Road Diaries: Teacher of the Year

A crowd of children is gathered inside the Magic Kingdom hoping to catch a glimpse of the star and get his autograph. I notice a dwarf pass the crowd and go unnoticed by most of the children. One little girl asks her mother to stop the character.

"You don't want to lose your place in line waiting for Mickey to get an autograph from one of the dwarfs," the mother instructed her daughter.

The little girl wearing a Mickey shirt quietly watched the dwarf walk away.

It never occurred to me that a social pecking order exists among Disney characters. Some characters are treated with a sense of reverence while others are just another foam face in the crowd.

A park employee is sweeping litter around the edge of the crowd.

"Where are the other dwarfs?" I ask.

"I think Dopey is the only dwarf we have," he answered.

"Where are the other six?"

"I guess they're in their cottage in the woods," he replied sarcastically.

I wonder why Disney picked Dopey from among the gang of seven to represent the dwarfs. Sneezy, Sleepy, Doc, Happy, Bashful and Grumpy formed a slightly dysfunctional brotherhood of dwarfs, but they managed to live and work in harmony. And why break up a union of workers that sings while swinging pick axes in a mine?

I am in Orlando attending the Kappa Delta Pi 47th biennial convocation. Kappa Delta Pi has a long history of promoting quality teaching and the convocation is bursting with energy. It's nice to see so many educators participating in over 170 workshops designed to enrich the professional development of graduate students, teachers and administrators. I meet two teachers from the Southeast and join a conversation about school cliques.

One is a middle school teacher and the other a high school teacher. Both have strong opinions about school cliques.

The high school teacher tries to connect the dots from a lunch table to Columbine.

"So-called popular cliques isolate certain students, leaving them feeling alone and inferior. So these kids form their own cliques-like the outcasts at Columbine High School."

The middle school teacher talks about the dynamics of friendship and how students treat each other before and after joining a clique. She describes incidents in which students who were friends since Kindergarten parted ways when one joined a clique. The child left outside the clique did not look, act, or dress like the members of the clique, and was left abandoned by a former childhood friend.

"It's really sad," she said. "I have seen too many children treat former friends differently after joining a clique."

"And it gets a lot worse in high school," added the secondary school teacher. "Some kids begin to feel more powerful as a group and start to dominate the school culture."

Cliques are social phenomena that usually begin as early as elementary school and take root in middle school. Cliques usually attract members with similar interests such as jocks, preppies, Goths, skate boarders, musicians, computer geeks, and people with purple hair. Most cliques are harmless and a temporary means for a student to feel secure before forming a more complete self-identity, but some cliques do attract dangerous minds.

And there is always the child left out.

The elementary school teacher is passionate about the need to "emotionally educate" children to address the problems associated with cliques and social isolation.

"In my school district," she said, "we incorporate programs that promote close and meaningful relationships with peers. We make sure that no child is left out. And guess what happened?"

"Test score improved?" I answered.

"Yes! Tests scores improved."

"What kind of programs did you implement?" I asked.

The veteran teacher talked about how teachers and support staff try to identify children—many as young as five or six years old—who appear to be socially isolated from their peers. She talked about reaching out to these lonely children and teaching them socialization skills. Not all parents or school officials initially supported the 'touchy feely' type school model until the test results proved the nexus between social and emotional health and academic success.

"A child's emotional health is intrinsically linked to academic and life success—that's common sense. But some school officials and parents did not see value in teachers spending time discussing virtue and ethics," she added. "These people were concerned that children were missing math and science time."

Her school's ability to both address the social and emotional needs of children and raise test scores impressed me.

"So your school makes an extra effort to make sure no child is isolated from his or her peers?" I asked.

"Absolutely. Children who are isolated when young tend to be isolated throughout their school years. They are the children who are stigmatized and the stigma stays with them.

I wonder why Disney decided to isolate the childish and naïve dwarf from his peers. Walt Disney was a genius and visionary but he blew it on this one. Dopey appeared lost and he reminded me of the child we all knew in grade school who had few friends. The one labeled "funny looking" or "stupid" or "weird" and inevitably kept that moniker until high school graduation.

I decided to follow the dwarf.

Dopey navigated the theme park crowds, finding openings between clusters of people with the agility of an NFL running back. I needed to quickly step from the pavement to a higher sidewalk to keep better track of the nimble dwarf. Fortunately for me, the character's large head made him easily visible and his lack of peripheral vision kept him on a linear path. A fork in the road and a large gathering of people created a pedestrian traffic jam. The crowd was cheering and fathers held up their young children. Cameras flashed from every direction.

Dopey paused for a moment and stood near the rear of the crowd. Few people noticed the dwarf because the cast of characters assembled near Cinderella's castle mesmerized them. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto and Chip 'n Dale stood hand-to-hand posing for photographs. It was the perfect storm of popular Disney mascots.

I wondered if Dopey would join the ensemble.

Childhood and adolescence present many physical and psychological challenges; however, it is also a time in which individuals seek strength and support from peers. Cliques develop and children sort themselves into groups that share similar interests, cultures, or provide a sense of protection or belonging. A child who does not find a peer group is left feeling isolated and abandoned and the long-term psychosocial outcomes can be devastating. A child with few friends or social support networks is much more likely to suffer from depression or other mood disorders. The developmental importance of belonging to a peer group during school years is critical to the maturation process, and no doubt the reason it has been a frequent theme of novels and movies.

