Precious Parking

The high school should really allow all students to drive to school. There is no reason just to limit it to seniors. If there is a space shortage, we should raise money and build a parking structure, just like they have at the colleges. 

There is no way my Precious would take the bus. The bus arrives far too early in the morning and Precious needs to sleep late. Otherwise, we get cranky and foul-mouthed and that doesn’t fly in my house! Walking or biking are just not practical. Besides, Precious has to take sports equipment and a computer and the hot/cold tray that Cook prepares for lunch each day. The bus makes so many stops and is not air-conditioned (or I think it isn’t, I’m not sure) and my Precious can’t take that kind of environment. 

Besides, there is only one bus after sports practice and it goes just about everywhere. It would take Precious a half hour or more to get home on it. That isn’t practical. Precious has tutoring in all the major subjects twice a week, private sports coaching, ACT and SAT tutoring, and frequent meetings with our college helper. I love that college helper. She is making sure that Precious is on top of all those deadlines. Precious doesn’t have to do anything! This college stuff is so stressful. Why can’t we just let Precious into my alma mater and be done with it? Precious will be going there anyway, why do we have to hop through all these meaningless hoops? 

So, I have a friend of a friend who has a little home a few blocks from the school. They charge pay $500 per semester for Precious to park at their house. We were going to let Precious take the Escalade that we usually keep at the lake house, but it’s two years old, so we got a Porche to replace it and Precious will drive that. We’ll just have to use my Land Rover when we are up north. It is a sacrifice we are just going to have to make. 

I wish my friend’s friend’s home was a little closer to the school. As it is, Precious has to walk three blocks. I park there when I stop by and take Precious’s Land Rover to the gas station and fill it up. Precious doesn’t have time for that. I can’t believe how long it takes me and that car always needs so much gas! 

I don’t know what we would do if Precious wasn’t able to drive to school. I can’t get up that early. It is an ungodly time, anyway. None of our people have arrived yet, well Cook has, but that is to make Precious’s breakfast and lunch. Cook can’t be expected to be a driver, too. 

I am concerned that, once Precious can drive to school, the staff will take all the good parking places. I don’t want Precious parking so far away from the building that it is the same distance as the friend’s friend’s house! That would be so unfair! I think kids who park in the nearby neighborhoods should have special spots right near the door when they become seniors. After all, they have been waiting to drive to school their entire lives! 

Reading for Treasure: Articles I Can't Stop Thinking About

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

My theme this month is articles that have taken up residence in my head, that I cannot stop thinking about. I strongly recommend you read them. Many of them will probably end up being the seeds of my own writing on this blog. 

Lifehacker contrasts two thinkers who have confronted evil: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Donald Ewen Cameron. The piece asks what is the difference between being evil and stupid: “Why Stupidity Is More Dangerous Than Evil.”

When I was first hired as a teacher, I told my department chairman that I wasn’t going to give grades. He said I had to, so I said I would give everyone A’s. He said that wasn’t going to work either. So, I tried to make the idea of grades fit with real student-centered education. These two pieces about how institutions of learning are rethinking grades are excellent discussions of this issue: KQED’s “Some colleges mull the idea of 'Ungrading' for freshman students” and Wired’s “The End of Grading.”

Similarly, I struggled with kids’ use of their smartphones in the classroom. I ended up hanging a shoe tree near the door and requiring my students to relinquish their phones during class. This also made taking attendance quick and easy. This wonderful article in The Atlantic looks at “The Schools That Ban Smartphones.” 

This quick article from The Daily Herald addresses a question I have been asking since I moved next door to the school at which I taught and my children attended: “It’s Good For Kids and the Environment. So Why Aren’t More Students Walking to School”

As a follow-up to several sets of articles about gun violence, The Chicago Tribune addressed a part of this issue that does not receive enough attention. While we hear about people killed and injured by shootings, we don’t hear about how those who are shot cope afterward: “Doctors: A firearm-related injury is a chronic and expensive condition, but many victims are forgotten.” 

Two very political articles from The Atlantic fascinated me. As a former debate teacher, the “Gish Gallop” technique that the former president uses is both effective and highly problematic. “How To Beat Trump in a Debate” is a great analysis of more than Trump’s rhetorical style, but the philosophy behind it. Similarly, “Why Fox News Lied to Its Viewers” looks at how ratings and pandering to the desires of an audience were more important than journalistic ethics on the Fox News Channel. Is there a connection here? 

Finally, two more articles from The Atlantic (can you tell that I am a huge fan of that magazine?) about reading. First, “The People Who Don’t Read Books” looks at some high-profile people who are proud that they don’t read. Second, “A New Way to Read ‘Gatsby’” was fascinating to me as I finished Nghi Vo’s magical spin on Fitzgerald’s classic, The Chosen and the Beautiful. Read them both and you will see why this book has staying power. 

Besides The Atlantic, I am reading Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany. 

Twenty Years Walking

When I first started teaching in 1986, I knew that I was going to spend a great deal of time at school – and I did. For my first decade or so, I would arrive at school around 7:40am and leave sometime after 7pm. Often, I would leave at 10pm or later. One day, after a long rehearsal, I sat down on a couch and awoke at 6am!

Spending this much time at school was one thing; spending more time in a car commuting was another. My first apartment was about ten minutes from school. When my wife and I married, we lived in the center of town. In 1996, we moved to the neighborhood immediately south of our school. For the past twenty years, I have walked to school almost every day.

While I know this is not possible, practical or desirable for many people, being so close to my work has been wonderful. When we moved, we had a two-year-old who was attending the nursery school in our building, so the three of us walked together. In all kinds of weather, we would make our way down our street, through a short pass-through, and into the rear parking lot of our high school. We didn’t have to fight a car seat, traffic, or horrible early morning departures. Yes, sometimes walking with a two-year-old can be maddeningly slow. Yet the experience was significantly different than when we were in the car.

For much of my daughter’s early years, my mother-in-law was very ill, and we would make long trips to hospitals in Chicago. We sat in traffic during rush hour. She ate, cried, played, and did many other things in the backseat of our car. I drove and tried to keep her happy, but it was very difficult and uncomfortable for both of us. I thought about doing that every day, and I was thrilled to walk, even if sometimes at a beetle’s pace.

We walk in all weather. If it rainy, no big deal. It is far better to walk in the snow than to drive. First, some students and parents are terrible drivers. Second, it takes a while out in the cold to clear off and warm up a car. Many times I have left the building chatting with a colleague. I walk home, and my colleague walks to his or her car. As I put down my school bag in the kitchen, I can see my colleague driving away. 

My van just turned twelve years old. It has about 94,000 miles on it and is still in great shape. Both the savings in gasoline and wear and tear on our vehicles is another fantastic advantage of walking to school.

I know that many people’s commutes afford them time to think, catch up on the news, or decompress. I do those things too, on my walk to school. Getting into the air, walking down my street, greeting kids and their parents, and chatting with my neighbors puts my school day in perspective. It centers me on the real importance of a school.

Often my wife and I walk together. Sometimes, our son joins us. We joke that his dorm in college next year is further from his class buildings than our home is from his high school. He will miss his walk to school. I will miss walking to school with him. His absence will make my gratitude for the years of walking with him, his sister, and his mother all the more poignant.

I’ve been walking for twenty years. That little amount of exercise and short break from the stress of the day has made a big difference in my life. When I retire, it is my plan to move immediately next door to retirement!