We Made It To School Alive
by Quartez Harris
We Made It To School Alive is a collection of 34 poems by local writer and CMSD school teacher Quartez Harris that covers the arc of an average day in K-12 education in Cleveland, from the first poem, “walk to school,” to the last, “walk from school.”
Every teacher in Cleveland should read it.
For one thing, teachers will find a lot to identify with here. The poem “testing doesn’t tell the whole story” takes the form of a standardized test to show how they dehumanize students and continue the legacy of slavery. Another poem, “what lawmakers really mean when they say ‘high poverty districts,’” uses the voice of a lawmaker to reveal the racism and white supremacy behind such coded language: “their low property taxes are a result of their own undoing.” And the speaker of “on whether i should smile on the first day of school” gets conflicting advice on the subject before concluding “when we, teachers of color, are told not to smile, what we really are being told / is be careful when opening our mouths / because black children will sense fear.”
The book also centers the perspectives of Black students, parents, and administrators to provide a more comprehensive and complex understanding of how, as it says on the back cover, “families of color establish self-worth and optimism in spite of a backdrop of structural barriers.” We hear from parents at parent-teacher conferences. We have a conversation with a school therapist. But most of all we hear and see the students themselves. In “cultural literacy,” students rebel against a broken system: “she asks a room / full of black moons: based on the title / what do they think the story is going to be mostly about? / they shout: / not us… / & light every book in the classroom on fire.” The poem “alive” reveals the students in all their creative, joyful glory: “marshawn stands on his desk; / tries to grab a cloud or two. michelle, kadence / play hide-and-seek under / their desk. / my god, my black students are alive.”
I cannot overstate the importance of this book. From the content of the poems, to the craft of the writing, even to the way it was created—by a local poet writing about local subjects, published by the local Twelve Arts Press, printed by a local printing press—We Made It To School Alive is one of the most meaningful and instantly iconic books of poetry published in Cleveland. Like a day at school (at least in its ideal form), you leave this collection a different person than when you entered, transformed, forever changed.
“we, the sons and daughters of black mothers and fathers
can run out of blood
but we’ll never run out of meaning”
