Doors

 The name of my school is Horace Mann Elementary. You may not have heard of it. Or maybe you're aware of all the schools across the United States named after the man who is considered to be the Father Of Public Education. Or maybe you have heard of it because it is a school in Oakland being considered for "consolidation (closure)." That last little bit of excessive punctuation is there to show that the way the Oakland Unified School District is informing the public is not mine. Rather than having meetings with the families affected, a form letter was loaded into a newsletter app and sent out to everyone on a list. A list of thirteen schools.

Thirteen communities. Hundreds and hundreds of families. Thousands of children. Families that have spent their lives connected to their neighborhood school. Their public school. The focus of the district's reasoning for closing these neighborhood schools, these community centers, is one of "revenue." As anyone in public education is painfully aware, the amount of money a school gets each year is determined by the number of students it is able to put in their seats. This is why we have an attendance team at our school, one that tries to figure out ways to get all the kids who are registered at our school into those seats every day. That's how our yearly budget is determined. For the coming year. The budget that has seen our principal scrimp and save and move money around to find ways to bring the best possible education delivered by the best possible staff to the kids in those seats.

And now might be a good time to mention the global pandemic. Into this mix of uncertainty, public schools have struggled to maintain that Average Daily Attendance while schools closed for in-person instruction. That was back in March of 2020. Since then schools, families and communities have sought out ways to recreate "normal" learning conditions. With a return to classrooms this past fall, this effort has been surprisingly effective, with air purifiers and hand sanitizing stations and a nearly constant refrain of "pull your mask up." Not just at Horace Mann. Not just at the thirteen schools on that list. But every school in the city. 

During this time, we have kept our After School programs running. Through creative budgeting and grants, we have been able to supplement our regular day with art and music and dance, relative luxuries in an era of cutbacks. Moving forward, it is our commitment to our community to continue to give our students the best possible educational experience we can. At the same time, we are tasked with this list. This list that suggests our job is also to figure out a way to bring enough children through our doors to keep them from being locked and closed. Forever. 

I wonder if this is what Horace Mann had in mind when he championed the idea of public school nearly two hundred years ago. I wonder if he expected teachers and administrators to have to justify the existence of their communities. These are not schools they want to close. They are communities. 

Psychiatric Help Five Cents

 Depressed? Not sure you can go on in this maelstrom of bad news and worse news? Please know that you're not alone. Everyone has a friend. 

Even Charlie Brown.

I say this because the lesson I have learned from reading Peanuts for my entire life is that even if you feel like a blockhead, and the people around you treat you with little or no respect, there will come a time when you will be lauded as a hero. You will get the girl. Or at least you will get the opportunity to speak with her and keep that flicker of hope alive for one more week. I have seen how even Lucy Van Pelt has had to come to terms with Charlie Brown's power and capacity for continuing on when everything seemed bleakest. 

Which, of course, does not keep her from snatching the football away from him just before he attempts to kick it. Such is the life of "that round-headed kid." But when the chips are down, the gang realizes that the glue that binds them all together isn't Schroeder's piano or Linus' blanket. It is the steadfast integrity of Good Ol' Charlie Brown. 

If this seems obvious to you, please keep in mind that Charlie's creator, Charles M. Schulz took his own feelings of loneliness and anxiety and turned them into panels upon which we could all reflect on our own miseries. In what is perhaps the unkindest cut Charles Schulz chose to name his comic strip, not after his doppelganger, but after a legume.

Maybe then it should come as no surprise that the voice behind the animated version of Chuck Brown recently committed suicide. Peter Robbins, who spoke for Charlie starting with 1963's A Charlie Brown Christmas and stuck with the role through his feature film debut, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Sadly, Peter struggled with mental illness and bipolar disorder, as well as problems with drinking and drugs. Maybe it isn't really a surprise that the kid who used to pursue that little red-headed girl was charged and arrested for stalking. Mister Robbins, upon his release from a stint in prison in 2019 said that he was looking forward to writing his memoir, Confessions Of A Blockhead. He never got around to it. He committed suicide last week. 

That's not funny. It's just sad. Aloha, Peter Robbins. your attempts to stomp on the Terra may not have been as successful as you had hoped, but thank you for the gift of bringing Good Ol' Charlie Brown to life for me and the rest of the world. 

Feels Like Home

 I know that I prattle on and on in this space from time to time about the time I have spent working for the Oakland Unified School District. "More than two decades...blah, blah, blah." I did not come to this job jaded. I came because I felt I was "good with kids." That particular qualification turns out to have put me in pretty good stead over the years. The trouble I have had during all this time has not been with the short people. It has been with grownups. 

Not the ones with whom I have worked directly. I have had the good fortune to do this job alongside some of the most dedicated individuals I could imagine. Working at a school in urban Oakland is a great way to test one's mettle, and at times one's capacity to be "good with kids." The real challenge hasn't come to me from the fresh and periodically frustrated faces of the youth. It has come from those on high. I suppose I might have had a sense of this when I first came to this place, part of a crew that had been hired to replace nearly half of the folks who had been keeping the pencils moving and the recess bells ringing. I came here on an intern credential, which meant that I had to learn the job on the fly while making sure to mind my Ps and Qs while I did so because I could be let go at any time.

