What I Got

The first time I brought Nina Simone into the classroom was with first-grade students in a District 75 (special education) school in Spanish Harlem. It was in the winter of 2000. There were nine students in one of my classes with different emotional and behavioral challenges. There was one student in particular who stole my attention. The hems of his pants were just above his ankles. His sneakers were gray rather than the white they had been and were a size or more bigger than his feet. He dragged his feet more than he walked with them. His name was Jesus.

Jesus spent most of his time quiet. He didn’t socialize with the other students. He looked around the room with his thick glasses that accentuated his thick, dark lashes and eyebrows. He didn’t raise his hand to answer any of my questions and did not join the other students when they got rowdy. If a fight broke out, he did not get up or move away. He didn’t start fights and from what I could witness, no one started fights with him.

I asked the teacher if she had any feedback for me or suggestions to get the students to write. . . . she told me, “Music, they like music.”

This was a tough residency. Students struggled with connecting letter sounds to letters and their spelling, and I struggled to keep their attention for longer than five minutes. The teacher and I managed to go around the room and work individually with some students, but their poems reflected their disinterest. Lessons that had worked in other residencies were not working in this classroom. And Jesus did not respond at all. “Blue is the color of. . . .” I asked him to tell me all the things that are blue (based on a lesson by Kenneth Koch). He looked at his desk. He did not look sad or angry. He looked at me. Then at the board. “Jesus,” I told him, “look at the water on the map. The oceans are blue. Do you want to start with that?” He blinked a lot but did not respond. The teacher then shared with me that Jesus, his three siblings, mom and dad were living in a shelter.

During that visit I asked the teacher if she had any feedback for me or suggestions to get the students to write. She said she’d give it some thought. As I was walking out the door, she told me, “Music, they like music.”

The weekend following that class I listened to a greatest hits Nina Simone album. I had fallen in love with Nina when I was first introduced to her during my freshman year in college. And then one song made me think of Jesus and the other students in the class. Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life.” Most of the students in this class lived below the poverty line. I came from a similar community. I identified with them. There were a lot of things that I did not have growing up. There were a lot of things that my students did not have. I didn’t have fancy clothes, a house, or phone at home. I didn’t have my own bed. I shared a twin bed with my older sister until I was 13. In Nina Simone’s song, Nina celebrates what we don’t have and then takes us on a joyous train of all the things we have that no one can take away from us. This song, with its fast pace, its repetition and deep voice opened a path for me to teach poetry and for the students to respond from the heart. Here are the lyrics:

Ain’t Got No (I Got Life)
By Nina Simone

I ain’t got no home, ain’t got no shoes
Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no class
Ain’t got no skirts, ain’t got no sweater
Ain’t got no perfume, ain’t got no bed
Ain’t got no mind
Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture
Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schooling
Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name
Ain’t got no ticket, ain’t got no token
Ain’t got no God

And what have I got?
Why am I alive anyway?
Yeah, what have I got
Nobody can take away?

Got my hair, got my head
Got my brains, got my ears
Got my eyes, got my nose
Got my mouth, I got my smile
I got my tongue, got my chin
Got my neck, got my boobs*
Got my heart, got my soul
Got my back, I got my sex*

I got my arms, got my hands
Got my fingers, got my legs
Got my feet, got my toes
Got my liver, got my blood

I’ve got life, I’ve got my freedom
I’ve got the life

I’ve got the life
And I’m gonna keep it
I’ve got the life
And nobody’s gonna take it away
I’ve got the life.

*When working with young children, I may omit these lines depending on the school administration’s discretion.

The next time I met with the students, I brought in a small boom box that I bought especially for this class. I talked briefly about blues and jazz music. How a blues song usually began with something sad, but then by the end there is an uplifting feeling. I was relatively new to teaching and bringing anything new made me nervous. I had no idea how my students would react to this song.

I put the CD in. The most beautiful thing happened. My eyes still get watery remembering this. Jesus got up and began to dance. Not a silly dance to make others laugh. No, it was a dance from the heart. He came towards me and held my hands so that I could dance with him. The other students got up, too, and danced, laughing and liking the music. When the song finished, they asked me to play it again. They didn’t believe me when I told them that Nina was a woman. 

They insisted she was a man. We listened to the song again. We then proceeded to talk about the lyrics.

I had all of their attention for the first time.

The assignment: To write a poem about the things that they have and then what they don’t have, similar to Nina. To get students to write with more details, I asked them to write about what they do with the things they do have. We wrote a collaborative poem first that served as a model.

Student samples:

I ain’t got a gold crown, but I got ears to hear my mom say, “you are my king.”

I ain’t got a mom with me, but I got my grandma who cooks bacalaitos for me when I get home from school.

I ain’t got a car, but I got hands to dribble my basketball and shoot it for three points.

I ain’t got a fancy dress, but I got crayons to draw and color a fancy red dress.

I have since used this lesson in almost every poetry residency. Most students love the song. Teachers love the poems the students write. One principal was presently surprised to hear her first graders talk so eloquently about Nina Simone.

I thank Nina Simone for every poem that she has inspired my students to write. I thank her for celebrating the downs in life and then picking us up to dance the things that can never be taken from us—our freedom, our life.

I will forever be thankful to Nina Simone for inspiring Jesus to hold my hand to dance and for writing his first poem.

Featured photo courtesy of Nationaal Archief.