here comes a flood

The story is that a guy who used to work for the NY Times had his wallet stolen from his jacket as it hung in the closet at work. Somebody found it stashed in a wall. Time between loss and find: forty years. It has been quite a while since I've misplaced a wallet. I have eventually found what I lost: in a pair of pants I uncharacteristically hung up or where it slid under the seat of a car. I can empathize with the dull panic and self-recrimination of having lost something so important. Watching the video of the man being reunited with his wallet after so many years took me far beyond what I could have imagined.

But there is much more to this than the return of a wallet. What I had not initially realized was the the office of the NY Times had moved. When the old guy gets out of the elevator, it isn't the same space in which he had once worked. It's all stripped bare, a staircase has been removed, and it's described as an Egyptian catacomb: dark, dusty and ancient. And when the hero finally holds the wallet out to its long-separated owner (at 1:22), the old man exclaims — and turns away. It is obviously his and he can barely believe he is looking at. He gently accepts it into his waiting hands.

Then the scene becomes holy. One reason this is such a fascinating moment is that it is pure, unrehearsed and profound. As he opens the wallet, the ensuing flood of memories and emotions makes him turn, as if to use his back to take the brunt of a wave. The camera maintains a respectful distance. We see him flipping through the images and papers. He talks to what is in his hand, softly like a child would to a small fluffy animal. He continues for a very, long minute. In excruciatingly clear words, he says exactly what we might expect: "I don't know what to say." He isn't tearful. But it hits him hard. It's difficult to know whether he is feeling the power of the reunion. It is not as simple as seeing pictures of people like his father who are long dead. There is something more taking place but we are left to wonder. He does snap out of his reverie but I suspect that's because of the camera's presence. I am fairly confident that when he went to bed that night, the wallet was on his chest and he lay awake for a long time.

I shouldn't guess at what he was thinking. Instead, I can imagine what might go through my mind. At first, I'd be startled by the rush of memories: an old credit card, a newspaper clipping, and so on — the sorts of things I wouldn't have remembered missing. On seeing them, I would feel and hear a clap just above my head as the "gone" and the "here" slapped against one another. Most of all, I expect I would feel warm with recollections but also chilled by the reminder of finiteness. I would bask in the memory of where I was standing when I took the pictures but also staggered by the realization that those moments are gone — and have been for quite awhile. The consolation for me is a scrap of verse. Noticing the advance in years is a reminder of the life we made for ourselves. To not miss what I experienced would be an indication that I may not have lived as I should've or could've. The hurt would be preferred to having no feeling at all:

“The ways we miss our lives are life.”

A Girl in a Library

by Randall Jarrell

the blog entry i may never read

The Interweb is an amazing space. Long ago in graduate school, I would spend an afternoon at the library browsing all the journals. I’d walk down one display aisle to the next, picking up whatever caught my eye. For those publications closest to my anticipated trajectory, I’d open the lid behind the display and thumb through a stack of the past year’s issues. Back then, Science Education had red construction paper covers. There were only 6 issues per year, one of which was entirely dedicated to summarizing all science education research from the previous year.

Now I not only read journals from home (albeit not being able to access copies published during my doctoral years -- presumably because they are far too old) but I receive automated updates of new issues. As I was composing this entry, a little chime indicated that the the latest issue of Mind, Brain and Education is now available. Once upon a time, I marveled that an author could cite someone else’s work that was “in press” because that meant it was possible to have pre-publication access. Now, that’s also a routine process for anyone in the field.

On the other hand, there are terrible things one can find online — images that make you wish for a bottle of eye bleach. I have become wiser about not clicking out of fear. For example, some news page indicated that girls are posting videos of cutting behavior for others to see. Not wanting to judge whether these are calls for help or exhibitionism, I really did not want to have those images seared into my visual cortex. I apply similar caution when puppy commercials or dog rescue stories appear on the television set. I am not strong enough and by changing channels or leaving the room, I insulate myself.

One of the great treats these days is when Zero posts a new blog entry. The announcement appears in Google Reader. Most of the time I pounce on it; other times I use it as my reward for moving more mundane tasks from the inbox to the outbox. Today, the subject line was a warning to avoid clicking too hastily. The more I thought about it, the more worried I became. The title sounded more like an elegy* than an entry that would fill me with delight. Instead, something cold and sinister lurked beneath the blue-cheery link. What I was feeling was dread. In a similar vein, I discovered a poem by Robert Frost that gives me chills for its finality:

"Out, out…" §
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

I suspect that the “a press release in the hands of my mother” will be similarly dreary and disheartening — a moment of greatness and celebration adeptly minimized and mocked with an offhand comment. As I consider that highly likely possibility, I just sigh. Were I to actually read it, I suspect I would cringe and moan. I probably can't resist forever. But I certainly will wait until a warm, sunny and sober moment.

