That was a lot of fun, our time together building The Bridge of American Dreams. Word of what we were creating spread to college campuses and drew alumni back home to help us with promotion. While my high school students were in the park putting the bridge together, these grads were gathered in a coffee shop making plans to display it on their respective campuses. None of the college students had ever worked on the bridge. They were my students before the bridge was conceived. Their junior friends were talking is all.
You might remember, this was 2015.
It is to those college students I owe the first apology. They saw in the bridge's symbolic richness a platform from which they might sound their voices. Expecting a grand unveiling, they got, instead, a series of delays as I hemmed and hawed, keeping them at bay.
What looked like inefficacy on my part was actually a strategy to keep my job.
I had been warned by the top dog himself to keep politics out of the project. None of you was aware that the superintendent had put his boot across my throat as a means of doing just that. Politicizing our Bridge of American Dreams would constitute insubordination from me. That is grounds for firing.
My need for self-preservation trumped collegiate idealism. Politics found its way onto the bridge, anyway. It came from the political right. This was my first encounter with the Trumpian mindset. What was intended as a universal symbol of American opportunity was shrunk into a representation of the U.S.southern border.
The superintendent told me repeatedly the bridge had no merit, that it was only an activity without educational value. Apparently, he saw it as a threat to his political idealogy. He must have looked at the bridge solely through his political eye and saw nothing more than an open invitation to cross that border, particularly with the majority of our district's population being of Hispanic heritage.
Meanwhile, he took the stance the bridge belonged to the district because it was constructed on school grounds with school tools. I explained to him that I had purchased all of the materials with my own money and that many of the students wanted to keep their panels. Neither argument swayed him, the bridge belonged to the school district.
Eventually, we did display our bridge on a college campus, at our local community college where many of you may still be taking classes. We had an opening night presentation on February 3, 2016. Some of you were there with your families. The college threw us a party. I owe this college an apology, too. They were set and willing to display the bridge for six weeks. The college president and his staff were as unaware of my predicament as were the students. They must have been surprised to see me dismantling our bridge after only a week's display. I do not know if they were aware that the superintendent of the high schools from which the college drew most of its students wanted the bridge displayed for only two weeks and then never again....
A Letter for My Students
Click on any of the images except those of Trump to land somewhere on the Bridge of American Dreams. This panel right here will take you to our Home Page
The Importance of Spelling or a Lesson on Homophones
Nancy prays
Donald preys
My Bitch
Michael Collins: Moving the Name From Political Revolutionary to Consciousness Evolutionary. Click here or on Unity to elevate your own consciousness.
Michael Kuznewski, name deliberately misspelled so a Google search will provide for him more favorable results. He still has many qualities and skills to offer a school district was the school superintendent intent on first inhibiting student expression and later confiscating their work in pursuit of his own political interests.
