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Civility – Another COVID Casualty

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COVID has taken and is taking more from us than we know or currently can imagine.  Illness, death, and the disruption of the lives we knew have been only the most visible losses.  It is the multitude of non-medical losses that will have changed us the most.  Damage to the fabrics of our community and social psyche will linger long after the masks come off.

I begin here.  None of my family members, immediate or across three living generations have died or been seriously ill with the virus.  We have been lucky.  The agony of those who lost family and friends or whose family members are seriously health-impaired due to the virus is both devastating and unimaginable.  614,000+ deaths so far and counting.  Unimaginable loss is an inadequate expression.

For most of a year we have watched the health department’s weekly reports of positive tests, community infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID with a variety of emotions.  In our  county there have been 30 deaths, 111 persons hospitalized, 2,577 positive tests out of 18, 669 tests administered, as of this date.  We currently have 30 active cases and our community has a moderate-high infection rating.  Our county fairly represents our state, but both are well below the death, illness, and loss in other parts of the nation.  These are matters of data and reported facts and, for a community with nominal effects, COVID has seemed more abstract than real.

The pandemic is not over. It is necessary to say that new variants, unanticipated surges of infection, and less than careful behaviors could again upend our quiet county data and the lives of our communities.  As we continue to deal with medical disease, we need to consider all the other casualties of COVID.  The damage to our society requires our attention and consideration.  We are not the society we were.

To enumerate our losses, I am concerned with these.

  • Civility toward fellow citizens
  • Trust in leadership
  • Greater economic gapping
  • Polarization of discourse
  • Economic resilience
  • Family coherence
  • View of the future
  • Child/adult connections

Each of the above topics is dramatically damaged by COVID.  Each topic is a small treatise of its own, but I will write only of one and allow a reader to consider how the pandemic caused sickness and behavioral disease in the others.

Civility is an older term that is never out of date.  Wrap up courtesy, politeness, good manners, graciousness, geniality, and consideration of others rather than self and you have the meaning of civility.  Civility is often expected, but it is a choice of how we act toward each other.  It is very easy to be civil toward other people when we are are agreement.  Civility is tested when we are in disagreement – how do we act and behave toward people we disagree with?  COVID broke our civility and things were said and done that stretched and then broke the harmony of local civility.  Can we get it back?

What happened?  First, COVID changed our social harmony.  Whether admitted or not, the presence and threat of disease and death touched everyone.  Immediately, we were divided by our disagreement that we were at risk of sickness and death or we were not risk.  Some friends said COVID was just a new and annual influenza and some friends said COVID was a new plague.  No one I knew stood neutral on this question.  Immediately our social conversations and behaviors were skewed by this single issue.  Keep this conceptualization in mind – annual flu without much consequence versus plague that causes death – because civility cleaved on this.

Second, the protocols arbitrarily adopted for community health added gasoline to the fires of initial disagreement.  Shut downs and closings were so dramatic and devastating to our “usual” that disagreement quickly elevated to anger.  Friends believing that COVID is annual flu were angry that schools and stores were closed.  Working parents lost jobs or needed to stay home taking care of children.  Employers lost employees.  Businesses instantly lost business and some closed forever.  Friends believing that COVID is the plague were angry that anyone would not want schools and stores closed, because social isolation was the only way to contain a plague. 

Third, things said and done can not be taken back.  COVID is unrelenting in this.  Lives have been lost and health has been ruined and there is not getting those back.  The lack of do overs also holds for what was said and how we treated each other.  Friends who usually spoke with smiles called each other crazy or stopped talking to each other.  Friends who walked toward each other turned their backs and walked away.

Social media is so easy yet so indelible.  Friends found it easy to make caustic and mean comments toward others on FaceBook or twitter or in e-mails.  Once said or written, they could not be retrieved or changed.  Social media created new channels for anger that further eroded civility.  We are known by what we say and do – this is a fact of life with or without a pandemic.  Now, it is more true than ever. 