Instinct surely plays a role in the human desire to form groups but nurture has an equally important part. Parents are the first and most significant arbitrators of childhood friendships, and we all remember which friends were labeled good or bad for our social circle. Or the characters worth posing with.

Dopey did not make a move to join the popular mascots. I do not know if he was late arriving or not invited. I do know that another little girl pointed at the dwarf and tried to get her father to bring her to him. The father whispered something in the girl's ear and then quickly lifted her upon his shoulders. She now had a better view of Mickey and friends.

Social isolation may benefit a few people with monastic tendencies, but children and adolescents who do not experience the protective benefits of close relationships with classmates risk increased vulnerability to negative social pressures. The price to gain admission to the clique is often costly. A girl may become promiscuous or a boy may feel the need to commit acts of bravado or deviant behavior to earn admittance.

The dwarf did not stay long. He was accosted by a group of teenagers who found an opportunity to abuse an outcast. They began to tap on his head with their knuckles and make obscene gestures. One boy kept asking knock, knock, who's in there? Dopey placed his hands over his heart and a security guard quickly appeared. The hall monitor had arrived and the boys dispersed.

Dopey walked away and eventually disappeared behind a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

I hope the dwarf had found his cottage in the woods.

Posted by Anthony Mullen at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I am sitting on a park bench listening to a psychotic try to make sense of his world.

"Can you believe that lady cop?" he asked in a defiant voice. "People don't need shit to own a cat."

I notice a female police officer standing nearby. She appears to be walking away from us and toward a playground. The disheveled and angry man is wearing a worn blue parka and lime green sneakers. He reaches into a salvaged baby carriage and grabs a McDonald's cheeseburger. A small white dog appears from beneath the bench and sits at the man's feet. He tosses the burger to the begging dog.

"Cats don't do nothing for nobody 'cept themselves," he complains.

I have no idea what he is talking about but nevertheless nod my head in agreement. I watch the dog hold the cheeseburger between his front paws and remove the meat patty.

"That cop wanted to give me a ticket for not having my dog on a leash."

I try to redirect the conversation. "What's the dog's name?"

"Name? He got no name. He doesn't need to know my name to know who I am and I don't need to know his name to know who he is."

Fair enough. I wonder, for a moment, why I bothered to name my dog.

"You see that lady cop over there? She's gonna take away my dog if I don't put him on a leash. She says all dogs got to be leashed."

"You'll probably never see her again," I said.

"Nobody wants to put a leash on a cat because cats know how to play the game," he replied.

I was hoping to spend a quiet afternoon in the park before heading back to the airport and not be drawn into a cat versus dog conversation. But the word leash hit a sore spot.

Earlier in the day I had met a special education teacher who was trying to make sense of her world. She was very upset about the impending closing of her alternative high school. The principal in charge of the main high school-as well as the off-campus alternative high school- informed the teacher that her population of students "cost the district too much money, bring down test scores, and should be kept on leashes."

I was upset but not shocked by the principal's remarks. I teach at an alternative high school and derogatory comments about my students flow freely among some educators. Alternative high schools have a long history of being utilized as "dumping grounds" for students classified with emotional disabilities, regardless of their diagnosis. That is why despite considerable etiologic pathologies, a child suffering from social anxiety disorder will share the same classroom with a child suffering from oppositional-defiant disorder. The catch all design of most alternative high schools is a product of economics and ignorance. Students afflicted with severe emotional disabilities cost considerably more to educate on a per pupil basis and too many people believe emotional disability is a singular noun.

The teacher wanted to know why her students are treated so poorly. It's a very good question, and one that needs answering. I have visited alternative high schools housed in school and church basements, trailers, and buildings that should be condemned. No other population of students is treated with such disdain.

One explanation is the fact that not all disabilities are alike or treated with equal resolve by those entrusted with the welfare and education of all students. Emotional disabilities fall on the far end of the disability spectrum, a place where people's sympathies seldom visit. The "deaf, dumb, and blind" once shared a spot at this end of the spectrum until advocacy groups, journalists, and community outrage put an end to the systemic neglect of these children. The value of hearing impaired, vision impaired, and cognitively impaired students triumphed and a modern sense of civility brought hope and dignity to these beautiful children. Sadly, that same sense of modern civility is lacking with respect to emotionally impaired students.

The man on the bench interrupted my thoughts.

"You think a dog should be kept on a leash?" he asked.

"I think-"

"Don't forget cats know how to play the game," he reminded me. "They sure know how to play the game."

Cats are probably more cunning than dogs but seeing one on a leash seems anomalous to the natural order of things. I have seen yuppies leash rabbits, ferrets, iguanas, Vietnamese Pot Belly pigs and sometimes their own children while strolling about Central Park, but I can't recall seeing a cat on a leash.

"I guess fair is fair," I said. "If dogs must be leashed, then cats must be leashed."

"What do you think about tying a leash to some school children?" I asked. "The kind of students who misbehave in class?"

The homeless man stared at me, appearing bewildered and slightly perturbed by my question.

"Look and see what I have in this bag," he replied.

