When Your Eyes Make Choices Without Your Consent

New York has always been a paradox for me.  I’ve always claimed belonging without ever really wanting to belong.  I grew up in the suburbs but always introduce myself as a New Yorker.  I've always taken pleasure in my visits to the city while keeping fairly certain that I’d never call it home.  When I’m there I emulate the habits of New Yorkers even though I don’t enjoy any of them: keeping pace with rushing bodies on broad avenues, archetypically avoiding gazes on the subway, always looking like I’m moving with backbreaking purpose even when I’m completely lost.  These are "New York things" to me, and my aptitude at them has always been a source of strange pride.

When I left for college almost five years ago I wasn't sure I'd ever be back in New York for good.  Too big, too much noise, not neighborly enough, easy to lose yourself, hard to get away.  Here was a place whose vastness and volume was matched only by its people's desire to be isolated; islands; invulnerable.  Here in this metropolis of 8 million I thought I’d found Earth's epicenter of being alone.  I couldn't help but feel both charmed and totally repulsed by the concrete and steel exterior of New York and its people.  Here was a place that I loved, but wasn't sure I could ever be a part of.

Most of the important people from the first 22 years of my life have ended up in New York: childhood friends, college friends, family.  I never considered moving back after college, in part because I thought I’d be too comfortable.  Still, I seem to go back every chance I get.

On my most recent trip earlier this month I found myself on the subway shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square.  This particular subway line is a graphic designer's erotic fantasy and a cultural critic's recurring nightmare.  Every car is adorned with a single advertisement that takes the shape of the subway car itself: images fold over every seat edge, enclose every windowsill and span every inch of ceiling.

I saw this phenomenon for the first time a few of summers ago when I rode the shuttle every day on my way to some already-forgotten internship.  An ad for Mad Men – which I believe is a show on television – rendered the subway’s interior into the interior of Grand Central Station.

This photo still gives me goosebumps. http://eatshopplaylove.blogspot.com/2010/10/una-ragazza-on-shop-dr-zizmor-vs-big-al.html

I remember feeling totally floored by the amount of design talent it must have taken to create such a thorough piece of art.  I remember also feeling totally unsettled that the ad industry had found its next ingenious method to break through the immunity to advertising that New Yorkers develop living in a city where ads outnumber pigeons.  That statistic is made up, and also maybe true.

This time the shuttle was filled with something even more curious: a full-car advertisement for Doritos and Mountain Dew.  Together.  Joined in matrimony from the depths of some perverse diabetic nightmare.  My mind flashed to a conference room full of buddy-buddy ad execs in seersuckers and fedoras somewhere high above Madison Avenue scheming ways to sell their products:

Dorito Joe: “Jeez guys, it’s been a tough month for Doritos.  People are just too thirsty to eat our product right now.”

Dan Dewey: “Yeah!  Summertime is the pits for Mountain Dew sales.  People need something that’s refreshing and substantial, and our product just isn’t dew-ing it.  No pun intended!”

Dorito Joe: “Gah... I just wish... I wish there was some way we could… Wait a minute!”

This is how I imagine most ad campaigns are born.

As a matter of survival I cling to the belief that humans will always like looking at other humans more than we like looking at billboards and posters.  It’s unfortunate that the largest and most well financed industrial project in all of human existence is dedicated to making the opposite come true, and I try to fight that project in small ways whenever possible.

People Watching is one great way to fight the Great Advertising Project.  It’s also my favorite idle activity in New York, especially while riding subways.  You see every kind of person on the subway in New York.  The only people you won’t see are the ultra-rich, claustrophobes, and people for whom the subway is difficult to access.  Everyone else is fair game.

There’s just so much to wonder about on the subway.  Where are those tourists in matching neon shirts from?  What book is everyone reading and would they recommend it?  Whom does that child belong to?  People Watching is also a good way to forget about yourself for a little while, which is among the healthiest things that I don’t do enough.

