I wonder if the call for change and reform is all that effective. If it’s our task to bring about change with legislators, to be honest and blunt, I see those changes as happening so slowly they never will in my lifetime as an educator. That is, I’ll be retired before changes come about that will significantly change schools.

But what does that leave me with? It leaves me with wishing change could happen, trying to adhere to directives I receive as a district administrator. It means trying to encourage uses of technology that are inspiring, that amplify student voices against a backdrop of high stakes testing that drains away the creativity and hope needed to amplify those student voices. It is as if the entire system is crashing, and the only hope is really to focus on ensuring that children’s voices are heard, that teachers are encouraged…one at a time. Every time I’m about to teeter, I write it down in this blog and share it with you. Some how, the next day, I can get up again and do my best. Isn’t that strange?

This emotional waterfall starts with this sentence that strikes hard at education today:

Here we witness the trials and tribulations of a generation of students imprisoned by expectations as low as budgets.

The sentence comes from this article from Educational Equity, Politics and Policy in Texas. It is well worth reading as it shares the views of a 70-minute solo play entitled No Child…. Some of the other gems in the article:

“I don’t know if I can change the politicians, but I know that tens of thousands of teachers have seen the show, and they go back to their kids just a little bit changed, a little bit lighter,” Sun says. “They are able to breathe a little bit, to just get a little bit more oxygen. That’s the revolution for me.”

Oh, is this what passes for successful reform or change? To lessen the suffering of teachers imprisoned in classrooms, where even modern technology can’t be used to figuratively stick their hands through the bars? Yes.

I’m reminded of Dick Westley’s Theology of Presence, in which he quotes somebody (darn it, one of my favorite books and I’ve mislaid it). The part of the quote that stuck with me is, our role is to make the human sojourn a little less painful. Fortunately, I quoted it in this blog entry before.

Let me tell you, of all the confessions I have listened to, I have not heard…nearly so much as I have heard discouragement. Discouragement of themselves, and of life. Discouragement is what truly kills people.

Such people want to do good, but they always seem to have nothing but trouble and disappointment and suffering, sickness of all kinds, the death of children, the everyday hurts and disappointments of life.

Think of the pain of those people who have nobody to love. And also think of the pain of those who do.

The reason I will call this Council…is not something abstract, no, not at all. It is simply to make the human sojourn on earth a little less sad.
Source: Eugene Kennedy in his play about Pope John XXIII as cited in Dick Westley’s Theology of Presence

Just reading that quote again helps me appreciate again the purpose of No Child… the play…it makes me ask, “Can my work as a school district administrator make the human sojourn in public schools a little less sad, a little less of a prison?”

Yes, I believe so.

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