Lastly, life goes on.  Regardless of where we live, urban, suburban or rural, we circulate in relatively small groups of friends and associates.  These are the people we rely upon and who rely upon us directly or indirectly.  I am happy to say that no one in my community circle died or suffered serious health impairment from COVID.  That said, COVID split my community circle and anger flared and things were said and done based upon those angers.  Civility in my circles diminished significantly.

One our human traits is the gift of forgetting and forgiving.  These two traits are choices, though.  Civility in our community may return but it will be by our choice.  Personally, I tend to forgive quickly but seldom forget.  COVID marked the generations of its survivors and only time will tell how we put our social and community lives back together.

In closing, do your own analysis of how the pandemic has affected your

  • trust of government or any community leader,
  • economic sustainability,
  • connections across generations, and
  • positive attitude about the future.

What has been lost?  What has been gained?  What will they be in the years to come.

COVID is affecting more than we know.

The Start of the 21-22 School Year Depends Upon Your #1

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We know these six things.  Adults make the decisions regarding the education of children.  Schools are pivotal to the economic vitality of a community.  Children are the last in our population to be eligible for COVID vaccination.   The virus of March 2020 is not the virus of August 2021.  During the pandemic, the issue of whose voices determine educational policy has become more important for some than the education of children.  The education of all children matters.  Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, these six topics have dominated discussion of public education.

The opening of the 2021-22 school year is a matter of determining which of these will be #1.  As in most scenarios, there is an analogy we can apply.  This is one I have used in prior blogs.  We are in the dilemma of three adult men in the movie City Slickers.  We face uncertainty in our future.  Curly, the old and grizzled cowhand, asks us a simple question.  “What is your #1?  When you know that, everything else will become clear.” 

With less than a month before the start of the fall semester, what is our #1 for this school year?  Each of these six knowns is vying to be the lead story, #1, for the 21-22 school year.  Of the six things we know, what we make our #1 will drive the others.

What do we really know?

Yes, adults make the decisions regarding how children will be raised and educated.  First and foremost, adults as parents decide how children will be raised.  It starts with a parent and that parent’s child, and it generalizes to the neighborhood and community.  “This is how children are raised here.”  Adults, as politicians, business and community leaders, and school leaders, weigh in on public policy, local employment, and schooling.  Adults make the decisions – this a primary law of the child’s world.

Yes, schools are pivotal to the vitality of a community.  In March 2020 closed school campuses had an immediate and adverse impact upon parent availability for daily work.  Some parents still have not returned to the job market.  Closed campuses curtailed the community’s access to the entertainment value of school athletics, theater, and activities.  Closed or open campuses make a difference.  Something as basic as the retail sales are reviving this summer as children require new school clothes, shoes, backpacks, and supplies.  Open schools are a sign of a community open for new business.

Yes, senior adults then all adults and finally older children over the age of 12 were and are eligible for vaccination.  Early data showed the elderly were the most vulnerable to severe COVID illness and death and their early vaccination reversed that data line.  Vaccines were provided to working adults to assist their return to employment.  Finally, young adults and teens became vaccine eligible.  But, not children under the age of 12.  Now, it is this age group, the vaccine ineligible, who are the focus of attention for decisions about September.  Masks or no masks.  In-person or remote.  Options and conditions for how children can attend school.  The health of the last to be vaccine eligible is our issue today.

Yes, the virus mutated, and today’s Delta variant is different than the initial virus that spread across our communities.  And, yes, the science of understanding virus is a changing story meaning that we are moving from a pandemic virus to an endemic virus that may be circulating for years to come.  Medical science needs to stay current if not anticipate these variants.  There may well be more variants and more vaccines in our future.

