On Turning 30

"All models are wrong, but some are useful," was the famous bromide of George E.P. Box that my statistics professor put up on a slide.

Turning 30 is just a date.  Just another birthday.  I know that.

And yet, this particular round number has been a useful model to think back on where I've been, and think forward to where I'm headed.  Maybe turning 30 is just a psychological juncture, but it's a juncture nonetheless.

First of all, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Perhaps because my itinerary for the big three-oh didn't give me a chance to think much: awake at 2:50, 6:00 flight from Chicago, 10:00 interview in Boston's Chinatown for an hour-and-a-half, 20-minute lunch, 2:00 interview near Government Center for another two-and-a-half-hours, 30-minute call about a job, 5 minutes sprinting through the rain.  Home by 6.  You could have stuck a fork in me.

It was finally at the bar that it sunk in.

It hasn't been as hard as I might have thought because I don't feel a day over 25.  All the years people have been telling me I look young.  When I was a sophomore in college I was mistaken for a sophomore in high school by the town librarian.  That's been the pattern ever since.  What once felt like an albatross--being baby-faced--now feels like a badge of honor.  There are plenty of folks who look 40 at 30; if I come off as younger, then either I've got lucky genes, or else the exercise and good eating are paying off.

Turning 30 has made me think about 20, and all the things that have changed since then.

When I turned 20, I was drifting through college, unsure where I was headed, with few buoys of support.  I hadn't yet made a truly close, enduring college friend.

I thought I was done studying Spanish--only to be headed to Chile 13 months later for a life-changing year.

I had never biked more than 10 miles--several years later I would huff and puff my way to my first metric century.

Above all, It's striking how little I knew, relatively.  How to write, how to write poetry, how to write pragmatically for a job, how to write about numbers.  My yoga instructor talks about how he'd trade his late-thirties body for his twenty-year-old body any day--but not the mind.  I couldn't agree more.

At the same time, I'm struck by how the core things that make me happy have fundamentally not changed.  Losing myself in an hour of pickup basketball, writing in any form, sitting outside in the sun on a summer day, breaking bread or sharing a beer with a close friend.  Those things sustained me at 20, and they sustain me all the same today.  I only hope they can keep on sustaining me over the next 10 years.

The Importance of FACE Time

Life is as the sea, art a ship in which man conquers life's crushing formlessness, reducing it to a course, a series of swells, tides and wind currents inscribed on a chart.

—Ralph Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues”

I’ve discovered a few things this summer, and high up on that list, I have discovered the power of the “one-on-one.” 

The one-on-one is a key sequence from the organizer’s playbook.  Though my own organizing is limited to two years of student activism in college, I’ve snatched the idea for my work on family and community engagement this summer—and boy has it paid off.

A fact sheet from Organizing for America’s Virgina branch revealed the power of meeting people in person, individually.  OFA tracked the outcomes of various forms of reaching out to potential volunteers over a four-month period in the winter of 2010.  They found that only 3% of people talked to on the phone became leaders in the organization, and 6% of volunteers at events.  Folks entreatied through one-on-ones, meanwhile, were converted to leadership roles fully 23% of the time.

***

As I took stock of my summer-long work supporting family and community engagement (FACE) at the Wallace Elementary School in Chicago, I knew that I had something to offer.  I also knew I had to hit the ground listening. 

Part of my mandate to listen was because I am the ultimate outsider to the work: a white, middle-class male not from Chicago, not living in the neighborhood, and not recently a schoolteacher, working with a heavily African American K-8 school on the Far South Side.

But equally a part of my mandate to listen was that FACE work inherently has to be democratic.  Though surely there are many schools that give lip-service to family engagement, for a half-dozen reasons, I don’t think you can meaningfully “engage” families if you don’t listen to their perspectives—and put those perspectives at the center of your work. 

As I developed my summer work-plan, a three-stage process came into formation: Assessing, Assisting, and Achieving.  The first stage: assess the needs, capacities, and perspectives of teachers, school leaders, families, and community members with respect to FACE.  The second stage: capitalizing on what I’d learned in the first stage, assist the various parties in developing engagement strategies—contributing my knowledge and experience with engagement.  The third stage: from the end of my placement forward, it would be up to the school, families, and community to achieve their vision for engagement. 

The currency of the assessing stage would take several forms—attending community meetings, holding focus groups—but above all else, I plunged into one-on-ones. 

***

To carry them out, I’ve broken bread at local diners, met up for coffee at Starbucks, cleared a space in the corner of a library under renovation.  Through the process of more than a dozen such conversations, mainly with teachers but now branching into parents and community members, I’ve honed my techniques into what seems to be a workable set-up.

Before we even broach engagement, we get to know each other—at least on some level.  I’ve learned that a key ingredient of the one-on-one is telling and hearing each other’s stories. 

