Midlife Meditation

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."--Mitch McConnell, October, 2010 If you've read my posts about teaching in the Reynolds School District, you've probably come across the term "high flyer." That's teacher talk for a student who is an exceptional child in ways that no parent wants his or child to be exceptional. The child may very well be bright, even gifted academically, and may not have any of the disabilities one normally associates with being on an Individualized Education Plan, but still is on the radar of every administrator and behavioral specialist of the school for one reason alone: he or she makes it hard for the rest of the class to learn. High flyers are obstructionists. They interrupt the teacher without being called on, talk with neighbors while the teacher is lecturing, distract everyone around them. When they do raise their hands, it is to ask to use the bathroom, g...

In all honesty, when I learned I would have to spend an hour a week at Four Corners School, I was not happy. I walked into the library at Margaret Scott at the end of August for our first full staff meeting thrilled to know I would be in a classroom, rather than the gym, and that I would not have to divide my year between Scott and Hartley Schools. Then I started to hear rumors about Four Corners, a school I'd never heard of. There was talk that my time would not, in fact, be undivided, that this other school had laid claim to some open space in my schedule and that the decision had been made, without consulting me, that I would have to teach there, as well. All these rumors proved true: on Mondays and Tuesdays, the last half hour of my work day was open. The administrator of Four Corners, an alternative school for high-needs children with major behavioral issues, had learned that music was being restored across the district, and had invoked state law to get some music i...