Remembering why I do this work...

Today was definitely one of the shittier days of my short career, thusfar...

And then, tonight...at about 2:30 in the morning...

I was reminded why I feel so strongly about this work...

It's because of 8 little kids at a school called BRIDGES -- a school for kids who are most at risk of serious behavior problems and some not so hot futures (some of them facing lives in and out of jail without some other intervention, likely) -- and how they changed my life and the way I look at it...

Most of my kids at BRIDGES lived in foster care agencies...many of them were hateful and nasty and very aggressive to teachers and with one another...

And many of them had no significant adults in their lives to look after their interests like most of us take for granted...they're parents were serious drug addicts...or not in the picture, at all...or just terribly harsh in their dealings with their children...

I tell most people who are enamoured with hurting children to change their behavior that they should definitely visit BRIDGES...you definitely won't find any children, there, from households that treated them too lightly...most of them had been hit quite enough, thank you very much...

But the saddest part for many of these kids...

Was how lonely it must have felt to go through life feeling like noone really cared about you as if you were their own child...

Most of their parents were too selfish or too out of it to, for all kinds of reasons, to take care of their children...

Teachers...social workers...

These were all adults who cared...

But it was only the rarest of teachers who cared about these kids as if they were their own...

And I just couldn't imagine how lonely a life that must have been...

How that would likely raise my defenses to what would seem like a too cold world for a 10 or 11 year old, if I were in that situation...

And yet so many teachers...just want to get those kinds of kids...or my own...out of their classrooms...out of their schools...out of their lives...

That's one of the more powerful reasons for why I believe in school choice...

Because such children...

All children...

Deserve adults around them...who want to be with them...

Who choose to be with them...and to serve them...

The truth is that my 8 kids at BRIDGES were a microcosm of what is wrong with the world, really...

None of us think that anyone really cares about us, for real...meaning we'll stick by each other no matter what...and we're all afraid of someone or many someones fucking us over and hurting us and working against our interests...

So we got these serious defenses up to a world that seems cold and ugly, much of the time...

And then we all go out and create that world...

That same world that we're so afraid of...

And the only way through it is to stop creating that world...

To create a different one...

And to be responsible for the one we've created...

To stop pretending that we haven't created it...that we aren't responsible for the one we're stuck with now until we get about the business of building a better one...

And when you spend a summer...with 8 kids that the great majority of adults in their world act as if they are doomed to go through life that lonely...that absent of the love and care and concern that you and I totally take for granted...and that angry and hateful against a world that seems to be constantly dropping them on their heads without comparably sticking by them -- for real, not just out of institutional obligation -- and seeing that they grow up to be better kids...

Or...as they get older...sticking by them...while you let them make not so hot choices...like leaving school and trying to raise themselves...

With an open door to having them rejoin school and polite society when they've had enough of the far less decent and caring world outside of school beating them over the head...
I don't know why more people -- and definitely more teachers -- don't take all kids' interests seriously, like that...

But we don't...

I don't even do it, some days...days like today...when I just wanted to be as far away some of the little shitheads I work with...as I possibly could...

But they need us to...

They need us to care about them like they were our own children...

And all children need us to care about them better than we have our own children...

Because we still have a long way to go...before we've everything we can to be the best parents...and teachers...and committed neighbors and citizens...that we can possibly be...

And I have to say...that the people in the system that I regularly encounter with the shittiest attitudes...

Are the ones who seem like they care, for real, the least...

And who are just doing this work, anymore...to make their way to retirement...

Because somewhere along the way...

They lost track of what it means to be a child...

And to need adults to care look after you...and to let you grow up...and to learn to be your own person...

Because they got so lost in covering their own ass...

At some level...we all make those decisions...

The ones that have consequence for a child or a family...that can either look after their interests, genuinely...or cover our own asses...

The latter kind of decision is a cynical one...that too many people in all kinds of fields and situations make...

And the world will only get better...for these kids...and for all of us...

The more we start making decisions that look out for others' interests, genuinely...rather than just covering our own asses...

And that is a dilemna that no government...no corporation...no God...no religion...noone can make fix for us...

It will only be changed...

By our choices...

And by us getting more responsible for these kids...and for the world around us...

I've got to try to get some sleep...

Have a great week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

That time of year...

Staff morale is at an all-time low since I've started at Eisenhower...lots of grumbling...lots of the time...with very little affirmation of positive attitudes going into our last couple of weeks, here, for the year...

The teachers are tired of nasty attitudes from kids...which are frequent...and on days like today seem more frequent than more decent attitudes from kids...this is why they say middle school is such a critical time for kids, I suppose...because this is a period that is more challenging, developmentally, for teachers to deal with -- kids transitioning from being responsible for very little on their own to greater independence and maturity...but being little shitheads along the way, frankly -- and it's just an overwhelming time...

I usually have one of the stronger attitudes...

But today and this last week I've been dealing with both poor student attitudes and poor teacher attitudes...and it's just been a little overwhelming, lately, frankly...

And until both students and teachers see it...I'm kind of stuck in between...I'm generally the go-between...but I've definitely been taken for granted lately...and the kids are catching the brunt of the consequence of my shittier attitude, today, from taking me for granted on that one...

One of the tough things about dealing with kids is that they are, generally, satisfied by nothing, expect the world, and often have the most galling sense of entitlement to not have to do anything while they demand everything...I imagine this is particularly true in an inner city school where so many families live with a greater sense of entitlement, generally...

But it's just really wearing on me, lately...

I'm definitely reconsidering my career, right now...

But it's not just the kids...it's the district...and other teachers...and the Feds...and everyone who has a demand on my time and energy...

I just don't understand why people would stay with this work with this attitude of entitlement and demanding without concern for real limits from everyone...

It's shitty like this for everyone, I'm sure...

I just don't understand why we have such a hard time understanding that this doesn't work as a way of dealing with one another...it makes more work for all of us...

And one thing I'm totally becoming clear about is that noone is ever satisfied with anything, when they operate like this...

Which makes it doubly overwhelming and discouraging...

It'd make a lot more sense to just chill out and not push each other so much...

But that would require thinking about someone else other than ourselves...

And that's the one we all struggle with so much...

Ben

The Notebook...

...James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Joan Allen...

I've never seen a movie capture unrequited love quite so well...

Definitely one of the most beautiful stories about true love that I've ever seen...

An unqualified affirmation that a life of love is a life of freedom...which is run by noone...but one's own heart...

It makes me regret what an ass I was when Brandi was faced with a similar choice...and how little I respected what she wanted/wants...

And it reaffirms my belief in true love...in a world that often acts like it doesn't exist or doesn't matter...

When really it matters most of all...

Love,
Ben

When hearts grow together and grow apart...

I'm working on grading...and I've got 5 IEP's I'm working on tonight in some capacity...

But I did want to take a break for a sec and reflect on some close relationships where distance has grown between us, especially between me and Brandi...

My last post on the topic expressed the very deep anger and hurt that I've felt about how Brandi has pulled away as a friend in a way that I am totally left in the dark about and have very little control over at all...

I've been having strange dreams, lately...

I had a dream last night about meeting Brandi in public, somewhere, randomly, and striking up a conversation...

Brandi had this thick, fake southern accent -- I'm sure because of my concerns that Brandi has kind of sold out a lot of larger concerns that we both used to share, largely because the most important among them was friendship and I've experienced not really much at all from her in quite a long time...even though she promised after we broke up that she wouldn't do what she has done, as of late...which is stop talking just because we were in other relationships...like a lot of Brandi's and my promises, this one isn't panning out...

She and I talked...though it was pretty superficial...and like the last few times I've talked with Brandi, I was just kind of disappointed in who'd she'd become...it's very possible that we just kind of grew apart in some very different ways...but I wasn't really impressed with Brandi as intelligent social-activist changing the world the last few times we talked...I do think that it's important to note that I was hurting pretty bad about our break-up, though...so everything I say has to be taken with a grain of salt, I think, given my being a jilted boyfriend...but that was just kind of how I was feeling at the time...but I don't even trust my own feelings on this because of how much other baggage I was carrying at the time and perhaps still am...

In the dream, her husband, Greg -- who've I've never met -- was being a real dick to me...I was being friendly...and he was acting like it was burden to deal with my friendliness...

Melissa traded on the internet for When Harry Met Sally for me, recently...

Which was really bittersweet to watch since so few people have that kind of relationship, I'm learning, and since Brandi and I had one pretty similar in a lot of important ways (the fact that we fought so much was the one most serious difference between Brandi's and my relationship and Harry and Sally's...but other than that it was definitely better than the movie in a lot of ways, especially in our mutual political idealism to match our falling in love...I don't know how much of this was shared or how much of it was me with rose-colored glasses, at this point in my life...but it was shared enough that I think it was a comparable if not closer romance...except no wedding at the end)...

