Midlife Meditation

None of these people believes in public education. Here's a non sequitur for an essay about how bad things are about to be: there are far scarier things in the Trump agenda than appointing Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate with no training or experience in public education, to run the Department of Education. The reason is perspective. Federal subsidies actually account for just eight per cent of public school funding overall, and much of that comes from departments other than Education, subsidizing meal programs and Head Start. Directing some of that money toward charter schools and vouchers is still problematic, but the local impact of whatever nastiness DeVos can push through is going to be minor compared to the abomination that was No Child Left Behind. Stack it up against protectionist global trade policies and climate change denial, and it seems even less of a worry. What stinks about it is what it says about these ersatz populists who are now going to pick th...

Not counting weekends or holidays, I have fifty-one more days. That's how much time I have left at Scott Elementary School. On June 15, I will say goodbye to these children for the last time. Where I will go after that to practice my vocation has yet to be determined, but I can be certain of this one thing: it will not be this school. Fifty-one days of school might seem like a lot to you. If you're not a teacher, or even if you are and you teach in a classroom, seeing the same children every school day, fifty-one days is a significant chunk of time: ten weeks! Two and a half months! More than a quarter! To most musical specialists, those 51 days equate to 20 semi-weekly classes, typically 30-35 minutes long. That's time for several units, time to learn two or three pieces and prepare them for a final concert. I say "most" because things are different at Scott. Starting next week, I will see students for music once a week. At Scott, I get them...

It wasn't until my second year of teaching elementary music that I learned I was special. I'm sure the word was in use long before that, but somehow I had never heard it before. And no, I don't mean "special" in the sense of "special education" (which, in education vernacular, has evolved to "sped"). In an elementary school, a "special" takes an entire class of students off their homeroom teacher's hands for a set amount of time. Specials, recess, and lunch are usually the only time during the school day that classroom teachers have for prep--and it's rare that recess and lunch are entirely student-free. Kids have a way of needing their teachers during those periods, whether it's for some one-on-one tutoring, as a reward for good behavior (lunch in the classroom!), or as a punishment for bad behavior (recess in the classroom). Specials in most schools are music, PE, and library; a few schools add a dedicated art teacher...