Sitting there in the shuttle trying hard to forget about myself for a few minutes and trying even harder to ignore the Dew-ritos ad, I had an epiphany: I only look at certain people.

I only look at certain people.

I twirled the thought around in my head, like trying a new flavor of double-churned ice cream.  I was surprised at how such a simple truth could escape my notice for years.  It was like discovering a limb whose weight you’ve always carried but never realized was there.  I felt liberated, like I’d had some glorious insight into how my mind worked.

I started to piece together who I looked at the most: cute children (which to me is pretty much all children), people with unusual physical features or attire, and people whom I find attractive.

Then I started feeling really ashamed.  I wasn’t just looking at certain people and not at others.  I was assigning value to them, all of them, without even realizing.  Some people are worth me looking at and wondering about, and others aren’t.

A habit like this can be useful, and it can also become dangerous.  The world throws a million pieces of information at us a day, and our minds need to filter through it somehow to avoid getting totally overwhelmed.  The problem comes when we get stuck on certain filters.  We enter into cycles in which everything we see affirms what we already believe.  In these times we learn very little, and become closed off to all the details that make the world complicated and interesting.

I think back to a year ago when I began serving my Americorps term at a K-8 public charter school.  I had big issues with the public school system: overemphasis on testing, learning confined to classrooms, the school system’s role in maintaining historical inequities.  I felt uneasy about serving in a school, and felt skepticism towards people who chose to make careers in public education.  You’d have to be pretty uncritical and somewhat oblivious to support such a broken system, I thought.

It took me months to realize that I shared a workplace with some of the most thoughtful, passionate, and giving people I’d ever met.  Many of them agree with me that parts of the school system are broken, but they’re resolved to create a school that isn’t.  With their guidance I've seen that an open-enrollment public charter school can prioritize critical thinking, social and emotional development, and outside-the-classroom learning.  I didn’t have an eye for these details at first, and instead I fixed on a few narrow conclusions based on what I thought I knew.

On this trip back I started to think more on some of the conclusions I had drawn about New York and why I couldn’t be happy there.  Living in New Orleans has intensified my feeling that New York is too fast, too crowded, too unfriendly.  If you walk too quickly in New Orleans, on the other hand, people may begin to worry about you.  It's not unusual to say hello to a stranger here, or to strike up a conversation.  Not everyone has somewhere to go at all times.  Sometimes people just sit outside their homes for hours with family or friends, or even alone.  

But in my certainty I was missing a crucial detail: New Orleans is about one-sixteenth the size of New York.  You can find Saints tickets on Stubhub for $60 because there aren’t 8 million other people looking for the same ticket.  At most there are a few hundred thousand.

In New Orleans you rarely walk by more than a couple of people at a time.  You can walk around your neighborhood all day and not see more than a few dozen people.  To travel any substantial distance in Manhattan on foot you have to navigate through a veritable ocean of humans.  Think about how quickly you’d get discouraged if you attempted to make eye contact or say “hi” to everyone you walked by.

So of course New Yorkers avoid eye contact.  Of course they wear headphones at all times, read a book on the bus or wear sunglasses on cloudy days.  Any genuine attempt at small-town neighborliness would be completely exhausting.  New Yorkers have to close themselves off a bit to keep their daily commutes from becoming staggering feats of human contact.

Here was a shade of New York I’d never seen.  It’s not that people are unfriendly or lonely or constantly desiring of privacy.  It’s that people develop habits out of necessity.  We all make our worlds as small or as large as we need to function in them.  We carve out corners to exist in and then fight like hell to keep our worlds at a scale that works for us.  We do this to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people, sensory experiences, and filter-penetrating full-subway advertisements.

Perhaps this is sometimes why people join gangs or churches, or why they leave their homes for other places.  These things give our world focus and scale.  Without them the world would just feel too small or too large.