Yes, we are in a battle of voices.  The growing question is whose voices will determine the decisions to be made.  In 2020, the voices were divided by in-person versus remote education.  Those voices splintered into adults who chose to open enroll to a non-local school and those who disenrolled from public school and enrolled as home schoolers. In 2021, the voices are divided by masking versus no-masking.  Per usual, most parents have opinions on this issue but only a small number of parents vocalize their opinions as demands.  Letters, texts, and petitions are sent to local school boards.  The issue is narrowed down to who will decide whether children will be masked in school – parents or school officials.  Everyone has data and studies and reports to cite in favor of their opinion.  However, at the end of this day, the adults making this decision will be the adults elected to the local school board and the adults hired as school administrators.

Yes, the education of all children matters.  The pandemic has caused multiple parsing of children into constituent groups of specific concern.  Children needing special education and assistive education quickly rose to our attention.  Children in homes without adequate Internet connectivity required other means for transporting instruction between home and school.  Children without adults at home to supervise and support remote education became at risk of falling behind or dropping out.

Most data indicates that vaccination protects against infection and makes subsequent “break through” infection less severe.  And, vaccination provides protection against most variants, so far.  Yet, the argument about vaccination or no vaccinations persists.  The real choice may simply be whether to be vaccinated and all other decisions will spring from that.

Communities will be healthier physically and emotionally when children are eligible for vaccination.  Communities are healthier when school campuses are open to in-person schooling.

Adults will continue to make the crucial decisions regarding school.  School boards and administrators, not parents or community voices, will make decisions regarding masks or no masks in school.  If the school board decision is “masks are optional”, parents will make the daily masking decision for their children.  And, parents will continue to choose where their children will be educated.  Public school enrollment will continue to decrease as dissatisfied parents demand options that align with their opinions.

What to do?

Everyone gets to decide their #1.  School leaders, parents, community – all decide.  Depending upon your #1, things clarify differently.

For school leaders, our #1 continues to be “the education of all children matters” and all decisions flow from this #1.  #2 is that public schooling is authorized by state statutes and those statutes vest elected school boards and employed administrators with school-based decision making.  #3 is parents will make decisions regarding where to educate their children – public school, open enrollment out, private education, or home schooling.  And, parents will make decisions regarding masking when school leaders determine that masking is optional and not conditional.  #4 addresses local conditions.  An open school campus is best for local communities.  And, a mutating virus plus a vaccinated population will continue to determine the status of an open campus.  Lastly, #6 is that the public always will have and will voice their opinions.  Voices, however, do not overpower statutory duty, parent responsibility, or the realities of public health. 

For some parents, parent choice is #1.  They have the right to choose where their child will be educated.  School leader decisions regarding masking and other protocols may influence a parent decision.  This #1 makes the education of their family’s child the highest priority. 

For other parents, their opinion is #1.  They want an open campus, their child to attend the local school, AND they want the local school to create protocols and rules that align with their opinions.  The alignment of school and their personal opinions matters greatly to these parents.  Where to educate their child always hangs in the balance of how well school aligns with opinion.

For our community, the business of business is business and business is #1.  Our community prioritizes an open campus, happy parents, and the education of children.

Why is this thus?

The #1 of school leaders is premised on this – children get one whack at each grade level and each subject/course.  One year of diminished learning creates negativity in a child’s education.  One year of wobbling decisions about what is #1 lessens a school’s productivity, parent commitment to a school, and child engagement.  While we generalize education across the K-12 grades, the knowledge, skills, experiences inherent in each annual curriculum matters.  Case in point – Remember fractions.  The manipulation of fractions is easy for some, hard for others, and complete mystery for a few.  What happens if, due to a lack of instructional commitment, all children in a grade are not provided with good or complete instruction in fractions?  What if fractions are a mystery to all?  The result will be devastating to subsequent mathematics, as well as chemistry, physics, and all shop courses.  We are required to create educational proficiency in all subjects for all children.  This is our #1.

Additionally, school boards are committed to equity, quality, and protection of the most vulnerable students.  Rules and protocols become easier when generalized to the majority.  Easy does not necessarily protect those most vulnerable to school failure or to viral infection.  How we “treat the least of these” has a familiar and essential ring for school leaders.

