Dinosaur?

All things end.  All things change.  The day will come when Lee Childs, James Patterson, Randy Wayne White, Dean Koonz, Stephen King and John Sanford will write no more.  I shall feel lost.  The day has already come for so many wonderful writers who could take us out of where we really are to some other place, some other time, some other group of really interesting people in interesting dilemmas, and help us see the human condition in new ways.  Star Trek, X-Files, House and Buffy have all been canceled, I felt lost, so enamored of the bright and brave fighting for right.  I shifted to NCIS, Elementary, Blue Bloods and Person of Interest.  They too will be canceled.  Yes, I miss Buffy and Angel, Spock and Kirk, Mulder and Scully, but life has gone on.  But not without these fictions enriching my soul.

Reality changes too.  For each new school in Edna an old school was abandoned and/or demolished.  Had I had a hand in the construction of the demolished buildings I would feel the same: lost, sad, and sentimental.  Some day these wonderful new buildings will be perceived to be old, obsolete and in need of replacement and they too will be demolished or sold or redirected.  Hard to imagine today, but true I suspect.  Roy Ortolon understands that and has done a wonderful job of documenting the transitions with bitter sweet joy in his new book.

Relationships change too.  My children have left the roost and started their own lives, and that is the most incredible transition I have experienced; much more emotional to me than when I left home to begin my adult life.  People whom I loved and with whom I worked in Spring Branch are now scattered and elsewhere.  The same is true for folks at A&M, the folks in Cleveland, and Corrigan.  And I am now in the transitional stage with folks in Edna.  I so miss the day-to-day contact, the professional and personal interactions with Richard, Dawn, Melissa, Demetric, Bobby, Paul, Katie, Deborah, Eddie, Carla, Fred, Irene, Janice, Betty, Beverly, Jan, Heather, Jamie, Mary, Deborah, Matt, Sarah, Ann, Kelly, Michele, Peble, Nancy, Lisa, Josh, Rose, Estelle, Gail, Cathy, Theresa, Angie, Kyleen, Vince, Marla, Sonny, Madalyn and Nancy, etc. etc.  And I should list all the members of the District Team as well.  I love these folks.  I loved working with them.  I loved the relationships we built over time, and there is a hole in my heart as they end.  I know they may not actually end, but they have changed.  I mourn the loss, mourn the change.  But these relationships have enriched my soul.

And as things change new things emerge.  We have abandoned all our old iMacs and now have iPads.  We have new buses.  We have new principals and new teachers.  We have new school buildings.  We have new Board Members and we will have a new superintendent.  (I still say “we” because I continue to live here, pay taxes here.  My school district remains Edna ISD and my representative on the Board is Patrick Brzozowski.)  When I came to Edna it had a history, folks had been here a long time, and the system existed before I arrived.  As I leave I become part of the history, but the system will go on, perhaps better, definitely different. 

I have walked a fine line between my passion and deep feelings regarding public education and my sense of professional obligation.  I have sometimes wandered in one direction more than another.  I have paid a heavy emotional price for my tenure here, but I do not regret it.  To pay less would mean I cared less.  I care deeply.  (And secretly, selfishly, I wonder what of the current traditions will survive:  District Team, AEIS workshop, Cabinet Meetings, Board Notes, Minutes of the District Team, blogs, fire side chats, prayer before meals, and terrible puns?)

I will either retire or aspire to something new.  Right now my heart aches.  I suspect I feel much like a person after a divorce they did not seek.  I am wounded.  I am having a hard time thinking about a new relationship while the demise of the old relationship is such a fresh wound.  Yes, now you know I am a sentimental fool.

Shall my generation of school people become extinct?  Am I akin to the dinosaurs?  I am a baby boomer.  Born in the late 40’s, I spent my childhood in the 50’s and my teenage years in the 60’s.  I tear up at the national anthem; I clearly remember the JFK assassination, the first landing on the moon, and the fear of nuclear annihilation on a daily basis.  I also clearly remember the fight for equal rights by people less fair and blond and by gender less hard and strong.  I identified with the weak, the downtrodden, the denied and separated, those judged by external characteristics over which they had no control, and I sought to help, support and promote them.  That was the American way.  Such support led me to public education, a place where on a daily basis I could serve to secure a better future for all children, a future where gender, pigment, and zip code did not serve as the critical attributes for success.  I abandoned making a lot of money to serve what I believed to be a higher calling.  This was not a job; it was a mission and I a missionary.  As I entered education I was surrounded by folks of like mind, like heart.  We were a generation of folks driven to public service, driven to equal rights, driven to protect democracy by empowering citizens with learning.  Not all of us, but most of us. 

