As we find ourselves careening into the dystopian unreality of this presidential election, I’m scouring the creative landscape with a survivalists instincts to understand the forces driving the chaos of what’s unfolding, I had the good fortune to see a music video release Our Love is a Garden from a new album Hope & Sorrow by Wilder Adkins. Directed by Marcus Tortorici and edited by a colleague, Heather Danosky, I was struck by the perspective these three millennials shared in their collaboration and it gave me a glimpse into some of the attitudes that are part of the undercurrent of social and political upheaval. It’s a beautiful song and the video is an exceptional visualization, suffused with an aura of the incomprehensible swirling around us. Wilder’s song is about the garden, in a biblical sense, but Tortorici tells us the visual story of a pair of lovers who come to this “garden” without the experience of innocence, while the lyrics speak an older language of love’s fragile nature, and how difficult it is to travel together through the landscape of union and life.

Something about the song and the visuals made me ask them how they felt about the world around them, what they see in the news, in the forces and velocity of what’s being released upon us. Heather stated very simply that she was terrified, and had no idea where her life’s trajectory would take her. Marcus shared the feeling of how hard it is to connect with people because there’s such a pervasive attitude of protectiveness and caution. It felt to him like people withhold their real or vulnerable selves and are disconnected from the very idea of it. Wilder told me he keeps the tools of his craft small and close at hand so he doesn’t need much in the way of resources to express himself. All three of them shared a similar sense of mistrust and confusion as to where all of these chaotically unfolding events would take them.

Although all three are at the point where their creative energies are propelling them into the lives they’re meant to have, they talked about not being able to see around the next corner. They expressed difficulty in having expectations about the future. The more they explained the feelings that lead them to the music and the visual interpretation, the more I was struck by how familiar this emotional landscape seemed. I was staring into an experience I’ve seen from a different perspective and I recognized the face of my son, of this age, which instantly propelled me into his life.

Born at the dawn of the internet, growing up in Los Angeles, at first in a gentle life. He had neighborhood friends, bikes, and skateboards, accented by video games, swimming parties, roller coasters, and birthday parties. One afternoon the city erupted in flames from the immense injustice of the Rodney King verdict and the ’92 riots unfolded. We lived close enough to be inundated in the smoke and sirens and we watched the steady stream of images from inside our home, unsettling and traumatic. Then early one morning the house began to shake so hard it felt as though it was ripping apart and the ceiling of our bedroom opened up to a dark sky while our house filled with dust. It was a long time before the shaking faded into his memories while the weave of his family was pulled loose in divorce.

Before long, the house, the pool, and the neighborhood were gone and his life in Brooklyn began. Then the World Trade Center Towers came down, 20 blocks from his school. A door opened in his bedroom, with the beginnings of social media and YouTube. The images of change and upheaval were no longer witnessed in the newspaper or on the family TV, he discovered them in the dark, often alone, as we invaded Iraq and the deluge of destruction poured in through a wire. During his college years, he began to see my life change. The f company I created deteriorated with incredible speed when the recession took hold. There was a brilliant flash of hope as Barack Obama was elected President, but the unraveling continued. He made his way home from school as we moved from our house. My company closed. We moved again, and again until finally there was no more room for him. I pushed him out as he transformed into his adult self and the world he entered was not one of promise and potential, but shaped by limitations and scarcity with hope in short supply.

He is a cautious and wary young man, creative and soft spoken. He can erupt in joy and laughter, but it’s always tempered. There’s little room for reckless abandon in a world of frequent change and unexpected loss. These children of ours having grown up in a hyper internet connected world have seen and experienced so much more than I did. They possess the tentative sensibilities of those who have experienced first hand, this unstable, dramatically changing world from the wide-eyed vantage point of a child.

While watching the groundswell of political activism within the ranks of these children of the unraveling, suddenly the notion that so many of them would passionately support an experienced and wizened veteran senator instead of youthful vigor as the embodiment of their hopes and dreams, doesn’t seem as incongruous as it did prior to the simple act of experiencing this song and video. Although this vision of the garden with its absence of innocence conjured a series of dark, complex and difficult memories for me, it left me feeling hopeful. They took the dreams and recollections of their experiences and transformed them into something quite beautiful. The capacity to find and feel love remains and it will be interesting to see what they weave out of it.

Our Love Is a Garden from Marcus Tortorici on Vimeo.

Source: Michael Elliot

I graduated from high school as a failed student. When I describe the state of my education from that time I borrow a line from the Woody Allen film Love and Death because “I couldn’t write my name in the ground with a stick.” Now I could tell a story about all the teachers who let me down, which is something I hear all the time at hearings from people speaking up for high standards, common core and the test prep factories of charter schools. They talk about their resentment at arriving in college unprepared, with deficient skills and in need of remediation. But I’m not going to tell that story.

