Escaping the Noise!

This summer, I could not escape from the blaring sounds of leaf blowers, garden tools, construction vehicles, and jackhammers! I was trapped in an anti-symphony! Closing the window only turned down the volume – and not enough.

My street was under construction. They were tearing out most of the curbs and replacing them. The school behind me was under construction. They were renovating the student cafeteria that faces the back of my house. My neighbors’ landscapers seemed to live at their homes and one was replacing their roof. I wished I owned earplugs!

I wonder how people who live in very noisy places can focus. When even one of the construction sounds stops, even briefly, the relief is enormous.  My days have been punctuated by the beep-beep-beep of vehicles backing up – into my house and my head.

Sometimes it is hard to focus on the important things because of the noise. It may be the latest television show or the most popular game app on the phone. It maybe the spin from politicians that is purposely designed to make me angry, indignant, or divert me from the real issues.

The noise distracts me and makes me unable to hear clearly. It makes it more difficult to think logically and focus on what is really important. For the past few weeks, I have cherished the few moments when quiet and clarity prevailed.

As we head back into election season, I fear that we all will be living in a construction zone. It will be challenging to cut through the noise and hear the real issues and ideas. It will be all too tempting to stick our heads into the ground, put in earplugs, or escape into the banal world of triviality and escape. Noise hurts, and when it surrounds us, we are not our best selves.

Have you ever been in one of those uncomfortable and noisy conversations where you fear you might say anything to change the subject or turn off the loud rhetoric? It is the conversational equivalent of a truck beeping in reverse for a very long time. How do we handle this? What do we say? Do we look at our laps and wish for silence? Do we add to the noise by raising our voices above the rest or simply talk about the weather or the local sports team?

I have been seeking silent focus. It has been difficult to find. I fear that will be the case for a while. However, I am teaching myself to tune out the noise by writing like this, and by becoming more involved in important and meaningful activities. I don’t notice the noise when I am with my family or working with my students. I notice it in those moments in-between.

Noise keeps us from being who we really are. Noise prevents us from thinking fully and deeply. Sometimes, those who do not want us to take advantage of our higher intellects use noise to prevent significant conversation. Sometimes noise is the accumulation of all the trivialities and distractions that are far more salient and attractive than the important matters that count.

There is a place for small talk and idle conversation. However, it should not replace big talk and substantive thought. Easy answers, quick platitudes, and flashy distractions are the cotton candy of our social diet. Living in the noise is not healthy. We must create spaces and times when we can slowly, thoughtfully, and quietly think.

College Essays and Recommendations Matter, Write?

Chainsaw killer schools were what we used to call colleges that made admission decisions purely based on students’ grades and test scores. Without recommendations or essays, these colleges would admit kids even if they were chainsaw killers, as long as they had the right numbers. Essays and recommendations as ways to colleges could see students’ characters, and go beyond statistics.

Can colleges prevent chainsaw killers from getting in? Do they really want to? Are they seriously considering the qualitative information in addition to the quantitative statistics? Are essays and recommendations just grade point and test score window dressing?

Students, parents, teachers, and counselors spend hours and dollars making sure that college application essays portray students in a positive light. The Common Application, which is used by 548 schools, requires one or two faculty recommendations and a counselor recommendation for each applicant as well. An application package is now a dossier on a child and goes far beyond grades and an ACT or SAT composite.

However, an article in the New Republic by Stanford Associate Professor Mitchell Stevens is titled, “Stop Obsessing Over Your College Essay – Admissions Officers Don’t”. Professor Stevens asserts that “Remarkably, all this scribbling has almost nothing to do with whether the student gets in.”  He goes on to state that, “personal essays rarely got even cursory attention from admissions officers. There were simply too many files to consider in too small a time frame, and too many other evaluative factors that mattered much more.” Stevens cites his experience of a year and a half observing, “in the admissions office of a top-tier liberal arts college” as evidence that the essay, “can be great marketing.” Is the essay merely a mirror? Are we writing to the wind – or ourselves?

As a high school English teacher, I read hundreds of essays each month. It is a time consuming and grueling process, even when I am not actively grading the work. How many more essays and recommendations do admissions officers have to read?

According to the New York Times, the University of Chicago received 30,369 applications in 2013. As a Common Application school, that means that each of these applicants sends them three recommendations and one essay. In addition, there are two supplemental essays. Students pay $75 to apply.

According to their website, the University of Chicago has thirty-three admissions counselors. That means that, if each of them read the same number of applications, they each read about 920 applications. Each one, remember, has three essays and three recommendations. If each counselor spends only two minutes on each of these six elements, then we are talking about just over 184 hours without looking at the rest of the application. If each application gets a second reader, then each counselor is now spending his or her two minutes per item for over 350 hours. And the University is making over two million dollars in application fees.

Professor Stevens’ school, Stanford, had even more students apply and similar requirements. Perhaps he has a point. Perhaps all this writing is more for the writers than the readers. If this is the case, if the essays and recommendations are far less important than many of us in high schools have been telling students, what does this mean? Should we spend less time on them? Should we ask colleges to reconsider requiring them? Would any student (or parent) believe us if we told them not to worry so much about these elements of the all-important college application?

