Why Public Schools?

In a host of graduate courses in departments of educational administration and on almost every employment application for an administrative position is a requirement to write a philosophy of leadership, a philosophy of administration, and/or a philosophy of schools.  Such requirements have always perturbed me.  Not that I do not have such philosophies because I do; but because each philosophical question is so different and includes so many various perspectives and nuances.  This may all sound like irrelevant, esoteric BS and leave you wondering if I have slipped off the deep end.  I must always consider the possibility that I have slipped off the deep end confirming that one cannot consider such a possibility and actually slip off the deep end. 

I believe this discussion is incredibly important to every parent, every child, every employee of a public school system, and in fact, every citizen of the state and nation.  Description of our philosophy, what we believe, determines what we do.  If we do not examine our belief system regarding public schools we will continue to operate in crazy and circuitous ways, seeking success on multiple goals to appease multiple constituencies who all have a different philosophy of education.  We can stop that nonsense with a clearly defined philosophy of public schools.  Why do we have public schools?  What is their purpose?  How shall we lead and direct such an institution?  Answers to these questions reveal our philosophies, reveal why we do what we do, and more importantly reveal what we should consider doing.

We have public schools in Texas because our Constitution, ratified in 1876, requires us to do so.  Article 7, EDUCATION, Section 1 states the following: 

“SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE OF SYSTEM OF PUBLIC FREE SCHOOLS.  A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

The responsibility for public schools falls squarely on the Legislature.  The Texas House and Senate are constitutionally mandated to establish public schools.  They are mandated to provide for the support of public schools, the maintenance of public schools, and they are to do so in an efficient manner.

Why?  Because the authors of the constitution believed that an essential component of preserving our liberties and rights is knowledge.  That is powerful.  Without knowledge our very liberties and our civil rights are at risk.  For me that places the importance of public schools way up there beyond defense spending.  Dictatorships have defense spending, but do not have free, open public schools charged with preserving liberties and rights.

We are to provide for a general diffusion of knowledge in a free public school system.  Diffusion is an interesting word choice.  Diffusion may simply mean “spreading” knowledge around.  Scientifically diffusion means movement from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.  Either way, people with knowledge are to share and/or spread that knowledge with folks who do not have such knowledge.

One constitutional sentence opens the door to a wide array of discussions.  Does the responsibility for a public school reside in local school boards?  No.  Are public schools a state function or a local function?  State function.  In fact, the state assigns certain responsibilities to local officials, but local failure to achieve those requirements can result in the state taking over the local school system.  Most local school boards do not want to think about that.  All professional educators are certified by the state, not the local board. 

More controversial to me is the general diffusion and efficiency requirement.  If a school system is able to demonstrate that certified teachers have spread knowledge to every child have we met the constitutional requirement?  Not anymore.  Now, to verify the veracity of our general diffusion of knowledge we must produce evidence the reception of that general diffusion via a high stakes standardized test.  There is a vast difference in the requirement to spread and the requirement to receive.  Some seeds land on fertile ground, some seeds land on rock, but in Texas all seeds must take root and grow and the responsibility is on the schools, the superintendent, the principals, and the teachers.  In other words, from my humble point of view, a high stakes standardized test that measures the outcomes of learning for the purpose of judging schools is unconstitutional.  All the constitution requires is the shipping of knowledge, not the receipt. 

Further, in what ways can a Legislature justify the creation of charter schools while honoring the mandate to support and maintain public schools in an efficient way?  Charter schools are run by agencies other than public school systems.  They are run by private sector folks under the guise of providing parents “choice” in public schools.  Using a neat intellectual trick, the Legislature has deemed these privately run schools “public schools” so that they are perceived to be legal and eligible to be supported by tax dollars.  In reality, every time a charter school is funded money is redirected from public schools to the charter school.  That is not efficient.  Nowhere in the constitution is there a requirement to provide choice in public education any more than there is a requirement to provide choice in tap water, law enforcement, and road maintenance.  Most amazing to me is that the very Legislators who annually consider requiring small school systems to consolidate for the purpose of efficiency are the very ones who support the creation of smaller charter schools running parallel to the public schools.  In other words, in my humble opinion, funding charter schools is unconstitutional.