He unraveled a rolled up Wal-Mart bag and started to remove bottles of pills. "Doctors say I have psychosis, hypo-sis, and some other kind of posis. So he gives me these pills. But as crazy as I may be, I would never think about putting no leash on a child. No how, no way."

"No how, no way?"

"No how, no way," he answered.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is calling access to quality education "the civil rights issue of our generation." This right is being denied to tens of thousands of children suffering from depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychosis and other crippling emotional disabilities. One million high school students will become dropouts this year, and the majority of these teenagers are afflicted with emotional disabilities. 70% of students classified SED or BED will dropout of school and 75% will end up in jail within five years of leaving school. Students identified with severe emotional disabilities graduate at a lower rate than any other group of students receiving special services.

The term Severely Emotionally Disturbed (SED) is used to identify a child whose mental health condition causes him or her to have extreme difficulties at home, at school and with classmates. It is often called "The Invisible Handicap" because the disability cannot be easily seen. Children with mood disorders are often very intelligent and have the cognitive skills to complete challenging school work and be successful, that is why SED students frustrate and anger teachers not trained to deal with this population of students; hence the principal's suggestion to keep them leashed.

Children do not make a conscious decision to live with a debilitating mental illness and they should not be treated as damaged goods. Alternative high schools are often the last stop for teenagers considering dropping out of school. These schools provide the small classroom settings and mental health support that fosters the growth of interpersonal relationships with teachers and peers - a prerequisite to the success of BED students.

My park bench companion decides its time to leave. He returns the Wal-Mart bag to the baby carriage and walks in the opposite direction of the police officer. The unleashed dog takes the lead.

Psychosis is a strange illness. Some victims are totally removed from reality while others are only partially separated from it. Fortunately for the man with the dog, he seems only partially removed from reality.

As for the principal who wants to leash SED children? You be the judge.

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The large piranha swam back and forth until the tapping of my right index finger caught his attention. The fish turned ninety degrees and looked directly at my hand. The fish was the size of a small football and obviously well-fed, but it displayed a set of jagged teeth eager to keep busy.

"He's been with us since 1989," the hotel clerk remarked. "I can't begin to tell you how many people never get to see a real piranha until they visit South Dakota."

I think she noticed me tapping on the glass. I feel like an idiot.

"It's the first piranha I've ever seen." I replied.

A group of small orange and gold fish is huddled near the bottom of the tank, trying to stay motionless.

"Why are these fish still alive?" I ask.

The clerk shrugs her shoulders. "That piranha picks his victims; I don't know why some fish are eaten and others spared. I suppose the fish on the bottom are the lucky ones."

I suppose so, although I am not sure if lucky is the right word. The cluster of small fish appears anything but fortunate and is defenseless against the capricious carnivore. One of the fish leaves the huddle and, quite inexplicably, swims toward the piranha. The small fish stops in front of the piranha's mouth and is quickly consumed.

"Did you just arrive in Pierre?" she asked.

I walk away from the large fish tank and talk about my trek to Pierre. The capital of South Dakota is not a major airline destination, so I needed to make connecting flights in Minneapolis, Lincoln, and Watertown. Horace Greely never envisioned the challenge of trying to coordinate so many flights when he advised young men to Go West.

The receptionist listened politely and then inquired if I was staying at the hotel to attend the teachers' conference or the meeting of high school wrestling coaches.

"I'm with the teacher group," I answered.

I was scheduled to address the South Dakota Governor's Teacher Leadership Conference the following morning. The hotel was also hosting a meeting of high school wrestling coaches. Wrestling is a popular sport in South Dakota, a piece of information that makes sense considering the state's history. Back in the 1760s tribes that would later form the Sioux Nation wrestled the land from the indigenous Arikara; in the 1860s troops of volunteer cavalry and a number of militia units wrestled the land from the Sioux. Hardy ranchers and farmers ultimately wrestled the land away from French and Canadian fur trappers, although the trappers did not put up much of a fight because they no longer had any Indian trading partners.

A young teacher walks by and stops abruptly. "I recognized your face from a picture of you in the conference room," she said in a cheerful voice. "I'm glad that you will be speaking about troubled teenagers; we have our fair share of problems right here in Pierre."

Pierre does not appear to be a city affected by anything other than cold winters and hot summers. The high school graduation rate is among the highest in the nation, people still keep their doors unlocked at night, and the local dairy Queen is free of graffiti. The prairie has an eerie silence but that's better than the staccato of drive-by shootings or the incessant sound of police sirens.

"What kind of problems?" I ask.

The teacher looks around to make sure others are not listening. "About ten years ago we were known as the "Suicide City."

"Suicide City?"

The teacher informed me that in the late 1990s Pierre was wrenched by a series of suicides, most of them teenagers. Eleven people from 13 to 23 years old took their own lives during a three year period. A rate about 13 times the national rate of teenage suicide.

"Why did so many young people commit suicide?" I asked.

"Nobody had a good explanation for the suicides," the teacher remarked. "It's as though something insidious crept into the town and took away the lives of these young people."

Suicide has always defied a good explanation because it's hard to rationalize a seemingly irrational act, and the teacher made an acute observation about "something insidious" that moved stealthily through the town. A phenomenon known as "cluster suicides" appears to target teenagers. This is when the disease acts more like a contagion and creates "hot spots" in certain areas. Pierre was one such hot spot in 1998.

