Farewell Friday: A Portrait of Beloved Community

On the penultimate Friday night of the school year, I gathered with about 10 colleagues from my school to bid farewell to four beloved members--2 middle school teachers and 2 high school teachers--of the science department. After enjoying some food and socializing, what began as a time of reflecting on the significant contributions of these four teachers blossomed into an amazing time during which words of vulnerability, encouragement and thanksgiving were shared by all of us about each other. Joyful laughter and heartrending tears rang out into the night alternately. Fears, disappointments, admiration, struggles, hopes and appreciation were all shared with great intimacy that night. The significance of what happened that night is profound and I will never forget it.

For over two hours as we either fought back our tears or just let them flow, we heard how these four colleagues, along with the rest of us, had existed as a community that had challenged, supported, encouraged and engaged each other so meaningfully over the past few years. Even though most of us had only worked together for about five years, the tears and heartache expressed that evening reflected a level of intimacy usually only found (if ever) in professional relationships forged over decades. Some people work for 30 years in a profession and never achieve the depth of relationships that I have found with my current colleagues--so how did it come to be this way?

I think that there is something about the sticky mess that is public education (at least at my school) and something about working with kids that provides the conditions necessary to get to that Friday night. How does one deal with a 15 year-old who plans to drop out of school at age 16 by oneself? How does one deal with parental accusations of incompetence by oneself? How does one deal with high stress and low pay (and the commensurate feeling of being undervalued) by oneself? How does one deal with a 16 year-old student who can't pass Algebra I but who plans to become an actuary by oneself? How does one deal with accusations of racist favoritism by oneself? How does one deal with endless bureaucratic procedures--that may actually inhibit student learning--but which seem designed solely to limit litigation, by oneself? How does one deal with the implications of families with means fleeing the school system you work for in favor of private schools by oneself? How does one deal with the interpersonal interactions with 120 adolescents every day for 180 days by oneself? The answer, I think, is that one can't deal with such things by oneself. Survival necessitates community. The bonds between my fellow teachers and me were forged as we worked side-by-side in a profession that demands your heart and soul; we developed an intimate interdependence that enabled us to sustain each other through the emotion-filled and often heart-wrenching highs and lows that are altogether common in teaching.

My colleagues have poured their lives out into their students and their school. They are the smartest, most passionate, most caring, most interesting and sometimes the most discouraged people I have ever met. I am honored to have worked beside them--their self-sacrifice, their commitment to social justice, their concern for helping kids, their innovative and creative pedagogies, their leadership and vision, and their sensitive hearts certainly have made me a better teacher and more importantly, a better person. I was blessed to experience that Friday night with my fellow teachers and dear friends and am even more blessed to have experienced the days, weeks, months and years leading up to it. I am thankful to have participated in and benefited from the building of such an intimate community of adults--to love and be loved so deeply by the people with whom you work is truly a gift.

The Money Quote, Part II

My soon-to-be-departed principal and his wife had a baby a few months ago. Recently he and I were talking about his new job and he said a big reason why he and his wife were excited to go to China was that their child

"would be able to attend good schools there."

While I haven't totally unpacked the significance of an American public school leader feeling like he has to move to China for his daughter to have access to good schools, I can't help but feel a sense of foreboding about it...

4 Principals in 4 Years

A few weeks ago, our principal informed us that he would be leaving our school to become the Middle School Head at an American School in Shanghai. A search committee has been formed to find our next fearless leader. This next principal will be the fourth in four years at my school (the fifth if you count the principal who hired me, but who retired before my first day of school). What does such high turnover say about the being principal at my school?

Education and Technology

Education and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. The theory is that the more adept students are at using technology, the more prepared they will be for finding 21st Century jobs. In education there are people--often called Instructional Technology Consultants or Educational Technology Consultants--who consistently advocate for increasing the use of technology in the classroom. We should not fail to note, however, that an increase in the use of technology in schools necessarily increases the demand for the services these people provide--how nicely that works out for them!

Anyway, it seems to me that schools often blindly follow the advice of these people and embrace technology before understanding what it would take to make that technology educationally relevant for students. Case in point from the NY Times--a recent article about schools and school systems that had issued laptops to all students. These schools are now finding that 1) students are using the laptops for non-educational purposes (online gaming, pornography, hacking into school networks) more than for educational purposes, and 2) these programs are incredibly expensive because of the maintenance required of laptops. Surprise, surprise...

Apparently another use of technology in education is to bribe students to perform well on standardized tests: At Northern High School in Durham, NC, school administrators are offering free iPods to students who score a top score of "4" on the North Carolina State Writing Assessment. Why are they doing this? Apparently many students do not show up for school on the day of this test. Many other students do not try to do their best on this test. Why not? Perhaps because this test doesn't count for a grade. Perhaps because they are tired of all of the standardized testing in North Carolina.

Lunch Duty

For the next two weeks, during my 30-minute lunch break, I have Lunch Duty. This entails sitting on a chair outside of the boys' bathroom next to the cafeteria. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do there--make sure the boys flush after using the urinals? interrogate passers-by? stare intently at 6th graders?--but we've all been told how important it is that we are at our duty stations.

The Money Quote

So subtle, I almost missed it.
From a recent parent email:

"Hopefully, we'll see an improvement in grades. That's the goal and objective."

Interesting...I thought the goal and objective was an improvement in learning.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Three days ago I participated in a meeting for a student who is in our Exceptional Children's (EC) program (i.e., Special Education). The purpose of the meeting was to reevaluate his Individualized Education Plan (IEP). This student is failing all of his core academic classes; he is also receiving D's and F's in his elective classes (something almost as rare at my school as the white rhino). He is enrolled in the lowest levels of each class that we offer at our school for ninth graders including:

• Standard-level Science
• Standard-level History
• Inclusion English (which means there is a special ed teacher in the classroom in addition to the regular teacher)
• Career-track inclusion Math (which means that there is a special ed teacher in this class also and that this math is not a part of the college-prep curriculum accepted by the University of North Carolina)

A sad situation for sure. Now here is where the situation gets even sadder: This student's parent says, "I just want to make sure that he gets through high school so that he can get to college, where things will be easier." Then the Exceptional Children's Coordinator, the student's EC caseworker, his math teacher, and I all look at the mother and nod in agreement. No one says anything.

I hate to be fatalistic, but it seems unlikely that, given this student's performance so far in high school, that college will be an option. But there is this idea out there that all kids should go to college, or at least have the option of going to college. The President says it, Senators say it, educators say it, parents want to believe it, kids believe it. But the reality is that not all kids will have the option of going to college, and perhaps--although this may be educational heresy--not all kids should.

My school really offers no vocational options to students. As an arts magnet school, we basically offer the college prep curriculum and an abundance of art electives. How is the student mentioned above being served by my school? It doesn't appear that he will become an artist (given his performance and interest in his arts classes) and the academic work is killing him. Even if he is able to graduate in 5 years after repeating the ninth grade, what will he be prepared to do? How will the classes he will have taken--World History, Physical Science and Earth Science, Spanish 1, Career Math, Clay 1--prepare him to be a self-sufficient and contributing member of society?

The fact is that we (educators) don't want to tell people that they should begin thinking of options other than college prep--such as vocational programs--and parents and students wouldn't want to hear it even if we said it. But it seems that at some point as a society we need to pull our heads out of the sand, realize that perhaps college is not for everybody, and consider the possibility that there's nothing wrong with that.