it seeps through. But it’s okay! They know I don’t cry over spilled milk but rather gentle parent them through the clean up as we pick up each piece scattered about. Their greetings each day are full of good morning, guess what, I missed you, please don’t take my phone today, why do we have work at 8 am?!, can I go to the bathroom, can I go out this in my locker, you didn’t update my grade, why you always trying to take my phone?!?!?! My favorite morning tune. The reason I rise and come to school just to hear my favorite beats. Heart beats. The life they breathe into me, into this room. I hover over the center of my desk where my student selected sticker covered mac sits checking attendance. Questioning where my children are, why they are late, and questioning if my children have checks on their classmates to see why they aren’t in class. As I’m doing that I’m simultaneously creating music with my top right desk drawer. Grabbing a computer charger, closing the drawer, opening it, grabbing another, passing that out for the many outlets perfectly placed along each wall of this 30x30 to ignite with a charge that emulates efforts made even if they weren’t proactive efforts.  

When you walk through the door, noise is all you will hear. This structure is artistic, chaotic but somehow imperfectly controlled. This space is not stale. There are couches where cemetery rows of desks typically sit and a kitchen table or two or three for those that want a little more structure. An oversized bean bag because why not have fun in such a monotonous environment and those fancy formal chairs throughout with a side table nearby each seat to act as a writing surface. Most days there is trash on the floor. Remnants of crumbled fiery red hot cheetos, dust scattered about the floor along with empty water bottles toppled over from gravity and lack of substance to hold it upright. The room aroma is always that of chicken ramen because who can tell a hungry body no when the retro candy apple infrared cooking appliance sits on its perch in front of the window glistening in the light. What else is its purpose if not to cook the nourishments that will help them focus on the next task at hand, any task at hand just as long as they are willing to focus when they have the energy to do so. Who else would use the endless supply of sporks stored in the bottom left drawer of the desk. Everyone is in on the hidden silverware secret and yet collectively we all manage to keep it stocked to ensure the next will get its use. The supply station was stocked with notebook paper, pencils, stapler, tape. All the essentials to piece together the few mindless thoughts we have each day. Highlighters. Markers, colored pencils and crayons because with this crowd, variety required and begged for.

This space is a reflection of me, better yet, a way I want to be seen. It emulates certainty about identity and love. Something I hope they take with them when they leave these nine hundred square feet each day. I am sure to tell them that as they go. On repeat. Like a broken record. A record that they love hearing. A record they come back to hear before, during and after our day is done because it’s coming from me, their favorite. That title isn’t something I gave myself. It was forced upon me by the one hundred and sixty eight that funnel in every fifty minutes like busy worker bees filtering into the hive. As if I was the Queen Bee. Although, I am her. They’ve called me mother more times than I can count, some without even correcting themselves because they feel the word is fitting for the role I play in their lives. But it is in these 4 walls that they give me the power, willingly to guide them on lessons they don’t want to learn but do because I’ve given them so many ways to love something they are supposed to hate.