I begin to recall some of the teenage suicide notes I read while working for the NYPD. Teenagers commit suicide for many of the same reasons adults kill themselves, but divorce of parents, inability to find success at school, feelings of worthlessness, rejection by friends or classmates, death of someone close to the teenager, or the suicide of a friend are reasons frequently scribbled on paper or napkins.

But it's very rare that a person, young or old, dies by suicide because of one cause. The act is triggered by several negative life experiences and mental health professionals agree that over 90 percent of people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death. And the most common mental illness is depression.

Teenage suicide is not a topic openly discussed in many schools. It should be.

Fourteen teenagers commit suicide every day and twenty-five others give it a try. We need to do a better job identifying high risk students and providing more mental health services in our schools. Parents, teachers, family and friends must pay close attention to some of the most common teen suicide warning signs:

• Teen depression.
• Obsession with death
• Poems, essays and drawings that refer to death
• Dramatic change in personality or appearance
• Irrational, bizarre behavior
• Overwhelming sense of guilt, shame or reflection
• Changed eating or sleeping patterns
• Severe drop in school performance

If a piranha and cluster suicides can be found on the prairie, none are truly safe.

Update, October 21, 2009
CNN has an interesting piece on teen suicide in the Latino community. Here it is: "Trapped between worlds, some Latina teens consider suicide"

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I am sitting in the back of a taxi heading to the French Quarter. The drive to my hotel is bumpy.

The driver glanced at me from the rearview mirror. "You always know when you're getting near the French Quarter because the roads are bad," he remarked. "Roads were bad before Katrina, now they're a lot worse."

The roads leading to the heart and soul of New Orleans are indeed rough, but so are some of the neighborhoods I see outside the cab windows. I pass rows of decrepit houses and stores, many abandoned and shuttered with closet doors. I think about frightened people passing hammers and nails to each other, desperately trying to save their homes, businesses, and sanity. I think about all the closets without doors.

"I don't stop at some of the red lights; you good with that?" the driver asked.

I notice groups of young men sitting idly on the steps of several abandoned houses and recall reading a newspaper article about New Orleans having the highest per capita murder rate in the nation. Three pit bulls swagger next to the taxi, the large black and white male is missing an ear.

"I'm fine with that," I replied.

The French Quarter still has a pulse and tourists are darting in and out of bars and cafes. The oldest section of New Orleans is a beautiful neighborhood crowded with buildings painted in pastel hues fashionable since the early 19th century. Elaborately designed ironwork balconies adorned with hanging plants abound. Katrina did not submerge this iconic legacy of French and Spanish settlers. A young lady hands me a flyer as I exit the taxi.

I toss the flyer back inside the cab.

The hotel is narrow and tucked between a bakery and a Creole restaurant; two chairs and a desk make up a lobby smaller than most walk-in closets. The night manager is busy negotiating the price of a room with an elderly couple from Michigan. I notice a group of people standing in front of the hotel listening to a tour guide. The guide is pointing his right hand at the second floor.

I ask the concierge what the group is looking at.

"Don't pay them any mind," he replied. "They're part of the ghost tours that come 'round here."

Ghost tours?

"Why do the tours stop here?"

The concierge provides a brief but disturbing history of the hotel. I find out the building was not always a refuge for weary travelers. Built in 1832, the brown brick building was originally designed to store ice. Ships arriving from Boston delivered ice cut from frozen New England lakes to a hot and humid city. Video may have killed the radio store but refrigeration certainly dealt a death blow to the ice house business.

The concierge continued the mini history lesson. "Ice houses were sometimes used to preserve dead bodies, and the tour guides tell people about the bodies once stored in this building. Some of the guides have wild imaginations and tell people the hotel has ghosts. But it's all a lot of nonsense."

I walk outside and stand next to one of the tour groups. A college student wearing a black cape and top hat is lecturing to his assembly of ghost seekers.

"Malaria was once very common in this city," he states in a loud voice, "and victims were taken to this hotel because it was filled with ice."

The guide forgot to mention the building was an ice house before it was a hotel and nobody questioned why a hotel in New Orleans would be filled with ice.

The guide continued his commentary. "This is a very hot city and dead bodies ripen quickly. The second floor of this hotel is where the bodies were stored, packed in straw and ice."

I glance at my room key and see the number 201.

The guide is speaking to a captivated audience. "A lot of people who stay in this hotel claim to see ghosts of children - sometimes the spirits are seen standing right over a guest's bed."

The group is provided a few quiet moments to take pictures of the hotel before the guide continues his supernatural tale. "Last month a hotel guest ran screaming from this building because the ghosts of two children knocked on her door late at night and asked if she could help find their parents."

Do ghosts ever come out during the day? Why can't parents keep better watch over their children?

I leave the group and carry my bag to my room.

My hotel room opens to a narrow hallway leading to a small bedroom. The walls are made of the same brown brick covering the outside of the building. I feel, smell, and taste moisture in the air. And the room is very dark. I swipe my fingers against moist walls blindly searching for a light switch. I flip a stubborn switch and illuminate a bedroom loosely decorated with a plain bed, small antique desk, and a large picture of a cherub hanging on the wall. Cherubs are creepy for many reasons, least of all their chubby faces and wings. The room has a gloomy atmosphere and no HBO. I hear clearly horse hooves and carriage sounds outside my window. A Hanson Carriage stops directly below my room. I watch the driver point to my room and a lady passenger places her hand to her mouth. I guess college students are not the only tour guides with vivid imaginations.

