More Coffee, Please

Sixty-four years ago yesterday 73,000 Americans, many not much older than the young men and women who sit in my classroom, risked their lives to storm the beaches of Normandy. Roughly 10,000 became casualties, bleeding and dying so others might live in a world without the need for that kind of sacrifice.

I made that point, quietly, to my kids today. It’s something we all ought to remember.

The Town of Sullivan selectmen have asked to have a say about the special meeting for teacher contracts. Unsurprisingly, they’re opposing it.

I’m trying to understand the logic of this, and I’m not sure there is any. I’m already grimly bemused with the Monadnock Taxpayers Association and their move to block the special election. Until someone can explain to me otherwise, it’s pretty obvious that the goal can’t be anything resembling a fair agreement and must instead be the destruction of public education.

It’s circumstantial evidence, of course, but strong nonetheless. Occams razor: Good enough for the Medieval Church, good enough for Southwest New Hampshire.

Sullivan is a little trickier to understand. The Selectmen have pushed for a lawsuit against the district before, over early-retirement. The townspeople rejected the action, but¹ I have the feeling that the real reason is the selectmen want to leave the district, much like Surry did. The townspeople don’t, and right now—as long as this contract is not approved—the selectmen can wave early retirement around like club to beat their point home.

It’s certainly something mentioned several times in their appeal.

I can’t speak intelligently about motive; all I can do is speculate, and wonder, and hope for a better decision. I like to think there’s a world out there where we can come together as a community to raise our kids the way they ought to be, and to provide for them the education they deserve without needing to run to a judge every couple of months.

I was missing one student this week—he was in Concord. New Hampshire has been looking at finding ways for students to earn credit in the work force for the last several years (the edu-speak is “Extended learning opportunities”) and this is an area that MC² has pioneered.

Which is why my student was there, talking about how kids can earn credit for doing real work out in the real world, using real skills.

At the state level, everyone (and a few people in addition) is terribly excited about what MC² offers and what it means for schools. There were schools from all over New Hampshire, and representatives from states all over New England. It was a rare chance for a young student to have voice in a public space.

What’s odd, and so very tragic, is the reaction from the local schools. Keene was there and tremendously excited about the school that had these opportunities—until they found out it was MC². At that point…well, who cares? They knew about that already.

Monadnock wasn’t there at all. Apparently there’s a good chunk of truth in Matthew 13:57.

The only thing I can say is, “no duh.”

I’ll be teaching this summer at Upward Bound, which among other things means I need to plan a summer curriculum. Of course, there’s still only so many hours in the day—I wish I had the power to change that—and those hours need to come from somewhere.

The easy thing to do would be to shortchange the students I currently have. I could easily take another few days to get feedback to them, not show up at a few events, and generally let things slide. Chances are, the only one who would really know the reason would be me.

I’m not doing that. I’m skipping the first day of Upward Bound because it’s a half day I’m contracted for. I’m also turning around work at my usual pace, showing up at Graduations, events after school, and coaching students at MRHS through their research papers and senior projects—as I’ve always done.

What I’ve given up is time with my wife, time with my family, time for me. And it’s only so long that I’ll be willing to make those sacrifices, and it’s only for one reason I make them now—I need the money to pay my existing bills. I’m not looking for anything new, I just want to stay where I’m at.

Of course, there will come a point where it won’t be worth it, and I’ll start looking around for a school district which can pay teachers what they’re worth. It’s happening right now, and it will continue to happen—especially as long as people stay quiet, and don’t start looking for the truth and examining the lies they’ve been told.

For anyone who wasn’t aware, Sue Romano is leaving the MRHS science department for Keene.

I’m going to miss Sue. She was my next door neighbor—and more importantly, a kindred spirit—for five years at MRHS. She was one of the rare science teachers who could not only be passionate about their subject, but more importantly cared more about learning and students than just the subject.

She was passionate about growing the teaching of physics at MRHS, and showed many, many students that they had an aptitude for a hard subject that could also help them be very successful in life. More importantly, she was more than willing to work with others—the trips with the calculus classes to look at physics in action at Granite Gorge doubled as a class trip for many of them, and I can’t count the number of times I would take classes across the hallway to see something incredible in her classroom.

She was something special. She was (and is) my friend. She’s an incredibly talented educator, the kind of example anyone would want for their child, and someone who is capable of inspiring others.

She’s also a veteran of the disaster that Winchester went through with their high school. I hate to think she saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to go through it again. But then, how could any reasonable person think otherwise, given the current situation?

The difference is that Winchester students had someplace to go. Keene can’t absorb 1300+ Monadnock students—which means they’ll just have to settle for a lousy education.

You gets what you asks for, sometimes.

The truly amazing thing, the thing that amuses me the most, is every time one of our kids gets in trouble the excuse is always, “it happens all the time at MRHS!”

It never does, but we often deal with perceptions, and not reality. If one kid gets away with it once, then it’s “always” and “all the time.” But the the whole point of a smaller school is to teach better, to hold students accountable, to not be a place where poor behavior is common because it’s small enough to hold people accountable.

The real trick—and not that hard, not really, not if we were willing to sacrifice a sacred cow or two—would be to make MRHS smaller, or at least feel smaller.

Speaking of community…

One of the things I’ve always liked most about MC² is the Internship program. It’s not always successful—we’ve had students get fired from internships—but even that is a natural consequence to the behaviors we see, and if we can catch it in high school and correct it, then we have a better chance of producing a young man or woman who will be successful in later life.

That’s all well and good—but what I really like is the connection to the community that the program creates. Schools should not exist in a vacuum—they should feel as much a part of the community and the business world as they are in reality.

Schools don’t exist for the sake of schooling—they exist to help the community have a better cadre of workers in order to be more successful. The more input business has with schooling,² the more invested they will be in creating a finished, final human ready to work productively.

So I appreciate the efforts of local businesses which done their time to us, and who are willing to work with us in educating the community’s youth. I also appreciate the effort put into it by our students (most of them, anyway) who work hard to say “thanks” in return.

But the best part is what it does for the kids. I appreciate men and women who are already busy but who find the time to do so much good for the kids. I see young people who have not found success anywhere else find it because an adult was willing to give them a shot. I see partnerships forming, and people caring about others, and working cooperatively and not just for themselves—something I’ve missed in this district for a number of years.

And I appreciate the effect it has—the confidence they learn out in the “real world” which allows them to tackle—and overcome—the challenges of school.

1 I was just informed Monday evening that Sullivan did not drop their lawsuit—it’s scheduled for September 15-17. Apparently, one reason for opposing the contract is because it gets rid of early retirement, and they want their lawsuit—if the new contract went through, they couldn’t have it. Interesting that lawsuits are more important than getting along. ↺

2 That doesn’t mean school should become a business. The mission is different—human happiness versus money. ↺

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Competency Based Education, Education, Monadnock Community Connections School, Monadnock Regional School District, Monadnock Taxpayer’s Association, School Change, School Funding

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