And it pays to go first, to tell my own story before I put my interlocutor on the hot seat.  I talk about where I grew up.  I put racial issues on the table: I talk about my choice to major in ethnic studies in college, the awareness and passion for social justice I gained from that.  I touch on my experience as a high-school teacher, then an adult ESL teacher, and how that led to an interest in family literacy and parents engaging with schools.  And I express a desire to work together with whoever sits across from me on community engagement.  By going first—and I’ve tried it both ways—I can show my interest in going deep, in being candid.

Then I listen.

One teacher told me about the intentional multiracial housing community she lived in in college.  Another about the ministry she leads.  Another about attending the Wallace back in the day, when it attracted students from across the city.  About the dozen pathways into education they’ve taken. 

Another talked about his high-school days at a strict Catholic school, where they vowed to turn boys into men.  Another about how her very parents reflected both visible involvement (her father served on the Local School Council) and subtle but critical engagement (her mother pushed her learning at home). 

I’ve seen faces open up, start to glow.  Not just about their experiences—also and ultimately, their vision for community engagement.

I usually don’t open my notebook until their personal story is over.  Then I dive into questions about community engagement, and start writing.  It’s striking how much information can be conveyed in merely an hour.  Even my limited stenography, when I retype it into Word later, can run for a dense page-and-a-half, full of insights I might have forgotten if I hadn’t been writing as I listened.

As we talk, I’m jotting notes about the person’s values, interests, and resources.  I’m identifying possible leverage points—attempting to chart Ellison’s sea: I plunge deeper when a topic seems to strike a chord, when the other person really cares about positive phone calls or the nuts-and-bolts of preparing for a parent-teacher conference.  I pivot off a topic when it’s exhausted itself. 

Finally: the commitment.

As the conversation winds to a close, I make explicit two to three talents in family engagement that I see in that person.  And I suggest a small way in which they might be able to contribute to FACE strategies.  In some cases, I’ve asked for a commitment on the spot: Would you be willing to teach newer teachers in how to make positive relationships with families in the first weeks of school?

Such commitments get funneled into an action plan, the template for next steps.

***

On their face, the one-on-ones I've put at the center of my work this summer may appear inefficient.  They are, however, purposeful--and purposefully limited, usually an hour, no more than 90 minutes.  And I have explored focus groups as a way to meet with more than one person at a time.

Beyond that, though, the value of the one-on-ones is that they allow me to make a potentially deep connection with the very individuals who will be responsible for carrying out—or not carrying out—community engagement long after my work is done.  They allow an individual’s perspectives, vision, and talents in the area of FACE to surface in ways that they might not in even very small focus groups.  As I’ve come to believe, it’s school leaders, teachers, and families who will ultimately have to do the work: if they are energized about community engagement, if they are the ones to build the strategies, they’ll own them. 

And the hope is—they’ll implement them.  One-on-ones are only the first step in a pathway that requires a lot of hard work.  But they make a very good first step indeed. 

Accomplished

Completed: The 30-30 Challenge on the 365 poetry blog.  Actually, 31-31: a poem a day throughout July.


Applied: To six jobs.


Set up: Two interviews.


Played: Tennis, for the first time in 8 months.  Sprains (on two forehand fingers, in my case) take a loooong time to heal.


Visited: Cincinnati (informational interview); Galena, Illinois (work retreat).

And all this in the last week!

We Don't Want Nobody that Nobody Sent

Just back from a memorial party held by one of our Far South Side community leaders to commemorate the 16th anniversary of her father's passing.  During a meeting Thursday to touch base about turnaround-school community engagement efforts, Jane invited a few of us from the Network office.  With a look that said, If you don't come, this community will not be engaging with you.

"You free five o'clock Saturday?"

"Absolutely."

***

As a white guy not from Chicago and not from an urban school system, working on community-engagement with an entirely African American turnaround school on the Far South Side ... well, my work is cut out for me.

As it should be.

I've been in this sort of situation before, and my approach to crossing borders is to cross them listening.  While I have my own knowledge and experience with community engagement, it's not my job to write a handbook in 10 weeks, pass it to the school and parents, and pat myself on the back.  Rather, I've tried to be democratic, inclusive, empowering: to take the ideas that the school and community have, and bring together the strands into a coherent whole.

After all, my thinking goes, community engagement will be an ongoing process throughout the school's five-year turnaround (and beyond).  Long after I am gone, parents, teachers, and community members will be holding the reins.  If they've had a hand in building community-engagement strategies, they'll be more likely to own them, and to implement them.

What's my approach been, concretely?

I've used one-on-one meetings--chit-chat over coffee, usually--to get to know the experiences and visions of teachers at Wallace Elementary, visions that can be tapped as the community-engagement work gets underway.  I've talked to all three leadership members of the staff--some of them more than once--as well as nine other staff members.  I've led off meetings with a few words about my background, how I became aware of my race and privilege, and the teaching and counseling that first got me interested in school-family partnerships.  I've listened to the stories of teachers, elicited their thoughts on engagement, and talked about the talents they bring to the process.

Feedback's been positive.  But it's been a harder go to connect to parents or community members.  Harder to get access, to get calls returned.  Harder to know who to contact.

