At President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993 (from Wikimedia Commons)
It was reported
today that Maya Angelou, the first African American female poet laureate in
our nation’s history, keynoted Detroit Public Schools’ first Back-to-School
Teaching and Learning Symposium.
The Free Press
published Dr. Angelou’s speaking fee—$40,000—among other details of the school
system’s federally
funded professional development budget. The reported attendance for this
week’s symposium is 1,800 teachers.
I did not attend the conference, nor do I claim any
expertise on the expenditure of the professional development budget ($21 million for the year;
$1 million spent on this conference).
I just love that this happened.
I remember when Dr. Angelou spoke at Bill Clinton’s
first inauguration in 1993. I only saw it on TV. I was a seven-year-old white
boy. I wasn’t then, nor am I now, particularly quick on the uptake when it
comes to poetry. Even so, I knew immediately that Dr. Angelou personified
something important.
I saw her bring to life something immeasurably good and
powerful. This thing lives inside us, and when awoken, makes us believe in
something we thought impossible. This thing could not be put into words, except
perhaps by her. Fifteen years before so many of us got swept up in hope and
change, Dr. Angelou was hope. She was change.
Among the beautiful
words (seriously, it’s for the best if you just check out the whole thing) she
spoke on that day in 1993 were these:
Lift
up your faces, you have a piercing need
For
this bright morning dawning for you.
History,
despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot
be unlived, and if faced
With
courage, need not be lived again.
Lift
up your eyes upon
The
day breaking for you.
Give
birth again
To
the dream.
Yes. Yes. She said that. She exists. There is precedent. We
can move forward from here, no matter how bleak the here might seem.
Dr. Angelou recited a different poem today in Detroit. This one was
written for and read at an anniversary party for the United Nations. Suffice it
to say, it is also a very good poem. Again, this is a masterpiece and deserves
to be read in its entirety. Yet I have hacked this portion:
We,
this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose
hands can strike with such abandon
That
in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet
those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That
the haughty neck is happy to bow
And
the proud back is glad to bend
Out
of such chaos, of such contradiction
We
learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When
we come to it
We,
this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created
on this earth, of this earth
Have
the power to fashion for this earth
A
climate where every man and every woman
Can
live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without
crippling fear
When
we come to it
We
must confess that we are the possible
We
are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That
is when, and only when
We
come to it.
The lady can write. And she can read aloud the things she
writes. Today, she read about the power that is inside each of us, the power of
each human to give “such healing, irresistible tenderness” to another. She read
that, by doing so, the seemingly unreachable soul can be reached. She read aloud how
to create the miracle that we are all waiting for.
Detroit’s public school teachers will endure countless
challenges with very little in the way of resources or thanks for the next nine
months. But today, they got something that is the best.
There is a lot that interests me about this educators’
symposium. It takes place at the Renaissance Center, an iconic symbol of
Detroit’s accomplishments and failures. It conjures the ongoing debate of who
is to blame for the declining educational achievement in this country and how we
should address it. I would love to know more about the how and the why of the
skills being stressed in its many workshops.
But Maya Angelou spoke. Maya Angelou spoke to 1,800 teachers
at a rate of $22.22 per teacher. Awesome.
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