I returned to the country in July 2019 following a yearlong sabbatical in Paris and European travel, despite, after the election that preceded my application, my extreme misgivings. I’d been reading a lot of james baldwin, poems by yusef komunyakaa, and was grieving from 20 years of school neighborhood violence and seemingly endless and pointless sacrifices for other people's children, and now the government system had been usurped by a used car salesman. Nonetheless, by the end of my sabbatical there was hope: potentially a new administration and restoration of the larger community devoted to democracy. The extended pandemic threw my efforts into distant space, leaving me without a gravitational pull from any school center or intelligent in-person community. I almost gave up on everything until now-a young student in a middle school where I’d been sent as a substitute asked me to sign his yearbook, remembering how I’d taught him to pronounce his French last name with a proper French accent—and I came back home and remembered who I am.
Sydney C., July 2021