I worked through those difficult feelings...and began to better enjoy the movie about half-way through...

I still wait for the day when I can sing Surry With a Fringe on Top to her...

But I'm actually wanting to just have some kind of mature closure on the whole deal...

I've been working through an awful lot of very bitter feelings toward Brandi in the last 6 months or so...how she's cut off communication...how senseless it's all seemed...how she's never even really communicated about why she's handled it like this...

She protests that Greg hasn't forced her hand, but something tells me that it didn't happen randomly and she insists she's not pissed off at me about anything, so then I'm left just feeling hurt and with no real decent explanation why I've had to go through all of this...
My dreams have reflected my more suspicious, hurt feelings, I think...

And I really don't want to think of Brandi in this light...

I just don't know what to think at each juncture when she's communicated less and less with me...

It's just kind of this dark hole in my life, right now, that is only balmed by good memories that I share with Melissa or on my blog or with whomever I'm talking with and they come to me, in the moment...

I had an inservice, today, and I ended up at 83rd and Metcalf, where Brandi and I used to live in Kansas City, looking for J.C. Harmon High School(which I'm still totally clueless about how to get to)...

It's so hard when you're as close to someone as Brandi and I were...and your most recent memories are all kind of darkened by fighting and jealousy and deep anger and disappointment...

But absent all of the good memories, that's all I'm left with...and they're just too painful to bear on their own without some good reason for all that pain...and the good memories are the good reason...

I honestly think that even if I fell in love, again, here sometime in the near future, I hope...that I'd still feel all this...just because it's a whole other relationship...one of my closest...and with no real resolution...

I have people in my life that I've been really close with with whom I don't have resolution with about bad situations between us...

But this one kind of sticks out in a major way, I'd say...

I don't talk to my mom, much, right now, just because I don't really identify with her, at all, anymore...I don't really understand her and I don't think she really understands me and I just don't trust her for advice about anything important at all, anymore...she wasn't there from about 12 years old on...and it took a while for me to forgive her for that...and more for her still insisting on so much of me with so little real involvement in my life...I understand better, now, that she's like so many adults who never really completely grow up...my mom's no wild child, in the least...but she's her own self-righteous, risk-aversive, less than grown-up version of a parent that you just don't feel like you can rely on very much...

My youngest brother and sister haven't talked much, lately...totally of their choosing, since I just haven't received communication back...though the two older sisters and I are on pretty good terms, lately...

I have some friends in Lawrence who handled a situation between us really badly, I think...and were so very terribly unsupportive for me during some really difficult points amidst one of the toughest periods in my life -- the time I spent working between grad school and this job -- that we haven't talked in quite a long time, as a consequence...

And I'm still going to make one more try to patch things up with my advisor and professors in grad school, here soon...

In all of these cases, I have either proactively worked to correct problems...asked explicitly about concerns that people might have had...or, generally, made far more proactive efforts to care for the relationship than have been reciprocated...or all of the above...

But the situation with Brandi stands out...because we were closer than any of the other relationships...including my relationship with my mom, by far...as much as I would wish for something better with my mom...

And because, as such, I trust Brandi more to offer me advice about life questions...
Perhaps that trust is misplaced, given that I haven't heard from her, on her own initiative, in several years...and hardly at all even as a response to some communication I've initiated...

But it was a trust I once placed in Brandi...and she's definitely one of the more quality people I've known in my lifetime...

And the dreams just remind me of what I am reminded of every day whether I care to be or not...

Which is that I miss her...and I hate this feeling of such total distance and unhappy mystery between us...

I just want the bad dreams to go away...

I have a kid in class who is having nightmares about really terrible abuse that he suffered under the care of his previous guardian...abuse that's been confirmed for me by other sources, so I'm more sure that he's not making it up...I've never really suffered that kind of abuse...but I can identify with the terrible feeling of wanting the bad dreams of some painful situation in your life to go away...to just leave you alone...or else resolve themselves...

Or give you some opportunity to resolve them on your own...

I just don't have that opportunity with Brandi or with far too many people, these days...
And I don't really know what to do about that, right now...I wish I did...

I'm going to be talking with some folks at KU about getting some resolution around bad feelings between us...I owe some apologies...and I'd at least like some mutual understanding, rather than the stand-off between Tom and I that we had the last time we talked...

But most of the situations I've mentioned either involved issues on the other end that I'm totally clueless about, despite making efforts to resolve (I'm thinking of my brother and sister, right now, which may be based on how young they are and where they're at in their young lives, right now)...

Or they involve hurt, on my part, that I haven't known quite how to get resolved with those people...and with very little effort on their part, at all, frankly...my mom stands out on this one since she's my mom, after all...though our last conversation, at Christmas, was nice enough to be fair to her...I just get frustrated that, like with my father and to a much lesser degree, my step-mother, there is this limit on mature conversation we can have where tough discussions can be had and we all come out together on the other side...

I don't know...I just wish all of these situations were resolved...and I wish I knew what I could do to resolve them...

Maybe I can brainstorm some ideas on how to get us closer to that point...

I've got to get back to work, here...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

On bigness and pettiness...

Today is a great day, in the sense that...

On a day when one of my older colleagues basically tried to tell me that I didn't know what I was doing because I was too young and not because he was just kind of dumb...

I had several kids and parents and one meeting with a parent, in particular, that reminded what an outstanding teacher I am...no matter how jealous and petty my older colleagues can be...

I have this girl in my first and second hour class...who has just come out of her shell and really turned on her academic burners this semester in a way that she does, to some degree, in other classes, but doesn't always do in ways that even approach how much she has been excelling in my class...

This kid is really on fire in my class...but she lacks the confidence to act similarly in other situations where she is much more shy...

She is the one most serious prospect I have of a special education student with potential to compete in the big leagues of school with much higher achievers because she just takes class that seriously with me...

And noone else appears to get to experience this really marvelous thing happen in their class in the same way...
I have another parent, tonight, who said that she called because her daughter really looks up to me...and she wants me to both help her daughter and to look out for her in this conflict that she's having with another girl in school...

And this mother just thinks that I am the greatest thing since sliced bread...

And on a day when an older colleague of mine was just being kind of dumb, frankly...and arguing that I shouldn't help a kid who might get identified because we just might raise her achievement out of the roof (which would be a good thing, right, if that were possible?:):):)...but it's not because she really needs the help...this guy's just kind of a moron, really)...and unwilling to face just how much stupid limits his thinking about teaching and his own teaching ability, as a consequence (every time I have a conversation with a teacher where they imply that smart doesn't matter in teaching, I think, "You're in school, you moron...and you think smart doesn't matter?")...

After a day of utter and complete denial from one of my more foolish colleagues...

It was nice to remember how good I am at this business...and how it just must eat him the fuck alive that I would be this good in my first year of teaching, while he still struggles so much well into his career...

Too fuckin' bad, I think...take smart seriously...and stop trying to hold me back so you don't feel so bad...fuck you and your feeling bad about your teaching and reasoning...get on the schtick, follow my lead, and become a better teacher, you old geezer...

Or be left behind...

Far behind, at this point...

I've got some IEP's and some grading to do...

Have a greet week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

On being stupid...

I have decided after a discussion with some teachers, today...
That stupid is the most serious problem we face these days (and always, really)...

I don't mean slow...

I mean stubborn, recalcitrant, unaccountable, bullying stupidity...

If you're stupid...and stubborn about not taking smart seriously...

You're in the fuckin' way...and your making life difficult for people who know better what they're doing...

And I don't want to hear any more excuses about this one anymore...

Cause the excuses...just make people look dumber...

And dumb we have quite enough of in the world...

Love,
Ben

This is why you don't play games with absolute power...

This is why you don't assert your right to do whatever you want to achieve a goal...

Iran threatens Israel if U.S. attacks...

Military options should come off the table...The Economist editors made that case more than a year ago, now...they were right, then...the Administration was wrong, then...

And if the Administration can't take this option off the table...

They could likely escalate a situation that only escalated, remember, after the Administration made threats against Iran and North Korea...

Does anyone ever take responsibility for bad decisions in politics?...

Love,
Ben

Why I don't have time, right now, to write about immigration reform...

I want to write about why more secure borders against terrorism and violent crime are not mutually exclusive with amnesty for most decent illegal immigrants...

And why they actually reflect a very smart prioritization of limited border patrol resources...

Meaning why focussing limited INS resources on terrorism and violent crime rather on kicking out illegals who raise families and do valuable work in America is pretty smart way to patrol borders...and more realistic, by far...

But I've got an IEP to do:):):)... I'll try to remember to come back to it another time:):)...

Love,
Ben

Got to say it was a good day...