Regardless of the pandemic, children need to be educated.  Primary grade children are in the “prime time” for their learning to read.  Mathematics changes from arithmetic to algebra-based math in upper elementary and middle school.  College and career preparation is ongoing in high school

The Big Duh!

School boards and administrators that acknowledge their responsibility to this #1 know what comes next – policy and rule statements that clarify school behaviors for staff, students, and parents.  Parents, knowing the decisions and decision-making process of their local school board, can make informed decisions regarding where to educate their children.  With clear statements, communities can plan on when campuses will be open and the conditions for closing a campus, if necessary.

“Understand your #1 and everything else becomes clear.”

Educating Children: “The hard is what makes it great”

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Jimmy Duggan is talking to Dottie Hinson in “A League of Their Own” about her decision to leave baseball.  She tells Jimmy that playing “… baseball just got too hard”.  His answer is about baseball and a whole lot more.  “It’s supposed to be hard.  If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.  The hard is what makes it great.”  We apply this insight to the teaching and learning of children in the 2021-22 school year.

What do we know?

No teacher, school leader, or school board member working today has experienced the type of challenges we all face in opening the 21-22 school year.  We have no prior experience to tell us what to do.  After more than a school year in various stages of campus closures, remote instruction, daily screen time interactions, and still within a national pandemic, there is an expectation that we can create normalcy in September.  To add icing to this dire circumstance, principals and teachers have little to no accurate data regarding student learning in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.  Hard is an understatement.

The status of student learning is confusing.  Some children were in-person students last spring.  Some children were remote learners last spring.  Some remote learners dropped in and out of active learning; their reasons were many and varied.  Some children were home schooled.  Some children enrolled in out-of-community schools that provided in-person learning and now return to their local school.  Some children were provided district curriculum in 20-21 and others were provided vendor or on-line curriculum.  A classroom in September will be a menagerie.

Statewide assessments in 20-21 were waived.  School assessments in 20-21 were hit and miss.  Data is not consistent across groups of children.  Data is not complete for an individual child.

School faculty and leadership changed.  The pandemic chased some out of teaching and greener pastures called others to new school employment.

As a generalization, children with learning challenges received attention and accommodations in 20-21 but not the same level of attention and accommodation required to make the annual progress they needed.

Why is this thus?

The 20-21 school year was about organizational survival.  In terms of time on educational issues, we spent more energy and resources in 20-21 arguing about remote versus in-person instruction, masking versus non-masking, inequities in Internet access, and our believing in or not believing in health data and experts than we spent on discussions of clinical teaching and learning.

As evidence, more than 95% of the public communication with our local school board were arguments about remote/in-person, masking and social distancing, and the cancellation or limited scheduling of athletic events.  Less that 5% of communication was about quality teaching and children.  The delivery of school lunches to children at home was a more heated topic that reading and writing. 

As evidence, we locally spent more than one million dollars on pandemic infrastructure, especially HVAC and technology.  The good news is that no children or school staff in our local school suffered serious illness and all teachers and children were provided with up-to-date personal devices.  Strangely, we spent oodles of money on how to distance ourselves from person-to-person contact when education innately prospers with close human and intellectual activity.

As evidence, as we begin the 21-22 school year, we still are in arguing mode.  More school board meeting time and administrative attention is committed to resolving parent issues with masking and the status of the unvaccinated than is devoted to curricular and instructional readiness.  Our local Board received more than 100 communications about masking and only two about our K-2 reading programs.

What to do!

Teaching and school leadership in 21-22 will be “hard”.  Although we are not out of the pandemic grind and distraction, we cannot lose 21-22 to the pandemic disruption.  We are ready for and need a good and productive school year of academics, activities, arts, and athletics.  It will not be easy, but the rewards are available.

Instructional expertise is now at a premium.  There are fewer teachers available to teach due to the pandemic and a prior lack of enrollment in teacher prep programs.  21-22 is a year for instructional expertise to be prized and a full-court press mounted through professional development to build more expertise.  These are clinical instructional and human relations skills.  Principals and teachers will be hard-pressed to lead and to accomplish this in-service training on top of necessary daily work, but expert work is required not a wish.