I passed that phase, and moved onto "career mode." It was during this time that it became clear that my tendency to go the extra mile or do the little things to keep things running was part of what I came to understand was job security. Now I have a key that opens most of the doors in the building. I show up early. I stay late. I have been in it for the long haul. 

You may believe that twenty-five years would qualify as a long haul. And it is, comparatively, especially when I look around and notice that I am the only one left of all those with whom I first came. I have now had several instances of teaching the children of children that I taught in those early days. "Dedicated" is a word that gets applied to yours truly on a somewhat frequent basis. 

And now my school's name is on a list. A list that suggests that we might soon be closing. Not because we aren't dedicated. Or because we are bad at what we are doing. Because the school district has been told that that they need to close schools to save money. They call this "consolidation." There aren't as many kids coming to our school as there used to be. When I started, this was a year-round school, which meant we had to have classes coming on and off track in three month shifts, making room for the crowd. That has not been the case for twenty years. Over the past few years, our daily attendance numbers have continued to flag, but not the staff's determination to bring a quality education to every child that walks through that front gate. We're not making any money. 

When I first came here, it was because the city of Oakland was in a flurry of hiring teachers to meet the demand created by the community. I jumped in that line. Now I am looking at the tail end of my story, but I find myself torn apart looking at those whose careers are just beginning. If I would have jumped ship every time there was a threat to close our school or reconfigure the staff, I might be running that bait shop in Key West that I have imagined all these years. I have a place to go when all is said and done. I can find a corner to wait out the last few years until I am ready to test the waters of retirement. But for all those who followed behind me, and those families who have walked through those gates? 

Sometimes even the teacher doesn't know the answer to the questions. 

Connect The Dots

 You better lose yourself in the music, the moment /You own it, you better never let it go

Neil Young, rock and roll's grumpy old man, has made a line in the proverbial sand. He posted a letter to his management group and his record company stating, “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform. They can have  Rogan or Young. Not both.” The Rogan in question is Joe Rogan, the talking head of the Ultimate Fighting Challenge and host of a podcast found on the other name mentioned there, Spotify. Oh, and the Young there refers to himself, or more specifically, his music. As far as followers go, Mister Rogan outpaces Mister Young at a pace of nearly two to one, with The Joe Rogan Experience pulling in eleven million and the Neil Young's catalog garnering just over six million.

An easy enough business decision, there, right? Except that the reason Neil Young felt compelled to take such a stand was the steady stream of vaccine disinformation streaming from the oraficicle known as Joe Rogan. Young's letter continued: “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.” So, when Joe sticks his face in front of the microphone and begins riffing on sundry conspiracies about vaccines and COVID-19. Coincidentally, a group of two hundred seventy doctors and scientists have made the same request of Spotifiy. Their letter asked that Rogan's outlet for those crackpots who have already been banned from other social media platforms for spreading false information be shut down. 

Somewhere in the background you can hear the grumblings of the "Free Speech" crew that feel that their brand of rant deserves to be heard, no matter the cost of human lives lost. It just so happens that social media platforms are businesses and not constitutionally required to air the ravings of every discredited "expert" on any given subject. Neil Young is weighing in on the side of science with a few million more followers than your average virologist. 

And now, on a relatively related note, we began today's post with the words of young Marshall Mathers, known to his fans as Eminem. Mister Em will be performing at this year's Super Bowl halftime, along with an all star hip-hop lineup that includes  Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige,Kendrick Lamar, and Dr. Dre. In the interest of transparency, I should mention that Dr. Dre is not a medical doctor. But these are all superstars who will not be paid for their time. This is more along the lines of a promotional appearance. Which may be why the powers that be at the National Football League have not considered paying the hundreds of dancers who will spend seventy-two hours for the opportunity to give the show that crowded lookdown on the field by dancing along with the featured dancers who will be up on the stage with the aforementioned superstars. Those folks down there, giving their all and waving their glow sticks and their booties, will not be paid for their time or their effort. Does this seem fair? Currently none of the hip-hop royalty have seen to speak out about it.

Maybe Neil Young could get something done? 

Medium Rare

 At my best, I was a wizard at Guitar Hero. On Medium. I cranked away and pushed myself through each and every song, including the bonus rounds. On Medium. For a prolonged period, way past when it was cool to be playing pretend guitar, standing in front of my television focusing all my attention on the screen, anticipating the flourishes of which there were a medium amount, and doing my very best not to fail.

But was it my very best? On a few occasions I took the opportunity to up my game. I flipped the lever that pushed me into the Hard Realm, and found myself clunking and thudding through songs I thought I knew by heart. I did. On Medium. Adding those extra notes. The Orange Button. I had watched others, savants who had visited my living room with the expressed intent of embarrassing me, take on that next level and showed me that it was indeed possible. 

