Pull on Those Covers! School Has Started.

For the first time this summer, I woke up at night because I was chilled and had to pull on more covers. Brr! Technically, we still have summer for another month, until September 23rd, the autumn equinox. Yet the weather already feels a little fall-like, Personally, I associate the beginning of the new school term with fall, and since schools have already started up, for me, it is fall.

Photo by Oliver Hale, Unsplash

Why did schools start beginning their fall terms in August, rather than September?

"Some have called long summer breaks a holdover from our agricultural past. That is not true. In fact, in the South, for much of the 20th century, schools took shorter summer breaks so that school could be dismissed in the fall, allowing children to help their parents pick cotton." (https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/opinion/20101126/editorial-longer-summer-breaks-good-for-students-parents)

 When I attended public school in the 50s and 60s, school started after Labor Day. So why did the fall back-to-school time get pushed up to August? Daphne Sasson, an Atlanta native, discusses the issue in an article on CNN. She says that in Atlanta schools first started beginning in August in 1996.She gives some reasons for a start date earlier than the traditional Labor Day date. 1.)There is more instructional time before spring assessments. 2.) Students can finish first semester before the December holiday break, so teachers won't need to review when school starts in January. (https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/living/school-start-dates-august-parents-feat/index.html)

Well, yes, I do get it, but we get less and less summer every year. I know the tourist trade would love for schools to get back to a September start date. Not that I am a fan of the tourist industry, yet in this case, I agree. Students need a longer summer vacation.  Families need time to go on vacations. Children need time to play with their friends.

Photo by Jon Tyson, Unsplash

Maybe it is nostalgia, but I yearn for the days when cooler weather meant that it was the end of summer and kids would start getting ready to go back to school. It seems like we are  rushing kids so much these days. They have to learn facts to regurgitate on assessments. Teachers have to teach to these tests, rather than instilling the love of learning and giving students tools with which to learn. These standardized assessments have changed the way teachers have to teach, or get fired for low scores of their students on the tests. They have changed the way students learn. Instead of learning to solve problems and become critical thinkers, they have to devote much of their time and energy to memorizing and learning the facts that may appear on these tests. So much for progressive education...

I know about this because as a classroom teacher, I was forced to teach to these tests. Some teachers were threatened that if their students didn't measure up, they would lose their jobs. Hard to do in an inner-city school in which my 10th grade students were reading on a 6th grade level when they arrived in my English classes. Some students did better, but a great number needed remedial reading instruction.

My students were not dumb. But school had become so much more than a place to learn. It was a place that if they wore the wrong color, a rival gang member might beat them up. School was a place to either score drugs or try to avoid running into pushers and druggies. School was a place they could get beaten up if they wore expensive athletic shoes that someone else wanted to steal for themselves. School was a place you had to avoid avoid bullies. In other words, the culture of school often overshadowed the instruction that was taking place in the classroom. And so many of my students were homeless or in homes in which parents were drug users and not supporting their child's school life.

My point, I guess, is that the defective educational curriculum with its standardized test requirements drives more than the earlier start dates of schools. Schools must work to collaborate with parents and teachers to create curricula that work for each locality. We must realize that social issues crop into our schools, and hinder learning. We must work to address these non-instructional needs of students--safety, hunger, homelessness, poverty, abuse, teen pregnancy, drug use, gang violence, school shootings, and so much more.

Photo by Jonathan Borba, Unsplash

Today's public school students have so many more challenges they face in school than I did  decades ago. With funding for public schools being cut, and charter schools and expensive private schools getting more and more of the resources, I don't see the problems with public schooling getting better any time soon. We need a transformation in educational pedagogy, which can only happen with an administration that believes in education as a right for all, regardless of race, gender, and social class. We must advocate for such a change. Children are our future.

Bears Then and Now

About a week ago, I ran over a bear on the highway. What was a mamma bear and two cubs doing crossing a major highway? Well, it was a total shock when my car came upon them. I slowed down and swerved, but though I missed the mamma bear, my car struck one of the cubs.

Such a pity! Later when I surveyed the damage to my car, I was not happy to see the driver side front fender hugely dented and the headlight skewed out of place. Thankfully, it still works. Worse is the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think of the baby black bear I killed. In a few seconds, a life was extinguished!

