Classrooms as a social activity

Reb1rth is not some scribbled dead sea scroll markered on a particle board school desk in first period. It is the student from second period who considers what has been written so that it saturates her understanding of geometrical theorems, of Chaucer, of the Trail of Tears and women burning in shirtwaist factories. A word that means practically nothing but connects her to some sleepy and irritated boy with blaring headphones in  a way he will never consider. A boy who sniffs fumes from the permanent marker, black, which he used to lazily scribe the capital letters and number 1 in place of i.