I grew up with a constellation of learning disabilities and was labeled an underachiever in the third grade. In reality, given my resistance, my inattentiveness, my issues with executive function which dog me to this day, I was unteachable. Many will say that’s an impossibility, but to this day, nothing has ever convinced me that I was present and able to be educated beyond what I was willing to take in. The expectations of school were all avoidance for me. I simply saw no value in it and I couldn’t marshal the personal resources to force myself to fit in.

One afternoon, in ninth grade, I was stranded at school because I missed the bus home, and I was waiting for a ride with a friend. He was on the stage crew for The Sound of Music, the spring musical that was being staged at school. He asked me to tag along and help him, so I did. I was small so I could hide under the stage of the outdoor amphitheater, and when the lights went down I’d race out to place props and move sets around. I had a lot of fun doing this, it was exciting, with the music, the singing and everyone taking it all very seriously. At the end of the night I was standing up on the stage waiting for my friend to drive me home when a teacher, Eileen Daniel Riddle walked up to me and asked what I was doing. I mumbled something about waiting for my ride, and she looked at me, then walked away. Moments later she came back with a broom and handing it to me, asked if I would sweep the stage.

She handed me a broom.

From that night on I worked on every play until I graduated. I rarely had time to hang out with my old friends who spent their time rearranging their body chemistry on a molecular level. I couldn’t get enough theater. I had never seen a professional production; I had no aspirations of being involved in theater. I just loved the connection, and belonging to something bigger than myself. I loved building sets, hanging lights, moving flats, and everything that had anything to do with putting on plays and musicals. Fortunately for me, I went to a school that could provide the experience of mounting theatrical productions four or five times a year. My life revolved around that schedule. Eileen was a tough taskmaster and the expectations were high, but she nurtured the desire in me and gave my life shape. That desire propelled me into college, because it was the only place where I could continue working in the community of theater. Once in college I learned to write because I needed the skills in order to develop a real grasp of how stories are told, how the design of a production is lifted from the pages of a script, and how to analyze the themes, the plot, the characters and demands needed to transform a play on paper into a production on a stage, or in a film.

I had a teacher in high school who handed me a broom and in doing so, inspired me to harness my intelligence to service my passion. She was a dedicated high school Theater Arts teacher, and she saved my life. This is what I take away from my failed educational experience, immense gratitude for a teacher who showed me something I’d never seen before, and it became the guiding force in my life.

We live in a time where the teaching profession is so maligned and education budgets have been stripped bare. The Arts have been eliminated in favor of a dirt dry, common core aligned test prep curriculum. So in order to remind parents about the need for solid creative programs in public education and in gratitude to teachers who give so much to our kids, in November I’m shooting a short documentary, interviewing former students and their mentor teachers about the ways in which teachers impact the lives of their students. I’m offering a group of adults the chance to thank the teacher who had such a powerful influence on the shape of their life, and share the story of how it unfolded. Over the years so many people have told me stories about a teacher who changed their life. It may not be the idealized version of some teacher we dream of for our children. For me, this was a tough relationship, born of adversity and failure, where I was lucky enough to encounter a teacher who could meet me where I was, without judgment, but with the inspiration that I needed. All it took was one. If you have a story, and want to share it with that former teacher, visit my Facebook page, Shoot4Education and leave me a message.

Follow Michael Elliot on Twitter: www.twitter.com/shoot4education

Bronx Middle School Principal, Jamaal Bowman spoke before Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force at The College of New Rochelle in New York on Oct 29. Beginning with his own personal dilemma over choosing a school for his own daughter, Mr. Bowman laid out a vision of what education should be and isn’t under the pressures of the federal mandates associated with NCLB and Race to the Top. This past week the NAEP scores (National Assessment of Educational Progress) were released, revealing significant weaknesses after many years of high stakes testing and educational reform initiatives. The NAEP results reflect the apprehension Mr. Bowman, and many teachers and parents have expressed. The reforms are costly, disruptive and lack any research or evidence to back up the results promised.

Principal Bowman makes the case to the Task Force that if we honestly want to raise student achievement, lower the achievement gap, or the opportunity gap as he calls it and prepare students to meet their future challenges; we need to begin by focusing with great emphasis on birth to 8 years old. Bowman offers up a vision for public education, evidenced by the practices at his CASA Middle School, that is more humane, more intimate and more closely aligned to the needs of students, the strengths of teachers and the innate brilliance in all our kids. Jamaal Bowman knows his kids and with the research to back up his approach, he makes it clear that by empowering teachers and inspiring children toward their passions, in an atmosphere that embraces our diversity, we have the capacity to realize the goals that the current reforms are failing to produce.