I have an IEP to work on...but I thought I'd share about a really great day in my little special education classroom and my little inner city public middle school here in Kansas City:):)...

We have a quiz that we're reviewing for, right now, in my 1st and 2nd hour math class...

I've told the kids that we'll review as long as they like, to reinforce a work ethic indendent of how well they do on the quiz...but also reinforcing that the more they work and practice, the better they do (many of my kids have really been resisting doing any work, up until this point...so this is a big deal that they are so willing and prepared to do work in class:):)...

We've been practicing with math relays where the kids choose teams and compete against each other using our warm-up problems to practice...

And the kids were just on fire today...it was amazing...
I have one girl...who was so shy when I first met her...and who is not only out of her shell...but she is my smartest, most active, most engaged, most confident student...even as she's gotten so much more confident socially, navigating between teacher expectations and peer expectations, which are often at odds...

And all of my kids...even my typically worst behaved kids...were engaged today and Friday...even students who teachers said they had very little hope for, academically...
I have one girl who every teacher I'd talked to sounded like they had given up on her...and she is doing something that she wasn't doing in any of her other classes...she's trying...she's working...and she's getting better, as a consequence:):)...

The big deal, though, is that all of my students are involved in our little math relays, right now...I've sent one student out of my class in two weeks...and even then, I skipped a procedure that I probably should have taken that would have kept him in my class for that day...just in a safe seat, which is a consequence that keeps him in the classroom...

Noone's getting sent out, as a rule...and the kids are doing the work...

And they're having fun:):):)...

They're enjoying it:):):)...

It's so exciting to see them get so excited about math:):):)...

And I'm just so goddamn proud of all of them:):):)...

Either tomorrow or the next day, likely, we will take this quiz...

They are steadily improving, generally, on their quizzes (I do have one student who went from an A last quarter, decided to blow off the class for awhile this quarter, and thus a D on her progress report, to a C or B with potential for an A on this next grade card...and even that was, generally, progress, since it involved her freely committing herself to the class and school and getting over the attitude that math and school didn't matter)...

And after this last week and today...I expect much better performance on this next quiz...

The biggest deal of all, though, is that many if not most of these kids are ones that everyone has told me that they couldn't do the work...because they had given up on them, not because the kids couldn't do it...

And I just wouldn't give up on these kids...

And they are responding to the expectation to achieve...

And I'm so goddamn proud of them...

For next year, I have so much planned (assuming my contract is renewed)...more formal math relays, where they would compete against other schools...a field trip to various workplaces where adults can talk with the kids about why education matters...looking into the Urban Debate League here in Kansas City to involve them early in debate competition and research...possibly taking on a newspaper extra duty to get my kids involved in academic extracurriculars (I've advised many of them to do debate, forensics, drama, etc. for similar reasons)...

But for now...I'm just really proud of my kids...

That they're taking school seriously...

Some of them for the first time in a long time...

It's very exciting...

And I'm really proud of them...

And I hope that after this quiz...

They'll have something to be proud of, themselves...
And really begin to understand why earning your way through life...is so much more satisfying than bullshitting your way through life...

The irony being that, at some level, bullshitting is what so many of the adults in their lives -- all of us -- do every day...

But good people want to earn it, I think, even if they are bullshitting...

And our little special education math class is raising the bar for all of us to earn it...for real...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

On quitting...

I have 5 minutes before I have to pick these kids to write something about quitting...

I'm of the Winston Churchill camp on this one, as a general rule...

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever quit...


I now see why Winston said it...

Because it's the most common character flaw to undermine important efforts...

That...and not quitting when you need to quit...I guess that illustrates just how complicated the whole goddamn world is...

But I have decided that should I be foolish enough to quit...

That I need to do what I think all quitters on any matter of social policy or any question of social importance should do should they quit...

I should shut the fuck up...and expect to be ignored when I want to voice an opinion that I didn't have the nerve to be a part of a constructive solution for...

Cynics should keep their fuckin' mouthes closed, much of the time, really...

Because they don't have anything to offer except excuses for why their lame asses gave up...wrapped in a million rationalized, bullshit conversation pieces...

We just had a really talented young teacher quit our faculty and move on to the suburbs...

...which is fine...I actually like this teacher, a lot...and I respect her a lot, too...

But I'm tired of watching people quit on these kids...

And I'm tired of people who quit really caring long ago...

Making policy for the rest of us...

I've got to meet up with some kids...

Love,
Ben

On quitting and not quitting...

I had a conversation with my kids, today, which helped me understand, better, today, why so many adults just seem so clueless and foolish and nasty, all the time...

The conversation I had with my kids was about not quitting...about my concern that some of them were quitting...on the class...on themselves...and how I wasn't quitting on any of them...and the thing that would make THE difference between them experiencing success or failure in my class and in life was whether or not, when the going got tough...they quit...

It was an interesting conversation for me to be having...

Because...I've been saying that if things don't work out for me, here, at Eisenhower...then I may be leaving the profession for good...

I'm a really outstanding teacher, really...

But I'm way past my limits of patience in dealing with the stupidity and the bureaucracy of school districts and schools and all kinds of places...but I'm just kind of fed up with the education field around this one, right now...

My stepmom and I talked about this, recently...and her attitude really exemplified exactly what I'm fed up with...

The stubborness...the foolish and stupid and unthinking defensiveness around it...the total inability to just face the honest reality of just how much the bureaucracy and the rules and all kinds of formalities really fuck life up...

Here's a great example I can think of...
I was an really strong competitor in college and high school in speech and debate...I was one of the best in the country, when I competed...I'm also a very good teacher, I think, and I think most of my colleagues would agree...

But because my undergrad, Wichita State, cut their speech certification for teaching my senior year of college...I don't have official liscensure to coach speech...

Now I am without a doubt 100 times better, at least, than many if not most of the people who have speech education degrees in the state...people who would be able to teach speech, officially...

My friend, Carson, is far better than 99% of the people with similar liscences...
But neither of us could coach speech, officially, because we lack to required certifications...which have everything to do with regulations and nothing at all to do with ability or talent...

It's insanity...

And the only people who defend it are people who have no fuckin' clue what they're doing...or people who want to believe in such regulations, because of their intentions, and who have not come to terms, fully, with their actual consequences...

Having said all that...

I did tell the kids that she shouldn't ever quit...

I'm just tired...

I'm tired of fighting stupidity like it deserves to be treated as something better than it really is...I'm tired of my efforts being judged by so many other criteria other than their merits...I'm tired of everyone pretending like all those rules and regulations are more worthy than they really are...

And I'm mostly tired of people pretending like they really respect rules and regulations and authority better than they really do...

I'm someone who follows them more than most...I just know that following them doesn't mean anything, really, unless it does...in which case, the rule isn't necessary...and the number of rules and regulations we have to deal with in our lives is so excessively demanding on our energies and concentration that I can hardly believe that people defend them like they do...

It doesn't mean that we aren't responsible...it means that our responsibility is and should be to our consciences and judgment, first, and to everything else, second...

I don't want people turning in slaves during the mid-19th Century in America just because that's the law...or Jews in Nazi Germany, for the same reason...

I want people to follow their consciences...I don't want them to follow rules, except when they are in line with their consciences...and even then, the rules are a compromise with a world where

I act out of conscience and genuine free will...

Most people, I'm learning, though...are kind of lazy...

They're lazy workers...lazy thinkers...

And they quit easily...they give up...on excelling...on being a better person...on having a good attitude...on all kinds of things...

And the one thing that people are laziest about...

Is the one thing that seems to insult their pride the most...

Which is admitting when they are wrong...

We watched a documentary on the life of a slave women in 19th Century America, today, in social studies class...

And I saw the sad dichotomy I face...

Slaves had to both maintain the hope that they would one day be granted their freedom...simultaneously recognizing the reality that many of them and their forebearers had died and never seen that world...

I want the freedom that so many would deny me...

I will not quit, in my heart...ever...

But I can see how having someone beat you down...begins to wear down your resolve, some...

And that's what happens to most people, I think...

They see a world that is full of ugliness and all kinds of realities to lose their faith in people...

And so they get worn down...

And they develop a shitty, cynical attitude...

And so they want to quit...

They want to quit working on the one thing that really matters most in the world...

Building a world where everyone -- or more of everyone than not -- takes responsibility for that world...all its problems...constructive solutions to those problems...and honestly acknowledging when a solution has succeeded or failed...and when it's failed...to move on to solutions that will succeed...

And when people live down to cynics' sorry ass expectations of them...because they quit working on it, so long ago...

They say, "See...I told you people couldn't be better, anyway"...

It's the laziest, most sorry-ass, bullshit, cynical attitude in the world...

And it's the one that fucks up more shit than any other...

Well, I don't know in what capacity I'll do it...

But I'm not quitting...

