Commentary by Nicole Hefner, Teaching Artist for Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Language Lecturer at New York University
For the past decade I’ve taught poetry to children with moderate to severe learning and mental disabilities in the New York Public Schools. Spring after spring, armed with little more than a bottle of water and a healthy stash of yellow #2’s, I’ve entered the classroom. My work with these students has never stopped satisfying me on the truest and deepest levels. I visit; we write poems (almost always through dictation) and then the students trace, squiggle or have the help of hand-over-hand with a paraprofessional or teacher onto their own paper, making the poem more fully their own. At the end of the term, the poems are compiled and distributed in an anthology; cake is eaten and we wish our summer farewells, bidding all goodness until spring—and poetry!—comes again.
This past May, however, my heart broke a little. I should say I’ve been at one particular school in Staten Island for all of my teaching artist years. My relationship with the staff is extremely rewarding, matched only by my relationship with the students. One particular young woman, I’ll call her S., now 20 (students remain in New York’s special education system until they’re 21), has been in my class for five of the past six years, and so, I was especially happy to see her when I walked into her third floor classroom. Ms. Poetry, another student yelled, and although S. did look up at me she did so with little recognition. After a bit, she broke into a smile. Oh, she said with an overly dramatic hit to her forehead. Now I remember you.
But I could tell she didn’t. Not at first, anyway, and then only in pieces. I was okay with that; maybe I looked different, I reasoned, and hmm, I thought to myself, I did seem to remember her having trouble with vision. But poetry! I said (surely too loudly). Of course, you remember poetry! There were other students in the room who I’d also taught for a number of years. I looked around at the silence. I said again. Langston Hughes? Dreams? For the love of cake, somebody’s got to remember poetry. I smiled and looked at the teacher who shrugged sympathetically. S? I said (at this point I was flapping birdlike and pacing the linoleum). You know poetry. We do it every spring. You love it.
Again, the gesture: the palm to the forehead. Oh, now I remember, she said.
The light through the high windows held the dust in the air, and we moved on; we had to. There was only just enough time to get a poem written. At the end of our spring together, the poems were as beautiful and powerful as they have been in past years, and, yes, S. seemed to love poetry every bit as much as she always had, but I had changed.
When I first started teaching children with disabilities, I had a conversation in the school cafeteria with a teacher who was a thirty-year veteran. You have to change all of your expectations, she told me. Maybe, she said and pointed in the direction of a nonverbal 19 year-old, huge and burly and wild-eyed, who sat rocking and chewing on his hand as those with autism sometimes do to feel the stimulation. Maybe, today, he will hold a pencil in his hand. Maybe, he won’t. You have to love them for what they can do; you have to get them to do what they can do.
I fear sometimes in the quest of being dynamic teaching artists we get so wrapped up in the art that we forget how real the students are. Our final products with their perfect-bound spines and their color covers may sit untouched on bookshelves for years as the very students who created them can’t even read them. So intent are we on guiding the students to compose wildly imaginative poems and funky abstract paintings, we neglect their pain and frustration; we overlook their illness. Perhaps—and this may sound extreme—we go so far as to de-humanize them in the service of art.
But maybe that’s the only way to do it. In buildings filled with nurses and wheelchairs, physical therapists and defibrillators, maybe it’s best that I not know if S.’s cognitive abilities are slipping or if they will continue to slip. Maybe, all I can bring is the poetry and bring it how I’ve always brought it: in the moment, in the lovely, wild moment of connection that those spring afternoons grant us.
I’m reminded, finally, of a story Brad Lewis told the other night as we sat in on a round-table discussion about health and wellness with a group of NYU students—all of whom, brimming over with newly-discovered knowledge and wild hope for the future, are right around S.’s age. The story was of the Buddhist monk and the goblet. “You see this goblet?” The Buddhist said. “For me, it is already broken,” and he lifted it to the sky and, then he drank from it. I imagine the water was sweet and cold but even if it was bitter I am certain that it was exactly what he needed.