For them.

I thought of all those plastic models that lined the shelves of my room and eventually hung from the ceiling on fishing line. I loved to construct planes and cars and monsters and ships and all manner of things from kits. I lived in a neighborhood where boys my age were all doing similar things. The difference? I was on Medium. I sometimes painted my spaceships and airplanes and creatures. Sometimes I would even remember to trim the excess plastic off the parts when I twisted them off the frames they came from on the box. I worked fast, but mostly stuck with the directions, but I was never at the level of detail that my friends were. One of whom took great joy out of showing me how he had taken an Afrikan Korps officer and painted his insignias just like a photo he had noticed on the box, and on this bit of plastic no bigger than the tip of his thumb, he had taken an needle to paint the lenses of the binoculars around the Kommander's binoculars that hung on his chest.

This was not me.

I was interested in completing the model. Then looking forward to slapping together the next one. I was, to put it mildly, "into completion." 

Fast forward to a few nights ago, when I sat in front of my computer, playing Civilization. Civilization IV, to be precise. I had been given the newest version a year before by my son, who figured that I must have finished the challenges available on a game that was nearly twenty years old. The one I continued to play after sampling the updated graphics and new details available in the update. I had become very proficient at the Chieftain level, one notch up from the beginning setting for Settler. I felt confidence in this realm and stuck with it, landing again and again at the Domination Victory. I had dominated once again. 

On Medium. 

Which seemed pretty victorious to me. 

It Could Happen To You

Unfortunately, one of the ways we learn things is the hard way. Nancy found out about playing tag on the play structure that way. She also learned a lesson about jumping from one of the higher points of the aforementioned structure of play, and landing on feet shod in Crocs. One of Nancy's foot twisted and fractured, resulting in a scene that required an ambulance and every available child to rush from wherever they were to the spot where she landed to bear witness to the scene. 

The good thing was that this was during our after school program, so this only amounted to about twenty kids, but it was still one of those moments that will be discussed for weeks and potentially years. "Remember that time when Nancy jumped off the play structure and broke her leg?"

"I heard she was pushed."

"The bone was sticking out of her shoe."

"Ewwww."

"There was blood everywhere."

"Ewww." 

She wasn't pushed. There was no blood. But there really was an ambulance. And a fire truck parked just outside the school. It was a magnificent distraction from the day to day monotony of COVID. This was no mythical invisible germ that grownups keep harping at us about. Her mask didn't do any good. This was full-on sudden deceleration trauma. 

The good news is that Nancy will be fine after several weeks on crutches, wearing a protective boot over her cast. She also gave every adult at our school credence to tell kids exactly what happens when you play tag on the play structure. Or wear Crocs to run and jump. And to avoid jumping from the highest points of the play structure because even that deluxe foam pad has its limitations. And most of all, gravity is real. So let's be safe out there, shall we? 

Debris

 It's always nice to have a word in French to describe something that is even the slightest bit vulgar or depressing. Detente, Tripes de poisson. And the aforementioned Debris. I went out for my Saturday morning run and observed firsthand the wreckage that had occurred the night before in and around our neighborhood after an overnight windstorm. Vegetation took the brunt of the damage. Limbs scattered the sidewalks and streets, and on at least a couple of occasions I had to dodge around entire trees that had become uprooted or snapped in the prevailing fifty to seventy mile an hour winds. There were also a number of fences that did not fare well as they attempted in vain to hold back the breeze. When the sun came up, folks were out in front of their homes doing triage. See what I did there?

This included the gate in front of my own house, which did not fail, but acquired an unsteady lean that made for a morning's work repairing and rejiggering the damage. Another French word: Damage. As I busied myself with the task that has been central to my experience as a homeowner, I listened to the chainsaws buzzing away just half a block away where an old oak had tumbled over, lifting an entire section of concrete driveway into the air before collapsing on the neighbor's fancy new fence. I felt relieved to be dealing with just one portion of the catastrophe. Another word we borrowed from the French: catastrophe.

While I dealt with the wreckage, texts were coming in from friends and coworkers, describing their challenges with the way the weather treated them and their property. One of my colleagues sent a photo of the entire top of a twenty foot tree that fell off onto the street, narrowly missing her car, leaving a snag of a trunk standing in front of their house. It would no longer be a place to climb or a spot for a tire swing. This was now destined to be a home improvement project that would probably involve heavy equipment.

And somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, I found myself being thankful. Not just for the relatively slight inconvenience I was left to deal with, but because the winds were relatively tame compared to those that swept through the subdivisions up the road from my childhood home.

And there was no fire driven by those gales. In the days to come, I am sure there will be stories of families displaced by this storm. But the order of the day was repairing, not rebuilding. Folks who were without power had their lives temporarily inconvenienced by a downed power line, but they were not forced to evacuate. We went back to our lives.

With joie devivre and esprit de corps.