Frederick Douglas escaped slavery after a brutal experience...was recaptured and treated brutally again...and escaped again...before working his entire life to end slavery...
I don't care what happens to me over the course of my lifetime...I will work my entire life to create a world of conscience over rules, no matter what the consequences...

Because it's the right thing to do...

And that's what a strong conscience looks like...

It also matches, better, the reality...that people make their own choices, decisions, and judgments...no matter what we do...

They are just less free to operate more completely out of those consciences in a world of threats and hardship for freely speaking our minds...which is the world we all live in until we take conscience more seriously...

I've got a meeting to get to...

Have a great weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The most important thing I learned from life in the real world...

We just had a team meeting, this last hour, to discuss kids in trouble...

And something I gathered from that meeting...despite all of my concerns with how often teachers repeatedly make mistakes in their tendency to want to be harsh when being honest would better do the trick...

Is that the one thing that I think I've learned most from my most fortunate period out of school and in the real world and on the job...

Is that I am much more committed to listening to people and their experiences, today, and taking them seriously than I was out of grad school...

I get frustrated with so many people because of their low tolerance for disagreement and honest discussion and argument...

But dealing with that frustration on the job has meant that I am learning, better, to just listen to people...to learn from them...and to let them make their own mistakes without always intervening...

I've been angry with my father and, by proxy, by step-mom, ever since Christmas, this year because of an argument that we had about a political issue that we were both pissed off about, them from experience and me from watching it unfold...from very different perspectives...

The issue was Hurricane Katrina...they had a hotel in Dallas that had absorbed many of those displaced by Hurricane Katrina and were very angry with FEMA and the Bush Administration (my parents are liberals, to be fair to the Bush Administration) for what they saw as a slow and incompetent response...

My father said amidst that conversation, "They didn't even have a plan," or something to that effect...

And as someone who was more frustrated with the reaction to FEMA's response and the way it undermined that response -- putting on pressure that was highly counterproductive leading to more death and hardship than was necessary -- I responded, "But they did have a plan"...

Which they did...I had read about the details of that plan amidst the crisis...and FEMA, under the Clinton Administration, had made promises to state and local emergency groups in Louisiana that it turned out couldn't be kept amidst a real crisis...

It wasn't bad faith that had led the Clinton Administration FEMA officials to make big promises...it was just human fallibility in a crisis situation (or any situation, really)...and the biggest problem amidst the Katrina crisis was our intolerance of that fallibility and the subsequent reactions to that fallibility which were at times constructive -- when we were communicating unmet needs -- but far too often unconstructive -- when we were pressuring, threatening, and otherwise undermining constructive efforts by putting on more pressure in already high-pressure situations that need a lower, more functional anxiety level to accomplish common goals...

And my parents were part of the problem, in this situation by adding to all of the unconstructive whining and bitching and moaning about the problem...

My stepmom was convinced in subsequent conversations that my dad's and her response were inconsequential in the big picture...

Which is definitely not true...it was the accumulative effect of many different responses just like my parents which helped to undermine so much good that was trying to be done with that response (while simultauneously developing better ideas for future responses, as Newt Gingrich and Fareed Zakaria both did on a This Week with George Stephanopoulos the week of the hurricane)...

I get frustrated with this lack of thoughtfulness...and with people acting like their lack of thoughtfulness doensn't matter...because they've not only failed to think thoroughly about the matter at hand...but about the consequence of their unthinking attitude...

But I'm also learning, better, to just let people think how they will...make their own mistakes...and learn from them...

I would definitely prefer a more rigorous situation...where people could learn how to have a vigorous discussion and not take it or the constructive criticism and suggestions out of it, personally...

But I walk lightly on that ice, these days, given how immature I've found most people to be around such matters...how foolish they often are, trying to avoid criticism or challenge or questions or suggestions or anything they may not like...

So I'm learning to just let the more fragile folks fail without the feedback...

And to be more open with stronger folks...who can have tougher discussions...

My parents and my colleagues are both among more fragile folks, much of the time...though I'll keep testing the waters and see just how strong they migth turn out to be...if they gave themselves a chance...

But I've learned my lesson from kids as much as anyone else...that everyone gets to choose just how much they will or will not be challenged...and, as a consequence...just how much they will or will not learn...

And I'm learning to listen to people, better...to trust them more, for what they have to offer...

And to let them fall on their asses all on their own without any input from me, if that is what they so desire:):):)LOL:):):)...

I'm also learning to appreciate just how much experience has to offer far beyond schooling, alone...how Ms. Simmons, my paraprofessional twice my age and with much wisdom about the world has made clear to me...that experience is its own education, quite apart from what schools might have to offer...

The problem, of course...the problem my stepmom and father are missing, right now...

Is that experience without adequate thought to integrate it into more meaningful understanding...can easily lead us astray...

As watching my older colleagues make the same mistakes over and over again reinforces for me every day...

And the beautiful thing about a strong education...an open, freer, more rigorous and responsible education...

Is that it teaches us how to integrate our experiences, better...to yield wisdom and understanding that helps us avoid those mistakes...and pass that wisdom down to future generations...

Why we would settle for less, I have no clue...

And yet, regularly, most people do...

I, for one, will not...and I would be completely psyched to meet far more people who will not, either...

And the more people who take that kind of commitment, seriously...

That kind of commitment has more power to make the world a far better place than probably any other commitment that any one person or 5 billion people might make...

I've got IEP's to write...my brakes are going out on me and I need new ones...so I have to ponder on the outrageous price I was quoted while I work on IEP's at my local Lawrence Public Library tonight (I had to get home to get the car to Meineke, and our computer is still on the fritz:):):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Becoming clearer that Ms. Fisher did me a huge favor...

I don't know why...but this afternoon's got me to thinking...

About what a genuinely huge favor that Brandi did for me...and I didn't even realize it at the time...

It's taken me a long time to accept something I never wanted to accept in the immediate aftermath of Brandi's and my relationship...

Which was...that despite just how unboundlessly unconditional and blind and romantic my love was for Brandi...

That that kind of love wasn't reciprocated...

I didn't want to believe that after we broke up...

And it never even really occurred to me when Brandi and I were together...

I was just kind of naive, I think:):)...and blind...to Brandi's flaws...so completely enraptured I was with being so in love:):)...

It's pretty clear to me, now, that Brandi didn't value me, period, nevertheless love me, even slightly comparable to how in love I was with her...and how much I valued our friendship...

And the idea of that...hurt so much after Brandi and I broke up...that I just coudn't imagine it to be true...

I was just so blinded, I think, by our potential...by her potential...that I didn't take nearly enough time, I suppose, to really sit and contemplate who Brandi was...and who she might be that she wasn't sharing with me...

It didn't even occur to me for whatever stupid, naive reasons:):):)...

That who she really was might fall so short of who she promised to be...

And the reason why that is such a huge favor to me...

Is because...truth be told...I totally and completely deserve someone who loves me like that...like I love them...that unconditionally...that passionately...that full of purpose and life...

And I was just so focussed on Brandi's potential for that kind of love, I think...that I kind of lost track of where she really might have been, as a person...

And Brandi leaving me...and not talking to me any more...

Just totally frees me up...to hold out for that kind of love...

Rather than settling...for what Brandi had to offer...

Which didn't turn out to be much, sadly...

The funny thing is...it's kind of crazy and unexpected...

But the more my arm is twisted...and the more I have to choose between a life I love...and a life that I'm forced to live with...

The more it becomes clear to me that I just couldn't choose anything else but a life I love...I just don't have it in me, really:):):)...and I'm just not intimated enough by the alternative, I suppose:):):)...

All this armtwisting has kind of made me a tough guy with really big heart, I suppose:):):)...

And I guess I'm just making some peace, too, then...that I just couldn't live that life with someone who would settle for less, either...

I need someone who can love that powerfully...

And Brandi, for better or for worse...

Just turned out not to be that person...

And the really huge silver lining in that very dark cloud...

Is that now my eyes are far more wide open...

Waiting for the kind of woman who can love that powerfully:):):)...and love me as powerfully or more than I love her...

It's been a long, painful road to face that reality...

But one well worth traveling...

So I can be loved as much as I love...and not settle for less:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Getting inspired...

I've got paperwork I'm working on, right now...bureaucratic nonsense that inspires me not at all...

I'm pretty sure, now, that I couldn't live my life doing anything but something like teaching or writing something substantial or something that inspires me in some way...

Something I really care about...

Because I'm just so utterly bored and uninspired by anything of such little substance of the stuff I'm working on, right now...

It's so crazy...the stuff I'm doing I think actually serves a secondary but important purpose of ensuring financial underwriting for this job and the special education department in the District, generally...

But I've kind of figured that out more over time than I was really told up front...and I'm just not someone who is motivated by tangible rewards hardly at all, really...