Other items are blatantly missing in our constitutional requirements of public schools.  Nowhere in the constitution, nor in state law, is there a requirement to provide an athletic program.  We are required to diffuse knowledge regarding the core curriculum, physical health, provide physical activity, fine arts instruction, etc., but we are not required to provide a winning football team performing in a state of the art football stadium.  All of that is above and beyond constitutional requirements.  Because athletic programs are so important to some parents and because athletic programs have demonstrated that low performing kids are more motivated to remain in school and perform better, I believe having an athletic program is important.  I do not believe it is constitutionally required, nor do I believe funding of such a program should take precedence over the academic or general diffusion of knowledge program.  Like charter schools, every dollar we spend on athletics is a dollar diverted from the classroom and the teachers who work therein.  That really bothers me.  Athletics may be the “face” of a public school system, a face that somehow annually requires additional face-lifting, but athletics is not the heart of the public school systems.  The heart is teaching for learning.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Legislature should define what is taught and how it should be measured.  The state Legislature has decided that it is appropriate for them to define what is to be learned.  They do so in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the TEKS, (and for those of you with a shortage of learning in phonetics, that is pronounced “Tex.”  Get it?)  The TEKS are the Texas version of the national common core.  In Texas we hate the common core and love the TEKS.  Go figure. 

The Legislature has also decided that schools have value only if their students demonstrate mastery of the TEKS, and the way to do that is via a high stakes testing system called STAAR.  There is so much wrong with this philosophy it is hard to know where to begin.  For brevity, (not my strong suit) I shall say that holding kids, teachers, principals, and superintendents accountable on such a test is akin to holding oncologists and plastic surgeons equally accountable for patient survival rates.  We have a responsibility as professional educators to do all that we can to ensure student learning.  However, I would argue we cannot learn for our students, we cannot take the test for our students, and the test does less to measure learning than it does to make the test manufacturer (Pearson) very rich.

Worst of all is that when the state writes the TEKS they do not tell us what those TEKS really mean, and when they develop the STAAR test they keep it a secret.  This works as a “Got cha” system, not a system of support.

Other embedded state oxymorons for me are the notions that public school systems are required by law to form groups of teachers, parents, business and community members who will collaborate with and advise the administration on a host of issues that will become policy, procedures and funding.  Such a collaborative requirement is not required of the Legislature.  I love it: a mandate to be open and collaborative in decision making from a group who refuses to do the same.  The local board is legally required however to ensure that the superintendent has such a collaborative group in place that functions in this capacity.  The state is looking for ways to up the requirements to be a teacher at the same time they have not touched the requirements to be a school board member, or to be a legislator writing school policy.  The state has a one-size-fits-all mentality in that districts are held accountable for the percentage of kids designated as special education, the percentage of kids by race sent to disciplinary alternative schools, the percentage of kids who receive a different test based on the abilities and handicapping condition of the kid, etc., etc.  This love of statistics for the purpose of judgment is not applied to legislators. 

In short, when it comes to the funding of charter schools, the mandated high stakes standardized tests, and a host of accountability requirements I believe the Legislature is operating in ways that are unconstitutional.  I am as likely to value Legislative mandates regarding public schools as I am to value an atheist’s recommendation on how to improve my church.  I will not break the law, but I do not have to value such idiocies.

So, what am I to do when I write my philosophy of public school leadership?  Shall I say my job is to improve student outcomes as measured on a test of state defined curricula and create a winning football team?  Such a statement will likely get me hired.  Or, shall I say that what the state requires professionally speaking is wrong, and shall I say what I know from professional practice and research to be accurate? 

So, this is what I say, best described in bullets:

