I tend to overvalue my skills when it comes to protecting my friends.
I conjure these absurd mental images of defending them from the assaults of everyday life. Onerous regulation that's being enforced unfairly? Let me take care of that. One-sided meeting with an overly obnoxious colleague? Give me five minutes with him. A supervisor who's unwilling to listen to the context of a problem? Hold my coffee.
But the truth is I'm not as important as I make myself out to be. When there's a fight in the hallway, I'm worthless next to Casey Wood. When a student is upset shedding buckets of tears, I'm nothing compared to Jaimie Wommack. When a member of my Forensics team is in need of a really creative introduction, I've got nothing on Deborah Bane. My only solace is that when words are needed to make a case I can lend my own insignificant aid.
I joked with my department last year that I was their Batman and they were my Gotham and I would shatter every verbal bone in my body to protect them from the absurdity that often came down from on high. The only absurdity was how limited I was in this capacity. Hell, I couldn't even save Wordly Wise.
Then came yesterday afternoon. I sat in a room with about a dozen adults, most of them educators, and I watched in horror as one adult with a significant amount of power berated, belittled, and otherwise bullied another adult in the room. In front of everyone. The belligerence settled early on in the room. The man in charge arrived already having made his decision; he was looking for some folks in the room to validate what he had decided to do. Make no mistake: validation came. "Oh I think you're absolutely right." "I'm not sure why we even made some of those decisions before." "Well, honestly, I was against all of that to begin with." "You make a really good point."
When the man in charge began leveling accusations at another, at a friend, at my friend, at someone whom I respect professionally, personally, it was hard to stay silent for long. I watched as the room gradually cemented itself in, so as to appear to not notice that the man in charge was firing threat after threat across the room at his target. And when I looked at he who received and saw the face of man who had owned up to decisions and mistakes throughout the entire time I knew him I was looking on the face of a Kindergartener who was blindsided by the naked wrath on display. I have been reduced to depths of pity at funerals and memorial services, but never at a professional meeting. This was a low I didn't know existed.
Just as quickly as the bottom of my stomach dropped out I found myself gathering in fury. Who did this man in charge think he was? Stupid question: I know who he thinks he is. He made that clear a few years ago. But this? This was personal. And Batman rose from that dark place. Every opportunity, every glimmer of inroads I took to defend the decision made, the process by which the decision had been made. I pointed out the absurdity of reversing the decision made now, of stripping something from students and parents alike. Of undermining them and thus our credibility. We had set some regulations into motion this year. Yanking them now spoke of chaos on a grander scale. Was that to be our reputation?
I was silenced multiple times, with both words and looks. I remembered that this wasn't a meeting to gather opinion and perspective; it was validate the man in charge with the decision that he had already made.
When the meeting broke the only thought I had was to chase after my friend, and run I did. I don't think I've ever seen him leave a room so fast. When I caught up to him and I knew my words were the most important I fumbled through trying to explain to him that what he has said and done these past few years matters, that who he is and what he represents to my and my school matters, that as his friend I was worried for him and thought about him more often than not. He is too reserved and honorable a man to be caught off guard by any of that. I didn't want to sound whiny so I switched topics after a bit. We joked. I shared some honest things from my year. In the end, I felt like I should have said or done more but I had never encountered such vitrol in person before.
I have no idea if my friend will ever read this. Maybe this isn't even for him. Maybe this is to consolidate my own sense of worth. I have no plans to be in another meeting with the man in charge but if it should occur, I suspect Batman will make a return performance.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
In Memorium
This isn't my thing.
Reflecting on someone's life after they've passed. Not my thing. I leave words for memorials and services to those more adept than I, who have more experience at it. But that's the thing about getting older. I'm gaining the experience. Too much, it seems.
