PTSAPID

I had a hard time sleeping last week. Something about being locked up in an elementary school while men with guns roamed the neighborhood kept me agitated and awake. While the experience was not that different in process from a rainy day recess, it was still a difficult way to start the year. Teachers I work with reported feeling the same way for the rest of the week. The anxiety that already exists at the beginning of any school year was magnified exponentially by putting us all in the most extreme conditions without the benefit of a fire drill to prepare us. Happily, all the staff and kids made their way back the very next day, and those who didn't make it until the third day of school now feel somehow cheated, having missed all the excitement.
And somewhere in there, the news came down that our little school in East Oakland had just become a "good school." At least that's what our Academic Performance Index tells us. We finally scored above eight hundred, and we can now say with certitude that we work at a "good school." At the end of that long week, a number of us went out to a local pub and celebrated the beginning of another school year. It's one of the things that makes it possible for us to do the things we do. I hoisted a couple of root beers to the potential that exists at the start of any new enterprise, and welcomed the challenges. I toasted the somewhat arbitrary eight hundred and two points in our API, and wondered aloud if we could continue the slow climb toward that illusory moment when all our kids are above average, just like Lake Wobegon.
This question was quickly shouted down as I realized that the next day was really the thing that mattered, and the next year would take care of itself. It was the end of another week. A very long week indeed.