One person makes a difference

For the last week or so, I've been seriously thinking about quitting. I've made my peace with it, I've thought seriously about it, I've made plans for it, if necessary. And most importantly, I've worked through the heartache of giving up my life love for the last 15 years -- inner city school reform.

And, this week, one person made a difference.

My principal, Dr. Freda Ogburn, may be the strongest leader I have ever worked with. Ever. She is more realistic, more humble, and a better person that anyone I can think of that I have worked with.

And in the pinch, she came through for me, this week.

I've been more seriously thinking about leaving the teaching profession, this week, than any time in my life as a teacher.

I only got into teaching, truth be told, to do inner city school reform. I've always known that if this was not the challenge I was taking on, then I should probably take on bigger challenges like policy (international policy if I were to have to choose) or even go into something more lucrative, if the more noble purposes in schools or policy were going to be perpetually swamped in the less noble purposes of power, self-interest, pettiness, etc. If everyone is going to be more self-centered and act like it doesn't matter, I've reasoned, then no need for me to get in anyone's way. If you can't beat them, join them.

But Freda has persuaded me not to go in that direction quite yet.

Yes, it is true that everyone in both public schools, day to day, and public school reform, have all kinds of personal and often petty and political agendas that I find small and distasteful. Yes, it is true that this is not likely to change, at all in one fell swoop -- many, many people seem very resistant to even committing to a more thoughtful life, period, nevertheless to think about schools or society more rigorously and in ways that they are unfamiliar with, largely because most people I work with don't think very much about anything at all, frankly, except they're day to day lives. So, as my great friend, Carson, says, being an intelligent person in a world that often doesn't take intelligence nearly seriously enough often feels like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill only to have it fall back down, perpetually, with no immediate notion of when it might change course.

The personal advantage of working in suburban schools is that I would get the chance to work with great people like Carson's wife, Sherry, who I adore and who is, easily, 100 times the teacher than most of the people I work with (and who doesn't have need to be a martyr, because she's focussed on being great at what she does, not on making excuses about why she's so shitty). It's been nice talking with Sherry and seeing that good teachers are both kind -- clearly, to anyone who remembers being a student -- and smart and who create learning environments where people feel safer to grow and learn without being controlled and hammered, all the time.

Working in inner city schools is a double edged sword.

On the one hand, it is annoying and upsetting as hell working with teachers, parents, and students who are perpetually rationalizing their shittiness; why they're so nasty to others, why they don't take school seriously (many teachers included, sadly), why the community is the mess it clearly is to anyone not trying to defend it, why the often poor quality of inner city schools has everything to do with the craziness of inner city communities, the inability of teachers to develop clear and open-hearted commitments to kids and families regardless of their circumstances (and kids and parents to develop similar clear and open-hearted commitments to teachers and schools, and to one another), why so many excuses are made for all of the failure of inner city communities and inner city schools, and why everyone seems to think that more of the hard-edged and polarizing policies (the drug war, for instance) of the past will someone solve many of the problems that they have often exacerbated.

It's shitty to work with people who are often being shitty and making all kinds of excuses for why they are that way.

And it's only the presence of someone like Freda Ogburn that keeps me around, at all. This last period taught me the importance of Freda's presence in this school better than any period I have been at Eisenhower.

On the other hand, it is all of that shittiness that is the reason I am in a school like Eisenhower, at all. Meaning, if noone intervenes in all of that shit and offers kids and people some substantial hope of escaping all of this ugliness that comes with rationalizing why people are such bad teachers, often; why community members are, perpetually, in such bad straights; why so many people throughout the school system spend so much time looking after themselves (administrators and teachers, contrary to popular myth, actually look after the community, generally, more than many parents and teachers and others who generally live, more often, in the community; but they still look after their own behinds much more than they would like to admit, and far too often more than they genuinely look after kids or families, truth be known); and why everyone keeps pretending that their lives are really better than they are or that they are entitled to more without working harder or smarter at making life better for themselves or others.

So there's all kinds of shittiness in the inner city community that necessitates somebody give a shit.

On the other hand, I'm not the type of person who likes to be taken for granted. I don't like to stick around in any relationship or friendship where I am treated badly. I am definitely treated better at Eisenhower, by my principal, primarily, than by any job I have ever worked outside of school, and even than in schools I worked in Wichita.

But I still hate being around people who are constantly making excuses for how shitty they are to me and to others and acting like it's no big deal.

And working in schools with faculties like Sherry, who is a real sweetheart, seems very, very attractive to me, right now, given my frustration with the lack of genuine commitment to facing honestly the problems in inner city schools and inner city communities.

