Twenty Five Years In Our Home

I had to convince my wife that this was the house for us. She liked modern architecture with open floor plans and this house was a typical colonial. But, it had the right number of bedrooms, the space we needed to expand our little family, and was at the very top of our price range, and had all of our school first choices! It was very well kept and would make a wonderful home for us.

I remember our final walk-through before closing; we met the seller and his son, an English teacher at Lane Tech High School in Chicago (He later became my colleague and friend when we hired him to teach at his alma mater). The seller showed us where everything was and how they worked. He was gracious and helpful. We were overwhelmed and a little frightened. We had struggled to sell our old home. We had to move in the summer because since we were educators, moving during the school year was unthinkable. 

Oh, yeah. The local high school was in the backyard. This house backed up to our school, the one at which we worked. We weren’t just moving closer to work, we were practically moving in. We understood what work from home meant twenty-five years ago. 

We both spent way too many hours at school. My average day was eleven or twelve hours and my wife could compete with that many times during the year. So a shorter commune would be a good thing, even if it was just turning a seven-minute drive into a five-minute walk.    

We were already used to teaching and working in the same community. We tried to be graceful at the grocery store when parents wanted to do business. “We’re off duty,” we’d demur. “I can’t remember the specifics, call me at school,” I’d reply. Our students were startled when they saw us around town. High school students still don’t really believe that their teachers have lives outside of the classroom. Well, this new house would practically be living in a file cabinet drawer, just bigger. 

A lot bigger. Our new house was much larger than the little one we had moved into after we got married. We loved our first house, but if we were going to have another child, we needed more space. When one of my former students found out where we were moving, he said to me, “Oh, Mr. Hirsch, you’re not the North Trail type.” 

He couldn’t explain to me what the North Trail type was and, as we got to know our neighbors, we couldn’t either. We already met several sets of neighbors because we taught their children. Yet, our neighbors immediately across the street never came out or said hello or acknowledged us ever – not even when they moved. Others were very warm and came over and introduced themselves. 

Within a few months, there were several other new families nearby and our two-year-old made new friends as we all walked to school together: she went to the school daycare and preschool! We shared the great commute. 

After a year or two, I started a neighborhood newsletter. This was when a newsletter meant photocopies, envelopes, and hand distribution. At almost the same time, a neighbor initiated a renaissance of the homeowners association and we combined our efforts. While there had been a homeowners association, it had gone fallow. Now there was only a person paying landscapers to keep the common areas from looking too shabby from a checking account that was rapidly being depleted. 

So I took on the role of secretary in those pre-email days and we recruited a few others to help us. Most of those folks are still working together, but that is going to change soon. We had little kids, all of whom are in college or out of college. 

Now, we are empty nesters. The two of us live by ourselves in this house. When we retired, the most common question was, “When are you going to move?” We are not. This house still works wonderfully for us. When the kids came home during the pandemic, we were so grateful for the space. I transformed my daughter’s room into a combination office and entertainment room. My daughter calls it my man cave and I call it my ready room. 

While I could see why someone might downsize, I am optimistic that this house will work for us for another decade or so. For all the changes we have experienced as a family, this house still fits us, twenty-five years later.

Reading For Treasure: Hey, Educators! Read This!

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles (and other readings) that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

While I was teaching, my colleagues and I would send articles to each other about things related to parts of our personal and professional lives. When I retired, I continued to find these reading gems (call them treasures), but I didn’t want to be that voice from beyond that keeps assigning busy working folks more things to read! That is one of the reasons I started posting Reading for Treasure. 

Yet, I’ve been finding wonderful things I want to send my friends who are still in the classroom. Some of them are for a broad educational audience and some are extremely narrow. I have lost track of the number of times a week (or a day) that I think to myself, “Oh! I know what I would do with that in the classroom!” So here are a few pieces of summer reading about education for anyone interested! 

KQED Mindshift shared an article reprinted from Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education that expresses one of my core teaching tenets: every student should feel that they are the teacher’s secret favorite. Teachers, please read this. New and pre-service teachers, you must read this!  “How Unconditional Positive Regard Can Help Students Feel Cared For”

KQED Mindshift also republished an NPR article titled,  “Colorado Becomes 1st State To Ban Legacy College Admissions.” When we discuss affirmative action, can we also discuss legacy admissions, elite sports, and other ways that the college admission game is not based on students’ merit and is rigged in favor of affluent mostly white students? One of the pandemic side effects has been this kind of shaking up of college admissions! 

Speaking of ways that affluent, usually white, students get advantages in education, can we talk about private education? The Atlantic’s cover makes the statement, “Private Schools are Indefensible.” This highly detailed and very powerful piece argues that private schools not only give students a leg up, but they also have a detrimental effect on everyone! The actual title of the article is “Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene.” 

