Quartez Harris wants people who read his book, We Made It to School Alive, to walk away hopeful for a brighter future for Cleveland’s children and schools. 

This book of poems, published in 2020, was his way of reflecting on his six years as a second-grade teacher in Cleveland. The stories are drawn from real experiences and conversations he had with students and parents, he said. They illustrate the conditions he saw in urban schools. 

“I absolutely felt like this is my way of writing their humanity into the world,” Harris said.  “And ultimately, I just wanted people to be sensitive to the plight that they were living through.”

Harris taught second grade from 2016 to 2021. Five of those years were with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, at a school in Glenville. 

He was named 2021 Poet of the Year by the Ohio Poetry Association.

Harris will be at Loganberry Books (13015 Larchmere Blvd. in Shaker Heights) on Sunday to read some new poems from the book, promote a re-release and talk about his work as part of the Rebel Readers’ February book discussion. 

Signal Cleveland met with Harris to talk about We Made It to School Alive, and about his teaching and writing career in Cleveland. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you write this book? 

I was appalled by how old the school building was. That it lacked central air, that it didn’t feel brand new, it didn’t feel modern. It felt dilapidated. So I was very sensitive about the conditions of the school. 

It started through that concern, but also all the environmental concerns. I mean, I was in Glenville, so I’m thinking about how my kids come from poverty-stricken economic backgrounds. I’m thinking through the gun violence that is really born out of poverty. I think about all these non-academic barriers that are impacting my kids before they come to school and how it also translates into their day-to-day school activity. So I was just thinking about all the things that kids go through to get to school and what they have to return to. [Writing] was my way to just sort of unravel and think through and study my feelings. 

Why did you choose this title? 

There was a student who came to me after school, and he said, “Mr. Harris, can you call my mom to have her pick me up?” 

And I said, “Yes, that’s fine. But you generally walk home.” 

He said, “I do. But I always hear gunshots.” 

That was the early essence of this book. I felt like, all right, there’s this kid who I personally felt was fearless, and he seems just unconcerned throughout our school day, but now he’s vulnerable. And at that point, I’m like, wow, this is a concern you have at eight years old? 

A lot of these poems are really just poems that young people, parents had their concerns or stories they confided in me. 

Like the poem “Parent Teacher Conference,” there’s a line that says, “I would have carried a pistol for this conference, but the school seems cool.” A parent actually said that. Why would he feel the sense that he needed to protect himself in that way in a school environment? 

It certainly was an uncomfortable book to write. And reading it is still unnerving and still uncomfortable because these are realities that have been reflected through my poems. But that doesn’t make it any easier to read them. It’s sad to me that I feel the need to write them. 

The book seems to have a deeper theme of violence and survival. Can you talk about that? 

There are poems, such as a poem where I talk about the parent who basically says: we don’t have much but we have a three-bedroom apartment with books as amenities. Like literature being a form of survival. 

Then there’s a kid hopping through chalk outlines, which is the contrast of, yes, this world is terrifying, but it absolutely can also be beautiful. 

So there’s this throughline of hopefulness. 

I have a poem where I describe a parent who is trying to imagine his child in this new school system that he dropped out of. And he’s hoping that [his child] doesn’t have to face the things he faced. That he can actually graduate. That he can actually see beyond the school building, see beyond the conditions of schools. He can swim in Lake Erie. 

So, there is definitely a sense of survival as a mode of just trying to invent a world that may not necessarily be present, but certainly a world that can be imagined. 

That’s why I use a lot of magical realism. Just sort of this magic that we create through our hopefulness. Like, kids, they swim through a canal of stars. A Hula Hoop circles the projects. Kids jump into bean bags as if they are plastic pools. There’s still this sense of sparkle of joy. 

Why did you leave teaching? And what’s next for you?  

I didn’t want to leave teaching. At the time, my literary agent said, “You redirect the paths of young people every day in the classroom, but I certainly think it’s time to do it through books.” And to my surprise, I was offered a major book deal. So I felt that I owed it to myself to give myself the attention that my writing deserves. So I stepped away, truthfully to just focus on my projects that are forthcoming.

These books certainly are dear to me, and I can’t wait until my publisher reveals what I’ve been up to. And then we could talk more about that when Publishers Weekly makes an announcement. 

The first book is going to highlight incidents of racial conflict. The second book will absolutely work around themes that have to do with students in school. The [third] book is still being written.

What should people look forward to at Sunday’s event?

I think they should look forward to vulnerability. I mean, these are hard themes, and they’re real themes. I also think people should look for a sense of possibilities. The themes in my book are very hard, but I feel like, if anything, they write awareness into the world. I think people can look forward to dreaming of more possibilities for kids who are in public schools.