We need to support classroom teachers in “normalizing” curricular instruction.  Masks or no masks, in 21-22 our teachers need to assess each child’s readiness for this year’s curricular objectives.  And, more importantly, instruct or remediate areas of learning which were missed or less successfully taught last year.  21-22 will be a hard year of work to get children and curricular goals back on track.  Constant encouragement and recognition of achievement will be required.

We need to support classroom teachers with conversations about daily assignments not classroom conditions.  The conditions will change during the school year.  Arguments about masks in August may not be relevant in October or November.  Focus on the year not on the day; on the pathway to significant student learning not on the distractions of the moment.  It is hard to move beyond the immediacy of conditions we do not like, but this movement is required if 21-22 is to be more than 20-21.

Understand that some instruction may seem like “yesterday’s” or “last year’s”.  It is.  Back-building learning is necessary bring each child individually up to speed with 21-22 learning goals.  Developing student proficiencies over such a wide spread of curricular goals will be hard; it is necessary to prepare children for 22-23.

The Big Duh!

Although Jimmy Duggan was not always an empathetic coach of the Rockford Peaches, he knew the game and that playing championship-level baseball was hard – “… the hard is what makes it great”.  The scramble to cause children to learn in 21-22 will be monumental for everyone in school.  Each staff member, including maintenance, food service, transportation, and not just instructional faculty, plays a role in transitioning school back to in-person teaching and learning, in-person school athletics, activities, and arts, and being a whole school once again.  Some pandemic protocols will remain in place and evolve during the school year as community viral conditions change.  The fall of the year will not be like the spring.  A graphing of what we need to do in 21-22 is a steep uphill slope; a hard climb.  At the top of the graphing, we will look toward 22-23 and a school more like what we knew and want again. 

We have hard work to do.

Schooling As A Long View: A Best Perspective

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“Matter” is not just a politically expedient term in the 2020s, it is a highly functional term.  “Matter”, as a verb, implies an essential importance or value.  When the word is used properly, it denotes a prioritization of what matters over what does not matter.  We need to set this aright.  Try this out – education matters, annual assessments do not matter.

The blame game of school assessment and accountability is messy because we all in are in the soup of the problem of making something that does not matter matter.  This includes all educators and educational leaders.  I am writing of the obsession with annual assessments of student achievement of selected academic skills that kicked into high gear with No Child Left Behind and continues twenty-plus years later. 

What Do We Know?

We march to the tune of federal and state mandates.  Each provides us with requirements to assess annually all enrolled children regarding their proficiency in English/Language Arts (reading) and mathematics.  Further, government publicly posts these assessment scores, along with graduation and promotion rates, and daily average attendance, as measures of school quality for the purpose of community accountability and parent choice of school enrollment. 

A person who believes that this narrow and myopic perspective of school quality is what really matters is not concerned with education but with some other nefarious agenda.

Education, not incremental learning, cannot be measured on an annual basis.  And, the education that we want for our children, one that is rich in academic, activities, arts, and athletics, cannot be measured and conveyed by the boiled down, single score that is used today to connote educational quality in a school or school district.  On the latest State Report Card, our local school is represented with a 79.6 – Exceeds Expectations.  The word “meaningless” is spoiled when used to describe this attribution of educational quality.  79.6 is not about education, it is about politicized ranking.  Contradictions abound in our soup.

Schools in Wisconsin are prescribed by statute and DPI rule to provide each child with instruction in a long list of curricular and topical subjects.  Statutory high school graduation requirements prescribe credits in math, science, ELA, social studies, physical education, health, and a successful civics examination.  And, the “state superintendent encourages school boards to require an additional 8.5 credits selected from any combination of vocational education, foreign languages, fine arts, and other courses,” per WI Stats s. 118.33(1)(am).  The legislature piles on with favored, special topics, such as personal finance, tribal history and sovereignty in Wisconsin, and calendared days for venerated Wisconsinites.

