Schools teach a variety of kinds of lessons. Some are curricular, some are environmental, others just seem to make sense. I know, you never thought you'd hear me say that something done in my school made sense.In the curricular areas, there are, of course, those educators who lapse into mystical, intellectual orgasmic experiences at the mere thought of The Calculus, but they're just weird and I'm not going there. There's the English teacher -- 12th grade -- who recently celebrated her classes finishing their study of A Tale of Two Cities by holding a festival of French food. So I'm wondering if anyone in that class at all, including the teacher, actually read the book.
Environmental learning, well, you learn to get out of the big kids' way in the corridors, if only to keep from getting knocked over by their giant backpacks hovering at your head level.
In the sense-making area, sometimes we just get it right. It's not so much that we do, but that someone in the school knows enough to let someone else step in and do something good. This week, we had a local organization come in and run an assembly. They've done this once a year for the last five years, maybe more. They divide up all the juniors, girls in one cafeteria, boys in the other. And intelligent, thoughtful people teach girls how to look for breast cancer, and boys how to look for testicular cancer. It takes 45 minutes and has the potential to save their lives.
Sophomores, earlier in the school year, are in-serviced in suicide prevention: recognizing the warning signs, knowing how to get help for a friend in trouble.
What they need now is a bit of Internet safety. I thought I might put something like that together for next year, but I recently found out the the administrator who's caused a lot of my recent troubles is the one I'd have to work with; moreover, he's got the potential to put a plan in place -- he works with the police on these problems when they come up -- but hasn't done it. I would really hate to work out a whole program and then find out that he's already hired some outside consultant to come in and do it. And I don't want to talk to him to find out, since he pretty much turns everything I say against me somehow. Again, we'll see.
