It Happens

Missed my alarm clock ringing,
Woke up, telephone screaming,
Boss man singing his same old song.
Rolled in late about an hour,
No cup of coffee, no shower.
-- Sugarland

I've been following a thread of conversation on Facebook with someone that started out about vacations and maternity leaves, but it touched on a lot of important topics as various people chimed in. It was mostly about America not giving as much vacation time as other developed countries. And some viewpoints about the importance of hard work and the balance between expecting people to contribute and be self-supporting, and the charity and care of our citizens. And where priorities are placed or maybe misplaced...when corporate CEOs make millions, while millions of people go without. All this matters to me a very great deal, more than I can explain in a thread on Facebook, and I'll explain why, and explain how I've chosen to live my beliefs on this...

• Maternity leave...babies need to be with their mothers. Period. For the sake of equality some might ask what about dad and I will argue that dad is the next best, and any family member for that matter. But babies need breastmilk. And we need to follow the model of our Scandinavian neighbors and give mothers the paid maternity leave they need. Until we start investing in our families, we will not have the infrastructures we want. We can pay for it on the front end or on the hind end, and the front end is far more productive.
  
  
• Some families can't or won't or don't have the means or ability to care for their children. Again, if this is the case, we need programs that will. But we need intelligent programs and we need programs without so much bureaucracy and red-tape and paperwork that it takes away from the important work of caring for our children. I should know. As a charter school director, I am doing more for less and getting better results than my expensive school district neighbors. And yet I still spend way too much money "being accountable" to our politicians when I could be actually doing the work of educating children.
  
  
• You can't simply say this is necessary or we had to do it that way because.... That is endorsing the status quo and is never okay. Even when things are going well, the status quo should always be questioned. There is always room for improvement.
  
  
• Once you've questioned the status quo, you have to also come prepared with alternatives or it will be only a short period of time before you're brushed aside and people stop listening to what you have to say. I've found two ways to facilitate change. One is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Depending on what scale you do this, it can be called starting over, entrepreneurship, or a revolution.
  
  
• The other way to bring about change is to do it incrementally. Highlight what is good and right and then talk about how you can take that in a new direction with some tweaks. Help people visualize what can be. Energize them about what they have to give.
  
  
• Start making life choices that reflect these values. Start refusing, even in small ways, to be part of the status quo if you don't like it, and start showing other people that there are alternatives - AND - without being labeled an in-your-face-nut, show them that there are alternatives that work.

So what have I done? I worked long enough to qualify to buy a house and then when everyone said it couldn't be done, I quit my job and we existed on one income and one car for 15 years. I nursed my babies long past the age everyone said I should, especially my youngest and everyone said she would be too dependent on me. I think Connecticut and Morocco proved that wrong. I homeschooled my girls because I believed I could give them a better education when they were younger, and then enrolled them in public school when I felt they were ready, not when an arbitrary age came along. I went back to teaching and fought like hell for the services my struggling kids needed and wouldn't stand down when I knew I was right.

Pretty soon, I became the voice for the teachers because they knew I would speak up - respectfully, but speak up nonetheless. And in the end, it got me on almost every committee there was in the building. That led me to getting my principal's license, and insight as to what was really good and really wrong with our educational system. And just like when I was a teenager and vowed to myself I would not do certain things as a parent, I promised that when I became an administrator, there were certain things I would not do. So I set out to create a different sort of school.

Along the way...my Uncle Vern died. I was scared to death of him as a kid because he was so stern. It was only as I grew older that I realized how really cool, how really interesting he was, and how much I enjoyed talking to him. At his funeral, every single one of his children spoke about how, at dinner each night he would ask each of them in turn, "And what did you do to make the world a better place today?" And that they were expected to have an answer. What a powerful message that was for a child growing up! I wanted my children to have that message - and my students. I didn't ask it as a nightly question like my uncle did, but more and more, I became vocal about making a difference in the world.

And so what is different about my school? It isn't the Core Knowledge curriculum. It is something intangible I've tried to create within the framework imposed by all the state laws and Department of Ed rules we have to follow.

It is a place children want to be. It is a place parents want their children to be. It is a place teachers want to work. That is no small order. What makes a school a place EVERY child wants to be at? Where every child feels accepted and successful and cared for? How to we as a staff create that and genuinely convey that? That is the task we have set before ourselves. We have made a commitment that every adult in the building will get to know every single child by name. We will individualize their learning. We all have a stake in their success. Today the Phy Ed teacher was working on a Math lesson with two boys. That exemplifies what I mean. I have other students who, instead of coming to my office because they are in trouble, know that when they are having a tough day they have a free pass to come to my office to talk to me. After the first month or two of school, they almost never need to come talk to me - simply because we have created safe places for them at school and there are adults they trust.

It is a place where teachers have a voice in how the school is run. They are allowed to question the status quo, share ideas, argue as to what is best, make changes, do it differently. All as long as they can show that the children are learning and are well cared for. But it is more than that. They are allowed flexible time off, reasonable comp time, and vacation options within the school calendar. And we talk about what we want the school to become. How we want to shape it, what we want the culture of the building to be. That's something that doesn't happen in a lot of work places. The staff are energized by it and the potential of what can be. My goal, as an employer, is to help a whole cadre of teachers, parents, and students who will eventually become parents and employers themselves, see that there are alternatives to the rigid rules-for-the-sake-of-rules work environment - and that you can create places of work that are both flexible and productive. Places where people want to be. I have not just started a school. I have intentionally invested time in creating a specific work environment for my teachers because I believe that is just as important as the classroom environment they create for their students.

The thread of conversation on Facebook ended with an article about vacations providing people with a sense of renewal. Everyone needs time off. Someone I know worked for a company whose policy was simply "take what you need, but don't take too much." She said that wasn't a good policy because people tended to be too conservative and not take very much at all. My experience is that not everyone is renewed by vacations per se. Some people get a far stronger sense of renewal by doing something creative like woodworking or quilting (I fall in this category). For others, like my teaching partner, it was physical exercise. For my father, it wasn't the time off, but rather the travel (he just happened to need time off to travel).

So yes, I agree there is a huge issue of misplaced priorities, especially when there are CEOs making millions and we have corporations that could be putting that money towards employees' maternity leave, vacation leave, etc. La Leche League has been fighting for longer maternity leave for years. So have other groups. Support that. Look at countries like Finland and Norway and Sweden and see how they made it work. Look at companies in the US that have very family-friendly leave policies and still make a good profit, start highlighting them in the media in very public ways. Start looking for legislative incentives for companies to provide this sort of policy. Revolutionary change is unlikely on this front in the US. So what is good that can be tweaked? What can be? What is the change that you can provide?