If people don't want to face up to their problems, I reason these days, no need for me to be trying to solve them for them. I can't. I've come to terms with that. Only individuals can solve their own problems with input and influence from others, but ultimately based on their own thoughts and choices. Everything else is illusion.

And why I wouldn't take a more lucrative, more supportive, probably more thoughtful or at least appreciative position in a place like Desoto rather than continue to swim through the bullshit in an inner city community where too many teachers, parents, and students are constantly making excuses for what asses they are is beyond me, most days anymore.

But then there's Freda Ogburn. Without Freda's support, I'm quite sure I would have left by now.

That way my experience when I was studying in poor urban schools in Wichita, Kansas. When you grow up white trash in the white trash side of town, you often encounter people who are scared and mean and intimidated by intelligence and what it means about their own shortcomings.

And I never would have returned had I not had some confidence that kids like me needed teachers like me as a break from all of the ugliness, and that if communities like Kansas City, Kansas are to get better, then they will need some honest voices to talk about why it is in such a mess so that it can clean the mess up, rather than everyone living defensive of the community in perpetuity.

I didn't get into poverty work to tell poor people that there really was no hope either because they were being screwed and there was nothing that could be done (poor people are screwed, often, but there is plenty that can be done by all of us including poor people, especially in a liberal democracy like the U.S. which takes equity and opportunity more seriously than most countries in the world, and who often have quite a bit of responsibility for their situations, whether they want to face that or not). Nor did I get into poverty work to find ways for them to help people make more money without some kind of genuine commitment to the idea that thought and higher values and education for its own sake and a million other important ideas about humanity and the world, generally, mattered quite apart from the material benefits that education provides. I genuinely believe in the value of education and the larger values of humanity, and my education was centrally important to nurturing those values, even as many of the people from the community where I grew up took all of those values and that education for granted.

I never romanticized urban schools and communities because I grew up in one and I was quite frustrated most of that time with how little people in my community took seriously values that sustained the world more substantially, including and especially intelligence.

It's funny. The biggest reason why I've learned not to be afraid of being fired is because I only came to this job because I genuinely cared. There's a million different jobs I could take if I cared more about myself than others. I just wanted to make a difference in a community like the community where I grew up in and to demonstrate that poverty and hopelessness are not the natural byproducts of urban communities. Poverty and hopelessness are clearlyfixable, if we will invest our thought and our energies and our money and our care and concern in one another more than in our own self-centered agendas. We just have to take the idea of looking out for others seriously and not constantly rationalize what selfish shitheads we can often be.

And doing so means building communities that are genuinely strong -- like suburban communities that urban dwellers constantly bemoan, sometimes for good reasons, often taking their strength for granted -- rather than being defensiveness about all of the clearly dysfunctional and foolish qualities of weaker communities.

Freda's one of the honest people who really makes working in a place like Eisenhower something worth doing. I hope that remains the case. Because I am damned tired of teachers and parents and students and people in this community acting like it doesn't matter to be smarter or wiser or more thoughtful or decent in life.

Without Freda, I couldn't possibly imagine staying at Eisenhower or any similar school or job. Because spending all your time with people who spend all their time making excuses for why they haven't taken excellence in their jobs more seriously, and making you feel bad that you have is really one of the most miserable and frustrating experiences that you can have in life.

The only thing that's prepared me for it, at all, has been an entire life growing up in such communities always being around people who never really quite took being smart and thoughtful and sensitive and loving as seriously as I did.

At some level, for me, the community I live in that I feel lives that way is the bigger world.

And strangely enough, working in a community where those values are taken less seriously than the university town I live in, for instance, or the suburbs that my close friends live in, just makes me all the more appreciative of how important those values are for everyone's lives, whether they take thought and compassion and decency and the deeper truths of life more seriously or not.

I just got a couple of emails from Brandi, this week. I don't really quite understand Ms. Fisher, anymore, except that she's just a lot more self-centered than the Brandi I knew and loved years ago. Either that or she was always that self-centered, and I just didn't realize it because I was so blinded by love. A definite possibility. I just know that I'm tired of trying to figure her out and I'm beyond tired trying to be friends with her, anymore. She's gonna have to grow up, someday, and seek me out. Because at this point, I'm tired of being such a good friend to someone who, paradoxically -- because at one point she was the best friend I had ever had -- has turned out to be such a thoroughly shitty friend. And I just don't want to be her friend until she can clean up her act, is the truth.

From now on, I live life up to my standards, and not down to the standards of others.

And I know what a difference I make and my life makes. And I know better than to think any less of my contribution to the world.

Because Frieda Ogburn has definitely taught me just what a difference one person can make.

Love,
Ben