I did, however, finally connected to two community members this week: Jane.  Community broker par excellence, parent to children who passed through Wallace, member of countless councils and boards.  Our meeting revealed one more thing that makes community connections harder than teacher connections: a reservoir of skepticism that may run very deep.

Wallace's teachers are all new, and the ones I've met with unvaryingly eager.  But as I quickly learned from Jane's questions, she's one of probably many community member who's seen attempts to change schools.  Seen people from the outside try to impose a vision.  Seen white people who know what's right.  Seen students extract an experience that becomes the basis for their thesis at a far-off university.

On Thursday, Jane voiced that skepticism to me; but also an optimism, and an invitation to her home tonight.

***

It was a rollicking good time: Jane's sisters and brothers and children and grandchildren, tin foil platters of rib tips and pasta primavera as far as the eye could see, and (I didn't quite expect ever to say this) a stirring a cappella rendition of Barry Manilow's "One Voice," sung by a middle-aged gentleman with a truly impressive range.


I stuck close to my supervisor--who knows Jane well--until I had a handle on the room's genealogy, ventured out to mix a little, had very much very good food.  As darkness came and conversation moved inside, it took a turn I'm becoming increasingly familiar with: clusters of folks separating off to discuss a new charter school opening, developments of a parent council, how a candidate in an old race approached the community.  Talk of redistricting, and how it will affect upcoming elections.

There's politics everywhere in this city.  It runs very local, it's very tied to schools.  Having never worked in another large urban district, perhaps this is par for the course.  But nevertheless, it's striking.  One moment I'd shaken the hand of a tall fellow by the sink--next he was telling me he's running for the board of a local, newly-opening charter school.

Perhaps the most important moment for my work came when Jane used her booming voice to command the stage with a few words.  After she thanked the crowd, she moved on to the three Network staff who were there.  She called me out--talking about how she was skeptical when she first saw me, but was coming around because now she witnessed passion and commitment.  She vowed to put some meat on my bones.

I felt good for a moment; but the listening, the awareness, the work, must go on.

Welcome to the Big Time, Kid

I know a little bit about Chicago politics.  I've read about the pork and patronage.  Followed the Blagoyevich Senate-seat selling scandal.  The wards, the "mini-mayor" aldermen, the machine, the voter-turnout traded for jobs.  

When it comes to the school system, I've been slowly absorbing the lingo associated with the web of roles, rulers, and responsibilities in and around CPS.  At the local level, perhaps the most unique manifestation of politics and schools are the "LSCs," or Local School Councils.  Created during 1980s decentralization, with one for each of the 600-plus schools, they have survived recentralization--and maintain the power to hire and fire principals.  

In addition to the LSCs, the system's alphabet-soup includes CACs (Community Action Councils) and PACs (Parent Advisory Councils).  Powerful?  Evidently, yes.  Why?  I'm not sure yet.  

In the case of the south-side turnaround elementary school I'm working with on community-engagement, leaders from the LSC and CAC supported the turnaround.

Oh, and did I mention there's a PTA?  The PTA did not support the turnaround.

It's one thing to conceptually know the politics.  It's another to see it with all its brass-knuckles gleaming--as I did Thursday night during a community meet-and-greet for the school.

The meeting featured an invigorating opening speech by Principal Brennan, who recounted the teachers that first sparked her love of science, laid out her turnaround vision, and was generally a beacon of energy and optimism.  

It was an important speech.  But the real drama seemed to lie elsewhere.

Two community members were invited to speak.  One the head of the LSC, the other the head of the CAC. 

Community speaker #1 addresses the assembled parents: "You don't have to like me, and I don't have to like you.  Because it's about the kids."

Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Now she addresses the principal: "Principal Brennan, people have been asking me, What do I think of you?"

An opportunity for a show of unity in the face of enormous challenges?

"And to be honest, Principal Brennan, I don't have an opinion about you.  Come back in December and ask me, and I will then."

How do you like them apples?  

Community speaker #2 was a little longer on the forward-looking and esprit-de-corps ...

... until I was introduced to her after the meeting.  As a non-Chicagoan white male in a suit, it often takes a little explaining to convey why I care about community-engagement and may have something to offer.  

Fair enough.  As it should be.

Well, let's just say: speaker #2 was and remains skeptical of my capacities in that regard, which she did not hesitate to directly tell me.  My status as an outsider, my choice of coffeeshop location, my taking of the bus ...     

I needed a glass of wine and a good 30 minutes of yoga after the meeting.  The school politics, the parent politics, the turnaround politics, the politics of race, of accountability, of community engagement.  This city breathes politics.  I've got a lot to learn.  

My Big Five

Everybody gets to the point, I guess, where the job search becomes serious.  I spent months and months exploring jobs, calling up folks for informational interviews, and mulling.  Lots of mulling.  Now I need  a job in the next two months.  I've applied for things, but unfortunately HR offices don't calibrate their hiring processes to the end of my grad-school program!

Folks at Education Pioneers have nudged me to reach out transparently to people I know, with a single message: I'm on the job market.

