Eduholic

Waterproofing a deck is not sexy. No one oohs and ahs when you’re done. The only discernible difference is that when juice spills it puddles instead of absorbs. But it is necessary. The payoff is deferred, barely tangible except over time: the deck lasts longer.

I built this one myself, a summer ago. It was our third year in the house, long enough to be sick of the cramped poo-brown platform tacked on the back, with its national park bars that dissected one’s view no matter where one sat. Five more feet and white-painted rails was all we needed. It turned into one of those epic homeowner battles that you swear you’ll never fight again.

The old boards were fastened with twisted five-inch hurricane nails designed to go in but never come out. During construction I wrestled sixteen-foot lengths of lumber and lugged eighty-pound bags of cement on hundred-degree days, recruiting relatives and neighbors along the way while my wife took lots of extra hours with the boys. The deadline then was my own 39th birthday party. Crabs and beer, and lots of oohs and ahs.

Now, it’s a year later. I’m transitioning jobs, and happened to have a day off this week—no kids, no work. Just me, a powerwasher, and the dogs panting beneath a picnic table. A chance to knock out some household maintenance; and nearly a whole day to think about the new phase I’m entering in my career.

Despite that my mantra as a teacher has always been, “Administrators work for me,” I confess that now it feels like I’m moving up in the world. I’ll have an office and more responsibility. I’ll be a manager of grown ups as much as kids; colleagues and students will both see me differently. I’ll wear ties.

There’s that bump in salary, but not enough to start paying other people to waterproof my deck. It’s still educator money, not real money. Lucky for me, I like a day of manual labor now and then. Knowing I’m saving a few hundred bucks is part of it. The mindless physicality and the solitude are a break from the constant extroversion of daddying or teaching. And there’s that intimate connection to whatever you make, something no one feels when they only buy labor.

The whole process is sort of like being in admin, I bet. What you do is crucial, and keeps the school running smoothly. However, the work is often thankless, or the reward is down the road.

There are other parallels. As I was rooting through the shed for the pump sprayer, I couldn’t resist the urge to reorganize. Forty-five minutes later, with bikes hanging on newly installed hooks and an old dresser on the trash heap, I was ready to start in on the original task. Constant distractions, I’m told, are part of my new job description.

Once I actually started spraying, it was clear that the pump itself was kaput. Instead of an even vapor, it emitted a spastic spatter of compound that freckled rather than coated the wood. Improvising, I grabbed a roller and smoothed as I went. Bending over for three hours left me feeling forty but got the job done. Improvisation and occasional pain in the back side are also to be expected as a Dean.

Needless to say, I flogged the metaphor pretty hard over the course of the day. I’ll spare you extending it further unless you want to come sit a spell on the deck. Actually if you’re interested, I’ll be painting the front porch a little later on this summer…

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sorry it’s been a while since I last wrote. Along with most of you at this time of year, I’ve been deep in the Stuff. Grading mountains of papers, saying good-byes, grading mountains of papers, distributing yearbooks, calculating final grades, moving stuff out of the room, telling kids to put away their yearbooks, haggling with kids about their final grades, signing yearbooks, exporting grades, going to end of the year luncheons, wondering if I should have changed so-and-so’s grade, hauling boxes of books around… you know. Stuff.

On top of the usual maelstrom, I’m getting ready to transition into my new job as an administrator/teacher. As the wave of leaving crashes around me and washes back down the beach, another wave is coming up right behind it. For example, on our second-to-last contract day, my division is going to a bar for an end o’ the year get-together. I’ll cut out early to make it to a dinner with the new school’s leadership team. From hoisting a beer with the TJ teachers I’ve sat with at lunch every day for three years, I’ll go to hoisting a beer with the folks at Congressional that I’ll be working with every day for what I hope is years to come.

I haven’t had a chance to process this upcoming change so much as run after it. Easing into the role this summer will provide time for further reflection, but I figured I’d take a moment now, before crossing over to the dark side, to reflect on the upcoming shift.

First, I guess I have to stop calling it “the dark side,” or making comments like, “Administrators are people too” (although that one got a good laugh at the faculty luncheon). The jokes reveal an us/them bias that I think is commonly held by classroom teachers, at least in the public sector.