I'm much more interested in a sense of purpose and in a life that moves me...and money is just so secondary among priorities that I might have that it just doesn't motivate me at all, really...

I don't know why I'm so much more internally motivated than most people...I suppose because I just know better...that nothing else will ever make me genuinely happy...other than a relationship with a woman who feels similarly...and having a family where I can hopefully inculcate similar values...

Also...I got spoiled...

I had a life of idealism and intense romance very early in life...right after college...that no reward would ever be able to match in a million years:):):)...

I'm being feeling kind of blah all weekend after I got back from the forensics tournament (which was a blast, by the way...totally reaffirmed for me why I loved competing for 7 years)...

And the reason is because I've got this certification issue hanging over my head...that I've been working on, steadily...

But, which, at some level...deep in my gut...just kind of flies in the face of so much of why I do the work I do...

I definitely am committed to this work in a way that is very rare, I think...I sincerely love/like these kids in a way that none of my colleagues do, I don't think...largely because the kids I work with are so damned hard to like and love, they're so damned obnoxious...

But I think about them like they were my own kids...and I love them despite their laziness and stupidity, much of the time:):)...

I suppose that should inspire me to work all the harder on this paperwork...and, at some level, it does...

It's just kind of frustrating to have this paperwork take up so much of my time...when it serves no substantive purpose for my job...and when it takes away time from doing the work I love to do...or even compelling me to take classes which I sincerely love to do for their own sake, completely independent of whether they are required or not...

And it just gives me an icky feeling I have to work through every time...of being compelled to do something that I value doing for its own sake, in the first place...

And the irony is that if it weren't for me loving this work and loving education and school, generally, independent of the requirements...

I wouldn't do it at all...

I'd go find something else that I could love like this...

The irony is that if my district level boss had said, "You know, Ben...we need you to take care of this certification issue because it guarantees funding for our program...and we need funding for our program to hire teachers and to buy all kinds of stuff that are useful for classrooms"...

I probably would have said, "Sure, no problem...that sounds like a great reason to get this stuff done...I'm right on it"...

But she didn't...and because I had to divine it from the endless emails I received on the matter...and because she just said, "Resolve the certification issues or lose your job"...

I went from angry and depressed...to not really giving much of a shit...

To finally putting together the pieces on this one so that I feel a stronger degree of responsibility on this one (though I've felt a strong degree of responsibility on it, the entire time...I've just felt an employee's sense of responsibility to his boss, rather than the responsibility of someone who has to accomplish something because others depend on him)...

I just realized that what makes me such an ideal match with a life of public service is that I'm completely uncorruptible...there's just no way that I could be bought off...because I just don't value money that way...I'm completely clear it doesn't buy you happiness...and I have two rich parents to confirm that as a matter of concrete reality as much as a matter of faith:):)...

And I'm just not motivated by the stuff, at all...in fact, I feel something of an aversion to it because I'm just not interested in having it compromise my integrity on anything I really do care about...

I'm sure I'll earn enough money in my life...

But a life centered around making money just seems like the most sad, bankrupt, dull existence to me that I couldn't imagine living that way:):)...

And I suppose that's why I see the world so differently that so many people...

Because I'm just not externally motivated...by money or by laws or by whatever...as so many people are...

I'm completely motivated by a love for my work and my life in way that very few are, I suppose...which does me a pretty lucky person, when I think about it:):)...

But which also makes me pretty uninspired by putting too much effort into anything that's centered around money...

But I suppose we all have to make money to pay our bills...and schools are no different:):):)...

I don't want to take that for granted...

That I have a life I love...and that I get to do something I love...and that paying the bills is just a part of that life:):):)...

Part of the reason I left grad school was because I was growing concerned that, in a very similar way, our program was just too centered around money...

But if someone would have explained it to me this way...I think I would have had a different reaction...and I might have stuck around longer...that and not having people press me all the time...which drives me crazy...since I am someone who is in such clear good faith around getting the job done if I understand it's purpose...which is clear to anyone who has bothered to find out or the get to know me, at all, I think...

Because I don't understand the purpose behind something...I'm so unmotivated by coercion that it just does so little good for the person trying to coerce me...I'm just not scared like most people are...

And I just have no interest in living my life like that...

I'll either live a life I love...

Or I'll spend my life looking for that life...

Either way...there's no way anyone could intimidate or force me to live my life by their terms...

Because I just won't...

I'd move on, first:):):)...

Which is what I've been contemplating all weekend...

But which won't be necessary, I hope...because I'm finally putting together why I have to do this bullshit, all the time:):):)...

Reason...purpose...understanding...

It's by far, without a doubt, and without any real competitor a better motivator than coercion...it's just that too many fools in the world can't get clear about that...and they deal with the consequences of that foolishness in the meantime:):):)...and will until they do get clear:):):)...

Have a good week, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

The fact that we're behind means that we have to work that much harder...

I had a great conversation with a dad, today...

This father has a daughter who is in my special education math class...

Who I think literally every teacher she has had that I had talked to had given up on her...

They were convinced that she was retarded...or just too stupid...or otherwise hopeless...

And this father was just greatful to talk to one teacher who hadn't given up...

And who had some expectations for his daughter...

And she was responding...

The reason for my call...was that this kid was beginning to do work that she, previously, would not do...she offered very little effort in class, at all...

And I made clear to her that if she didn't give me any effort...then she could take her F's and there wasn't a thing I was going to do for her...

But if she worked with me, then I would work with her...and she could learn a lot...

And as I told her father...maybe find herself in general education classes at some point in the future...

If she could get a fire underneath her...which she has gotten, in very small part...

But significant enough that I thought her father should know...

You know what pisses me off most about the world, right now...

How many people have given up on the most important priorities we have...like committing ourselves to every child's future...no matter what obstacles we face...

And then acting like somehow their giving up and cynicism should be treated equally or better than the kind of hope and clear commitment that someone like me brings...

It makes me kind of sick, really...

And message I have for every single person...who believes that their cynicism should be treated with the same kind of seriousness with my realistic and clear-headed idealism...

Is fuck you, you bullshitting mother-fucker...your cynicism is a dishonest attempt to get yourself off the hook for the most serious responsibilities...

And either get yourself back on the hook...and commit yourself to finding solutions rather than always rationalizing failure...

Or sit down, shut the fuck up, and get out of the way of committed people like me...

Because there is not one fuckin' whine or moan or complaint that I will listen to, anymore, on this, that doesn't have some constructive focus on changing or solving serious problems or improving serious priorities...

We are not cavemen...we cannot look at every problem and say, "Well how the fuck can I beat the shit out of this problem and make it go away?"...

We have to think our way through problems...include people in on decision-making...account for peoples' different ideas, persectives, disagreements, etc...expecting full and responsible participation...

And otherwise stop being such assholes trying to club our way through problems that need more thought...

We need more light and less heat to solve most problems, today...during a hopefully brief era when we have rationalized more heat than could possibly ever be useful for solving most problems...

But...like imperialism...or legally-sanctioned morality...or religious or racial bigotry...or sexism...or slavery...or autocracy...or a million other bad habits that humanity has gotten itself into...

This habit has been a hard one for us to break...

Largely because people with power very rarely like to either part with it very easily...or take responsibility for their failures, when they have it...

Largely because human beings, as a rule, rather than as an exception...can be such pricks...who just don't like to admit what pricks we can be...

How do we escape the cycle?...

We take responsibility...

And we live better lives...

It's painful...it's difficult...it's a far harder row to how than the one we follow now...

And it's the only way out...

And future generations will remember what fools and pricks we were...just as we do of past generations...

Until we get past it...

And begin to think a whole lot more...

And bully a whole lot less...

I've got some work to do...

Have a great weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Forgiving our collective foolishness...

I'm wiped out...

I have a national qualifying forensics tournament that I committed to judging this weekend...it will be a weekend of grading and IEP's and getting my brakes changed and finances and cleaning and other kinds of stuff after that (actually I have to get the brakes changed before I head down to Wichita)...

But...at some point...I also got a get a beer in there, somewhere:):)...

Because this week has been insane...

I don't just mean that it's been busy...but it's surely been that...

I mean insane...I mean people lost in stubborn irrationality about what they can get done by demanding, bullying, pressuring, and otherwise undermining their's and my ability to get the work done...

And I'm finding that the only way to tolerate this persistent stupidity...