译文:
S.的故事：教智障儿童学诗
注：作者
Nicole Hefner，《教师与作家的合作性》的教学艺术家，任纽约大学语言讲师 这过去的十年里，我在纽约公立的中小学校，教那些患有中度认知缺陷和智力残缺的学生们。过了一春又一春，我走进教室的时候，我的全副武装不过是一瓶水，和一张黄色的等级为2的健康证明。教这些学生的过程中间，所产生的效果，一次又一次使我得到真正的、深切的满足。我走进教室；我们写下一首首诗（几乎总是用口述），随后，学生们随着我们的口述，把诗写在他们自己的纸上，有的是学生自己用花体字写下来的，有的是学生在专职辅助人员、或老师们手把手地握着的情况下写下来的，他们把这首诗完全写成了自己的诗。在学期的结束，这些诗都会被重新编排，出成一本诗集；吃完了蛋糕，我们在相互的祝福中离别在夏季，互道珍重，直至春天——还有诗！——再度返回。
而在这刚刚过去的三月份，我确有一些伤心。应该说明的是，我教授艺术的这些年，都是在史坦顿岛的一个特殊学校渡过的。我和这所学校里的员工们，建立了极其良好的合作关系，只有我的那些学生们和我之间的默契，可与之相并论。在我的学生中间，有一个特殊的年轻女子，我称她为 S.，S.今年20岁（纽约特殊教育系统中的学生们需要到21岁方才毕业），在过去的六年里，她曾有五年的时间在我的班级上过课，因此，我走进她所在的、位于教学楼第三层的教室时，非常高兴能见到她。诗女士，另一个学生这样叫起来，而 S.，尽管确实抬头看了看我，却并没有完全认出我是谁。过了一会儿，她的脸上展露了笑容。哦，她极富戏剧性地伸手拍一下额头，说。现在我想起你来了。
可我认为她还是没有认出我。无论如何，并非是立刻认出来的，随后她也并没有完全想起我是谁。对此我可以接受；或者是因为我看上去不同以往了，我作出这样合理的解释，而且嗯，我心里想，我似乎记起，她在视觉方面有些缺陷。但是诗！我说（当然是小声说着）。无疑，你想起来的是诗！在这教室里，还有其他学生是我这些年里曾经教过的。我环视这些安静地坐着的学生。我又说。兰斯顿·休斯？梦想？（此处译者注：兰斯顿·休斯(1902—1967)在美国文坛,尤其是黑人文学方面,是一个举足轻重的人物。1960年代黑人领袖马丁·路德·金那篇流传至今、脍炙人口的《我有个梦想》跟休斯的关于“梦想”的诗歌有直接的联系。）为了那些可爱的蛋糕，会有人记得诗。我笑着看看那个同情地耸耸肩膀的老师。S？我问（在时，我象鸟儿一样拍动着双臂，在这亚麻布的地毯上踱来踱去）。你知道我说的诗。我们每个春天都作诗。你喜爱诗。
再一次，S.作出了这一姿势：用手掌拍拍额头。哦，现在我想起来了，她说。
从高处的窗户透进来的阳光，照亮了飞舞在空中的灰尘，我们的课程继续进行；我们必须要接着讲课。所剩的时间已经有限，仅够写出一首诗。在我们所共同渡过的这个春天，行将远去的时候，我们写下的这些诗，如同过去的这些年里所作的那些诗一样，美丽而震撼，而且，当然， S. 看上去如同她一贯的那样，还是那么地爱着诗，然而我却变了。
我最初教这些智障的孩子们的时候，曾在学校的自助餐厅里，同一个富有三十年教学经验的老师，进行过一次谈话。你必须要改变你所有的期盼，她告诉我。或许，她说着，指向一个沉默的19岁的孩子，后者身材健硕魁梧，眼中露出狂乱的目光，他坐在那里不住地摇动着身体，咬着手，如同那些孤独症的患者一样，他们有时需要以这样的动作，来感受到刺激。或许，今天，他会将一只铅笔握进手里。或许，他不可能拿起笔。你应当为他们能做到那些力所能及的事情，而爱着他们；你应当引导他们去做自己力所能及的事情。
我担心，有些时候，我们这些活力教学艺术家，在致力于做好本职工作的同时，会由于太专注于艺术本身，而忽略了学生们真正的自我。我们在教学过程中最终完成的那些诗作，它们装订华美，带有彩色封面，而这些书，这些年来，由于作出这些诗的学生们根本不能阅读，因而一直无人问津地放在书架上。我们太侧重于指导学生们，把他们肆意的想象写成诗歌，画成没有章法的抽象画，因而我们忽视了他们的痛苦感和挫败感；我们忽视了他们的病症。或许——这种说法听起来非常极端——我们为了艺术走得太远了，以至于使他们失去了个性。
但这也许是唯一的做法。在这满是看护和轮椅的建筑里，到处都是物理治疗学家和电击去纤颤器，也许这是最好的办法，有了它，我就不能知道，S.的认知能力，是正在衰退，而是将会逐步衰退。也许，我唯一能带来的就是诗，并且如我曾经一贯所做的那样：在那些春天的下午所授予我们的一个个时刻，在那些可爱的、容我们彼此肆意接触的时刻，我把诗带到了这里。
最终，我记起了一则故事，布瑞德·刘易斯曾在另一个夜晚讲过的故事，那时我们围坐在一个圆桌前，同一群纽约大学的学生们，讨论着健康和美好——这些在坐的学生身上，对于将来，全部都洋溢着追寻新知的渴望，还有热切的向往，他们的年龄都与S.相当。这则故事是关于一个佛教僧人和一个酒杯的故事。“看到这只酒杯了吗？”佛教徒说。“在我看来，它已经打碎了，”他把酒杯抛向空中，然后喝着洒下的酒。在我的想象中，那酒是甜的，凉的，但即使它是苦的，我也相信，同样可以满足他的需要。