I slept lightly during the night and was not interrupted by any spectral intruders. The bedroom light flickered occasionally and I covered the picture of the Cherub with a bath towel.

The next morning I sat in a French café and enjoyed a croissant. The local news headline concerned a drive-by shooting that claimed the life of a 16-year-old teenager in the city's Ninth Ward.

I have seen the ghosts of New Orleans but they do not go bump in the night or seek help looking for long dead parents. The past cannot bring forth ethereal spirits to frighten our lives. Only the present can summon the images of the dead and the dying. The ghosts of New Orleans are real and can be found sitting idly on the steps of abandoned houses. Sadly, like all ghosts, they don't know they are among the dead.

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Growing up in New York City presented many challenges but one of them was not dealing with snakes. I fear snakes. The very word snake elicits a creepy, tingling sensation around my ankles. But what benign synonym do I substitute for snake?

"Hey, look at that serpent crawling toward our tent."

No, I am not writing a blog about snakes or ophiophobia. The focus of my blog is about the poor condition of some of our nation's schools. Snakes just happened to literally slither into the story.

I am standing outside a two-story wood frame building that leans to the right. The roof is missing many shingles and oddly enough resembles a game of Tetra. Wood rot is eating away at the school's foundation. It is the type of building one is tempted to kick just to watch it collapse. The image of this decrepit building collapsing like a deck of cards would be comical if school children and teachers did not occupy it.

The inside of the school is not much better than the outside. The walls are coated with several layers of olive green paint, a shade once popular in institutional settings. Collections of aging portraits of principals past decorate the wall outside the main office. The principal in the middle of the row bears a stark resemblance to Andrew Jackson.

A first grade teacher who takes me to her classroom meets me in the hallway.

"It's too bad the children are gone for the day, she said. "You would have enjoyed meeting some of them."

Yes, I would have enjoyed meeting with some school children. I spend most of my time meeting with adults. Her classroom is filled with old wood desks and a blackboard. I glanced around the room looking for an abacus.

"How many children are in your class?" I ask.

"Thirty, but two are home schooled and don't show up anymore."

My eyes are quickly drawn to the floor. It appears to be rotting away in some spots. "The floor looks old."

"The whole school is old and the floor came with it," she replied. "But we do our best and the children get a kick out of guessing which crack the snakes will come through."

Snakes?

"You have snakes in your classroom?" I asked.

The teacher takes my question in stride while moving some papers off the top of her desk. "Yes, but the children know what the poisonous type look like. The snakes that peek through some of the cracks are not dangerous. They live under the school and eat mice."

I figured this was a good as time as any to enter the theater of the absurd. "How do your children know which snakes are dangerous?"

"The colors and stripes," explained Mrs. G. "The black ones with a red stripe are harmless but the red ones with a black stripe are poisonous."

I was about to ask if any of her students are colorblind but was interrupted by an art project placed before me.

"One of my students made this," she exclaimed. "He has a learning disability involving reading and writing but paints beautifully."

The painting was indeed beautiful, a watercolor showing a family playing with a Frisbee in an open field of grass. The young artist captured intricate facial features. Mrs. G showed me some other art projects and a science experiment involving Lima beans. The beans were placed in a variety of growing mediums, including soil, sand, and gravel. Colorful wall posters recorded the germination of the beans and the growth rate of the embryonic plants. The teacher did a wonderful job trying to stimulate learning despite the dilapidated classroom and lack of resources.

"Are there any plans to build a new school?" I asked.

"No. People around here are suffering and can't afford to fund a new school building."

A few days earlier I had visited an entirely different type of school. The building was new and designed to provide an abundance of natural light throughout the school; a paradise for those suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder or paying the monthly electric bill. The floors were covered with terracotta tiles and the walls painted a blend of reds and yellows that mimic a summer dawn. Classrooms contained the 21st century learning tools needed to teach 21st century learning skills. A SmartBoard, bank of computers, and a science workstation for group activities filled each room.

"We're also a very green school," the principal said proudly. "We were thinking green before thinking green was in vogue."

The school was indeed very friendly to the environment. Even the trash cans are labeled MADE WITH 100% RECYCLED PLASTIC. Students can been seen actively participating in the "plastic cycle" by depositing placing plastic water bottles into plastic garbage cans, knowing that some of the bottles will return as plastic garbage cans.

The contrast between the two schools says a lot about the present state of American schools. Children in one district are being taught in a building not fit for human habitation while other children are learning in contemporary state-of-the-art "green friendly" school. One school has a lab that can extract DNA; the other school has termites and crawling interlopers. I am saddened by the condition of too many schools, particularly in rural and inner city locations. All children deserve a level playing field to be able to "reach to the top."

Now a pop quiz: is it the red snakes with black stripes or black snakes with red stripes that are poisonous?

Only the children know for sure.