• All kids do learn.  Our job is to determine and provide the learning that is important to us.
• Learning best occurs in a classroom where a dedicated, caring, committed professional educator is working with small numbers of kids.  There are no magic bullets, no guarantees of success via hardware, software, paper, books, strategies, etc.  As every kid is different so is every teacher.
• Committing our resources first and foremost to teachers and classrooms supports keeping the main thing the main thing.  We must listen to teachers.
• Schools, school systems and communities should be organized to support teachers and instruction.  Increasing accountability does not improve instruction or learning.  There must be accountability, but it must be using models other than ones prescribed by the state.  Threatening teachers, creating a climate of fear or disrespect of the profession does not improve instruction or learning.  Mandating that scores improve is not only unprofessional, it is unethical.
• Collaborative decision making in a climate of mutual trust and respect will always be more powerful than top down mandates. 
• The role of school leadership is to create a climate of support, collaboration, and mission driven instruction.  School administrators should no more micro-manage teachers than superintendents should micro-manage principals, than school boards should micro-manage superintendents or than Legislature should micro manage school systems.  No Legislature, School Board, superintendent or principal can possibly know that needs and challenges present in every classroom.  Without an arena of trust we will not be able to improve instruction.  If we do not promote leadership in each classroom we are promoting the automization of instruction, which we know does not work for diverse student bodies.
• Degreed, certified, professional educators are always more likely to know what should be done and how it should be done to most help and support kids than lay people, including parents and elected officials.
• The true role of leadership in a learning organization is to collaboratively define where “West” is and keep the herd moving “Roughly West.”  (Will Rogers)  Leaders do the right things, managers do things right.  Leadership and compliance are antonyms.
•  We cannot promote the freedom, liberties and rights of the people via a public education system dictated by central mandates and accountability.  Such thinking is counter intuitive and illogical.

OK, those are the key elements of my philosophy.  Would you hire me?

Boys in Charge

I am disturbed by the assault on Flight 17.  Deeply disturbed.  Across the globe we see the ambitions of certain males play out in destructive ways.  Putin wants more of the Ukraine.    ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that Christians in Syria must either convert to Islam or die.   Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnapped 200 girls.  Kim Jong-un in North Korea rattles swords while his people starve.  Each of these men and oh so many more have never grown up.  They are as little boys throwing tantrums and demanding that all things be as they wish; that the world in which they operate will be “my way or the highway.”  Each of them so steeped in their own juice that they have lost all reason, all humanity.  How are men, grown men, to deal with such boys who yield such power?  Imagine giving such boys weapons?  We have done so.

And when the smoke clears on Flight 17 we will learn that local Ukrainian “boys” playing with Russian missiles shot down a commercial airliner killing nearly 300 civilians; men, women, children.  Never should such boys have been armed.  They are not men enough to trust with weapons.  The evidence of that is scattered all over eastern Ukraine and is now sealed off by the same boys toting guns.  I am sick to my stomach.  In a world where men have refused to grow up, have demanded their right to be armed, have demanded to have their way, have insisted on making war against others, and worse, have become heroes to other boys we must find ways to stop them and teach them without acting as they do.  If we retaliate we will be boy-like ourselves as was Bush when we attacked Iraq.

Men now appear unable to get there without help.  Where are Churchill, FDR, JFK, Wilson, Gandhi, King and Mandela?  Those are the men we need and they are few and far between.  Perhaps it is time to let women lead us to maturity, lead the world to stability, and show how we grown-ups behave with tolerance and forgiveness and firm boundaries.  Perhaps we need to be mothered to adulthood.

But not by all women.  The Palin’s and Bachman’s cannot be put in charge because they are enamored of this boy power in the same ways cheerleaders are enamored of football teams.  They as well as the men of the same mind set will always prefer to attack, even attack themselves in a form of political cannibalism via suits and impeachments and seceding from the union.  No, we need maturity, regardless of gender.

I fear the outcomes if the boys are left in charge.  Other voices that have yet to grow deep since childhood will demand that we respond in similar ways to the boys.  That will be disastrous.  Again.

This has struck such a nerve with me because it is boys like these that I have attempted to teach my entire professional life.  It is boys like these that asked me to leave; asked me to leave without demonstrating courage or integrity.  They are boys with weapons and remain so.  They are willing to engage in sneak attacks, launch missiles at unknown targets, hide in strongholds surrounded by others of like mind whether it is the caves of Afghanistan, the hideaways in Pakistan, the palace in Syria or room 108.  There they remain convinced they are correct, everyone else is wrong and, therefore, they remain unteachable.  How do we stop them?  How do we teach them?  How do we open their minds?  Boys such as these should not be in charge, they should not be armed.  They must grow up and achieve a level of moral reasoning that demands self-control, honesty, tolerance of others, forgiveness of others and constantly seeks peace for reasons larger than themselves. 

Perhaps I ask too much.

