Another Brick

 When I was in high school, it seemed as though every teenager in the country was issued their very own copy of Pink Floyd's album The Wall. The "hit single" if there was one from this four-sided epic included the lyrics, "We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control, No dark sarcasm in the classroom, Teacher, leave them kids alone." It was an anthem, of sorts, for the alienated youth of the time. The time was 1979. 

Those words have been in my head since then. And every so often, I hear them rattling around in the closet of my mind as I meander through my day. As a teacher. I think about how I was once a child who felt oppressed by institutional learning facilities. I remember how listening to this song made me feel seen, and heard. 

Now I work in one of those institutional learning facilities. For the time being, anyway. Part of my mission for the time I have been "Mister Caven" at Horace Mann Elementary School is to attempt to strip away that feeling of walls. We still stop and listen when the bell rings. We don't run in the halls. And yes, there are times when my rhetoric skews to the sarcastic, but I am not here for mind control. I am here for cultivation. Lifting up, not putting down.

Every day I have spent inside the walls of this school have been about building from the inside without having to tear anything down. I fix things. I climb the ladder to put the basketball nets back on the rims, right after I have been up on the roof getting the balls that have been kicked there. "By mistake." I walk students back to class when they have busted out, searching for an early exit. Not by force, but by reason. We talk about the options available. Do they really want to go home, and face the potential disappointment of their parents? Would it be better to give math another try, even though fractions can be completely confounding? In the lunchroom, I peel back the plastic wrap, start to peel an orange, ask for help keeping the floor clear of debris. Back outside on the playground, I am tying shoes and unraveling conflicts, encouraging kids to use their words when they feel hurt. And I encourage them to listen to one another. 

Oh, and somewhere in there, I teach. I provide a place to engage with Al Gore's Internet in ways that might provide them something beyond a high score. I give them a place to run and play, sometimes tricking them into moments of understanding and teamwork. My secret agenda is not mind control. It is education. 

I've been in this business long enough to know that if our school is closed, and all of us are scattered to the four winds that our mission will not change. What will change is the sense of community that I have carried with me all these years, having my place, my team, my family taken away. Because somewhere in this mix, the decision was made that what we were doing did not match up with the spreadsheets provided by financial consultants who never set foot inside our school. They are the ones who will ultimately be responsible for tearing down these walls. 

I would not have imagined this in 1979. I cannot believe it now.