Blind, Aggressive Birds

I'm killing time in the Student Center after my class go cancelled. Behind me, a group of students are talking in what can only be secribed as "fighting words." One girl in particular perks my interest.

Her voice radiates among their crowd of peers. Words of gossip, of hardships, of profanity, of passion. There's a rhythm in what she says. Words bounce off each other, even rhyme unintentionally. I could pray to achieve that kind of prose in my writing. It's poetic the way her words flow with a guided beat and structure. She even uses punching alliteration. She puts emphasis on the word "power," making pictures of fists and rebellion soar through my mind. She talks of Belleville and feeling captured. Her friends try to comment, but she's on her soap box, for once having a chance to express herself and to tell her story...and it's beautiful.

My mind only has one thought: This girl needs to write poetry. She would slay in a poetry slam. She is an artist, burdened by her past, made stronger for her future. This saddens me. How many countless others have this ability? This ability to hold people to your every word. This ability to make yourself heard. As the arts are being cut off in school, are we killing the chance girls like this have to become someone who means something, who has something to say? God, I hope not. Girls like should not be silenced.

She's the drum in the movement of change and she doesn't even know it. She just knows that she is imprisoned, and I can see from my seat in the SC that she is being held prisoner by her school, by her city, by her country in a system that doesn't fit her style of learning and growing. She's a blind bird that can only feel she is in a cage. She only knows that she should be soaring. She was meant to fly.

I conclude that everyone is an artist inside. It sounds corny, but maybe we each have an untapped ability like this girl. I need to find a way to utilize and discover the artistry in my future students. If I can do that, I will feel like the world has meaning again. Some people learn through lecture and notes, sure. But girls like this need experiences and situations. They need debate, muses, tools, and context that a traditional classroom could never provide.

She's still preaching behind me. Those beautiful beats and that magnificent flow that could move mountains. If she is ever my student, I will not silence her. I will open her eyes to the good she can do, the people she could change.