Wishing for Another Truth

Interesting week:  the Speaker of the House of Representatives is suing the President of the United States; the Texas Governor slams a Senator from Kentucky regarding foreign policy; The US Supreme Court rules it is OK for a company to limit women’s rights based on the company’s religious beliefs; there remain people who think the earth is flat, the earth is 6,000 years old, and humans are not triggering climate change; the biggest headline all week has been Brazil’s soccer defeat (now Argentina’s); and the President’s Chief of Staff commits treason by selling out Jack Bauer to the Russians.  Oh wait, that last one is fiction.  Sadly, the rest are real.

Is it just me, or do you also sense that our world now tilts on the wrong axis?  Where once we as a nation stood for what is right, what is good, what is noble, we now vary our stance based on what is politically favorable.  We advanced based on science and knowledge and human rights rather than archaic belief systems and the self-aggrandizement of petty demagogues.  Lines now are not drawn between a Hitler and a Roosevelt, between a Khrushchev and a Kennedy, or between those who persecute and use humans versus those who protect and honor humans.  They are drawn more like the history of Galileo versus the Pope, or what is believed to be true versus what is known to be true.  I am scared.  This tilt is the prerequisite of the inquisition.  When we lose our footing in what we know in favor of what we believe we return to the times of believing Zeus hurled lightning bolts.  Such times should not be our future, but our past.  Radical Muslims are ready for such times.  Enlightened Americans should not be. 

In what may seem to be a paradoxical position, I believe our “beliefs” should be grounded first in our knowledge and second in our “beliefs”.  If you believe the earth is flat that’s OK, but you should not work for any shipping company or NASA.  If you believe Zeus hurls lightning bolts that’s fine, but you should not write the building codes for protecting our structures from thunderstorms.  If you do not believe that humans via fossil fuels are negatively impacting our climate and our atmosphere that is fine, but you should not be shaping guidelines for the EPA.  If you believe it is OK for men to practice reproductive rights but women should not, that is OK, but you should not be writing health insurance guidelines.  And if you believe “companies” are capable of moral positions that supersede the individual human moral positions of their employees that is OK, but you should not be ruling on human rights from the bench of the US Supreme Court.

We get to this point when what we know to be true is in conflict with what we wish were true.  The Pope wanted his interpretation of scripture to be true even though we know Galileo and Copernicus were right.  The Pope is an expert on scripture, not solar systems.  We should not look to his holiness for our astrophysical answers.  He is also not a biologist and we should not defer to him for reproductive questions.  Bill Gates is not an educator.  Ron and Rand Paul are not economists.  Arne Duncan talks as though he knows education, but he does not.  He knows Bill Gates.  And Rick Perry is not an expert of anything.

For instance, a little research will reveal what we should all know:  the national debt was compiled during the 8 years of the Bush Presidency and that Obama has not even doubled it.  The Speaker should know that we know that a member of Congress should not sue the President of the United States.  That is not our structure.  If the President has broken a law then impeach him.  Otherwise we need no political stunts to gain sound bites and waste our tax dollars.  If members of the Supreme Court hold belief systems that place corporate rights over human rights they should recuse themselves from issues that reflect that conflict.  The only rational position can be that corporations only have rights as they are comprised of humans.  Rights apply to all, not just the majority.  If they do not get that, Boehner should sue them.

Our hope for the future is that our form of government can find a way to work based on what we know.  We must abandon what we wish to be true for what we know to be true.  The climate is changing and we know why.  And, we know what to do to make it better.  The economy has been in terrible condition since 2008 and we know why.  And we know what to do to make it better.  Better that is for everyone except for maybe the top 1%.  We know.  If you feel you know otherwise then do some research.  Listen to and read those who are the experts in the field, not those who are on the payroll of those who wish for another truth. 

If you need an electrician do not call a politician.  If you need an astronomer do not call a flat-earther.  If you need a public education policy do not call a private-schooled billionaire.  If you need an economist do not call an oil company executive.  If you need a doctor do not call a member of the clergy.  Let us get about the business of looking our problems in the eye and dealing with them as best we know to do rather than blindly holding to tenets we wish were true and are not.  We have abandoned the Pony Express for airlines.  We cannot move forward in similar ways if we believe that horse riding is somehow more moral than flying in a plane, and that we should protect ranchers more than airlines. 

Education and knowledge are the answers we need; not beliefs we wish were true.  Yes, we must have a moral foundation in our decision making.  I recommend this one:  do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Be bold enough to see the truth as it is, not as you wish it were. 

God grant me and you the serenity to accept the things we cannot change; courage to change the things we can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Now, back to worrying about saving Jack and the world as we know it.