We knew the first steps of the likes of Nazi’s and Communists was to gain control of the schools and shape the learning of children via government approved beliefs.  Such practices are still true in the Mid-East and elsewhere, and there are among us today American leaders who argue for the same.  Thought is not encouraged; obedience and compliance are.  There was “right-think” and we deeply feared the Orwellian notions.  We sought service and freedom over income and safety.  We were baby boomers, a principled lot.  Our parents survived the Great Depression and World War II and we were determined to secure economic and political freedom for all.  The government was not the villain.  Our government was what we stood for, it was the seat of democracy, and it was what “We the People” chose and loved.  We were the perfect public servants, morally committed, called to do good deeds. 

That has changed as all things must.  We are now a people divided.  Many of my fellow boomers ended up making a lot of money and decided protecting wealth was more noble than promoting equality.  Now, there are those who resent, even hate the government at the same time they seek to gain control of it.  They resent the fundamental notion of “to whom much is given, much is required” and opt instead for the notion that for whom much is earned little shall be taxed.  They resent investments in children who are not their own.  They resent and fear the promotion of thought rather than obedience and compliance.  They would prefer to shut down the government rather than allow it to serve the people.  They would prefer reducing the taxes of the wealthy and shifting what taxes are collected to promoting private sector wealth rather than public sector service.  Somehow they have captured the thinking of people who have no business supporting such a philosophy, people who are working hard and not getting ahead, the uneducated, and people who earn less than $350,000 per year.  Worse, they promote the codification of their own religious beliefs.  In the 1950’s we would have called such a philosophy similar to fascism and the people who support it quasi-fascists.  Now we call them Governor, Senator and Representative.

Public education is now thought of as government education and the public has been taught to believe that such institutions are failing and alternatives are necessary in a context where the government is not the seat of democracy but the enemy of wealth generation.  That is a poppycock and balderdash.  Regardless, few are brave enough to stand and point out that the emperor is naked, and those who do pay a heavy price.  Witch hunts for the “non-believers” return from early colonial days and those witch hunts begin in our state legislature, and local boards have sipped from the same cup of Kool-Aid. 

The Board asked me to leave and I left.  I did not fight.  I deeply believe in democracy and have told every board I ever worked for that when they wanted me gone all they had to do was ask.  This board, like all boards, is selected by our community either consciously or by default.  Evidently our community through the voice of the board wants me gone, so I am gone.  I am deeply saddened by that.  I feel rejected by those I cared for the most.  The majority of the members of this board are not baby boomers.  I am of a different generation than they.  My values and my view of the world are for the most part different, my expectations are different.  My view of the role of public education is different.  I have always seen public education as the bastion of democracy more than the training ground for employment and competition.  More than anything else I believe this is why I was asked to leave.  The Board and I did not share a common sense of purpose for public education. 

The Board has now selected a new superintendent.  He is younger than I.  He will likely be more in tune with the Board’s philosophy.  I know him and wish him well and hold no enmity toward him.  I know things will be different in Edna.  Whether they are better, worse or just different will be up to the community and the employees to decide.  I encourage you to support the new supe and give him a chance.  I assume he will support changing the culture because if the board wanted the current culture to remain I would remain.  Or, perhaps they did not think that through.  I know it took me years to work toward our current professional culture.  It will likely take years to change it.

What is the current professional culture?  I believe and have worked hard to instill the following notions:  Real improvement is inside-out, not outside-in.  Real learning occurs with a teacher in a classroom with kids; not at a keyboard, on a monitor, in central office, board room or in the state legislature.  Standardized test data may be interesting or informative, but it should not be the bedrock of evaluation or judgment.  The horizon for determining the effectiveness of the education we provide is years in the future, not June when the scores come in.  The fundamental model for improvement is collaboration, not competition.  Everyone in the system and in the community has a role to play and all voices must be heard.  Honesty and openness are more important than who one knows or one’s title.  Consensus is always more powerful than majority vote or dictatorial demand.  Servant leadership is always more powerful than self-serving leadership. 

Change.  Morphosis.  Edna ISD is morphing.  My life is morphing.  I shall go somewhere else or retire.  I fear that my sense of calling for public education will not be sought by other governing bodies.  If so, that is very sad to me, not because of who I am personally, but because of the belief system that for me forms the foundation of the mission of public education which I perceive to be the bedrock of democracy.  Perhaps if that mission has truly morphed, it is time to retire. 

If so, I may be a dinosaur. 

But, for now I know that dinosaurs had teeth and I am not yet a fossil.