Posted by Anthony Mullen at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I am sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial scraping an Italian ice with a wooden spoon. I find myself here almost every time I visit our nation's capital. The city has many beautiful monuments and each is unique in purpose and meaning to visitors. The war memorials command reverence and can make a grown man cry, visitors gasp while looking up at the Washington Monument, and although only a few people can find the Jefferson Memorial on the first try, there is no more beautiful place to be during the cherry blossom season. But the memorial to the 16th president of the United States lures my heart and soul. The twenty-eight Georgia marble pieces that form the statue of Abraham Lincoln provides me with a sense of serenity and security.

A teenage boy interrupts my quietude as he tries to navigate a skateboard down the front steps of the entrance. He is quickly stopped by a park ranger.

"Unbelievable," an elderly man remarks to me. "Did you see that?

"Yes, I-"

"The trouble with these damn teenagers is that they have no respect for anything. That boy could use a good kick in the ass."

The gentleman is right about not using the memorial to learn how to kick flip down stairs on a skateboard but wrong about damning all teenagers. I came to the monument tonight because I had just finished speaking with a group of Fulbright scholars and was thinking pensively about teenagers. The Fulbright scholars I had met were a wonderful mix of teachers, each trading countries and classrooms and serving as goodwill ambassadors for education. I was impressed with the breadth of knowledge these teachers displayed and their easygoing personalities.

I began the evening sharing a table with six other educators, including a lovely woman who was the India Teacher of the Year. She was impressed with my moniker despite being named the top teacher in a country with 1 billion people; only a fellow teacher could display such humility. I reminded her that she had won the gold medal of teaching accolades. And then I enjoyed a conversation with a teacher from Israel. I learned that she is an information and communications technology (ICT) teacher trainer/educator with over 28 years of experience in the field of education. In addition to working with teachers in the ICT field, she volunteers her free time trying to bring together Israeli and Arab teenagers. She provides a forum for these teenagers to discuss the volatile environment in which they live their daily lives. A sort of mini United Nations for young people raised to distrust each other. I wondered what made her initiate such a valuable round-table.

"My son, Gavriel, was murdered several years ago by Arab terrorists," she said.

Gavriel was murdered at the age of 17 and a half by terrorists while on kitchen duty at a Yeshiva where he studied. He was part of a group of four teenagers volunteering their time to cook dinner for a larger group of young children sitting in the school's cafeteria. Two Arab terrorists posing as Israeli police officers entered the kitchen and shot and killed the teenagers. Gavriel was shot eight times. Yet something truly remarkable happened during this horrific slaughter: the teenagers quickly locked the door leading from the kitchen to the cafeteria as soon as they saw the gunmen. These brave young men instinctively sensed that the cafeteria was the real target of the terrorists and acted to prevent a massacre of children. They knew that their lives would soon end but acted to save the lives of many.

I did not respond to the man who wanted to kick the skateboarder in the ass because my mind was someplace else. It was in the kitchen where Gavriel sacrificed his life; a place where a few teenagers respected the value of life and living. And then I turned around to look at Lincoln's magnificent statue and the great man's eyes looked upon me. And I could hear his voce.

This is not a place about me. This is a cathedral for all the martyrs who have suffered and sacrificed their lives for others.

He was right. The Lincoln Memorial is a national cathedral for martyrs.

Lincoln and Gavriel were struck down by an assassin's bullets and both left our earthly world too soon. On April 15, 1865, at 7:22 am, a doctor put his hand across the president's chest and whispered, "He is gone." A minister asked God to accept his humble servant Abraham Lincoln into His glorious kingdom. Everyone in the room knelt beside the bedside and remained quiet until Secretary of War Edwin Stanton proclaimed, "Now he belongs to the ages."

So, too, do you Gavriel.

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While purported to be a blessing the ancient Chinese proverb "May you live in interesting times" may be a curse. Teachers certainly live in interesting times but we are plague with much turmoil in our professional lives.
The seemingly endless discussion about designing national standards is one of the many inflictions cast upon teachers. I have been traveling extensively throughout the United States listening to academics, government officials, and policy makers talk about the need to implement a set of academic standards that will best serve the needs of over 60 million students. The goal is to homogenize 50 state standards and, ostensibly, provide a child in Arkansas the same level of education provided a child in Massachusetts.
Few people would argue that receiving a quality education is a birthright that should not be affected by birthplace. And I suspect that even fewer people would argue that the “race to the top” is a national endeavor considering the fact that we live in a global economy. But the very important discussions taking place concerning national standards is being held on a wobbly table. A table made unsteady because it is missing the teacher leg.
Teachers are being left out of the process of designing national standards and this is a recipe for disaster. Committees comprised of government officials, academics, and policy makers form an incomplete framework without the support of teachers. Teachers, after all, will be expected to implement the standards once adopted. The malformed thought that teachers should not play an integral role in helping develop national standards is just that: a malformed thought.
I can feel a palpable anger when standing next to teachers who feel ignored and marginalized by the committees designing national standards.
It’s time to let teachers help right a wobbly table.

Posted by Anthony Mullen at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Some people want bad things to happen. It’s a quirk peculiar to smart and not so bright people alike and probably has some unclear purpose in the human genome. On the evening of December 31st, 1999, I was assigned to help police the crowds gathering at Times Square to welcome the New Year. A few hours separated the relative calm I was experiencing and the Y2K nightmare certain pundits claimed would occur when the clock struck midnight.

