The Never Ending Sunday Night

The first indications appear in mid-July. School supply displays begin to pop up at the Target or Wal Mart. I walk by, blow it off, and try not to think about what is ahead. Around the 24th, the mail gifts the first piece of school correspondence in nearly two months. The district logo is in the corner. I sigh and begrudgingly open it. There is usually some silly slogan that is meant to capture the goals of the new school year. For some of us, there is an invitation to a formal convocational gathering in a stuffy high school gymnasium where we sit grouped by school and watch a Power Point presentation involving terms like NCLB and AYP that are nomenclature to educators and no one else. Clouds of dread begin to form on the horizon. Where has summer gone? I just finished summer school! I need to get to the pool! 


Then August 1 sneaks up like a stealthy bandit, robbing the last ounce of summer. What was once a date on the horizon is now staring me down like an angry bull. An old high school friend and fellow educator summed it up best: August is a "never ending Sunday night."


For educators like myself, our "winter of discontent" comes in August. Skeptics may argue that teachers have the best job because they work only nine months of the year. They have never stepped foot in front of a classroom. This job, when done well, wears the hell out of you.


The academic year in America developed for two reasons. One was the agricultural cycle, where children were simply needed at home during the summer months to work on the farm. For many kids, school was something sparsely attended after the fall harvest and before the spring planting. Another reason was in the days before air conditioning it was impracticable to hold school between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Until recently, Missouri schools could be penalized for starting school more than 10 days before Labor Day. This was in part due to lobbying efforts by the farming and tourism interests. Growing up in Jefferson City in the 1970s and 80s, I remember being out before Memorial Day and not returning until late August, usually after the 26th. Those were the good old days.


This marks my fifteenth year as a certified educator. I like to think my longevity is a bit longer because I DID teach in private school and sub before getting certified in 1996. Every year without fail the minute August appears on the calendar, the "back to school" anxiety ensues. I return to school for the first time in nearly eight weeks. The library carpet is freshly shampooed. Chairs are stacked. Tables are on their sides. All of the displays I took down in early June are waiting to be resurrected. My faculty mailbox overflows with magazines and catalogs. Bulletin boards wait like blank slates. Finality is staring me in the face.


One would think that these back to school jitters would be the stuff of rookie teachers. Glen Hall, the famed NHL goalie the last time the St. Louis Blues were in a Stanley Cup final (yes children, there was a time...) would throw up before a game and then toss back an orange juice. Bill Russell, in his championship days with the Celtics, would routinely upchuck before a game. If he DIDN'T then Red Auerbach knew something was wrong.


Floating in the pool today with my wife, I asked Jodie why I continue to get so uptight about the start of school. As a librarian, I have arguably the best job in the school. I would not say the "easiest" because anyone who works with kids knows there is no "easy job" anywhere in education, particularly in elementary school. 


Her response was salient. "We care deeply about what we do. That is why you feel this way." 


Now a librarian, my wife spent sixteen years as a classroom teacher. Whereas some faculty members would walk out of the building immediately after school with nothing but a purse on their arm, Jodie would stay late and then bring work home. A Sunday afternoon for her was often spent holed up at Panera Bread or Barnes and Noble reading stacks of student writing. Every year her students made huge gains, and she often received the most challenging kids because she was a master teacher. For me, teaching summer school was an easy diversion; for Jodie, she needed time to "be a vegetable."


Figuratively speaking, I am having my Bill Russell moment in the locker room before a big game against the Knicks. Once I step out on the parquet floor and begin the pregame warmups, I will hit my stride. That time will come.


For now, though, I am stuck in the never-ending Sunday night.

Fat Meat is Greasy

I owe the title to Chaverly Morgan, an outstanding teacher and beloved colleague. Chaverly teaches 5th graders at my school. I am the librarian. Before every weekly class visit, Chaverly reminds her kids of the succinct bit of wisdom passed along to her by her mother: fat meat is greasy. The kids know it means "if you act a fool you're gonna learn the hard way." I co-opted the phrase this summer when I was teaching history at a high school within my district. I witnessed kids scurrying late to class (and running the risk of "bilging out" of summer school with too many tardies), making nary an effort to do ANY assignments, and even trying to catch a smoke in a bathroom stall.

"FAT MEAT IS GREASY!" I told them. Learn it now or learn it the hard way. Saying "Fat Meat is Greasy" is, I suppose, an African-American idiom akin to Bob Dylan's "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows." There are some things in life one would THINK folks would have figured out by a certain age.

So as I write in the onset of my fourth decade on this planet and sixteenth year in education, I find myself wondering why things that seem to make sense are often scarcely found. As educators, we are bombarded with high stakes testing and cries that our educational system is failing us, but no one has the courage to hold parents accountable for not having their kids ready for school. As a country, we have seen this massive growth in federal entitlements, bureaucracy, and control. It is evidently unsustainable, but few are willing to confront reality and DO something substantial. Added to this is a government-media complex that seeks to support the insanity rather than confront it head-on. The past 50 years has witnessed the creation of an "entitlement class" that is losing the essential American cultural DNA of hard work, thrift, and power to seize the blessings of liberty while ensuring it for all. Too many folks have hands out instead of hands up. There are too many grasshoppers and too few ants.  Something's gotta give and folks need to realize "fat meat is greasy."

A wise mentor told me years ago that "great teachers never stop teaching." Everything we do, even in the most mundane tasks, has the power to be a teachable moment and also a learning moment. My father, whom I consider the greatest teacher I have ever encountered, is a retired Episcopal priest and a master of the twelve minute sermon. He has the manner of the kind village priest, and would have easily passed as the kindly vicar in a pastoral English countryside if the slight drawl of his Ozarkian roots wasn't such a dead giveaway. Dad once wrote that God could have sent Jesus as the "Great Ann Landers of the Universe." Give out some good advice and see if it takes. He chose to send Jesus among us to teach us a thing or two about doing right by our neighbors and he continues to teach us two millenia later.

Master teachers get their students to think and engage in self-discovery. Perhaps that is why we are here.