What, then, is a quality education?  Certainly, the requirements of our state cannot be ascertained on a two-subject annual assessment.  It is folly and absurd to connect and label a school’s quality using this politically-devised scoring mechanism.

Rather, take the long view.  As a result of multi-subject instruction and school experiences, what does a child know, what can a child, how does a child resolve significant problems, how does a child cooperate and collaborate with others, and what does a child value from their learning at the point of graduation?  Or, at the transition from one level of education to the next – elementary to middle school to high school, or primary to intermediate to secondary levels of education.

Why Is This Thus?

Education, like soup, is not something you throw in a pot, turn on to heat, wait ten minutes, and eat as as a consummate meal.  Education requires time for elements of various curricular ingredients to mingle, for initial trial and error, for correction, for additional instruction to refine understandings and skills, for enrichment and extended applications, and for personal acknowledgement of what has been learned.  Children do not become proficient readers, trumpet players, computer coders, throwers of ceramic pots, or solvers of physics problems in single year increments.  Or, in two- or three-year increments.  Education of important learning takes time.

It is school fact that some children can meet a school goal immediately and other children require significantly more time.  Some children seem to learn innately while others learn by grinding through their assignments.  At the end of the day, educational quality is when all children have learned and are proficient in displaying their learning.  Current assessment systems reward schools based upon the enrollment and achievement of their innate learners.

The quality of an education is dependent upon each child’s wants and needs.  When the school bus arrives in the morning, some children run to the gym or playground drawn by sports and athletics, some run to the music rooms and art studios drawn by artistic interests, others run to their classrooms drawn by individual academic interests, some to the school shops, and still others to hallways and school commons where their social interests are met.  We can find children who excel in the arts yet stumble on the required ELA and math assessments and today we label them as “not meeting expectations”.  We find children whose first language is not English making tremendous gains in English-dominant academic classes yet disaggregate their low assessment scores.  We should be celebrating each child’s personal growth and attainment of our many curricular goals as displays of educational quality.

Our current valuation of educational quality creates divisive strata within our faculty.  Teachers of ELA and math matter because their curricula are measured.  Teachers of all subjects not measured do not matter, or not as much.  Further, we insult non-ELA and non-math teachers by insisting they find and use strategies that fortify student ELA and math growth.  Then, we give lip service when asking ELA and math teachers to support student learning in what doesn’t “matter”. 

To Do!

As the saying goes, “Say what you mean and mean what you say”.  If in your school only annual ELA and math proficiencies matter, say this on your web site and above the entrance doors of your school.  And, post your annual state-issued school report card scores as if Moses carried them down a nearby hill.  If test scores matter, refer to your excellence as snapshots only.

If, in your school, education matters, take the long view.  On your web site and above your doors declare the importance of all instruction and student learning over time.  Post scores of multi-year growth toward proficiency in academics, activities, arts, and athletics.  If education matters, place your emphasis on learning over time that matters, refer to your excellence as enduring education.

School Is Where Children Grow Up: Education Is How They Grow Up

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Children grow up.  As K-12 educators, we know them well in increments, sometimes a school year only and sometimes as elementary, middle or high school students.  Then, they graduate and we lose track of most.  Who they were and who they become are influenced by how we interacted with them while they were ours and by how they react to what and how we taught them.  We are not responsible for everything in their young adult lives, but now and again they let us see our work and its effects.  I am amazed by so many when I see them in latter years.  They are full-grown and in the world we believe we prepared them to occupy and I smile at their stories.

I turn wood on a lathe and create useable personal and home craft products.  At a recent craft fair a young man and young woman were examining an ebony-handled razor and shaving brush set.  They stood on the other side of my display table under a red-topped canopy.  There were a dozen folks looking at my work and whenever anyone picks up an item, I engage with them and tell them about the wood or how the item was crafted.