A middle age man wearing a shirt that read HUMPTY DUMPTY WAS PUSHED asked me if the NYPD was prepared for the chaos that would ensue when all computers shut down.

“Let’s hope for the best,” I replied.

He told me that he was a professor of computer sciences and mathematics at a local university. “This is no joke, captain,” he said. “Planes could fall from the sky.”

I recalled reading doomsday scenarios about planes falling from the sky, trains crashing, and bank accounts disappearing because computers could not abbreviate a four-digit year to two digits. The Year 2000 problem would usher in Armageddon and I was standing among 1 million people. I told the professor that I knew very little about computers but would keep my eyes focused on the sky.

A young college student defended the professor. “He’s the chair of the computer science department and you should listen to what he has to say,” she said. “My husband has been studying this problem for a really long time.”

I did not want to argue with the professor or his child bride. I believe he needed a plane to fall from the sky to validate some professional journal articles he had probably written.

And now I sit looking outside my window watching birds eat sunflower seeds. The president spoke to our nation’s children and life continues to ebb and flow more with the weather than the ramblings of political commentators. I suspect that few, if any, children have been converted to “radical socialism” and nothing bad has happened after the president advised students to stay in school and work hard.

Humpty Dumpty may have been pushed, but he was too thin skinned and clumsy to be sitting on top of a wall looking upon others.

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I cannot seem to leave the Bronx behind me.

My New York accent and a deviated septum are beginning to make me feel like a pilgrim in my native land. It seems that almost everywhere I speak children ask, “Where are you from?” Southerners are particularly sensitive to the tone and cadence of my voice. A young boy in Alabama listened to me order a burger and fries in a fast food restaurant and then remarked, “Y’all talk funny.”

Y’all?

I realize the National Teacher of the Year should be able to recite Dixie and The Battle Hymn of the Republic with equal gusto, but it’s awkward to say y’all with a New York City accent.

I am dwelling upon my accent because I am preparing to dine with a lovely Southern family. I have been invited by the Williams family to enjoy a home cooked meal and a heaping of Southern hospitality at their Huntsville home. The Williams family is a member of the Du Midi club, a civic organization that hosts educators attending the U.S. Space & Rocket Center Space Camp. For the last 11 years, Du Midi members have taken teachers out of their dorm rooms at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to introduce them to delicious Southern food. The kindness of these good will ambassadors cannot be overstated because I have been eating cafeteria food for the past four days. Tonight I get to eat local cuisine and enjoy the company of native Alabamians and some fellow state teachers of the year, including Bob Williams from Alaska, Susan Elliott from Colorado, Derek Olson from Minnesota, Christine Gleason from Texas, Edney Freeman from the Virgin Islands, and Alice King from Wyoming.

The matriarch of the family, Ramsey Williams, speaks with a soft and soothing voice. She greets me at the door and makes me feel comfortable in her beautiful house. The Williams family has lived in Huntsville for countless generations and they are very proud of their small city. Ramsey and her guests treat me to an oral history of Huntsville, including sharing stories not likely to be included in the town’s official history. I learn that Huntsville was once the state capital, has more antebellum houses than Birmingham or Mobile, was a busy hub for cotton merchants before “that unpleasant business with the North,” and helped to build the Saturn rockets that sent men to the moon. I also learn that a charitable madam who once boasted she had the most beautiful prostitutes “north of New Orleans” is responsible for the state-of-the-art medical center located in the heart of the city. Nineteenth century etiquette prohibited the madam’s girls from mingling with polite society or working Sundays, but the wages of their sins provided the land and building that eventually became a premier adult and children hospital.

After finishing a delicious meal we relocate to a large and cozy living room. The Du Midi Club guests begin to exchange stories about their family genealogies; the newcomer in the Huntsville group is an elderly gentleman whose family arrived in Alabama over 200 years ago. His wife chided him for being a “Johnny-come-lately.”

What a stark contrast to my family’s tenure in America. Most New Yorkers are considered “old blood” if they are fortunate enough to be able to trace their family history back to Ellis Island.

“How long has your family lived in New York?” a retired Saturn rocket engineer asked.

“My mother came here in 1954,”I replied. (Insert the sound of crickets.)

And then the subject of teaching took center stage. My gracious dinner companions praised the teachers in the room and wanted to know all about my experiences traveling throughout the country. A retired army officer stood up and spoke about the time he played teacher for one day. He had been serving the first of two tours of duty in Vietnam, gathering intelligence information during the early days of the war. A South Vietnamese army official took him to a remote village filled with small bamboo houses but no school. He asked the escort permission to give the Vietnamese children some paper and pencils and books; small tokens to help educate smiling children who could not read or write. The South Vietnamese official thought it was a good idea for Americans to help educate poor rural children and he gathered them together in a one-room bamboo hut. The tall and rugged-looking ex-army officer described feeling so much joy being able to give children books and to play “teacher for one day.”

He then left the village to gather intelligence about local Vietcong activity in the region.
Later in the day, the South Vietnamese escort began shouting “Vietcong! Vietcong!” and the American officer took cover behind a large tree. But the escort was pointing back toward the direction of the village. Smoke could be seen rising above the tree canopy and the sounds of women wailing pierced the humid air. The Vietcong had thrown grenades into the makeshift schoolhouse, killing all the children. The killers did not want Vietnamese children to accept any gifts from American soldiers; including the gift of an education.