People Are All We Have

School is out for summer.  Kids and instructional staff have about 10 weeks to not work, to not come to school.  As I think about the kids we teach and the staff who teaches them and the administrators, superintendents, and school boards that serve them it strikes me that the only people available for all these positions and roles are people.  We are stuck with people.

And none of them are perfect.  We are all flawed.  We are all precious.  We are all different.  So how shall we judge the performance of human beings in all of these roles?  Is it OK to be flawed?  Is it OK to err?  Is it OK to be different?  Is there such a thing as a poor human being?

For our youngest children in school we are more than willing to forgive and support despite the errors.  We know that trial and error, emphasis on error, is a great way to learn.  Some 4 year olds still wet their pants.  We do not punish.  Some 6 year olds do not know their colors, letters or numbers.  We do not punish.  Some 7 year olds may not be able to tie their shoes.  We do not punish.  We forgive.  We promote their learning.

By the time kids are in 3^rd or 4^th grade our forgiveness wanes, our standards for acceptable behavior wax.  We introduce standardized high stakes objective multiple choice accountability tests.  The very notion of a standardized objective test belies the human experience.  There is nothing about the human experience that is standardized.  We are all flawed, we are all precious, we are all different.  Let’s see how 9 year olds do on a standardized test?  Ludicrous.  Perhaps we could use such an instrument to assess and plan, but we should never use such an instrument to judge, place, punish, label, or rank human beings.  How can a 9 year old be a poor performing person? 

It gets worse.  By middle school age our desire and demand for conformity really escalates at a time each kid is trying to figure out who they are and where they fit.  The tests mean more; the consequences of falling outside the bell curve get worse.  We help label kids as losers, those who have cooties, and those who are “in.”  If kids cannot achieve the adult labels, they will seek to achieve the same labels from their peers leading to all kinds of different behavior.  By high school, we see kids in little blocks of time denoted by bells.  The groups morph, the subject changes, and the adult at the front of the room changes.  We attempt to stress compliance here, but as children become young adults they seek to be unique and celebrate who they are.  How dare we label them incorrigible?  How dare we label them losers?  How dare we label them academically unacceptable based on their willingness to comply, behave and regurgitate on a standardized test? 

Are we to assume there is a way to teach perfection, to create perfect little humans?  Is that what we need, more metrics to measure degree of perfection and more negative sanctions for those humans who fail to achieve such?  If so, we are in trouble because the only children we have to teach are human children, precious and flawed, never capable of achieving perfection.  And the only folks who could design and require such a test are people.

How about the adults on the payroll?  Are they people too?  Does each of them have issues, concerns, pressures, heartbreaks, celebrations, desires, dreams, successes and failures?  Yes.  They are humans as well.  They will make mistakes; they will fail to be the perfect employee.  We can measure their behavior all we want to.  We will learn they are all flawed and precious, none of them are perfect, and some are good and some not so good at performing in ways other imperfect humans have prescribed.  We can even reach conclusions about these adults by judging them based on the behavior of the children they are hired to teach.  This doubles the flaw in the evaluation as we add the sin of being a human child to the sin of being a human adult, compounding the possible failure rate.  Why would we ever want to do that?  Perhaps only perfect people seek to evaluate adults, children and schools in this way.  If so, they should come forward and accept their award for perfection, knowing full well it is likely to be a death sentence.

And how about the administrators, the principals, the business managers, the curriculum folks, the superintendents?  Are they human as well?  The answer long kept secret is yes, they are human as well.  They carry the attributes of flawed and precious as well.  But their job descriptions are likely to read, “Be perfect in all that you do.”  Promote learning, but do not upset anyone.  Promote order and control but do not offend anyone.  Promote accountability but do not allow anyone to be in the lower quartile.  Be loved and respected.  Ensure that every one is above average and every program is above average.  Be feared and trusted.  Be liked by all except for those that it is OK to dislike.  Be omnipresent and totally out of the way.  Dress better. 

If it makes little sense to judge students based on standardized tests, worse to judge teachers based on how their students do on such tests, then it is really sinful to judge administrators based on how the adults and the kids do on standardized tests.  This compounds the error in this thinking 3 fold and in no way is an indicator of the performance of the leadership.  For a leader to attempt to change student outcomes when he or she teaches no children would require additional pressure and harassment of the teaching adults in the system.  That pressure and harassment will promote intolerance on the part of the teachers of the humanness of their students.  The entire system will be corrupted by an external standard of perfection that assumes some humans at the top of the curve are excellent humans, and some humans at the bottom of the curve are lousy humans, and that this test accurately measures such. 

