More Coffee, Please

The Town of Sullivan dropped its lawsuit against the district. Now we spend the funds which have been going to lawyers on education—a novel thought, and I hope it stays that way.

MRHS held its first-ever lockdown drill this Wednesday. It went well.

I’ve been a wee bit concerned about security at MRHS ever since a student brought a rifle into the building and decided to fire it into the ceiling twenty feet from my head. Seventeen years later, there’s a plan in case something worse happens.

For a first time, it went well. The cafeteria was emptied in less than a minute—no small feat for that space and that area—and most students took the drill seriously. There was only one set of doors not locked, and it was for a room where there were no students—so a fairly forgivable lapse.

Granted, there were some issues. The PA system in the building fails in the gym and in the library, making it difficult or impossible to hear announcements and instructions in an emergency. There were some classrooms with the same issue, and some have no shades—all things which will need to be looked at, and all a result of the inadequate funding for the building for the last two decades.

Still, I like Mr. Pickering’s response. “It needs to be done, and we need to find a way.”

Yeah, we do. Now we just need to get everyone behind that.

It’s more a side-note than anything else, but Mr. Moriarty’s complaints to the school board about his inability to act as a reading tutor for Mt. Caesar amuse the heck out of me. From the Sentinel article:

Moriarty drew a comparison between his story and that of an African-American man being refused the chance to volunteer with an all-white fire department in the 1960s.

I’ve no idea why he wasn’t granted the position—I’ve no connection to the school and all I know is what was in the paper, and it seems entirely right to me.

I do think his choice of metaphor is a little sloppy. It’s more like a member of the KKK asking to be a worker in an all black school. I don’t know that I’d be all that eager to have working in the building the same fellow who spends so much time and energy attacking everything that goes on in the building—specially given his propensity to take reality, distort it, and create half-truths from it.

More likely, however, he’s just not needed.

I love MRHS.

There are things that drive me crazy—part of this whole blog is working to try and highlight the things we do right and wrong to keep and fix them—but when you come right down to it, I love the kids we produce.

I got roped into acting as an advisor for a student’s senior project—which is to say, I eagerly volunteered. Advisors are a new part of the senior project, an attempt to get more people involved in the process and ensure the student is doing the work at the level we’re looking for. It’s one of the structures pushed for in the summer of 2007, and it’s gradually becoming an integral part of the program.

Since the individual in question was one of my students from Upward Bound, I was more than happy to get involved. But what was really impressive was the way, when I was haranguing my advisee to get some work in on time, every student around volunteered to help.

A group of kids, with no connection to her at all, decided to leap into help. There were offers coming in left and right—which is impressive, to say the least.

We really do have great kids.

I love random hallway high-fives. “Hale! I got a 98% on a math test!”

One of the better things one can hear on a Friday.

So I was gently reminded that if I’m going to agitate for people to go to School Board meetings then I should be at them myself, and where was I on Thursday at the education committee meeting?

Right. It’s an excellent point—mea culpa.

The dilemma is this: for the last year I’ve been spending my Tuesday nights (school board evenings) taking classes. It’s one of those little things I like to do to make myself a better teacher¹ and one of the things that the district wisely encourages in order to create better trained educators.

It’s also one of those things I’m willing—one of those things I’ll have to give up in order to keep watch on a school board that has far too many people who are not working to make education better.

Besides, from what I understand, I need to be around just to hear Mr. Moriarty quote me out of context. Apparently on Tuesday he cited my blog as part of an attack on lazy teachers—which is not what I said.

I suppose it’s a certain sign of success when people take your words and twist them. Now… where’s the fame and fortune part of that?

Speaking of the school board, the next meeting will be Monday, November 3 right before the presidential and other federal elections. It’s in Sullivan, so you’re advised to bring a flashlight—as always, they’re at 7pm.

If you didn’t catch the Sentinel photo of Kylie Mason going after that soccer ball in the Thursday paper, do so. A great shot of a great athlete playing the game as hard as it ought to be.

One of the fun things about interfacing with MRHS is getting a staff ID number. I had to fight very long and hard to get my old ID number back, and even that was a compromise. I really wanted 24601.

Come on… we’re doing Les Miserables this year. I’d be making French convict jokes all year long.

1 Insert sarcastic comment about it taking more than a class to pull that off here… ↺

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Monadnock Community Connections School, Monadnock Regional School District, Monadnock Taxpayer’s Association, School Board

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