I then watched tears swell in the eyes of a masculine and compassionate man. He is still haunted by the ghosts of children he once tried to teach. And then my eyes began to swell.

I may talk funny, but we all share the same tears

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I last visited the White House in the summer of 1968. Richard Millhouse Nixon was president and I remember a lot of people with long hair and colorful clothes shouting in the direction of the president’s home. My father told me these people were called “hippies” and they were protesting the Vietnam War.

“Why here?” I asked my dad. He replied that hippies had a lot of time to travel and protest, and often go to places like Washington, D.C.

“Do they work?”

“No,” my father answered.

I thought being a hippy was a pretty good lifestyle, with lots of opportunity to travel and no need to work.

I was 9-years-old at the time and the White House appeared large and off-limits to ordinary people. My mom and dad took many pictures of my brother and me standing in front of the president’s beautiful house, separated by a tall wrought iron fence and a deep green lawn. I wondered if President Nixon was looking out his window at the hippies and me.

Forty-one years later I was finishing my last security search before entering the White House to meet President Obama. I passed through a metal detector and my wife and mother-in-law were asked to surrender their pocketbooks. A secret service agent escorted my family to the Roosevelt Room and we were instructed to wait there until taken to the Oval Office. The regal wood paneled room is filled with portraits of Theodore and Franklin, each president glancing at the other from opposite walls. I was admiring a painting of then Colonel Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill when a White House aide asked for a copy of my Rose Garden speech. I had only one copy tucked inside my suit jacket and was reluctant to part with it. The young aide politely assured me that he would make a duplicate and place the original in a nice binder. “You don’t want the wind blowing away your speech while standing at the podium, do you?”

“No,” I answered. The image of the speech flying away from the podium and me chasing scattered pages on the Rose Garden lawn only added to my anxiety. I thought about how popular "National Teacher of the Year Runs After Speech" would be on YouTube.

The secret service agent returned to inform me that in exactly 11 minutes I would be escorted through a locked door at the far end of the Roosevelt Room, cross a narrow hallway, and then enter another locked door leading to the Oval Office. He stood then with his back against the wall, watching my family and glancing at his watch.

“Seven minutes,” the agent called out.

“Three minutes.”

“One more minute, Mr. Mullen.”

This was the moment I had been dreading for the past few weeks. What if I meet the president and say something stupid? What if I walk to the podium in the Rose Garden and become paralyzed with stage fright? What if….

“The president will be delayed,” the agent said. “You will meet him in 12 minutes.”

Twelve minutes? Could the president’s schedule be so precisely calculated? I took a deep breath and leaned my right shoulder against the locked exit door. The extra time may relax my nerves. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. President. God afternoon, President Obama. Did I say God afternoon? I’m getting tongue twisted just thinking about meeting the president.

“Where’s the bathroom?” my father-in-law asked.

Bathroom? How do I know where the bathroom is? “Hold it in, Joe,” I said.

“But I need to take a leak.”

I told to my father-in-law the Roosevelt Room had no bathroom.

“What about the president’s office?”

“The president’s office? You want to take a leak in the Oval Office?” Not only am I getting tongue twisted thinking about how to greet the president but I also have to deal with an aging bladder.

I was just about to tell my father-in-law that he would probably not be permitted to use the president’s private bathroom when the door I was leaning against opened and a man shook my hand.

“Welcome, Tony!”

I turned around and was face-to-face with the president of the United States of America. What happened to the 12 minutes? Where was my Secret Service escort? I stood speechless staring at the president.

“Welcome, Tony,“ the president repeated. “How are you?”

“Fine, Mr. President…very well.” I replied.

I was astonished to be shaking hands with the president and somewhat confused. The last close encounter I had with the president was standing next to one of the many life-size cardboard images of the president that clutter the streets of the nation’s capital, and didn’t protocol dictate I be escorted to meet the president? I should have been taken to the president and instead he comes to me; the most powerful man in the world came to greet a teacher.

The president welcomed my family to his home and invited us to the Oval Office. The First Lady and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stood in front of the president’s desk; wide smiles brightened their faces. My mother-in-law and Mrs. Obama talked about children and grandchildren, the president and secretary of education talked about basketball with my teenage son, and my father-in-law looked for a bathroom.

The president emphasized the important role teachers played in his life and how these teachers instilled confidence in him at an early age. The president and his wife posed for many pictures with my family and made us feel very comfortable in an office filled with so much history. My family was then escorted to the Rose Garden and I was left in the Oval Office with President Obama and Secretary of Education. We stood in front of a beautiful set of French doors, three men wearing suits and gazing upon the crowd outside. The president turned to me and said, “You know, Tony, this will be my first speech in the Rose Garden.”

I nodded my head politely and did not know what to say. Was the president providing a quick fact or letting me know that his first Rose Garden speech was set aside for teachers? And then I looked at the president and saw a pair of warm and intelligent eyes. I also saw the face of my students, particularly a student named Tyler who had an African-American father and Caucasian mother. I decided to break the silence.

“If it’s any consolation, Mr. President, this is my first speech in the Rose Garden and I speak after you.”

The president smiled and placed his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s do it!” he said. The president of the United States placed his arm upon the shoulder of a teacher and walked with me to the Rose Garden.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

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