The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries.

--Thomas Jefferson to
M. Correa de Serra,1817. ME 15:156

Why does anyone do what they do? What led me to the Mississippi Teacher Corps, and to the Delta, is a long and complex story. It involves people, places, and stories too long to tell here. There’s a blog for that. It goes way back.


Adapted from my application essay,  which asks and answers the question:



Why Mississippi?

Not a traditional candidate, I came to MTC after nearly 20 years in education publishing.


I had my misgivings about uprooting a successful, happy life and trading it in for a difficult job in a difficult place. I also had misgivings about living and working with colleagues who, if not fresh out of college, were likely more contemporary to my own child than to me.


But the path seemed clear, and this was the best way to give something, in a meaningful way, to a world that had given me the opportunity to live, work, and raise a child in one of the most privileged regions of the country, sending her to what is arguably one of the finest high schools.


I believe in the basic tenets of the Jeffersonian concept of public education. What it has become in our time is a farce in many instances, bloated by bureaucracy and strangled by personal power grabbing.


Working for a nonprofit education policy association, I knew the work I did helped school districts in many ways. But of course, policy alone can't reach far enough into the deepest pockets of poverty and inequality so many rural and Southern school systems face.


As part of my career, designing and producing publications, I'd had the chance to spend a lot of time in all sorts of schools as I’d traveled with writers to photograph their stories. From an adult-education initiative in Pointe Coupee, La., to a migrant education program in Indio, Calif., or a “last chance” high school in Southside Boston, and a first-person account of students living with HIV/AIDS, I’d spoken with and documented students and their teachers in dozens of schools where they struggle every day to make a difference in the lives of the children most often forgotten or discounted.


I wanted to see and hear and feel the changes that need to be made, and I needed to do it from within the communities where the need is greatest. No doubt, there is ignorance in the South. But there’s also ignorance about the South. And the worst ignorance threatening rural, and especially Southern, schools is the ignorance of people in power who simply throw up their hands in defeat against what they believe is an unsolvable institutionalized problem. And it is, in fact, unsolvable from afar. But from within, and through education, the effects of poverty can be conquered.


These were the reasons I came here to do this work. They are only part of the reason I'll stay on.

   
< This is why I teach punctuation.











About the tattoo

As I packed up what was left of 50-some years of living in Virginia, and set out on the 1,200-mile journey
that would bring me to Mississippi and an unknown fate, I decided it should be marked in some significant way that would enable me to have a constant reminder of my decision. I stopped in Blacksburg to spend a last few days with my daughter. In the morning, I did an i Ching casting, and then we went to Ancient Arts to get the ink.  It was important to me that I not choose which hexagram I would use as my touchstone, but to make permanent whatever the sticks gave me that day.


My hexagram was 41, the sun, which symbolizes diminishing. Its inner (lower) trigram is the lake or swamp, whose attributes are joy and tranquility.  The outer (upper) trigram is the mountain whose attributes are stillness and completion.


The i Ching is the Book of Changes. And the change is generally found in a decrease of the lower in order to attain or increase the upper.


From the reading for hexagram 41 in the  Wilhelm-Baynes translation of The I Ching or the Book of Changes:


The lake at the foot of the mountain evaporates. In this way it decreases to the benefit of the mountain, which is enriched by its moisture. The mountain stands as the symbol of a stubborn strength that can harden into anger. The lake is the symbol of unchecked gaiety that can develop into passionate drives at the expense of the life forces. Therefore decrease is necessary; anger must be decreased by keeping still; the instincts must be curbed by restriction. By this decrease of the lower powers of the psyche, the higher aspects of the soul are enriched.


The bright path seems dim;

Going forward seems like retreat;

The easy way seems hard;

The highest Virtue seems empty;

Great purity seems sullied;

A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate;

The strength of Virtue seems frail;

Real Virtue seems unreal;

The perfect square has no corners;

Great talents ripen late;

The highest notes are hard to hear;

The greatest form has no shape;

The way is hidden and without name.



During my first week of teaching in Rolling Fork, when students were debating whether I had a vampire sign, one informed the other that “They make ‘em get that where she come from.”