Is to have that beer...and to just keep forgiving what stubborn dumbasses we are around this issue until we figure out what people are so resistant to admit on it...that they're wrong...that there really is a limit to what you can bully to get your way...so they have to learn how to choose battles better and differently...and if they're really thinking about it...to use the least possible necessary aggression...so that the pushing things too hard doesn't slow you down too much...which it does, as a rule (is there any other lesson to take from our dealings with Iran, right now?..."Hey Iran, stop developing nukes"..."Hey U.S., fuck off"..."Hey Iran, stop developing nukes or we'll really put the pressure on you"..."Hey U.S., watch us pursue nukes faster and more persistently in the face of your pressure, you morons"..."Hey Iran, now we're really going to put the pressure on"..."Hey U.S., now we're going to get far bolder in our open pursuit of a nuclear weapons programs and even declare ourselves a member of the nuclear club before we are")...

I mean how fuckin' obvious does it have to become?...are Americans going to pay $10/gallon a gas before they figure out what a fool-hardy path it is to bully our way through every issue?...

"We really could have gotten so much more done in North Korea if South Korea hadn't gotten in the way with all that diplomatic nonsense" dumbasses in the Administration who advocate this approach must be saying, these days...even as South Korean totally saves our ass on the nuclear issue, because we're just too stubborn to see our failure...

Bullying your way through an issue is something that must be done as little as possible...and even then, it only works temporarily...

And...eventually...your credibility is undermined...

You have to really live in a world of self-delusion, I think, to somehow think that I'm not a really pretty damn good teacher...

Or just really stubborn...

And the latter means that if the district were to let me go...then you just become one more footnote in my books and discussions of how irrational bureaucracy is in dealing with important decisions based on substance...rather than based on institutional inertia...

The latter suffocates itself, eventually, without fresh air from people like me...to help people see how they keep tripping over the same goddamn mistakes...

But...at some point...you got to finally see the mistake...you can't just keep fighting me, mindlessly, on it...

And not seeing a mistake doesn't mean that you're not making it...

It means that you'll keep making the same mistake...

And I'll be moseying my way along...waiting for you to finally catch up:):):)...

But probably helping someone else...on some other team...

I've got stuff to do before the end of the day:):):)...

Have a good weekend, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Making peace with a world of irrational demands...

I've got a certification issue that I've been working on, today...I've done everything that I can do, today, to get it resolved...

It's been hanging over my head for awhile...I thought I was further along on certification issues when I left grad school than I was...and I've been taking care of them since I got the job...

You know what the craziest thing about these issues and most of the bureaucratic hassle that I've dealt with in the school system is?...

It has almost nothing at all to do with taking care of the concerns and problems in schools and among kids that we say we want taking care of...at best, it guarantees that people who get my job have an education background, which is a mixed bag, really...

And at worst...it becomes the pain in the ass that it's become for me...

And I can't think of a better case scenario than mine to demonstrate just how irrational the whole process is...just how foolish it is to get so wrapped up in regulations that often have little to do, substantively, to achieve the goals we say that we want -- namely, getting qualified teachers in classrooms...

And do very much to undermine those goals...

I've said that if I end up not being renewed next year, I may just quit teaching altogether...

Which would be the most clearly counterproductive result of the whole process...but I just figure that if district officials get to that point, they might as well rest with that issue on their consciences...which I doubt would let them rest well...there's very few criteria -- except for the need for more experience -- by which you could judge me a poor teacher, I don't think, objectively, intuitively, intellectually or otherwise...

You just have to be kind of stubborn fool, I think, to not recognize what a stupid, foolish decision that would be...and one that would so disillusion me, I don't think I would be interested in teaching for quite a while (I don't know if I'd ever go back) if it were to happen...

Sometimes I wonder if we just want important efforts to fail, we so often bullshit the consequences of foolish policies and decisions...

I actually think the matter will resolve itself fine...

In the meantime...I'm left wondering just how stubbornly wrong-headed we will be in our pursuit of a world where rules dictate to a reality that is perpetually on its own terms...

We have to stop this nonsense at some point...because we won't be able to function at all, otherwise...

But in the meantime...

We live in a world where everyone is perpetually just trying to get what they want...and the rules are perpetually a function of that...

Or more perversely...we keep maintaining a world where bureacracy obstructs our ability to achieve important goals...

And we all abdicate responsibility to abstract rules that serve no purpose...except to give us the clearly false sense of accomplishing something that it is not accomplishing...

We're just kind of a foolish lot, I think...people...

We just get committed to all kinds of positions...good and bad...and then staying stuck, no matter how foolish the consequences are...

The saving grace being that you can only be a moron for so long before people start to point it out...

And stupidity begins to give way to reason...

To do otherwise is to try to maintain an irrational worldview in the face of all kinds of evidence to the contrary...

Being wrong is the everyday term for that situation...but soon it becomes damned foolish...and clearly controlling...and at the far end of the spectrum it becomes psychotic and destructive...

Surely I can have more faith in people than that, don't you think?...

I hope so...because I have a feeling that you would have one pretty upset faculty and administration and staff, and perhaps some students, as well, here, if the case turns out to be otherwise...

I have stuff to get done, here...

Have a good week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

A heart to heart...

I had one of the most heart to heart conversations I've had with anyone in the building, today...about a kid...it was the strongest I've ever felt in making sure that a kid's interests were taken seriously amidst a serious situation...

The kid was being kicked out for the remainder of the school year...for distributing marijuana...which is a very serious thing for a student to do on a school campus...especially a middle school campus...

He's a good student...who I like a lot...and who made some very bad choices...

And he might not be back at school this year...

My heart went out to this kid, immediately...because he's such a good kid...who just made some bad choices...in a world that's a little crazy, right now, I think, around facing uncomfortable realities around drug use, abuse, and -- in this kids' situation -- distribution...

I had a heart to heart with the administrator involved around making sure that a conversation takes places that communicates effectively...and which the kid can believe, with good reason -- because it's true, I hope -- that the action taken is being done as much for him as for anyone else...because we're concerned about where this might lead, down the road...so he can take genuine responsibility for the situation...and we won't -- hopefully -- see a situation like this, again...

There's a whole lot around drugs that we, as a country, need to start accounting for much more honestly...that we don't do, right now...

I'm not a drug user...I've smoked marijuana in my lifetime...and I don't, today, more because it is unhealthy than because it is illegal (the prohibition of alcohol arguments related to drugs are pretty dead-on, as far as I'm concerned...and the end of prohibition of alcohol happened as much because people faced up to realities of the extent of how many people drank alcohol, in their own times, as much as because they realized what fuddy-duddies they were being around the whole issue...in fact, the former reason was the most serious reason to end prohibition, as is true of drug prohibition, today)...

My concerns are bigger than how this issue gets resolved, in the big picture, which I'm quite confident will end in the legalization of drugs, at some point in the future...when people start accounting for this more honestly and thoughtfully...

My concern, today...was with the welfare of a very young kid caught in the crosshairs of this reality and our debate about it and who made bad choices that he is responsible for...

Something clearly needs to happen to deal with this situation...distributing drugs on a school campus is a very serious matter...

But a relationship needs to be built with this kid, too, that makes clear how much we care about him...and how important it is for him to take responsibility for this situation, so that it does not escalate and this kid ends up getting into much more serious trouble down the line...and so, as much as possible, we don't have drugs circulating around our school...

My concern is that over the course of dealing with this situation...that we are committed to this kid, for the long haul...meaning we seek genuine responsibility -- not a bullshit, "I'm sorry"...and certainly not a bullshit, "We've punished him therefore our hands our clean" pseudo/fake resolution -- that doesn't resolve the underlying issues, here, for the long term...

I had a good friend in high school...a really smart guy...my best friend...who got lost in the drug culture from my sophomore year on...

He got caught for it, at one point, at least, that I know of...and I have no confidence whatsoever that his getting caught or others getting caught in any way is equivalent to taking responsibility...none...

And in the meantime...all of the issues that my best friend was facing that led him in this direction...went unresolved and undealt with...the entire time I knew him in high school...

The gap between adult responses to kids' problems...and the problems themselves...is so huge so much of the time...that we -- meaning adults -- almost begin to fool ourselves into thinking that we have solved problems...or dealt with them adequately...that we clearly have not...

Drugs is one of the most obvious failures by adults in their relationships with kids, if they would have the guts enough to face that honestly...

They generally don't...

And many young people...who have very little experience navigating that world where adults' accomplishments fall so dramatically far from their aspirations...and where adult behavior, as much as kid behavior, is responsible for so many issues...

Get caught in the middle of so much our bullshit about where we're doing well and where we're not...

This is an issue where our efforts have pretty dramatically failed, if we would face that honestly...

But we don't...

Because we don't have the courage to...

And young people live with our failures...as much as with our more noble aspirations...

This kid is responsible for his behavior...

And so are we...

And if we make decisions that lead this kid to take a bad turn...

We are responsible for that...

As much as him...

Whether we want to face that uncomfortable reality or not...

As much as anything...I am the kid who stayed out of trouble, for the most part, when I was in school...

