I do not need to count how many clams I rake up in a year, how many times I listen to a favorite song, how many basil plants bloomed in my garden.
I do not need to know Eli Manning’s quarterback rating, my town’s place on a top 100 places to live list, the graduation rate of my students at Bloomfield High School.
I do not care how much you make, the horsepower of your car, the square footage of your home, how much you pay in property taxes or for that bottle of wine you hoped I’d enjoy.
I trust my tongue and my ears, my eyes and my fingers. I particularly trust my nose. And I trust I am mortal.
I have one New Year’s resolution, and it has nothing to do with numbers, with ratings, with scores, with any measures of success as defined by our culture.
It is simply this:
Teach kids what matters.
If you cannot do that because of external constraints, well, I get that.
If you cannot do that because you have no idea what matters, find another job.
If I am not mortal, please forgive me–my behavior, if we’re immortal, makes me one huge asshole.
Originally published January 1, 2017. Photos by me.
I watched the sun as it set yesterday. I watched the sun as it rose again this morning. I don’t do this often enough, few of us do.
Just a few minutes after the sun broke through this morning, a twitchy squirrel sat on top of a fence post, still, facing the sun, then resumed his twitchiness.
A vulture flew within 20 feet of me, its under-feathers reflecting the sunlight as it banked.
I just watched.
It would have happened anyway. And it’s happening anyway.
5:23 P.M. here–the sun stands still, shifts*, and heads back north.
6 months ago, when we sat on the opposite side of the sun, I celebrated the summer solstice, a joy tinged with the weight of knowing the sun would start its slow, long course southward.
Winter is only hours old, and winters can be brutal here. The light, however is returning.
When I was a child, winter meant cold, summer heat. I did not, could not, grasp why the elders got so excited late December, at the cusp of winter, when we faced long wintry days.
I get it now.
I stood outside last night in the chill with my youngest, now a quarter century old, watching our shadow drift across the moon, a wavering copper-gold washing in from the moon’s left.
My mom used to tell me she could see me as an infant even as I stood before her as a man. I laughed, of course. I am big–over 200# big.
I get it now.
I still give tests, more out of habit than sense now. Performance on science tests a few days before the Christmas break follow a predictable pattern, and my students did not fail to fail.
We do a lot of things because we do them. If mastery’s the goal, then a class average of low 70’s with a bell-shaped curve, a science teacher’s dream a generation ago, marks my failure.
On my board today two-foot numbers announced the time of the solstice–5:23 P.M. Solstice literally means the sun stands still.
Very few students notice how far the sun has shifted since class started just 3 1/2 months ago. There’s no need. Food comes in boxes, heat in radiators. The whole world of technique is magic to them.
In Ireland this morning, the sun rose, as it has, as it will. A shaft of sunlight flashed
through a chamber in Newgrange built thousands of years ago, before the Great Pyramids, before the Celts arrived, before Stone Henge.
We will not study this in science, nor will our students study this in history class. We will create a class ready for the 21st century, for the abstract, for a culture that confuses bank profits with economy.
If children owned the winter solstice, the dying light, knowing what waits for each of us before a 100 winter solstices pass, would they come to school?
Would you?
I believe schools can be worth the time children invest in them. I am not convinced we’re there yet.
At least not as long as I keep practicing education as religion, using a script written generations before me