I'm even getting sort-of headhunted.  By a pretty cool nonprofit for an intriguing job, but I will admit it's a bit ... weird.

A couple years ago, I was asked what are the five most important things I'd need in a job.  I made a list back then.  I've tweaked it since, but it hasn't changed much:

Mission: I've got to work for a place I can connect to.  For the most part, I always have--a blessing, but also a need.

Grassroots Connection: I struggled teaching high-schoolers, but loved teaching adults.  I loved being a student activist in college.  I love talking to people.  I don't know if I have to be on the front-most of the front-lines, but I feel a deep need to be close, at least.

Strategy: Okay, this one can be hard to square with the preceding one.  I like the opportunity to think strategically, make plans, deal with "big ideas" (even if they only seem big to me).  Some mix of grassroots and strategy would put me over the moon.

Sharp Colleagues: I want to work with people who push me.  "Push" can mean a lot of things--push me intellectually, emotionally, experientially.  But at the end of the day I want to be challenged not just by my supervisor, but my peers, too.

Support, Growth, Development: Though I am very self-motivated, I struggle when I feel "out in left field," with lack of clarity or lack of support.  I thrive when I can bounce an idea off someone.  When I taught adult ESOL, that person was not just my on-site supervisor, but also a mentor I connected with almost exclusively via email.  In other words, I'm flexible as to where I get the support, but I know I need it.

Those are my big five.  I'm trying to keep them in mind as I search for jobs: considering lots of options, trying to stay true to myself.

Engaging a Turnaround School: Dispatch #1

I've got my workplan, I've got my action steps.  Today the rubber met the road: I conducted my first "one-on-one" with a staff member of the turnaround elementary school in Chicago--let's call it Edwards Elementary--I'm working with this summer.  The topic is community engagement.

I've made the case to myself--and am trying to make it to my office team--that the best thing I can do is build and support relationships about community engagement, relationships that can far outlast my brief tenure as a summer consultant.  As a professor of mine said last semester, "People are more likely to support something they helped to build."  I'm trying to help them to build it.


I escaped from the 103-degree heat into a Starbucks on the far south side of the city to meet with the Edwards's newest clerk, Eileen.  I'd first connected with her at a school meet-and-greet the week before.  I asked her to tell me a bit about herself, and I learned that she grew up in the neighborhood of the school, still lives there, and went to the school herself some 15, 18 years ago.  That was all news to me.

Part of her story, then, was this: "I want Edwards to be the place it was, the place people came to for school from all over the city.  I want it to be the place, again."

Another part was the views on parent engagement she's developed in her previous job as the clerk at another turnaround school on the (somewhat less far) south side.  She was eager to open up about her experiences, and had some definite feelings about what works and doesn't work when it comes to connecting with families.  

If she could recommend only one or two key things to teachers at Edwards, what would they be?  Her eyes lit up: You've got to connect, she said, one way or another.  Email, text, phone calls.

At your old school, I asked her, what did staff do to reach out to families who didn't have a working phone or email?  Her face lit up: Oh--we'd get the security guard who'd lived in the neighborhood for 50 years, and he'd either find someone who could get to them, or he'd go knock on their door.

Just the first of many one-on-ones.  Should be an interesting summer.

Dispatches from the Frontier

All right, today marked my fifth day at my Education Pioneers summer fellowship, meaning a week is in the books.  I'm helping a network of schools within the Chicago Public system develop a community-engagement plan for an elementary school that is undergoing a "turnaround" process--year one of five commencing this fall.  It's cool work: different from what I've done, different enough to stretch me and give me new skills, but also not that distant.  Only 15 months ago I was working with parents--and my adult ESOL students--of Boston Public Schools students support their kids' learning.

Unlike some past pursuits, I feel prepared for this.  I've plunged into old jobs headfirst and thrashed; now I feel like I can not only swim, but swim well.  I worked with parents on parental involvement, did community outreach with the Latino and Hmong populations once upon a time in Milwaukee, and took a grad-school class that studied community engagement deeply.  I've got plenty of ideas and a binder full of more at my side.

A large part of today was spent mapping out the strategy behind the community-engagement strategy.  How do I do the work that I do?  My central question is this: if engaging a community (reaching out to parents, empowering them to have a voice, setting a common vision for the students based on both school and community desires) is a process, then most of the work will happen after my placement ends in August.  So how do I make sure my work empowers others to care about community engagement, and then do the engaging after I've likely left?

In other words, I can't just write a handbook, wipe off my hands in August, and take off.

This will be a challenge, and I'm looking forward to it.

***

Another challenge: building an effective team.

What makes an effective team?  Many things: trust, willingness to be critical, industriousness, focus on the work, commitment to the work.

And more ...

Today I was in a meeting of, say, eight people.  All adults.  During the two hours in which we managed to edit--nay, highlight several words for later editing--a single page of writing, the room was awash in distractions.  If it could be tapped, it was being tapped at: iPads, iPhones, other laptops.  A bowl of cherries seemed to present a fascinating byplay, over the course of more than five minutes, for two people.  All right: if the boss or the ops manager looks at the Blackberry occasionally, I get it.  It's 2012.  But virtually every single adult being consistently and blatantly distracted, while others are talking, in a small group meeting, often by not one but two devices?  Sheesh.