Who feels a powerful sense of loyalty...to my friends who made worse choices, in this respect...

Because I genuinely cared about my friends...and about even the kids that very few people genuinely care about...

I've made bad choices in my life, too...and I am responsible for them...

And I know that threats of punishments had no effect on me, whatsoever, except when the threat of getting caught was immediate and eminent...and then, only short term...

Like it or not...we make choices in our lives...out of conscience...or not at all...

Because when we don't make them out of conscience...

They aren't our choices, at all...

And that is what leads to the sad, embittered nature of the lives of far too many adults...after they survive the slings and arrows of youth...

As much as anything...

Because of what open, unrepentant hypocrits and self-centered assholes we become covering our own asses...

We can choose to not be those things...

But we can't choose to be those things if we aren't more honest about our failures...

The drug war is one of the most powerful failures that adults need to account for more honestly when it comes to the welfare of children and adults who we care about...and whom, if we don't, we should...and certainly we can take no moral high ground, in the least, if we fail to care about the interests of everyone we deal with...there is no moral code I know of that makes qualifications on whom is regarded our love, concern, and respect...and any that do are long rationalizations for what assholes people choose to be in the face of higher moral callings...

I have no interest in rationalizing that kind of self-centeredness and failure of humanity...

And those that wish to will be remembered by future generations as they always are...

As the smaller-minded of their generations...resisting the efforts of bigger-minded people...to care for the interests of all people...not just the ones they decide to include for whatever random reasons...and exclude, for whatever unsavory reasons...

This kid is a pretty easy kid to advocate for...

Because he's such a great kid...smart...nice...likable...generous...decent...

...good kid...

Who made a choice that he did not understand the gravity of, I'm quite sure...

So many very smart...very good...very decent kids and people...

Give up...

On school...on their idealism...on the highest values in life...

Because they give into the cyncism...on this issue and a whole host of issues...

And I'm just not interested in seeing that happen with this kid...for anyone involved...him...or the adults who are making decisions on this one...and who will hopefully take responsibility for any and all consequences that follow...good and bad...

We owe our kids better than to cynically ignore our failures...around drugs...around education reforms...around the use of jails and prisons to solve many, many problems that would be better solved with stronger relationships and with more honesty...

And having the conversation I had, today, about this kid with this administrator...reminds me of why I do this work...despite all of the insanity...and the denial...and the lying...and the bullshit...

The people who have positions of responsibility who often don't take genuine responsibility...meaning that they face up to their failures...as much as they have their successes acknowledged..

The kids and the families with ultimate responsibility for their lives who fail to take genuine responsibility for their welfare...meaning that they face up to their failures...as much as they have their successes acknowledged...

And the people...which is most people...

Who fail to genuinely take responsibility for the world around them...meaning facing its and their failures...as much as having their successes acknowledged...

And who, most importantly, fail to face their own failures...their personal failures...their individual failings and shortcomings...

As much as having their successes and strengths and virtues acknowledged...

We deserve a world where people live like that...

We deserve lives where we live like that...

And more importantly...

If we fail to create a world like that...

It is our failure...and noone elses...

So if and to the extent the cynicism wins out...it our failing...our own personal cynicism...that makes that possible...

And we do not want to be remembered as people who maintained that cynical reality...

Then we must take responsibility for that failing...and for all our failings...

As much and far, far, far more...

Then we ask 11, 12, and 13-year-old kids to take responsibility for their own mistakes and failings...

To do otherwise...is so clearly morally wrong...that I can hardly believe that we could live with ourselves...to rationalize it otherwise...

Have a good week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

The fire...

It's a Friday night...I just got done with an IEP...

And I've nothing better to do...than clean my office (which desperately needs it)...and blog...

I probably should just get my ass out of here...

It's funny...

Carson and I were just talking about not wanting to return to the grueling schedule of debate and forensics competition from our high school and college years...

But tonight, I'm really missing them...

I'm missing them because I miss the thrill of testing my wits with really smart folks...I miss the passion that people felt for excellence in something that really mattered (thinking and empathizing -- in the case of dramatic events -- that is)...

And I'm missing being with people who really took these things seriously...

I've been frustrated, lately, because I really love these kids...and what I do...and I love engaging people about how the world could be better, given our willingness to invest the time, energy, and thought into doing so...into letting go of stupid ways of thinking about the world...and working to develop better ways of thinking about all kinds of things...

But I miss working on these things with people who share my passion...

I have many colleagues who share some of that passion...and I love working with them, especially on those days when they're really feeling it...

But a lot of folks seem to settle in their expectations for kids...or expectations for their own lives...

That are far lower than what they actually have to offer...

And it just seems like such a sad choice to me...

I'm getting worried that I'll never meet a girl with that kind of passion, again, because only one has ever ran with me in that way...and I don't even get a hi from her, anymore...

I miss the challenge...I miss someone challenging me even if they think I'm too strong for them...I miss the give and take...and I miss almost as much the push and pull...I even miss the fighting in Brandi's and my relationship, just because at least it was something real between two people who felt something real about things that really mattered...our relationship in particular...at least I think Brandi cared about our relationship and/or our friendship...I can't tell anymore...the clear indication, at this point -- only obscured by the fact that she regularly visits the site -- is that she doesn't...

Adults become so incomparably boring, from a kids' perspective, I think, because they become such pussies...they get so afraid of being themselves with one another for fear of offending one another, all of the time...and so it's refreshing, even when I disagree with someone, when they feel free to be themselves...to say things that offend me...and to just speak up...

We obviously have to learn how to have strong opinions and reconcile that with a realistic means of engaging people to accomplish our common ends...

But goddamn if I don't want to have some tough conversations with people who don't get all squeamish about ideas or attitudes that they don't like...

I really enjoyed that in talking with Carson, the other night...because I can trust Carson on this one...that I can talk freely...and I like it best when he talks freely...and still have some level of expectation of open-mindedness and engagement and not just getting all hung up on self-righteous posturing...

Brandi was pretty amazing about this, too...she could get self-righteous, some, as could I...but she was fairly humble when she was challenged, too...and she always had something interesting and thoughtful to say...

Maybe it's that people get afraid of the passion...or that they get too self-satisfied...or that they just don't care...

I don't know...

I just know that I miss the fire amongst my friends when I competed in debate and forensics...and from discussions and just friendships in college...

I miss the passion of my relationship with Brandi...

So many older people seem to give that passion up...

And maybe what I've been seeing lately amongst teachers is them finding that fire again...whether I or anyone else agrees or not from where that fire springs:):):)...

I want that kind of fire in my life...and I want it more often...and, ideally...and as soon as possible...I want it in the form of a relationship with someone who knocks my socks off...and who reminds me of what mad, passionate love is like, again...

I want to be around people...and a soulmate, in particular...who make my blood boil for all of the right reasons:):):)...

The one great thing about porn, I suppose, is that at least people are feeling some real...even if it's not love...and even if often it's not so real:):):) (my only one real concern with porn is that I want my sexual partners to enjoy themselves and not have to do things that they don't want to for ulterior reasons other than enjoying the love/passion/fun/whatever of a sexual encounter)...

Yeah...I'm getting the fuck out of here...

But where I'm gonna find that kind of passion or fire or connection or whatever, I have no fuckin' clue...

I think I need to get laid (but something tells me that's not gonna do the trick...although it may not hurt to try:):):)...

But what I really want is to share some passionate discussion with someone who really gives a shit about the world:):):)...

Have a great weekend, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

Reap what we sow...

I have this colleague I work with...who is the strangest hypocrit I've ever met, among the teaching profession, at least...

He's a friend...so I say this as a friend who just doesn't have the freedom to have this conversation with him, personally, given the limitation of me wanting to not piss off this colleague and lose my job over something so stupid as why he has such bizarre attitudes towards sexuality:):):)...

He's someone that we're always running subtle interference for because he's always saying offensive sexual shit without really being very sensitive to the people around him or their reactions...

I love offensive shit, personally...generally when it is in jest...

But not only does this guy just not pay enough attention to whom he is offending...but the places where he does offend me, at least -- and I'm pretty hard to offend...though...I want people to feel free to speak freely around me, without regard to what I might get my panties in a twist in the moment about or not -- are generally out of moral self-righteousness that just doesn't square, at all, with his behavior otherwise...

He said, today, that part of the reason he quit the Orthodox seminary -- which is where he first studied -- was because he wasn't ready for ordination of women and homosexuals...

And this coming from a guy who makes sexual and often not very funny sexual humor all the time in a profession dominated by, luckily for him, some very easy-going women...

It's funny...because this guy is almost a case-study in sexual repression...

Meaning...that he often obsesses about sexuality in conversations where it doesn't seem like the most appropriate place or time to be having such lewd conversations...and then gets upset, simultaneously, about the very open sexual attitudes that allow someone like him to speak so freely about sex...