Perhaps this is also why my mind trained itself only to look at certain people.  It keeps things simple.  It’s much easier for me to spend a day ogling at babies and attractive women than it is to spend a day trying to contemplate the fullness of everyone’s humanity.

We all need easy days.  We all need time to shut our minds down, or to be closed off and stubborn and certain.  But I think it’s important that once in a while we remember to ask: what are we missing?  Where haven’t we been?  What aren’t we seeing?  Who are we walking by?

On my last day in New York I decided to conduct an experiment.  I told myself that I would try to notice everyone, especially the people who don’t usually grab my attention.  And not only that, I would try to give them all value.  I’d give them a description that complicated my perception of them a little bit.  Here are some highlights:

“Encyclopedic knowledge of igneous rocks.”

“Employee of the month in June.”

“Plays a mean alto sax.”

“Plays a crummy alto sax but works damn hard at it.”

“Never misses son’s soccer practice.”

“Helps old women cross streets.”

“Speaks seven languages fluently, has broken hearts in six.”

“Just really, really kind.”

And some less cheery ones:

“Angry because just lost job.”

“Tired from staying up all night with spouse with terminal illness.”

“Significant other feeds low self-esteem.”

Predictably I got really overwhelmed really quickly.  There were just too many people, and I was working against 23 years of conditioning.

But even a few minutes of this completely transformed my day.  I felt more hopeful, happier, more open.  I started noticing more people, and then I started noticing more of everything: contours of tree branches, heights and shapes of skyscrapers, the rhythm of cars playing along the street.  New York seemed even more impossibly vivid.

Late that night I made my way back to catch a train home from Grand Central Station, my favorite building in the world.  Sometimes I leave extra time on my trips to New York just so I can walk around a bit and stare at the constellations painted on the ceiling or the ridges in the tan stones that form decorative shapes on the walls.


I love being there around rush hour.  I stand off to the side and watch people run across in every direction, avoiding a thousand devastating collisions every minute.  It amazes me how many people walk through the main concourse without ever looking up, without taking a moment to remember that their commute takes them through this stunning edifice with a million beautiful edges to consider.

Look at all those edges.
http://www.thingstoseenyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/grand-central-2.jpg

I thought I had considered many of those edges, but that night the building revealed itself to me in a way that it never had.  I noticed light fixtures and wall colorations and designs in the marble that I'd never seen before.  I was moved to tears by the cohesive and overwhelming beauty of the place.

I knew that the euphoria of that evening would fade, and it has.  Even as I felt it I realized that it’s easy to be vulnerable towards the world when you’re in a comfortable, familiar place and you don’t have to worry about work or errands or bills.  I realized that it’s easier to see new details when you get a break from focusing on old, ongoing details.

I thought that maybe I could carry a little of this with me, try to channel it every day in small ways.  Maybe I could learn to see better, to become a more cognizant observer.  I promised myself to notice things more; to notice the particulars in plants, buildings, and clouds; to notice at least one stranger every day and imagine some detail that gives them value.  Maybe some days I’ll even gather the courage to talk to them, to go beyond just imagining.

I boarded my train home and said goodbye to New York for a while, goodbye to its honks and shouts, to its glass towers and black asphalt, to its abrasiveness and its charms.  Staring out from the train's window onto New York's singular landscape I thought to myself, “Maybe I could be happy here.”

Teaching to Learn, Part 6: Power Struggles

Wow it's been a while since I posted something.  I've been busy with so many good things!  Writing and performing poetry (yes, for real), designing and building an irrigation system for our school garden, hosting a bi-weekly writing group, AND expanding/re-writing one of my blog pieces for inclusion in a BOOK!  A real book!  Right now I'm in New York for a couple of weeks, catching up with all the most wonderful people in the world who don't live in New Orleans.


This piece is meandering, hastily-edited, and not the most fascinating... but sometimes you just need to move on.  Bear with me, and I promise the next one will be better.