Respect is still respect (I hope).

Second City, First Impressions

Picked-up pieces from my first days in Chicago, aka the site of the summer fellowship:

After a day of kicking myself that I hadn't packed my basketball shoes (at least not for this trip), I borrowed my friend Anna's younger brother's sneaks to join a dozen future Derrick Roses honing their hoop game across the alley from my Anna's apartment.  Never seen a court that got nonstop play from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm.  But then, this is Chicago.

Since the last time I'd visited, I'd forgotten just how ... character the El has.  Taking the Blue Line into the city from O'Hare, when the train enters denser neighborhoods the tracks pass through a veritable canopy of apartment rooftops, so close you could reach out and touch them.  The platform at the station I got off at was wooden and clearly past its prime.  Such touches have their own kind of charm; then again, the accessibility is mediocre.

View from the kitchen table of my friend Anna's apartment, where I crashed till I could move into my own sublet: row of potted herbs on a windowsill, in front of power lines, in front of a grey rooftop with its ducts and vents, in front of a main drag of Mexican eateries, in front of ... the spectacular downtown skyline.  So much about urban living captured in a single vista.


Whoever Naty is, she's the Mayor of Anna's stretch of the Ukrainian Village.  Dona Naty's Tacos one block, Naty's Pizza the next.


I now know what a Pedal Pub is, and I'll leave it at that.

I remember the days when Megabus was just getting started in the Midwest, you could only take it to a few cities, and it seemed you could get a $5 ride even at the last minute.  How times change.

It's nice being back in a city served by The Onion's A.V. Club--for my money, still the most efficient, coherent, and informative entertainment listings available in the cities I've lived in.

Can anyone tell me where and when the good open-mic poetry slams are here?

Trying to find an affordable yet quality grocery store in Hyde Park has proven quite the challenge.

This is a city with a lot of good coffee.  And here I am, trying to transition back to tea.  Sigh.

Kudos to the UChicago Marketplace for connecting the lampless man with students giving away lamps.  I am awash in light!

I consider myself somewhat aesthetically challenged, but even I can appreciate how awful a color of pink my new room is painted.  And with all the new lamps, it's hard to avoid.

Glad to Be Done, and ...

I finished my graduate school work three weeks ago—closing the book, not with a bang but with a take-home stats exam—and though it’s taken some time for the feeling of completion to sink in, it finally has.  I first began to appreciate the month-long break I am on during those moments when, over a plate of dinner, a brief flash of anxiety would rise in me and then just as quickly recede.  No, I didn’t have to excuse myself to finish just one more class reading; there was no meeting to schedule, no unoutlined outline, no nothing. 

In the mood of reflection post-grad school, I’ve been most struck by two things: first, the ability to inure oneself to a ton of work, and second, the strong desire to do something truly imaginative.

First, I am struck by how accustomed one can get to a “new normal.”  In my case, it was the new normal of working all the time.  In August, based on advice extracted from friends who had crossed the grad-school bridge before me, I harbored fleeting and wildly optimistic plans to “treat grad school like a job.”  Get to the library at 8, work all day, and leave it all behind to get home by 6:30 or 7.  In my naïve imagining, it would a job with long hours, to be sure, but with relative boundaries.  The occasional evening and weekend would be sacrificed of course, but disciplined work ethic could make those exceptions, not the rule.  By the end of September, I was telling people, “I’m early to rise, and still working on the early-to-bed.”  I never did figure out the latter part.

Much of the time, the schedule represented a joyful immersion in pursuits of interest.  I distinctly recall, several times last fall, lifting my head up from a book and thinking, Wow, I’m being asked to spend all my time reading and thinking—what a privilege!  I felt the joys of the work most strongly in the spring, where I did most of work not alone but in groups, joining with classmates over bagels and coffee, our efforts laced with banter, good-natured needling, and inside jokes kindled in the long, loopy hours passed together at the ed school library. 

At other times, I was reminded of the darker sense of work that comes into English from the French travail, and the emotional something that is chipped away at by too much labor.  I will always be grateful for the privilege of spending a year focused entirely on school—and without having to balance it against a full-time job or full-time parenting, as others have to.  But when the hours were longest, schoolwork sometimes felt more like travail than joy.  Although being a student promised to be less emotionally demanding than previous work as a teacher, I abandoned much of the personal caretaking I’d once steadfastly maintained as a schoolteacher.  A personal rule of 6.5 hours of sleep per night slipped to 6, or less.  Weekly pick-up basketball remained an imperative, but a Thursday run became increasingly optional.  In the fall I’d stick to the calmer waters of tea, not coffee; by the spring I was intaking as much espresso as I needed to fire the engine.