I am reminded of the big brown bear that I saw in a cage at Brown County State Park in Indiana when I was four or five. My Aunt Mickie had a souvenir stand at the park. She took me with her to peddle her wares a few times. What I recall most about those visits to the park was watching the big brown bear in the cage. It was horribly abused by tourists and children who would throw things at it and torment the poor animal. This had to have been one of the few remaining bears in the state as all the bears in Indiana had pretty much been exterminated by hunters around the turn of the 20th century, about the time Charles Major, a resident of my hometown, Shelbyville, wrote his book, Bears of Blue River.

I recently saw the newly refurbished statue of Balsar and his bear cubs on Shelbyville's town circle. He had killed their mother and so made the cubs his pets. At least I had not meant to kill a bear. In Balsar's time, late 1880s to early 1900s, bears were hunted for their fur and to eat. Hard to take that in.

I believe in totems, though I don't think that my totem is a bear. I do
have a sentimental attachment for bears, and have spent many hours on the banks of both the Little Blue and the Big Blue River in Shelbyville, though there were better rivers to fish, as the Big Blue had been polluted by a factory's dumping waste in it for decades. I did love to sit by the rivers and ponder my life. Once I went on a boating excursion to pick up trash off the river. It was pretty disgusting to see how much trash was in my rowboat and in my brother's rowboat when we finished that river trip. Below is a photo I took of the Big Blue a couple of years ago. Pretty muddy!

I am reminded of many trips my best friend since we were six, Bonnie, and I took to that river, picnicking, or just sitting on the banks talking about our lives and our dreams. Beautiful, relaxing times with someone I knew and loved best in the world. Bonnie was struck and killed by a truck two years ago, when she was crossing a highway at night. That was a big loss. She was right by my side when I snapped this photo. Bonnie, who had a tender heart, would have cried with me about the death of that baby bear.

I need to reread Bears of Blue River.There is something mystical about the bears that flow through my life. I will think on that. As in the movie, The Lion King, there is a circle of life. Someone dies, someone is born. I know there will be a new baby bear born somewhere. These thoughts I find soothing. The words of a song I sang in Girl Scouts as a child, come to me. "Peace I ask of thee, o river. Peace. Peace. Peace."

Why Do Some Women Marginalize Other Women?

Recently I had an upsetting experience in which an organization I had been in a leadership role for nearly a decade, abruptly ousted me from that role for a period of time. When that time period was over, we had a meeting which I thought would be about how I would resume my former duties. Instead, I was asked to help rescue a project which the current group could not pull in on time.

I was dumbfounded. When I later asked re: my reinstatement to the board, I was told that there would have to be elections, and I would need to apply. Since I had restarted this organization about ten years ago and had been the key organizer for most of this time, I felt disrespected and cast out for no good reason, except for a conflict with another member, which she has consistently refused to work out.

It caused me to think of how my chorus, Womansong, has chosen to deal with conflicts which come up from time to time. We hired a couple of fantastic diversity trainers who gave us workshops and also some reading materials to support our transition to a more inclusive organization. One of those works is White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun. We identified two of the descriptions of this culture for the chorus to work on together: right to comfort and fear of open conflict.

In these two interlocking issues, leaders of a group  look at those who bring up issues as bringing discomfort, which supersedes any willingness to look at the issues the person is bringing to light. It is typical in white culture that we may feel that our own personal needs and egos need to be protected. We may fear the message of the person who brings up the issue. We may want to keep the status quo.

Some antidotes to these damaging attitudes given by Tema Okun are:
 •role play ways to handle conflict before conflict happens; distinguish between being polite and raising hard issues; don’t require those who raise hard issues to raise them in ‘acceptable’ ways, especially if you are using the ways in which issues are raised as an excuse not to address those issues; once a conflict is resolved, take the opportunity to revisit it and see how it might have been handled differently

•understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning; welcome it as much as you can; deepen your political analysis of *racism and oppression so you have a strong understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture; don’t take everything personally (changework.net)

*I would add sexism, ageism, and classism as I have experienced all these -isms in this and other organizations, unfortunately. 

   It is by looking deeply at the conflicts we encounter in our work with others that we, ourselves, grow, and then, as a result of our own personal growth through the conflicts, allow our groups to come out the other side bigger, better, and more inclusive.

   Racism, sexism, ageism, and classism are regressive and hold us back. Let's begin anew to throw off the inertia and stereotypes of the past and embrace the new, ever more beautiful, and accepting attitudes of the future. Diversity is our strength.