If colleges and universities justify the essays and recommendations as a way to prevent chainsaw killers from being admitted, the epidemic of sexual violence on campuses would be evidence enough that these vehicles (or the minutes of reading) are not effective. According to the Washington Post, “Overall, there were more than 3,900 reports of forcible sex offenses on college campuses nationwide in 2012, up 50 percent over three years.” Clearly, character is not being evaluated well enough.

Are they all chainsaw killer schools? Are our students, teachers, and counselors whistling in the wind? I hope not. I have spoken to countless college admission counselors who earnestly tell me that they read these essays and recommendations. Do they all? Do they spend enough time? Does it matter enough?

While students might learn about themselves through the process of writing college essays, staff is not benefiting from writing recommendations. Writing recommendations is time away from students. Come clean, colleges. Be more transparent. Tell us about your real process and the relative worth of all this writing. If recommendations and essays are not major players in the admission decision, is it time to let them go? Maybe it is: this year, the Common Application is allowing schools to make the essay and the counselor recommendation optional.

Midsummer Blues

We are only about a week from my mid-summer. It is not the real middle of the summer and not the summer solstice, but the time when I have been away from school for the same amount of time as I have until school starts: the middle of summer break.

The middle is when the bell goes off: summer is now “ending” and school is “around the corner.” The back to school sales started immediately after July 4^th, and I have learned to ignore them. But they are like that gnat buzzing around my ear.

I have two opposite responses to midsummer. I want to savor summer. I want to do all the things that I have not yet done. Yet, the urge to start to prepare for school grows more powerful the second half of the summer. I have done school planning throughout the summer, but at this time, I become more critical of myself and I start to feel as though I haven’t done enough. I look at my list of school tasks and beat myself up. I have been wasting my summer! What have I done with this time?

School is not the only clock ticking in my head. I am hyper aware that my family and I are experiencing a “last.” This is most likely the last summer that my entire family will be home together over the summer. My daughter just finished college and will be starting graduate school. My son will be a senior in high school. Next summer, one will be at grad school far away, and the other will be getting ready to leave for college. After that, our paths diverge.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t have vacations and holidays together. However, the odds of having anything close to a summer like this again are very slim. And it is almost over!

So I am trying to make this summer move in slow motion. I want to savor being together and not anticipate being apart. Even the negotiations about who gets a car to drive are making me melancholy. I don’t want to do school work, but I know if I don’t, I will pay for it later. Maybe that is a price worth paying.

The rest of my family seems keenly aware of this landmark as well. My daughter is spending tons of time with her grandparents. They aren’t in the same place with my son as they are with my daughter – and that is okay. He doesn’t feel slighted, but I wonder if he’ll get a similar opportunity.

We aren’t sitting around staring at each other. Both of my children have jobs. My wife and I are busy doing all those things that we cannot get to during the school year. I am busy, and fighting that busyness.

Summer is about to wane. My family’s life is at a turning point, too. It is going to take more than a few hundred words here or a few months of summer for me to adapt to our new world. It is not that I am not ready for it; it is that I am a little scared it isn’t going to be as nice as the brief interlude of this wonderful summer.

Next year and next summer will not be like this –and it is half over. Time to stop whining and savor this super summer while it is here.

The Power and the Person in the Post

Why do we choose to share what we post on Facebook, Twitter or other forms of social media? While it is evident why people share good news announcements like births, engagements, and graduations, why do we see pictures of food, pets, and home improvement projects?

I started thinking of this question when my daughter began to show me a young person’s Facebook page that focused on highly materialistic things. The page in question was filled with pictures of purchases, status symbol items (cars, jewelry, etc.), and “don’t I look good” statements. Although it was easy to condemn and criticize, it made me think about my choices of posts.

Clearly, the young person in question wants us to admire her. She wants us to see her the way she wants to see herself: attractive, pretty, wealthy, and successful. She is self-esteem building by status statement. The posts that I saw had comments that reinforced the image she was working so hard to project.

Posts are very difficult for me. Sometimes, I believe I overthink what I am posting. I ask myself if what I put on Facebook and Twitter is something worthy of the people with whom I am sharing it. I worry about what it says about me.

I know someone else whose posts are liberal bait. She puts forth an extremely conservative message and then reels in the outraged and passionate arguments that inevitably follow. It is all about the fight with this person. She wants the conflict. She likes stirring it up. Her conservative persona is less about political ideology and more about attention. If I say something that will get you all riled up, you will engage with me.

Certainly, many people use social media as a means of sharing personal news. Posts relay the same things we used to share before the PTA meeting, or while waiting for the religious service to start, or standing in line at the farmers market. These posts are combinations of the “wish you were here” postcard and the cute holiday photo. They say I’m still here. We’re doing okay. Don’t forget about us.

Some posts are dramatic: breakups, illnesses, disasters, and downers. These posts are vents and commiserations. By sharing the bad news, the poster receives sympathy and even offers of assistance. The alarm is sounded and, hopefully, the cavalry arrives.