This past year was not easy for teachers, students, parents, or anyone connected to schools (or anyone in general). So the argument that many classrooms were only just getting by before schools closed feels harsh. However, the pandemic pushed these teetering teachers over the edge. Jennifer Gonzales, writing in Cult of Pedagogy, asks teachers not to hit the “easy button.” “No More Easy Button: A Suggested Approach to Post-Pandemic Teaching” makes highly specific recommendations about what school should look like next year. I would argue that Ms. Gonzales’ suggestions are just what school should look like – always. 

I love Math With Bad Drawings. If you haven’t looked at that blog, please do. It is magnificent. In this satiric entry, “Kafka Explains Math Education,” Ben Orlin is specifically talking about math education but his points apply to many (if not all) subject areas. He even uses real Kafka quotes!   

American Lit teachers, look at this! A new book takes a magical new look at The Great Gatsby. It focuses on Jordan Baker, who in this telling is a Vietnamese adoptee who was raised by a wealthy white woman. She is also queer! Read the review from Tor.com:  “A Greater Gatsby: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo”

I am currently reading Think Again by Adam Grant

Graduation Was Different This Year

The graduation venue was not the beautiful concert hall in the park this year. It was scheduled to be on the athletic field, but the cold and rain forced it into the gym. And while the musicians were recorded and the graduates masked, many of the traditions were maintained, translated, or acknowledged. 

Graduation was different this year. 

People were missing, not only because the venue was smaller and each student was only permitted two tickets, but because some of the graduates, for a variety of reasons, could not attend. Some family members could not attend, and some family members were present only in memory. It had been a year when the flag was always at half-mast. Many faculty members were not present. They usually greet the graduates in their academic robes. The CDC said that an indoor group gathering like this is safe if vaccinated and unvaccinated people are masked, but even so, not everyone was willing or able to participate. Still, the ceremony was streamed live, so people could watch from afar. 

I greeted my former students and colleagues as the kids lined up for the processional. It was good to see students and staff after a year of pandemic winter. Even if it didn’t feel like spring outside, smiles shined through the masks. 

I don’t think students have ever hugged me like they did at graduation this year. No one asked if I was vaccinated (I am). The physical contact was initially surprising and then oddly comforting. My students haven’t seen me not only due to the pandemic but because I retired after their sophomore year. I had stayed in touch and visited before school closed. I promised them that I would attend their graduation and celebrate with them. However, the pandemic changed what we were celebrating. This was more than a culmination of high school. This was more than the traditional commencement. 

Graduation was different this year. 

Seeing people on screens, video chats, social media, email, and text is not a replacement for sharing the air, space, and time together. Some of my students were surprised to see me. I emailed them a congratulatory note a week prior. Our relationship had survived the distance. 

Sometimes, when I am talking to my family on the phone or chatting over a video call, I feel unsatisfied. I want more than I can get from the voice and image. Yet, talking and even seeing my child on the screen isn’t enough. What a needy parent I must be. Last year’s graduation, and my son’s college graduation, were entirely on the screen and that had to be enough. They were still unsatisfying. 

Graduation was different this year. 

The power of our presence, the thirst for each other’s company, the relief, and the release of the suppressed burden of worry, solitude, and powerlessness was almost physically expelled. Every year, I am always keenly aware that, at graduation and during the last weeks of school, I may never see these students again. That is the nature of being a teacher. These relationships are on a limited lease. 

Graduation was different this year. 

Graduations in the past felt promised. Only students who misbehave are denied graduation and only for the grossest of offenses. Gathering this year was an act of acrobatic contortions and then, thanks to weather and circumstance, a marathon of adaptations. Yet, there we were, surrounded by each other. 

I am not a fan of whooping and cheering after a student’s name is read. I worry that, when a mortarboard is thrown in the air, it will hit someone. I have been an outspoken proponent of a dignified and orderly graduation. 

Graduation was different this year. 

We all cheered! Hats flew! Every speaker was on the verge of tears and made no attempt to hide it. It was like exhaling after a long time underwater, reassurance from the doctor, the reunion at the airport; there is a future, we will be alright, and people I have been holding in my heart are here in front of me. 

I hope that the graduation of the class of 2021 is unique. I hope we never experience another like it. It was exhausting and exhilarating, and I am eager to go back to the regularly scheduled dignified ceremony. 

Graduation was different this year. 

We needed it more. I hope we don’t have that need again. I hope this year’s graduation can sustain us and remind us of the power of our presence, the coming together of community, and the essential nature of a gathered community. 

I am so grateful to the school staff members who made graduation happen despite roadblocks, potholes, breakdowns, and storms. Once again, the school is the heart of our community; it nurtured our children and helped heal even this old retired teacher’s heavy heart.