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The fireworks started early this year in Irvington.  In 20-something years of watching the fireworks show over the Hudson River, I've never seen them start early.  This year a lightning storm raged in the upper air above the Tappan Zee bridge, prompting the change in schedule.  Liability is the best timekeeper.

The  storm was probably ten miles away from the park, but from where I was sitting it looked as if the storm clouds had pushed up against the section of the sky reserved for fireworks.  To my left daggers of lighting lit up the sky every few seconds, and to my right the show got underway.

The lightning-fireworks combination made for the best Fourth of July show I'd ever seen.  Nature and artifice traded blows, competing for who would be the best crowd pleaser.  The best moments came when they worked together: lightning lit up a huge swath of sky and cut into the fireworks' airspace just as several rockets exploded.  What a spectacle.

As we left the park my dad saw a woman in a maroon Lincoln Towncar driving the wrong way down a one way street to bypass the crowds leaving the park.  He politely let her know that she was breaking the law, and asked her to please turn around.  She ignored him and kept moving, so like any problem-solving guru he tried telling her again, only this time louder and more forcibly.  She persisted, and as she made her was slowly down the street a small crowd gathered to heckle her on her way.

My dad had a few choices in this situation.  He could have ignored her entirely and left it up to the cops to deal with it or not.  He could have told her it was a one way street then let her decide if she wanted to risk a moving violation.  He could have tried to reason with her, or convince her more gently, but we were in a rush to walk home before the crowds caught up.  Instead he demanded she turn around, creating a power struggle: a situation with a winner and a loser.  She ignored my father and drove away.  Fugitive Lady - 1, Dad - 0.

Even though my sister and I felt a little embarrassed, I don't hold it against my dad for picking the escalation route.  He felt pretty strongly that she should have to wait to leave the park like everyone else.  It's easy to tend towards escalation and power struggles when your strong beliefs have been violated, even in small driving-the-wrong-way ways.

American culture encourages power struggles like that grumpy dad at little league baseball games - the one who just missed making the majors and now deals with his failure by channeling frustration into his child.  He argues every ball and strike, berates the coach if his kid isn't batting third, and generally just robs the atmosphere of fun like a forest fire burns oxygen (and for the record, my dad was never that dad; my dad hated that dad, and was always encouraging even though I was an awful ballplayer).

Maybe this dad doesn't even like being that dad, and he just doesn't know any other way to deal with his frustration.  It's the same with Americans and how we deal with conflict.  I don't think we like power struggles so much as we don't really know how else to resolve things.  It's easier for us to tell kids what to do than to teach them why they should do it; easier to rant and talk at than to listen and talk with; easier to let our emotions do the talking than to channel them first through our minds and hearts.

(I could broaden this point about power struggles to include the American political process, how we approach warfare (see: atomic bomb), or our love of competition in all forms, but I'd rather not today.  It's sunny outside and I'm on vacation, and I don't want to put myself in a bad mood.)

As a teacher I've struggled with how to resolve classroom conflicts: students interrupting, arguing, moping, ignoring me, acting defiant, hitting one another... the list goes on.  I spent most of my first year telling kids how to act, which often involved raising my voice, timeouts, and disapproving stares.  I was initiating power struggles in my classrooms, and I often didn't win.  But even when I would win, I wasn't sure that my kids were actually learning why they should act the way I wanted them to.  It's one thing to show respect, it's another thing to understand its significance.

In May and June I attended weekend-long trainings in Restorative Practices put on by the Center for Restorative Approaches, a division of Neighborhood Housing Services.  Restorative Practices are a thorough and extremely well thought-out set of techniques for relationship building and conflict resolution organized around a few of simple yet brilliant guiding principles, which I'm going to whittle down recklessly for the sake of brevity:

First, that personal relationships form the basis for effective conflict resolution.

Second, that harm done to people creates needs, that those needs must be met in a way that works for everyone involved in order for a conflict to be truly resolved, and that people are the best judges of their own needs.