“The razor handle is turned in ebony”, I said over the display table.  “Ebony is grown in equatorial Africa and turns into a very smooth and durable handle for razors and brushes”.  The young man manipulated the razor in his hand looking at the young woman and mimicking his shaving.

“You don’t remember me, do you”, he said turning to me while examining the accompanying shaving brush handle.

This is not a foreign question for a retired teacher, coach, principal, school superintendent.  I have known thousands of children.  As young adults, some are exact replicas of their former teen-age selves.  Others are not.  I could not name him.

Still holding the razor and brush, he told the young woman, “I was trouble when I was in school.”  She smiled and said, “Nothing new there.”

“Help me”, I said.  “You are grown and I cannot place the face or voice.” 

“Shane (I will omit the last name)”.

I immediately knew his story from Kindergarten through his graduation.  “I am pleased to see you again”, I said and held out my hand and we shook.  I was also pleased by his firm grip and willingness to shake.  These two facts told me about his memory of his studenthood – he was equally pleased to see again.

I turned to the young woman and said, “I explain to every person accompanying a former student that I knew your friend when he was a student.  I always say, with hand flourishes, ‘He was a stellar student, a fine athlete, courteous to his teachers, and a good friend to his classmates.’”  She smiled a look of understanding yet knowing better.

Looking at Shane, I told her “Shane grew quickly in elementary school.  He was big for his age and wanted to be big among all the other boys, but some things got in his way.  One was temper.  The other was independence.  He did not like being told ‘No’.  This obstinance also put him on the wrong side of some teachers and he spent time out of the classroom.  As his principal, I knew him fairly well.  A little of his home life influenced his need to be loud and defiant in school and we did not fault him for that.”

“Shane was athletic but did not like sports.  Cooperation was not his thing.  He was school smart, talented in music.  He was inquisitive.  In middle school, he was ‘all boy’ and got into the usual mischief.  In high school, Shane showed a real attachment to teachers who took a personal interest in him.  His principal did.  His music teacher and his computer science teacher, also.  Like many high school students, Shane did well in subjects he liked and skated through those he did not.  He graduated.  And, I have not seen him since shaking his hand at graduation.”

Turning to Shane, I asked, “Bring me up to date.  What are you doing back in this area?  Where have you been and what are your plans?”

He explained that he graduated from college, majored in computer science, was employed with a software company that, due to the pandemic, allowed him to work from anywhere.  He and his girl friend were renting-to-buy a home several miles from his former school and they intended to make this their home.  Not surprisingly, Shane did not introduce her, so I introduced myself and welcomed her to the community.

Shane was tall, well-built, looked healthy, and stood straight.  He looked me in the eye when we spoke with each other.  He had learned professional skills and was gainfully employed with plans for a future. 

I rounded the displayed tables to stand next to him saying, “I am so pleased to see you today.  I am pleased that you looked at my woodwork.  And, I am most pleased that you told me your story.”  He did not make a purchase, but took a business card and smiled as he and his girl friend walked on.

School is where children grow up.  They give us thirteen years of their life and the opportunity to teach them.  School is all about preparation; it is not an end.  Education is how children use what they have learned, some learning from school and some from life, to become adults in the world. 

We see many Shanes in our work.  It is easy to characterize them early in life by their school successes and failures, behaviors and misbehaviors, and how they seem to conform to our pre-conceptions of what and who they should be.  School is a little like lathe work.  A block of wood goes between the head- and tailstock, we give it a turn, apply a chisel, and begin to imagine a finished product.  It is only an imagining, though.  I never know the true grain inside a block of wood until it is exposed.  Almost always, it is a natural work of art.  I also never know, once it is purchased, if an ebony-handled razor and brush will become part of an owner’s daily practice, how long he or she may use it, or what will happen in its future.  I only know that it was well-turned, prepared and finished for long service, and ready for the world. 

I liked Shane as a student and hope to know him as an adult in our community.  He is still turning out.