This already exists, albeit on a small scale. High Tech High is the first example that comes to mind (www.hightechhigh.org/gse/). I believe there are others, but at least this one is worthy of more investigation.

All first half, every little deflection broke City’s way. It gave me a bad feeling. Away from home, if you don’t make your own luck bad things are way more likely to go against you, no matter who you are or who you’re playing.

Such an unbelievably underrated, yet fantastic film. Great performances and ridiculously funny.

Yet, the only way is through. They all have to simply go again, but Slot has to find some short-term solutions to stabilize this slide.

I can’t even imagine using an AI tool for letters of recommendation. The whole reason the kid has asked me to write it has to do with our relationship. Plus, no language predictor is going to sell the strengths of that student like I will, based on our experience together. I simply couldn’t!

Acceptance of handed down tradition and knowledge is preparation, not just for tradition but preservation. The young one intuitively recognizes it as a ritual, a resonant realization of the elder’s mortality, something she definitely wants no part of nor has the tools to articulate.

While the elder wants to show the younger ways, passing down knowledge, understanding, the young want no part of it. Seen as chores, they reject what is being handed down without recognizing all the intangible, deeper opportunities on offer.

“there is no ‘other’ land to arrive in. My work: to imagine.”

And he does.

“I was born mid-migration. I’ve made my home in that motion.”

The motion, call-and-response movement creates a new “land,” the one where the speaker fights freely for what is held dearest. The motion makes meaning.

I wonder about the “Answer: “ but love that it’s left open for us to fill in the blank.

That’s where “our work” begins.

So many beautiful bits, each sentence a punch, swinging at stuff keeping the speaker and “my people” down, calling it out with “my work,” like a jab-refrain left of the colon for the combo-cross from the right.

There is a fearlessness. Aggressive belief in the power of poetry to make a difference.

I’m fascinated by use of smell in poems.

What the daughter thought might be deception is “Smell the way the air changes because of purple and green.” Natural and fragrant, but “change” is what catches. Followed by a promise.

Another two part change, father to daughter, and the “scent of rain.”

The images are so strong. Intimate memories from the speaker, contrasted with the knowns an informed reader brings sharpen the effects. The grades U and S also bring home just how young Jamyla Bolden was, an elementary school child.

The personal quality of the speaker is so strong: the directness to Jamyla, references to the father, but most of all, the familiarity of the place, Ferguson, MO. A place now infamous for violence.

It was no surprise learning Shihab Nye hails from Ferguson, as @thevogelman.bsky.social linked.