on various topics.
I have very few days left with my students. With Friday as graduation day, this is a 3-day school week. But I will be with them only on Tuesday, as Wednesday I fly to Florida to serve as a Reader (grader) for the AP exam for US Government and Politics. I will return to my students on Friday, June 10, then Mon-Wed of the following week before heading out to Netroots Nation the morning of June 16. Only 5 more days with my students. That makes me reflective about the school year now approaching its end.
Also making me reflective is learning on an email list that a friend's mother passed - he had gone home as she was dying, helped gather other family around her. She was lucky to pass in her own home, surrounded by those who love her. That makes me further reflective - on how isolated many are as they die, whether in military conflict, or tragedies such as that in Joplin. Those are bad enough. But then too many are ripped from family, from comfortable places - they die in hospitals, or in facilities to which they are moved because they can no longer care for themselves. As I age, now 65, I become more aware of such issues. I went through it with my father, who died in such a facility, and contrast that with his baby sister, who stayed vibrant and active and living in her own home until her recent death at 89.
Mixed in with this are my reflections on various political issues - education, medicare, infrastructure, to be sure, but also environmental, geopolitical.
And then I stop. The front door is open. I hear the birds in our bushes and trees.
We are spending the weekend preparing our house for my wife's youngest sister, who will spend the summer with us as she fulfills a prestigious internship in the field she has chosen to follow. She will come with her cat, who is sweet, but declawed - our five are not. We have had to thoroughly clean one room - and shortly I will head out to rent something to deep clean the carpet - buy a futon, put together a small chest of drawers and clean out half the closet. She will have that room for her and her cat.
We also have had to do serious cleaning of the rest of the house. Now that instruction for the year approaches its end, I have time - and energy - to go through the accumulated detritus I have never addressed - our trash collectors may need an extra truck for what we will put out. Some old and somewhat damaged furniture we put out has been picked up by those looking for a bargain. Some books and videos will make their way to the local library where others may purchase them and the funds go to support that PUBLIC institution.
In the process Leaves on the Current and I realize how bound by unnecessary possessions we have been. The process of cleaning and of sorting makes us both realize we can shed some of our acquisitions, even as we also rein in our acquisitiveness.
I have committed to return next year. I will have four classes for Advanced Placement - over 130 students. I plan to totally rethink how I do the course, but hopefully in a fashion that does not require me to resubmit my syllabus to the College Board for approval. This year's students were sufficiently different that I have to adjust to meet them as they arrive - with far less prior knowledge, with a much heavier dependency upon technology rather than print.
But I realize the increasing possibility that next year will be my last, at least in my current school, and in Maryland. The state is moving in the direction of longitudinal data about students. That implies strongly a move towards value-added assessment. Such a move will make it increasingly difficult to teach with integrity, even as I know that I will probably come out pretty well in any such assessment. If such an approach is in effect for the 2012-2013 school year, I do not expect to teach in Maryland. I will have to move to reinstate my certificates in Virginia and DC to give myself flexibility. A public charter would also be a possibility. And as of yesterday I realized something else - as strongly as I have been committed to public education, there is a part of me that would like to end my teaching where it began, in a Friends' school. I may well explore the possibilities around DC - the salary would be less important, because of pension from Maryland and Social Security.
In our discussions about our friend's mom, others on that list have shared about their experiences of dealing with aging and sick parents. There have been remarks about the difference that Medicare made in getting treatment. I know in my own case that health issues I have confronted in the past decade were far less financially difficult because I had good medical insurance. I have also been reminded of the inequity of access to care when I volunteer at free health and dental events, as I will again in Wise Virginia in less than two months. As I am now in Medicare, albeit so far only Part B, I have to explore whether to drop my employer-paid insurance for next school year and go fully on a Medicare plan - the difference in cost is not major, and the coverage may actually be better. I will need guidance, which reminds me how unnecessarily complicated and confusing is our health care system. But at least I have a choice, and I again remember how many do not. I could also be covered under my wife's insurance as a federal employee.