- - - - - -

* The elegy--the traditional poem for mourning--began in ancient Greece as a sad song lamenting love and death, often accompanied by a flute and written in a specific meter.

§ Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
~ Macbeth

School Subject Area Scores

This lacks sophistication as a blog entry. But it does give me a chance to post information in an interesting way. The data is from the Grade 5 statewide mastery test. It only spans 3 years because the science test has only been given that long. Not sure what to make of it except for variability in changes between schools and from one year to the next. These particular schools (all pseudonyms) were chose because half had high achievement gaps in science (by Students of Color, % ELLs and low income families) and the other have had smaller gaps — not that anyone (even me!) can tell which is which from this display.

baseball tribute

Sometimes I envy the die-hard fans of a particular sports team. Me, I like to watch. But I don't have the mind for memorizing players and positions. Maybe if following a team had been a core piece of my childhood, my mind would be wired differently. On the other hand, it is a true fan's inevitable disappointment. Every sport can only have one champion and all the rest are, if we can be honest with ourselves, losers. And yet, I envy those who so strongly identify with teams, especially in Major League Baseball. True, we found ourselves swept up by the Cleveland Indians in the 1990s and even attending a World Series Game in October. It was bitter cold yet we have many memories. This includes the plaintive cry of a young women seated somewhere in the five remaining rows above us, encouraging and reminding each batter how she felt: "We love you Omar! We love you Manny!" They say love conquers all but there just wasn't enough. We lost this game and ultimately the Series to the Atlanta Braves.

It must be the metaphors associated with baseball that explain how deeply many fans embrace it. The video and lyrics below were created as a tribute to a baseball announcer. What touches me is not simply the effort to honor the man and reminisce about one's golden youth. There are lessons and ambitions and promises this artist makes that caught me off guard. In addition to the highlight of his 1995 season during which the baseball announcer calls an amazing final inning win, this musician looks at his life, what he has done, and where he's going. The title quotes the baseball announcer but also how many of us feel when we look back on things and are amazed by what we've seen and heard and felt. The whole video is great as are the lyrics. What I have provided below are just the final few moments which say so much and stand alone.

My Oh My by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

I don’t really collect cards anymore,
Just a box and some old cardboard.

Memories embedded in the dust,
In the fighters that age
Just like us
Living somewhere off in the drawer.

This is what you make of it
Yeah we play to win
Live it like we’re under
The lights of the stadium.

Fight
Until the day that
God decided to wave us in,
Right.
Until he waves us in.

Not sure that this would appeal to a larger audience as a conference talk. So maybe it's enough to post it here and let others decide what to make of it.

closing a fund, ending an era

The current leader of our school was in a different administrative post when I arrived. He has many traits that we admire. In a profound change, he has indicated that our school will not provide data to US News & World Report so that magazine can generate report cards on teacher preparation programs. Standard #1 is Classroom Management, there is no standard for science for elementary majors, Standard #12 equates excellence in secondary teaching with content area coursework, and Standard #16 is Selectivity presses for high GPA and/or standardized test scores that will certainly preserve the lack of diversity among teacher candidates. At the very least, this is one less initiative where we would have been expected to make efforts to game the system. This is a signal that we our leadership is shifting toward increased substance and reduced self-promotion.

The major challenge our leader faces is financial. He was asked by central administration to give some money back to ease the university’s crisis. He first dipped into his discretionary accounts. But there wasn’t enough. So he started looking at faculty accounts, especially those that consisted of leftover money from projects that had ended. Normally, I would be guarded about this. But with the new leadership and the fact that the economy has had very little impact on the workplace left me feeling calm. He has decided to essentially “tax” accounts in the amount of 6%. Not a large sum and not in any way jeopardizing ongoing grants. My department chair explained this all to me and I was imagining I might have a few hundred dollars less in my travel budget. However, the tax wasn’t across all accounts. Perhaps they only went for each faculty accounts with the smallest balance. I had to kick in three dollars from my first faculty account.