Because grad school seemed to require less emotional strength than my prior work, I abandoned things to preserve me emotionally—and found my emotional strength taking a toll.  The costs were little but added up.  Having to leave dinner earlier than I’d like made me feel less present around other people, always the guy edging for the door.  Sending a personal email felt like a luxury compared to processing the dozens of missives about class, meetings, school events.  There was less time to linger over a conversation, or a beer.  Never before had I so appreciated how the long conversation, the personal email, the curling up with a movie or novel acts as a salve, healing and restoring us between bouts of work.  It makes the work easier to do.  It gives the work its sense of reward. 

At orientation, our faculty keynote speaker urged us students to surrender to grad school, and surrender I did—to the joy and to sacrifice of it all.  At the time, I could hardly appreciate how much I would end up surrendering, or how important it would feel to get back some of what I’d surrendered when it was all over.  Since being done I’ve experienced what feels like a gift: I am so much more appreciative of the little things than I was before.  Discovering an excellent pisco sour at the bar Eastern Standard; losing hours in a Michael Chabon novel; taking photos off a bluff overlooking La Crosse and the Mississippi River.  I am as happy to surrender to these things as I was to surrender to grad school.  Here’s to small things that feel like luxuries.

The second striking reflection of the last few weeks has been the primacy of reading to my vacation plans.  I got my fill of nonfiction and PDFs the last 10 months, but for my down time I mean novels.  It has become a sort of shorthand.  To the question, How do you want to spend your time off? comes the answer, Catch up on reading.  It’s always been that way; as a kid, I was constantly losing a whole afternoon to a book.  But now, the urge to crack open a book seems like a nonnegotiable part of the R-and-R.    

And in, finally, reading again, the most appealing part of literature has been how it allows one to escape into the unknown.  All of the things they say about literature—putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, imagination filling out characters—are so true, and I see that now all the more because of its contrast with my schoolwork.  It is like the contrast between the unknown and the known.  Literature brings us all to the happy precipice of the unknown, from where we take leaps that land in wonderful places.  How the mind’s eye will imagine a character is an open-ended endeavor.  Where the author will take the story may have been foreshadowed, but not telegraphed. 

The unknowns of fiction seem so unlike the decisiveness of the policy program.  Sure, as more than one ed-school commencement speaker mentioned, it’s important for us educators to “hit the ground listening” upon our graduation.  But I often found, in my policy and management program, that wondering about the unknown was far less emphasized than being decisive, assertive, straightforward.  You know it if you’ve seen; we students know it well: The executive summary outlining the three main points.  The imperative to define the problem—hammered into me by my most recent professor’s exhortation to “Have a clear problem definition,” or by my fall professor: “What’s the problem here?”  The unctuous elbowing-in of politics, with its necessary decisive steps and its cool disregard for second-guessing.  The PDF with the three bullet-pointed problems and accompanying three bullet-pointed solutions.  And as students, the policy memos we wrote more often than not hewed to the same dictum of the policy world: State the problem, suggest solutions.

What was lost in that decisiveness, especially given our location within what is (probably accurately) known as the most opinionated ZIP code in America, was, at times, a respect for the unknown.  A policy—anything in education, indeed most things in the world—can only be measured and assessed and understood so far.  There are things we don’t know, or can’t figure out, unless we wait a long time, ask just the right questions.  Maybe there are some things we can never know. 

It’s not just imagination that having a respect for the unknown demands of us, but patience, humility, the willingness to hold one’s guns, rather than fire them off in opinion.  In an essay on American education, as it happens, Christopher Hitchens wrote, “The measure of an education is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance.”  In that sense, my graduate program was a mixed blessing, opening up both countless avenues and on-ramps of curiosity while also disciplining a decisiveness about matters that carries danger.  We can debate the relative weight of either of these.  But no question, having time off has been a clear step in the direction of the unknown. 

Gains or Games?

[R]eformers have relied on the idea of community as the vehicle through which they could compensate for and counteract the costs inherent in American social priorities and arrangements.  They have believed that local communities can somehow be different in values and dynamics than the larger society in which they are embedded.  Thus, for example, it has been presumed that in a society driven by self-interest in would be easiest to identify common interests within a local community.  ... In reality, as discussed above, Americans have been far more likely historically to use the idea of community to exclude and divide than to include ...


In a society characterized by social and racial segregation, the people coming together to address poverty and its related problems become the poor and excluded coming together to address these problems.  The history of neighborhood initiative reflects a persistent tendency to ask those with the fewest capital, institutional, and human resources to draw on those resources tro better their lives; to ask those whose trust has been betrayed over and over ... to join a process requiring significant trust; and to ask the excluded to be responsible for finding a way to become included.


--Robert Halpern, Rebuilding the Inner City, 1995 (pp. 10 & 12)


In trying to come up with proposals for a more participatory and community-organizing role for parents in a Promise Neighborhood Initiative, more and more I ask myself: Am I more or less optimistic about the abilities of PNIs to fulfill their ambitious missions?

I Respect State Policy, but I Can't Say I Love It

Tonight was the last class in my state policy practicum.  It was a long, engaging evening: an invitation to my professor's house, homemade lasagna and a Corona Light, and two simulations of state Board of Education meetings.