The very first compliment that Rob Quel ever gave me was the worst thing he could have said. It was 10th grade. I was in his Writing Lab class. We were giving impromptu sales pitches. He handed us an object - we got up to sell it. Most of the items were random. Some, I suspect, were calculated. One kid got a bottle of Gatorade. The soccer player. Nice. Me? He handed me a pen. And in a scene prescient of "The Wolf of Wall Street" he told me to sell it. I have no memory of what I said. I remember overhearing myself, though, and thinking, whoa, why you getting worked up over a pen? But that was me at 15: cared too much about EVERYTHING. I finished. There was some polite applause and Mr. Quel, sitting in the back of the room, said, "Wow. You should consider a career in evangelism." I assumed he thought I didn't know what the word meant. I was smug in the knowledge that I did know the word and hated it. Of all the things to suggest: religion. To me? Really?
And thus was a relationship born. How could I have known it would span this long.
He coached me as an extemper. He was tough, even unfair sometimes. When I was elected to speak at my high school graduation, by my peers, he looked over my speech half an hour before I was supposed to deliver it and suggested it was too vague. I bristled. How you want me to change it now? I asked, silently.
Then Rob Quel dropped out of my life for almost a decade. I had drama of my own to deal with. When I returned to E.C. Glass in the 04-05 school year, he was still in the elementary world. Assistant Principal here; Principal there. I started to hear sometime later that he might come back to Glass as an admin. His wife worked here; his oldest kid was going to school here. Made sense. Then I was slapped with the first unthinkable thing in my professional life: my Principal, a man for whom I would stand in fire for, was yanked away. Unceremoniously. Gone. Not gonna lie: I'm still bitter about that. I'll probably always be bitter about that because we are, as a school, still living with the resonance of that decision. Not as bad as invading Iraq. But a personal war here nonetheless. One I'm still fighting, most days. So the year after I lost my Principal, Rob Quel reappeared.
One of the first things he said to me that year, after a day of school that week, was a Harry Wong reference. He admonished me not to expend more energy than the students. Make them do the "heav lifting." I felt a tinge of that old excuse me? response. I'll exert the energy I choose, thank you. But he was partially right. My students were sitting in one place too much, listening to me drone on too much. They needed more to do.
Rob challenged me all the time to make the time in my class worthwhile for them. Once, maybe three years ago, I was sitting in his office after school reviewing the evaluations from my students. He was reading some out loud - the bad ones - and giving me a hard time. "Too many students like you," he said. "Clearly you're doing something wrong." But then he found an honest concern. "I think," he started, "that conservatives feel nervous about voicing their thoughts in your class." We looked at the responses together. Sure enough - there was something there. That was a hard conversation to have. I think it was hard for him to confront me on it too. He knew my politics and while I thought I had tried hard to keep it out of my grading I didn't keep current events out of my classroom. I could hem and haw about it all I wanted but the perception was real. How was I going to handle it?
But my best memory of Rob was every time he threw my classroom door open, arresting my lesson and demanding my students rise up and not be subjected to "sad stories" any longer. Our debates about Old Man and the Sea were legendary. He always wanted the old man to beat the living crap out of those sharks. He didn't need the story to have a happy ending, but it didn't need to have a depressing one.
Life, though, has a sense of irony. Because depressing is sitting in my classroom at 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon and realizing that he will never throw my door open again. He will never challenge my literary prowess on social media again. It'll be quiet uptown, I suppose. And I'm not sure I'll ever hear a voice fill that void.
One of my favorite stories is by Norman MacLean, a memoir about his childhood in Montana with a minister father (religion again) and a rebellious younger brother. I quote from that work more and more these days. Two moments stand out to me. The father, after a family tragedy, tells Norman, "We can love completely what we cannot completely understand." Rob served in many capacities to me. A mentor. A teacher. A foil. An antagonist. And I will never understand his passing. I can work at finding some peace though, I guess. But the ending of that particular story is probably more relevant.
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."
Santiago, the fisherman, strains for all his worth but he never saves that marlin. Rob would tell me to fight the sharks. But it's hard because now these waters are haunted.
Reflecting on someone's life after they've passed. Not my thing. I leave words for memorials and services to those more adept than I, who have more experience at it. But that's the thing about getting older. I'm gaining the experience. Too much, it seems.