How in the world can this possibly be a way to promote learning, promote the adults who promote learning, and promote the leaders who promote the adults who promote learning?  Such a system is a clever design to undermine all we know about ways to help and support human beings to become better, wiser, and smarter than they currently demonstrate.  Who would promote such a system?  Ah, only perfect people it seems to me would inflict such a model on humans.  Again, those people should step forward to receive their just desserts.

How about school board members?  Are they human as well?  (And in this group we could lump all elected officials responsible for educational policy at the local, state and national level.)  Sadly, as far as I know, they too are human beings, flawed and precious.  But though elected officials attended school does not qualify them to run schools any more than taking medicine qualifies one to prescribe medicine.  Like oh so many, they fear being discovered as imperfect persons and so they act with a superficial authority that they hope conveys superiority.  It does not.  They know schools less than students, teachers and administrators and yet are empowered to set policy and direction and protocol.  Worse, they bring notions of school from their own history and from others who do not know schools to implement in systems of humans.  Elected policy makers begin less perfect than the rest of us regarding schools and lead us to a state of declining humanness and humanity.  They hold office at the whim of a fickle public so their goal is to please that public rather than teach, lead, and support that public.  So sad.

As people are all we have to work in this place called school and as all of them are flawed and precious, and as all of them will look poorly on some metrics and well on others, how might we judge our schools and the people and kids within?  That is the question we have been asking and it is the wrong question.  There are no benefits or positives to judging humans, only sanctions and negatives.  Why would we want to do that to our children?  Why would we want to do that to those who serve our children?

How might we support and promote the people in our schools?  That is the right question.  How do I know?  Because that is the question we ask of every person we know in crisis.  How can I help?  What can I do?  Those are questions people ask of people in time of need.  We do not ask, "How might I measure your current performance so that I can draw attention to your flaws?"  We seek to help.

Schools are like families.  They are not like assembly lines.  Assembly lines dehumanize people, though we are learning that by empowering those on the line to act with autonomy rather than conformity we actually improve the production.  At the same time schools, the most human operation there is save the family and church, are more and more put in the role of conformity and compliance as though someone knows what a perfect school looks like, a perfect student looks like, a perfect teacher looks like, a perfect superintendent looks like.  No one knows such things. 

Nor do we know what a perfect family looks like or a perfect church and congregation look like.  We will not improve our families or our churches by increasing and applying metrics, much less high stakes metrics.  Application of such metrics to families, churches and schools demeans the purpose of those hallowed organizations.  Why are they so valued?  Families, churches and schools are the nests from where we all spring to the skies of our future.  Those nests should be feathered in love, acceptance, tolerance, support, forgiveness, and hope.  Not fear or dread or failure or lower quartiles.  Not retention or termination or public ridicule.  These nests must be feathered in other ways if we are to promote people, help people, improve people and help them grow.

Are there school employees who should leave?  Yes.  Are there families that need intervention?  Yes.  Are there churches torn apart and ripped from their missions by petty differences and squabbles?  Yes.  But none of those exceptions are improved or reduced by the addition of more metrics and more judgment.  In fact, adding such will exacerbate the problems.

People are all we have.  I am so sorry, but the members of your family are human beings.  I am so sorry, but the members of your church are human beings.  I am so sorry but the children and the adults in a school system are all human beings.  All humans are flawed and precious.  Each time we punish or banish a human from any of these institutions we diminish our own humanity.  Each time we help and support humans in need we promote not only our own humanity, but by modeling we promote the degree of humanity everywhere.

People are all we have.  Celebrate them, love them, forgive them, promote them, defend them, support them.  To do otherwise is a denial of what it means to be humans, made more sinful in a system devoted to promoting the success of humans in the future.  We have had enough carrots and sticks.  It is time for a hug.

To every adult in public education I wish you a wonderful, restful summer.  Enjoy your humanity before returning to promote the humanity of little and younger people.  We are all people, after all, flawed and precious.  My heart goes out to you as members of my professional family, just as my heart is tied to my own family.  Be good people.  You are all we have.