Sure, most people could have done with just the first two.

But not in our class, and not for me.  We lapped up the third part, the simulations.  We role played, laughed, loved them.

This semester one of my top goals was to let my wonky side free for a few months, and see how it behaved.  I enjoyed those simulations, in which my role was to advocate for early-childhood education to get a piece of the pie in the wake of an unexpected $10 million windfall in state education funding.                                    

I enjoyed a class debate we had, again on dividing the pie: dropout prevention, or funding preschool?

I've enjoyed the internship in legislative state policy, rolling up my sleeves and digging into the trials and tribulations of English Language Learners (ELLs) in Massachusetts.

I've enjoyed attending a state board meeting and hearing impassioned advocates on both sides of a charter school rise to the mike and make their arguments.

I've enjoyed these experiences in the sense of a curiosity satisfied.  In January, I wanted to glean some sense of how state policy functions, what it's like from the inside out.  I now feel like I can apprehend, in some limited way, what the engine looks like: what fuels it, sparks it, oils it.  Where it can go, where it can't go.

But satifsying a curiosity is different from finding joy.

I respect state policy more than ever.  But I can't say I love it.

Because for all the pleasure of getting under the hood, there's been an equal if not stronger frustration with all that state policy can't do.  Where the car can't drive.  I've been offered the daunting privilege of contributing to a redraft of legislation that would rectify how ELLs are served by Massachusetts, 10 years after voters ended bilingual education through a ballot initiative.

The efforts to legislate in favor of ELLs is worthy.  But compared to practice on the ground, or regulations from the state education association, I'm just not sure what changes in law can accomplish.  Sometimes I wonder if trying to tinker from 30,000 feet is like rebuilding the house with the same fire that burned it down.  It was a change in state law that led to the ELL tangle we face today; but trying to rectify that through law is a path dotted with booby-traps.

But even if we can find new language that will positively affect kids in classrooms--and I'll do my darnedest to help make that happen--the process of state-policy work hasn't given me much joy, either.

As a guest presenter in another of my classes said recently, "To work in policy, you have to like reading law."  I spent most of my undergrad years reading history.  The law I've read, in contrast, has often seemed drier than this New England spring.  After some time reading state law and regulation, I've begun to be able to decode it.  And still--after a few pages, a few minutes, I find myself pulling myself out of the papers, shaking my head, walking to the water cooler.  Anything for a break before plunging back in.

There are other ways at state policy of course: state departments of education, working at the grassroots but sitting on a board or committee, doing research for a think-tank.  I respect the work of state policy, and (heeding the advice of my sister) I try never to close a door.

But as I search for the next move, and consider moves beyond that, I find myself circling back to a truism I've heard before--and heard tonight from my professor: find work that resonates with you.

I've yet, I'm sorry to say, found that state policy fits the bill.

Reading between the Lines

Tonight, in my family engagement class, we heard from a Congressional policy advisor: Do you like reading legislation?  If you want to work in policy, you're going to have to read a lot of it--and you'll have to like it.

I've been up to my eyes in English Language Learners this semester in my statehouse internship, and thus far--I can't say I love legislation.  Department of Education regulations ... technical assistance for school districts; they may not be page-turners, but they're at least bereft of looping semicolons and "whereases" that dot the statutory language.  But the law itself?  Not only don't I love it.  It's not even a courtship.

I may not be enamored of legal language, but it's been a blast seeing policy from the inside-out.  The hearings, the advocacy, the urgency: this stuff matters.  And to contribute to the process has been quite gratifying.

But as someone used to writing a lesson plan on Friday to be rolled out next week, state legislation seems to move at an absolutely glacial pace.  And there's something else to adjust to.  Bills are filed, the public weighs in, committees file amendments, semicolons are added, "whereases" tweaked.  If you're lucky, a bill squeaks through committee, gets enough support on the voting floor, and goes to the Governor for a signature.  Sure, it's what we all learned in eighth-grade civics.  But the slowness of it is what stands out in person.

And the tortoise speed of legislative action is mirrored in the distance one might feel from the effect of law. The bill I'm working on right now carries a pearl of frustration precisely because it's not yet clear to me how changing the bill will actually change kids' lives.  It's not clear to me policy is the right arena in which to be fighting the battle.

Some legislation has an impact, maybe even immediate impact.  But much legislation edits around the margins, spawns unintended consequences, or at worst, as we all know this week, is immediately pilloried and targeted for repeal.

And that's something else our guest visitor spoke of today: How often do you need to see the results of your work?

Week Links: In a Wonky Mood

Guess I've been in a wonky mood since my professor encouraged us this week to "curl up in bed ... with Title I of No Child Left Behind."  Haven't gone that far, but ...

A well-reported piece on how more and more homeless families in Massachusetts are being put up in local hotels.  I would have liked a little more about the overall Rube Goldbergian homelessness and housing system, but there's plenty of good stuff and vivid anecdotes nonetheless.  The money stat: Four years ago the state housed 66 homeless families in hotels; today, that's 1469.  And this, despite state programs designed precisely to move families into their own apartments ASAP.

