Danger In The Schools

At my current school we work with at-risk kids who are unpredictable from time to time. They have their outbursts. We deal with those. That's what we've trained for, what our experience has prepared us to handle. We recognize and defuse most situations before kids explode. We are aware of the kids in our classrooms.

One kid I'll call Frank is crazy. Really. He's not right in his mind, needs serious help, and is predictably unpredictable. It's a matter of time before he hurts someone. We've said since he started with us that Frank is beyond our abilities and a danger in the school.

We've let people know. There's a strictly enforced chain of command. We tell our immediate supervisor and then wait. We don't expect much to happen. We know the kid is dangerous, but no one seems to much care.

Today Frank went off. I was down the hall when I heard furniture tumble. The desks here are heavy. When one goes flying, it resounds through the building. When two or three fly, I get down the hall fast to see if I can help.

I met Frank on his way out of the room. Behind him I heard shouting and maybe crying. He began to make his way up the hall, but I turned him around suggesting he'd be better outside where he can't do any real harm to anyone but maybe himself. He kicked the doors open hard enough I thought one broke, then punched the mailbox outside the door. I stood so he was encouraged to walk to the right away from school. Our parking lot is to the left and I wanted him far from our cars. I drove Dad's '72 Chevy pickup to work. No way is Frank messing with that.

Frank walked away. I let him. The last thing we want is him back in the building. I wasn't worried about him out in the tame village in which our school resides. He could walk and blow off steam. If he wandered too far, the police, who work well with our kids, would help him find his way.

Watching him walk, I wondered if Frank would be back in class tomorrow. Probably not. I figured he'd get a day or two suspension. But he won't be removed from our program. I couldn't have said that for sure then because I can't see into the future, but I can damn sure see into the past, rememberoing how this has gone almost every other time.

The teacher in that room is a tiny woman long past retirement age. In that class of ten kids there are four different grade levels, at least four different subjects, and ten different sets of challenges and baggage. It's more than any teacher can manage and still effect real learning. We do the best we can. We work hard. But we're up against it. Then add in an unstable, dangerous kid. I mean, come on.

Frank is a symptom of a systemic problem in the organization's culture. I got Frank out the door and we worked to restore order and calm. We talked with the kids. We closed the blinds so Frank wouldn't put on a show from outside. There's little we can do for or about Frank. There's even less we can do about the broken system in which we try to work.

There are a lot of reasons I'm leaving this school. Danger is just one of them. It's a big one, but remember, it's just a symptom of the real problem, the one driving a lot of us out of the classroom. It's enough to make us all want to flip the furniture, punch the doors, and go a little crazy. That or just quit.

Two Books

My project isn't unusual. It's to figure myself out, to find out who I am and who I might become, to plot a path into some future. You know, the usual. One way I do all this is to read books.

Last week, on the advice of someone I respect, I began reading This Is Marketing by Seth Godin, a guy I've not read before but about whom I was vaguely suspicious. He seemed a guru with too many slick answers, but I was willing to give him a shot.

I tried to see what the book had to teach me, but I've taken the bookmark from between pages eighty-six and eighty-seven and placed it into a new book, Handmade: Creative Focus In The Age Of Distraction by Gary Rogowski. Though the bookmark is only between pages twelve and thirteen I feel better already. Rogowski talks of sawdust, Robert M. Pirsig, learning, and hiking. It's as though I can touch each thing to which he is referring.

In eighty-six pages, Seth Godin gave me two things to touch. Two. I kept waiting for more than platitudes. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with marketing to get the book. Then again, I'm not much of a woodworker and Rogowski already has me in his hands. He keeps talking plainly and telling stories. He doesn't seem all that concerned about persuading me. He's convinced and that's enough.

I wanted to learn from Godin and maybe I have. Moving the bookmark from his to Rogowski's book tells me a lot. I'm not sure just yet what all of that might be, but I'm getting a strong, strong feeling that might just be some kind of understanding.

Them's The Breaks

I haven't posted in a couple days. Things got busy and I've wondered about other kinds of writing I want to do. Posting daily takes work — though I don't want to oversell it since I can gin up a post in half an hour — and there are times it leaves me without the energy to write something longer. And then there are the streaks and the break.

Streaks sometimes work. They keep me going when I want to quit. A long streak gets me over my inertia.

But streaks can get in my way and become more important than the thing I'm really trying to do. That was how daily blogging had begun to feel. I was churning out mediocre posts that weren't making me happy and got in the way of other writing. I took a break so I might come back with a better idea of how to proceed.

I've kept my Morning Pages streak. People confuse the blog with those. There are posts that come from the morning's pages, but not often. Morning Pages are less about writing than about daily practice like meditation or prayer. I find balance through them. Without them the last five years of my job would have been unbearable. Morning Pages teach me who I am. That streak is easy to maintain. Every time I consider breaking it, I reconsider and keep going. The daily-ness feels necessary and good. It doesn't get in the way.

I'll try to keep publishing a newsletter each week. It's a great way to keep up with people, understand audience, and have fun.

Here are my guiding questions for streaks:

• Is it making me happy?
• Is it making me a better person?
• Is it making me a better writer?
• Would a break improve things?

It has been a good break. I'm back today, happy, better, and ready to see what happens next.

Those questions are a good guide to most anything. Go figure.

Morning Pages As Metaphor

First of May. Wet and rainy. This morning was cold. I woke early listening to the rain, trying to resist the call of my bladder. I lost that battle. Downstairs I pet the cat, told her she had to wait for food, disappointing her once again. I took pen and phone to the basement though lately I wonder why I bring the phone. I'm not listening to music as I write, preferring forty-five minutes of quiet. My life feels too noisy. I need some solitude.

I wrote the date and page number on each of the three pages and wrote that it was cold. Writing flowed from there, but distracting thoughts kept intruding. I thought of one thing I had to do today, then another, then another until it was as though I were trying to write one line of thought while screaming and having a seizure.

Rather than give up, I switched to writing the panic and anxiety. Then I wrote this one word: breathe. I stopped the pen, closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, held it, and exhaled. I went back to writing.

At some point I thought of how many lines I fill every morning. Three pages of thirty-one lines each. Ninety-three blank lines. I can write only one line at a time and when there are ninety-two to go, it can feel daunting. But if I write about it soon there are only eighty-three lines to go, then sixty-one, thirty, and half a dozen.

Morning Pages take me forty-five minutes most days. Once in a while I get distracted and they take an hour. Then there are times I wake late and have to rush through in half an hour. Whatever the case, it's one line at a time, one word after another, one page, two pages, and then three pages. There's no other way other than to give up. I've come so far that I don't want to break the streak. I keep going.

There are lessons about writing to be gleaned from doing Morning Pages, but the more important things have to do with living. I don't know all those lessons. I'm still learning. But these few come to mind: Do one thing, breathe, and do another. Fill one line at a time and understand that ninety-three lines only seems like a lot. Turn each page over and move to the next one. Don't stop until they are all finished. Remember to keep the hand, arm, neck, and body loose. Stop to pet the cat when she visits. Listen to the sound of the pen on the page.

One more thing thing I'm learning: it's going to be okay.

I finished my pages. I breathed that in. Then I moved on to the next thing. Tomorrow I'll fill three more pages. This is all there is to it. This is a life.