Some posts are questions and community connections. They ask if we can recommend services or relay issues faced by the community. My homeowners association has benefited by creating a Facebook page where neighbors can have digital conversations.

We want to be heard. We want to express ourselves. We want to communicate. We want to discover who we are and who we can become – and we are a little curious if what we see in the mirror matches what others see through the window.

Although there are occasional discussions, most responses to Facebook posts are affirmations, confirmations, or exclamations. They reflect the feelings and message of the post rather than challenge or add to it. So like so many other forms of communication, these posts are really about us. They are expressions of self.

I wonder if our posts could be more. As I read posts about important social issues, I wonder if social media could be a stronger force for discussion and dialog. I have read about how people in other countries have used social media to reform governments and create social justice.

My views have changed, and my eyes opened by what my Facebook friends have shared. Recent events have proven that ideas shared on social media can have real impact on politics and policy.

Our posts are about us as individuals and, more and more, us as a society. We are advertising our values and our view of ourselves. Are my posts a good snapshot of me? Is that picture complete or correct? Does it match how I see myself? Now you see why I perseverate before I post! 

Four Graduation Speeches

My favorite season is fall because it is a time of beginnings. Spring brings graduations and goodbyes. Yet, this year has been different. My spring has been framed by four graduation speeches.

The first of these was delivered by my own daughter at her college graduation at the beginning of May. Months before, she had been invited to submit a written speech and compete to be the student commencement speaker. She called her English and theatre teacher dad, and we brainstormed possible topics. She settled on the idea that, since she was a tour guide, her speech could be one final tour. She submitted her speech, auditioned, and was selected.

She wrote a speech that used her experiences as a college tour guide to explore where the class of 2015 had been and where they were going. It was a last tour on the way out of college.

The metaphor worked well. Her speech took her classmates from being tourists to becoming guides to transforming the world as agents of change. She reviewed the past as a means of bringing us into the future. It was the ideal way to look at both graduation and this season of transition.

Her speech captured what I was feeling as I watched her talk in a huge athletic arena filled with about 6000 people. How did I get here? How could I have a child graduating from college? What happens now? My children and students are growing up. I must be really old!

Meanwhile, back in Deerfield, a similar process was taking place. My Senior English students had written their own graduation speeches as a means of both practicing their speaking and listening skills and reflecting on their high school careers.

As they delivered their speeches to the class, they took listening notes on the various aspects of their speeches. Two students made a special note about one of their classmates; they said that they hoped he would be the real graduation speaker.

This student’s speech was moving and eloquent. He did not fit the mold of the traditional choice for our graduation speaker. He was a transfer student. He was not a native English speaker. His parents were still in Japan, and he spent much of his high school career having to figure things out for himself. He shared the lessons he had learned from his experience, and my students and I were moved.

Our high school’s process of choosing a student speaker is similar to my daughter’s college. I am delighted that our speaker is not automatically a student who has earned an academic honor or been elected to an office. Students submit their speeches and then some of those students are invited to deliver them in an audition. My student submitted his speech, auditioned, and, like my daughter, was selected.

He and I rehearsed together in one of the large lecture halls a day or two before graduation. Like my daughter, he was both confident and nervous. His message was one of going (and growing) beyond your limiting perceptions and of demonstrating gratitude for those who have helped you. His delivery was personal and powerful.

Like my response to my daughter’s speech, his speech captured my feelings at that ceremony. I was grateful for these wonderful kids and their families – and I didn’t want to let them go. But that isn’t the way it works in my business. Fortunately, the next two graduation speeches let me look to the promising future.

I delivered two graduation speeches in the past few weeks. I served as the high school representative at two local middle school graduations. For the first one, my message was the same one I delivered when my son left junior high: say “hi” in the halls. I talked about how relationships are the foundation of a positive high school experience.

Two nights ago, my colleague and dear friend Michelle and I spoke to the graduates of Shepard Middle School. We took the relationships idea one step further and asked our newly minted freshmen to choose kindness. Extending on the message we had delivered together a few years before (and that I had echoed at my earlier speech), we said to them, “While grades, activities, and all that stuff is important, what you will discover about Deerfield High School is that the quality of your time here will be measured by the depth and quality of your relationships. And relationships are built on kindness. It isn’t about your transcript, test scores, or preparing for college. That’s a trick and a trap. Those things are icing – not cake. The cake is the people. Grades, scores, and successes are meaningless without the folks who come together to make them happen. You join a family when you come to DHS. The DHS family is the ground on which all of our achievements are built.”

At the end of the speech, Michelle said to our future students (and her own daughter), “Acts of kindness should not be random. Make your acts of kindness deliberate and thoughtful.”

That statement capped my four speech graduation experience. I began with a review of the process: the past that brings us into the life changing future.  I moved into a speech that asked me to let go of my concepts and be grateful. Finally, I welcomed the future with kindness and the promise of a special family relationship.
I love our DHS graduation, but I hate saying goodbye. This year, my four graduation speeches reminded me of where we have been and got me ready to step into the future. What a wonderful way to end the school year!