When I moved, I had to be sly about extracting funds from my former university. Truth is that there was probably an above board way to transfer foundation money to my new employer. But I had an evil scheming supervisor at the time. A lovely administrative assistant helped cut the check that I could then use for tidying up the remains of a conference I had hosted in Wisconsin at Wingspread. For some reason, that I arrived in New England with a check from my old place to my new university put my former dean into a rage. In retrospect, I believe that having unspecified funds was a potential lightning rod for audits. Perhaps there were other accounts and sources that were larger but of even more suspicious origins. Regardless, we got it settled and I was able to cover the necessary costs for my attendees. The fund was in an account for which I did not receive monthly statements. In a show of great generosity, I told our budget office that I wished to close the account and turn all those funds (around forty dollars) over to the Dean. How nice to end that account in such an optimistic and generous environment given that it began with great “Sturm und Drang” and has ended in a thaw promising renewal, warming and growth.

helping them to listen

Confusions about what to say are complicated by uncertainties about when to say it. What might feel like a missed opportunity to communicate an idea to a larger audience might also be a matter of making sure the audience was prepared to hear those messages. Interviews are under the control of the guy or gal at the microphone. They field the call-in questions and massage the query before handing it over to the guest. Generous and gentle guests, whose voices are luxuriantly sonorous even over hundreds of transmitted miles, will accept the question as posed. Other guests who are more politically adept will deflect and reshape the original question so they can push their pre-determined message by pretending to respond to the caller. Only rarely does the interviewee chastise the host for asking questions he would never ask of himself. Such are the privileges of living every waking moment thinking about language and being celebrated for every syllable, pause and throat-clearing.

There are situations where I suspect that pushing an agenda would not have much of an effect. For example, as much as I or someone else might like to highlight the inequities in educational opportunity and attempt to advance a reform that seeks to be more inclusive rather than selective, the truth (as I know it) is that not everyone is ready for that type of exchange. As an instructor, I have the time and power within a course to move my audience along over multiple episodes. I am not restricted to a single broadcast. I can even press the audience members to influence each other. The other day, a student asked why I insisted that the class used a theory to structure their research. I called on another student to describe the first time she drove to her urban high school field placement (she had shared this story in an assignment). I used her impressions of the situation to illustrate how her “theory” influence how she interpreted what she saw and heard and felt on that day. Thus, I can prepare my audience to hear the messages. Plus, I recognize that I have more than one shot to make this happen.

I made an appointment with a colleague to have coffee and to work through an issue he had unknowingly created that was producing challenges for interns placed in the school where he had done some consulting. I went to his office and he had to fax something before we trekked to the coffee shop. I hadn’t told him why we were meeting and I wondered if he suspected something that wasn’t too good. I offered to walk with him down to the fax machine and politely asked how he was doing. He was non-committal but asked if I would hold his hand as we walked down the hall. He grinned and I declined. But I was not attuned to what he wanted me to hear. I was so intent upon steering the conversation so I could smooth things out for my interns. In fact, he and I came up with a simple remedy. Turns out, he needed to talk to someone about challenges he was facing at home. Luckily, I was in no rush and was open to hearing him out.

He shared how is son was undergoing cognitive and psychological tests. I’d heard stories of the boy’s fascination with science and math, but also knew the routines of a primary grade classroom (e.g., phonics worksheets) were a source of frustration. As I expected, the child did very well on the cognitive tests (something like the 98-%ile). But his non-cognitive self was showing developmental issues including very poor fine motor skills and behaviors that were on the “autistic spectrum” for his age. His adopted father, my colleague, shared that there were indications of fetal alcohol syndrome that might have contributed. The good news is that they have located a therapeutic regimen that will help the family through the next 2 or 3 years and get everything on track. But those demands will prevent dad from continuing his pursuit of interesting school reform efforts that were just beginning to gain traction. We commiserated about the luxury of having resources (e.g., experts, dollars and the time) to give the child what he needed. Nevertheless, the restrictions this places on dad, who is struggling to be happily productive, remain.

Here then is an example where it just happened I was ready to listen at the time my pal was ready to speak. It was not a magically intuitive act on my part. I had no sense that there were issues needing to be shared. Further, I was caught off-guard by the privilege of being a worthy recipient of this information. In retrospect, even though there is usually a zone of physical detachment I would never cross, perhaps a held hand was exactly what he needed -- if only metaphorically. Meanwhile, maybe it is wise to determine in advance what messages should be widely broadcast. And yet lamenting what should have been said might need to be balanced against the possibility that a particular forum was not the best one for sharing one’s deepest ambitions. Still such an experience reinforces strength with which those beliefs are held. Because there is much greater likelihood that another opportunity will present itself, it is all but certain that in time others will hear what was not fully revealed last Friday. I plan to be nearby and especially attentive when that moment arrives.