Strange, huh?...

I see this all the time...

People have strong sexual feelings and reactions to sexuality that they don't know what to do with...and that luckily they feel free, at least, to talk about them in a way that doesn't leave them and the guilt and shame they often feel about them all bottled up inside of them...

And they, simultaneously, fully embrace the very sexual mores that keep such obsessions, and the most unhealthy versions of them in the form of sex crimes and other sexual violence, in place...

Our freer and more open attitudes around sexuality are clearly more healthy than in periods of humanity when we've had less free and open attitudes...and less sexual repression, paradoxically, leads to healthier attitudes around sexuality...because their expression gives people better opportunities to make better choices around sexuality...

So why people with less healthy sexual attitudes would want to simultaneously impose their less healthy attitudes towards sex on everyone else AND take advantage of the freedom that, luckily for them and all of us, allow for healthier forms of sexual expressions and fewer forms of unhealthy, dangerous, and often violent forms of sexual expression, I will never know...

And it just reinforced for me...that when our mean, nasty, vindictive, repressive impulses reap what they sow...the meaner, nastier, more vindictive, and more repressive we are...the worse a world we create out of our ugliness...meaning more sexual violence and unhealthy sexual activity...

Individually...as much as for all of us...

And the more healthy and open our attitudes are...and more responsible freedom we exercise around sexuality and life, generally...

The better world we get...

The question, really, is which one of those impulses are we going to choose...

And in the meantime...

Why in the world does the larger world take more seriously the very kind of fucked up views of my colleague?...

And not take more seriously the more intelligent, decent, and healthy views of sexual therapists and other thinking people whose sexuality is not wrapped in the shame and guilt that is the legacy of our past failures to deal with sexuality more healthily and effectively?...

Because the truth is...that no matter how much people like my colleage might be defensive otherwise (and to his credit...he did say that he was not quite ready...not that he was staunchly opposed)...

The world has been a major fuckin' mess when it comes to sexuality for much of its history...and it's only been with the advent of modernity and more sexual freedom and openness that we've gotten healthier and more honest about the lies and terrible consequences of repression, generally, and more repressed sexual attitudes, specifically...

And make no mistake about it...men deciding if they are going to let women and homosexuals be ordained in the Church --has everything to do with sexuality...and its repression...and men who don't know how to handle all those bottled up sexual feelings they have...

It's a sad legacy, that's for sure...

But more sad is the shame and guilt and repression and denial and the unwillingness to face reality that both maintain it...and that is imposed on the rest of us, so the scared, small, and mean among us don't have to face the boogeymen in their closets, so to speak...

In the meantime...it makes me so sad to think about all the people who get hurt -- so many people -- and who live such unnecessarily unhappy and tragic lives...

All because we just can't see reality on this one, so lost are so many of us in our fears and cynicism about the very human nature that we're responsible for maintaining with that same cynicism and the repression that is the outgrowth of that cynicism...

The only way out is more freedom, more responsibility, more openness, more decency, more humanity, more compassion, and more forgiveness...

Which is the most serious and important way to mark humanity's progress and growth, anyway...

But the consequences of that kind of growth...would, above all, involve more people making better choices...fewer people hurt, around matters of sexuality and violence, more honesty and openness, less shame, and a more responsible and enjoyable sexuality for everyone...

I don't know...

It seems so strange and dysfunctional to me...that my colleague's attitudes are so prevalent...and that more healthy attitudes are treated as so alien by so many people in the world...

I don't know why we keep fucking this one, up...except that this kind of hypocrisy and repression and unhealthy thinking doesn't feel a responsibility to challenge itself until it is challenged...

And challenged it will be in a society that takes seriously the very kind of freedom and openness and decency that bring more light and less heat to such difficult issues...

Love,
Ben

Our insanity around children...

It's the end of the semester...and the insanity has set in, I think...

For the kids...and for the adults...

Here's how the insanity works...

Adults want the best for kids...they don't want them to make mistakes...and they don't want them to fail...

Both of which are necessary -- necessary...meaning not an option -- for learning...

Adults oscilate between two extremes, persistently...

On the one hand...holding them responsible for mistakes...and treating them -- and everyone, really -- harshly...

Which generally just gets peoples' hackles and defenses up and generally -- meaning as a rule rather than as an exception -- is counterproductive...

Or on the other hand...finding excuses for their behavior...to get them out of harsh consequences...

Rather than just letting kids deal with the natural consequences of their behavior...and treating them decently and real -- meaning, if you're angry, let them know that you're angry...and develop perspective about life and the things that make you and all of us angry, in the meantime -- and as kind as possible...

Adults constantly want to protect kids...and then to bring down the hammer harshly when they don't want to protect kids...

Rather than just chilling out, some...and learning to let kids deal with the natural consequences of their behavior -- like grades...as a reflection of what has been learned or not been learned -- rather than adult consequences, except to deal with immediate situations in a temporary way that can never replace the learning, no matter how much we might wish otherwise:):):)...

But instead...so many adults...teachers...parents...counselors...etc...

Want to protect children and young people from the natural consequences of behavior, on the one hand...

AND...want to impose unnecessarily harsh consequences, on the other hand, no matter how counterproductive they might be...

And I just feel constantly caught in between these various and often random and wildly oscilating moods of protecting kids and kicking the shit out of them...

And many times, I'm just like...

Can't we just think about this more...and develop better understandings of why we engage in this insanity...the range of our own moods...and just let kids deal with life and all of its more natural consequences without always trying to protect them or knock them down?...

Enabling isn't caused by being too nice...

Enabling caused by not deal constructively with problems...meaning not confronting problems in a way that will deal with them effectively...

And the most important problem that most adults who are responsible for young people need to have confronted is their tendency to try to control them and their choices, too much, in ways that just stunt their growth and maturity, rather than promoting it...

One of the best things my dad did for me as a kid was give me plenty of freedom...and to not always have my every move controlled by him...as a teenager I had far more freedom than most of my friends, largely because I had earned it, obviously...and many kids have not earned it...but we can presume trust until they violate it, and then give it back once it's been earned again...

But so much of the insanity of schools and child-rearing, generally, is both trusting kids, not at all...and then wanting them off the hook all the time because we didn't do the hard work...of teaching them...and modeling for them...how to be more trustworthy people...and how to deal with the natural consequences of being a less trustworthy person...

And much of this has to do with the fact that many people...and the people who demand the most, in particular...don't work nearly hard enough at being trustworthy models for our children, ourselves...and are not nearly trustworthy, ourselves, in our judgments about such matters...because the children who make the most excuses about their lives...generally come from families with adults who make the same excuses for themselves...

And in the big picture...

That means all of us...

Because we're all fucking it up...whether we want to face our failure around this one or not...

I had 2 spoiled brats, today, who goof off all the time when we work together...who do very little work, at all, on their own...and who are constantly complaining and demanding the energies of others...

Who really need to eat some low grades, right now, to get the message that they must earn their way through life...and that they can't and shouldn't be able to demand their way through a life that they work to little at earning their way through...

And who have parents...who simultaneously sit on top of their children, clearly counterproductively if you'd just look at the results of their efforts, in the maturity, or rather lack of it, in their children...

And..at the same time...demanding that teachers make all their failures as parents go away...

Without ever having to lift a finger...

To take responsibility...

For what shitty-ass parents they've been to their spoiled little brats...

I love these kids...I care about them...

And I care about them enough to be honest about what a total disservice this way of raising children is for them...what a disservice it is for the kids and their parents, much more than the teachers involved -- though we certainly have a powerful responsibility on our shoulders, as well -- not to have to face their failures...

Parents who kick the proverbial shit out of kids have consequences to face around that stupid, foolish way of raising children in the form of their kids' behavior, down the road...

And I have no interest in letting those kids' off the hook for their failure to take learning and earning their way through school and life seriously...

And I think perhaps the parents need a reality check, too, that fucking up with your kids for years and then expecting schools to make it all go away, overnight, is not only foolish and impossible...it's obnoxious...and it's that very attitude why those folks' children are such shitty students...and until that attitude is given up...they'll never succeed...no matter what we call the grade we give them...

I'm smarter and more responsible than most people my age or any age, really...because I had a dad who often succeeded despite himself, much of the time...to give me the freedom...to choose being smart and responsible...of my own accord...which is the only way that such qualities and any important qualities in life can be internalized for a lifetime...

Free will isn't just some luxury...or some fantastic notion...as a matter of practicality...it is the only way that people become better or worse kinds of people...

And if people think they can force kids to do what only free will and learning can do...

Then they will deal with the consequences of that foolish choice for as long as they maintain such foolishness:):):)...

I've got to get something to eat...I'm famished:):)...

Love,
Ben