The very first compliment that Rob Quel ever gave me was the worst thing he could have said. It was 10th grade. I was in his Writing Lab class. We were giving impromptu sales pitches. He handed us an object - we got up to sell it. Most of the items were random. Some, I suspect, were calculated. One kid got a bottle of Gatorade. The soccer player. Nice. Me? He handed me a pen. And in a scene prescient of "The Wolf of Wall Street" he told me to sell it. I have no memory of what I said. I remember overhearing myself, though, and thinking, whoa, why you getting worked up over a pen? But that was me at 15: cared too much about EVERYTHING. I finished. There was some polite applause and Mr. Quel, sitting in the back of the room, said, "Wow. You should consider a career in evangelism." I assumed he thought I didn't know what the word meant. I was smug in the knowledge that I did know the word and hated it. Of all the things to suggest: religion. To me? Really?
And thus was a relationship born. How could I have known it would span this long.
He coached me as an extemper. He was tough, even unfair sometimes. When I was elected to speak at my high school graduation, by my peers, he looked over my speech half an hour before I was supposed to deliver it and suggested it was too vague. I bristled. How you want me to change it now? I asked, silently.
Then Rob Quel dropped out of my life for almost a decade. I had drama of my own to deal with. When I returned to E.C. Glass in the 04-05 school year, he was still in the elementary world. Assistant Principal here; Principal there. I started to hear sometime later that he might come back to Glass as an admin. His wife worked here; his oldest kid was going to school here. Made sense. Then I was slapped with the first unthinkable thing in my professional life: my Principal, a man for whom I would stand in fire for, was yanked away. Unceremoniously. Gone. Not gonna lie: I'm still bitter about that. I'll probably always be bitter about that because we are, as a school, still living with the resonance of that decision. Not as bad as invading Iraq. But a personal war here nonetheless. One I'm still fighting, most days. So the year after I lost my Principal, Rob Quel reappeared.
One of the first things he said to me that year, after a day of school that week, was a Harry Wong reference. He admonished me not to expend more energy than the students. Make them do the "heav lifting." I felt a tinge of that old excuse me? response. I'll exert the energy I choose, thank you. But he was partially right. My students were sitting in one place too much, listening to me drone on too much. They needed more to do.
Rob challenged me all the time to make the time in my class worthwhile for them. Once, maybe three years ago, I was sitting in his office after school reviewing the evaluations from my students. He was reading some out loud - the bad ones - and giving me a hard time. "Too many students like you," he said. "Clearly you're doing something wrong." But then he found an honest concern. "I think," he started, "that conservatives feel nervous about voicing their thoughts in your class." We looked at the responses together. Sure enough - there was something there. That was a hard conversation to have. I think it was hard for him to confront me on it too. He knew my politics and while I thought I had tried hard to keep it out of my grading I didn't keep current events out of my classroom. I could hem and haw about it all I wanted but the perception was real. How was I going to handle it?
But my best memory of Rob was every time he threw my classroom door open, arresting my lesson and demanding my students rise up and not be subjected to "sad stories" any longer. Our debates about Old Man and the Sea were legendary. He always wanted the old man to beat the living crap out of those sharks. He didn't need the story to have a happy ending, but it didn't need to have a depressing one.
Life, though, has a sense of irony. Because depressing is sitting in my classroom at 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon and realizing that he will never throw my door open again. He will never challenge my literary prowess on social media again. It'll be quiet uptown, I suppose. And I'm not sure I'll ever hear a voice fill that void.
One of my favorite stories is by Norman MacLean, a memoir about his childhood in Montana with a minister father (religion again) and a rebellious younger brother. I quote from that work more and more these days. Two moments stand out to me. The father, after a family tragedy, tells Norman, "We can love completely what we cannot completely understand." Rob served in many capacities to me. A mentor. A teacher. A foil. An antagonist. And I will never understand his passing. I can work at finding some peace though, I guess. But the ending of that particular story is probably more relevant.
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."
Santiago, the fisherman, strains for all his worth but he never saves that marlin. Rob would tell me to fight the sharks. But it's hard because now these waters are haunted.
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