We do the important work of the school, teachers tend to believe, while administrators push papers, waste time with unnecessary meetings, and are driven not by seeing the spark of learning in a child’s eyes but by the latest report on test scores or whatever policy du jour has been handed down from above.

Administrators, I imagine, have their own secret opinions about teachers: they can’t see the big picture, there’s always a whiner in the group, if they only knew what I have to go through with parents to make their lives easier… each side nursing its unspoken laundry list of grievances, while somehow the schools themselves—bustling, dysfunctional families-- keep running, day after day.

At my new gig, I’ll have the unique chance to wear both hats. As an 8th grade English teacher, I’ll still be with kids in the classroom every day, continuing to think about and refine my practice just as I do now—also, I promise, writing about it here, just as long as Teacher will have me.

And, as a real live walkie-talkie wielding administrator, I’ll have unlimited access to colleagues’ classrooms and also to top secret leadership meetings, a perspective that will no doubt broaden this blog’s scope in a way that I hope will interest teachers who wonder, while waving at one while running to the john at 10:23, what that administrator actually does when not standing in the hallway looking officious for a few minutes during passing time.

All this and more to come, but for now as the school year winds down for most of us, I just want to thank you for visiting, and wish Eduholics everywhere a restful summer. Try to balance professional development with pool time (and when that fails, may the pd be good). For my part, I’ll be busy meeting folks and learning the ropes at my new school. Among other projects, I'll be visiting local academic summer programs with the goal of starting one at Congressional a year from now, and looking into developing a student teacher program with a local university. Lucky there’s a pool on campus…

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I’ve told my colleagues and my kids, and now I’m telling you. I’ve accepted a position for next year as Dean of Students and teaching 8th grade English at The Congressional Schools of Virginia, an independent preschool-8 school in nearby Falls Church.

Like Voltaire’s Candide (blogged about by some of my tenth graders this year), I am leaving a fabled land of riches. Diamonds aren’t strewn on the ground like pebbles here at TJ, but you can’t spit without hitting a remarkable student or teacher.

I’m blown away daily by the eagerness and ability of these kids, and by the willingness of my colleagues to engage in dialogue with the sincere goal of making this the best of all possible educational worlds. I wish that, like Candide, I could leave with a string of large red pack sheep stuffed with priceless yellow mud and other rarities of High Tech High.

My destination, fortunately, has its own riches, tucked away on a lush forty-acre campus complete with horses, a swimming pool and a ropes course. Just like at TJ, there’s a dynamic leader, a diverse student body, and a committed faculty. What draws me is the chance to take on a new role in my career. After fifteen years in the classroom I want to help run a school. A nice raise and an entrepreneurial environment that doesn't exist in public schools sweeten the pot.

Being at TJ has upped my game. Which is a good thing, because in addition to the challenges in moving from public to private, secondary to primary, and teacher to administrator, my new job will include starting an academic summer school and developing a program for student teachers in collaboration with a local university.

In my spare time, there is a 1 in 16 chance that I will train for the New York Marathon (thus 15 in 16 chances that I’ll collapse on the back deck with a beer). If my twin brother and I don’t both get in via the online lottery, we’ll have to find some other way to observe our upcoming 40th birthday.

The Eduholic in me has been staying up nights composing an ode for the end of school luncheon. I’ll cherish memories like making a canoe with a Waterfall and eating lunch every day with my own 10th grade English teacher, Mary O’Brien, still going strong after 30+ years.

Meanwhile in the dad department, it’s pool time. I took my rambunctious three-year old to Target yesterday for a Spiderman swim singlet with so much flotation it makes him look more like the Hulk. We can now exhale when he runs around near the deep end filling his water rocket. And I feel warmed by the circle of life to see my seven-year old as a Bluefish, learning his strokes on the same swim team that was the center of my own young summers when I was a kid.

After all their adventures, Candide and his pals ended up exercising their talents at humble tasks from cooking to carpentry. “All events are linked together…” observes Pangloss, the hero’s irrepressible sidekick. “That is well put,” Candide observes, “but we must cultivate our garden.” And so I putter on, warm in the sun, to the next loamy patch.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)