Third, that non-judgmental communication and active listening are crucial for resolving conflict.  When people hear each others' sides of a story and understand how everyone involved in a conflict was affected, it triggers empathy and opens up the chance for a resolution that's realistic and persistent.

Fourth, restorative practices are voluntary.  If a person does not want to participate in problem solving, then they are subject to whatever forms of punishment, consequences or discipline that are otherwise in place.

In a classroom, that looks like this (highly abridged, but based off of scenarios I've encountered):

Mr. Sam: "Mikey, I noticed that you pushed Chelsea.  Can you tell me what happened?"
Mikey: "She was makin' fun of me so I pushed her!"
Mr. Sam: "And how were you feeling when you pushed her?"
Mikey: "Angry, cuz she was makin' fun of me."
Mr. Sam: "Who did you affect when you pushed Chelsea?"
Mikey: "Her I guess, cuz' she got hurt."
Mr. Sam: "Good.  Was anyone else affected when you pushed Chelsea?"
Mikey: "Maybe the other kids in the class, since they all saw it."
Mr. Sam: "Good.  Chelsea, who did you affect when you teased Mikey?"
Chelsea: "Mikey because he got upset, and you because you have to talk to us now."
Mr. Sam: "Good!  So Chelsea, what do you need to make it right?"
Chelsea: "I want Mikey to pick me a flower from the garden as an apology."
Mr. Sam: "Mikey, does that work for you?"
Mikey: "I guess."
Mr. Sam: "And Mikey, what do you need to make it right?"
Mikey: "I just need Chelsea to know that I get angry when she makes fun of me."
Chelsea: "I'm sorry I made fun of you, I was just teasing and I didn't know it would make you so angry."

Boom.  Done.  No yelling, no punishment, both kids were able to communicate their needs, and both had a way to resolve the conflict in a way that worked for them.  Relationship mended, conflict resolved.  Even better: by saying how their actions affect people the kids are actually learning empathy, a skill that can and should be taught.  Everyone wins, including Mr. Sam.

Using this kind of approach isn't an abdication of responsibility or consequences.  It's a chance for my students to participate in the act of resolving conflicts, rather than just being told how to resolve them.  It's a voluntary process, so if a student refuses to be part of a restorative solution then I revert back to traditional discipline, usually a timeout or a visit with the school disciplinarian.  Usually my students opt to have a say in what happens to them.

Having a process for conflict resolution that also teaches my students empathy is quickly becoming my favorite teaching tool.  It's also really, really hard for me to practice consistently.  In the training our facilitator told us it takes about eight times to learn a habit and about 28 times to unlearn it; I'm up in the 50-something range and I still lose my patience with students constantly.

It's hard to ever really unlearn that kind of behavior for good in a culture that teaches, practices, and even celebrates power struggles.  We make holidays to commemorate the ones we've won and to honor the people that died in the process.  We set off explosions to represent firearms detonating and marvel at their symmetry and sparkle.  Then we go home and make our own explosions using hurt feelings as gunpowder and friends, families, neighbors and strangers as ammunition.

Any time I can keep a student from yelling or crying or fighting it feels like a huge victory.  Long-run I'm hoping my students will have a set of tools to listen, empathize, and work out interpersonal problems.  I'm hoping that someday when their beliefs are violated in some small driving-the-wrong-way way, they'll be able to work through it without creating a power struggle.  Maybe they'll talk it out instead of yelling, since they've learned that yelling can hurt someone's feelings and make it harder for a person to listen.  Or maybe they'll just brush it off since the conflict was small and they'd rather forget about it than risk escalation.  Maybe sometimes they'll still yell or get angry and create situations with winners and losers, but maybe when they calm down and get some space they'll be willing to talk it out.

When we can leave a messy or hurtful situation feeling not only resolved but healed - when everyone can walk away feeling like a winner, or at least not feeling like they've lost - it's like the sky lighting up on the Fourth of July.