A perceptive article at The New Republic on Obama's "re-competition" plan for early-childhood education: same pot of money, but now programs deemed "deficient" have to compete for grants.  One interesting takeaway: the changes have faced little opposition because they were proposed by a Democrat--and because ECE lacks large teachers unions to organize resistance.  This will be an interesting one to watch.

Finally, a Romney and a Kennedy: strange and (at times) strained bedfellows.

Adult Education's Day (or More?) in the Sun

Back from a few days in Burlington, Vermont, with its 70-degree March weather, and surprisingly good restaurant scene (like this one).

A sure sign of spring's renewal and hope, yesterday: adult education prominently featured in the Boston Globe!  In essence, to respond to the reality that adults go back to get a GED, then find it's not enough to get them a family-supporting job or to succeed in community college, the state is planning to "retool" the system to strengthen the focus on college- and career-readiness:

The effort would lead to increased instructional intensity, more academic and career advising, and a curriculum geared toward college and career readiness, including courses in specialized areas of interest, education officials said.

For me, some takeaways, lots of questions.  First, this move should be seen as part of the overall K-12 conversation about bolstering college and career pathways, and making a more seamless educational system.  Second, while adult education has undergone funding cuts since the recession struck in 2008, a renewed focus on the field might act as a barrier to later cuts. 

That said, it's unclear how the field will be "retooled" from above--despite the positive comments from people in the article, teachers, counselors, and directors will all have to be on-board with, and well-trained, in the new sauce.  And I worry that too strong a focus on merely career preparation--while undoubtedly important to so many GED and ESOL-skills seekers--neglects preparation for the rest of life: to be a citizen, to be a parent, to go to college for broad, not narrow skills. 

Look forward to following this one.

What Matters to Me, and Why

Third in a series of speeches for Arts of Communication, at the Kennedy School of Government (the first here, the second here).  

Assignment: Speak about your values.

Over the past few weeks, a number of you have spoken about growing up white and privileged.  In the small town where I’m from, that was my experience, too.  My parents are loving, caring, and involved in the community.  But let’s face it: we were more likely to be in a food co-operative than a multiracial coalition.

A month after I graduated college, I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to volunteer with AmeriCorps.  In college, I’d been an ethnic studies major and student activist.  I was drawn to Milwaukee because it was diverse, affordable, and a bit gritty.  I was drawn to AmeriCorps because, before I became a schoolteacher, I wanted to immerse myself in the community.  I wanted to learn about the institutions around me, and about myself.  Little did I realize, living in a white neighborhood, and working in a black one, just how immersed I would be.

When I arrived, I had six weeks to kill before the program.  I went on brewery tours, I bought a bike, I learned about Milwaukee history.  And I settled into the room I’d rented in a two-bedroom apartment, one of six units in a yellow stone building in a neighborhood people had told me was good to rent in.

A month after I moved in, my roommate Helen and I were chatting one night.  She said, “if you ever need something fixed, talk to me.  The landlord, Gretchen, doesn’t like to deal with subletters.  And I’ll tell you something else Gretchen doesn’t like: blacks.”  Ellen went on: one time Gretchen found out she was considering subletting to a black couple.  She told her, “If you ever rent to people with hair like that, I’ll evict you.”

That night, I learned: it’s one thing to read about race, another to feel it pound, feel it sweat.  I went to my room in a daze, wrote down everything Ellen had told me on a yellow legal pad.  That night, and many more nights, my muscles would clench with questions: Should I move out?  Should I stay, and try to change minds?  I had black friends.  Could I invite them over?

I decided to stay.  I decided to take action.  Now, I didn’t end unfair housing.  But I gathered facts, secretly.  I called up a fair housing council, and gave them each piece of the story.  They opened a case—though I never found out how it got resolved.  But as they investigated the practices in my building, I had to interrogate the habits of my mind. 

For Milwaukee is a city with a lot of street crime.  And for many people, the face of that crime is young, black, and male.  That fall, as I’d leave my AmeriCorps job at the Red Cross to wait at a bus shelter on the corner of 27^th and Wisconsin, in a downbeat, black neighborhood, I’d like to say I felt no anxiety or prejudice.  But I’d be lying.

With time, I found my own way to be comfortable.  I talked to friends and colleagues about—my own racial feelings.  I walked around the neighborhood.  I engaged people at the bus stop.  I tried to make peace with my skeletons.  That fall, I learned: It’s one thing to feel open-minded, but another to open your mind and see how you really feel. 

More than that, in my year in AmeriCorps, I learned what structural racism, and personal racial prejudice, look like in living color.  What was the more important lesson?  To take steps to rectify institutional racism?  Or to take a step back and reflect on our own racial feelings?  Both.  And I learned that you can’t deal with one and not the other.  As long as our minds are segregated, our apartments, our streets, our neighborhoods, will be segregated.  I truly believe that, even if we can’t overcome inequality overnight, with time, we can—but it has to start with each of us.