I have further flexibility in life because I have a defined benefit pension as a public employee. Fewer and fewer private sector employees have such financial stability. We see a downward spiral - as companies have shed their defined pension plans, corporations and wealthy people put pressure on governments to drop theirs - they say we treat public employees too well, and they foment resentment among the vast majority of people who no longer have access to such plans. Yet I remember a time when public employees did not have access to Social Security, and their government pensions were their only safety net. I see downward pressure on things for which people fought and struggled and even died - the right to collective bargaining, due process in employment (private as well as public), pensions, health care, education, the right to vote, civil liberties against the government, civil rights for various minority groups.
I am saddened as I see the advances achieved, often not only during my lifetime but also during my awareness - beginning when I was 10 - and also my own political and social activity being eroded, or being deliberately attacked.
When I was younger, very young, we really did not pay good attention to what we and other societies did to the environment which sustained us. Then, at least for several decades, there was a conscious effort to make the world a better place - we got laws to protect air and water, there were international agreements on sustaining and protecting the resources of the oceans. Yet somehow along the way profits became more important than sustainability. International comparisons and globalization were used not only to drive wages down for the workers who produced our products, but also to pass the costs of our economic efforts on to others, either in neighborhoods or nations too poor and too politically uninfluential to resist the siren call of "jobs" or whose political leaders could be coopted by financial benefits for them if not for their people. Or simply to ignore the longterm costs of our various actions and leave them for the future generations - for whom forests will disappear, water will again be polluted, sources of food endangered by deforestation, climate change, overfishing, monoculture food production, factory farming, etc.
I am 65. I am entitled to reflect back not only on my own life, but on the changes in society around me. Perhaps I should have been more reflective, more active, beginning several decades ago. At least now I take the time.
I worry about the legacy we leave behind. In my case, it will not be to biological descendents, although both my wife and have connections through nieces and nephews and cousins. As a teacher of young people, I feel a responsibility - I have to empower them to take ownership and assume responsibility for the world around them. I see many things that give me hope - most of my students show a deep caring for others. They may not be political in the sense those of my generation used such terms, but they are often moral in their concerns, and their activities often advance the well-being of people beyond themselves. That gives me hope, even as I realize that I must help them understand that how politics is defined can limit how much they can achieve, for themselves or for others.
I know of at least 16 of my former students who are themselves now teachers. I know of at least 6 in school this year who at this point plan on becoming teachers. Perhaps I played some role in that. Knowing that caring young people are still willing to consider a life of service to others at a time when such a life is very much under attack motivates me to keep trying, despite the difficulties.
This morning I receive an email from someone very influential in government who off the record was willing to agree with something I offered that was very critical of one of his/her peers. I realize that over time i have developed some contacts, some ability to wield influence on behalf of others. That is another reason I keep at it, because I feel a responsibility to speak and act on behalf of others because I can, because sometimes my voice will be heard where theirs might not be. At the same time, I try to provide opportunity for their voices, using mine to amplify what they say or write. If others then turn directly to them, I can let go of that particular burden and move on.
I still do not know what I will be when I grow up, if I ever grow up. I know that part of who/what I am is to serve as a facilitator for others, just as another part is to be the annoying grain of sand to which when the oyster of society responds a pearl of great price becomes possible.
So I write. So I ponder. So occasionally I act.
But I am also one who is aging. Thus I also may stop and listen to the birds outside my door. OR simply sit still as one of our cats curls up next to me, his or her body warming mine as I return the favor.
It is a Sunday morning. Shortly I will head out to rent the carpet cleaner. I will spend much of the day on household cleaning and sorting of things. I will have on music as I do so, periodically stopping and focusing on the sounds. My wife will be working along side me - it will be a shared experience of making a difference, of recreating a common space that we will soon share with her sister. We will watch as the cats explore - new furniture, new arrangements of older furniture, new places to climb, to crawl under, to lie upon.
Tomorrow is a holiday. As Memorial Day, it is a time for another kind of reflection. I will do that as well.
Thanks for being willing to read my Sunday morning meditation.
Peace.