Susan Fedor/00-01/Diary Entry10

Entry # 10: Lessons in the Power of Hope

Last week I had jury duty. Along with 249 other citizens of the county, I was called upon to serve in what the clerk of court deemed "the highest civic responsibility." It was a week of revelation for someone who lives a too cloistered existence in a school.

Often, when unexpected responsibility finds me on an errand in the community, I am surprised at the amount of activity that goes on outside a school during school hours. I imagine that the rest of the world goes into a state of suspended animation when the morning tardy bell rings and then reactivates at 2:30 when we dismiss. In reality, a parallel universe is unfolding outside our doors.

Jury duty was just that sort of parallel activity. First and foremost, the experience caused me to reflect on assumptions about people I had come to accept as real. (Pride does go before the fall.) When the broad spectrum of humanity is considered, as it tends to be in your average jury pool, my expectations for wisdom, fairness, and analytical prowess were low.

As an educator, I have come to see my fellow citizens as "average," in my skewed scheme of things. I was wrong. By the end of the week, I had seen nobility of purpose transpose into noble thoughtfulness and action among the least entitled and educated to the most privileged of the group. It was a transforming experience. It is my second chance.

As each jury panel returned from their courtroom having concluded their work, they would regale the rest of us with accounts of the testimony they had heard and the wrangling that went on among them to reach a verdict. Time and time again, I was amazed to hear accounts repeated of the subtle and well reasoned deliberations that had preceded their decisions.

I did not expect to find such thinking among this mix of people. Now, I know better. Sentimental compassion or hard-nosed righteousness was not the norm; an understanding of human nature and the most basic rules for decent conduct ruled the day--consistently. The wisdom of the whole group exceeded that of the individual. That business school experiment I had read about in the New Yorker was right: take a jar of M&M's and have a group estimate the number of individual candies. You will get a wide variance in numbers proposed, but averaged together, invariably they are within about 2% of the accurate count.

Preaching to the school-bashers

The tedium of waiting was trying. But I put the time to good use reading and spreading the good word about schools and students. Repeatedly, I encountered school bashers. Repeatedly, I told them that my work was the best job in the world. "Discipline: there's too little of it today. Schools are out of control. Why would anyone want to teach? And why in a middle school of all places?"

I never shirked the duty of my own personal middle school trial which went on all week, and I never altered my explanation of how education has changed for the better during my 32-year career. Did I change any attitudes? If not, it was not because I had ignored the challenge. What I conclude is some of these negative perceptions are of our own doing.

As "POGO" so sagaciously observed from the comic pages years ago, "We have met the enemy and they are us." Those grocery store conversations overheard by those with no other window into schools may be our undoing. Even our own best promoters, who describe middle schools which are the "range of the strange" or "hormone heaven," do us all a disservice. We must remember what stock people will put in our words about our work and utter our thoughts advisedly.

We were given a lunch break each day, a veritable gift for someone who either eats lunch standing up or not at all. One day we were give two whole hours and one of my fellow jury pool members said, "that's not a lunch break; that's vacation." I had to agree.

Results from our annual needs assessment

I rushed back and forth to school to manage by flying around; walking was too slow. At the end of the day I returned once again, after everyone had departed, to tend to the detritus of the day: mail, returned phone calls, answered e-mail and the like.

In the mail this week I found the summary of our state mandated annual needs assessment which we had completed just before the holidays. As I reviewed the results, overall I was pleased with our marks. However, there were a couple of items with disappointing responses.

One was about a perceived level of accommodation. Consistently the question, "My child gets a second chance" received low marks from parents and students. I am always surprised. From my vantage point, the teachers are doing back flips to accommodate students with flexed deadlines for work completion to test re-takes and make up opportunities. Even as we mete out consequences designated in our clearly drawn discipline code, we recognize the developmental stage of our students with counseling, parent conferencing, planning for future success and the like.

How can they keep saying, year after year, that we do not give second chances? I am mystified. (And do not confuse second chances given to my child as compared to absolute consequences, which should be applied without consideration to any other wrong doer in the interests of maintaining a safe, and secure school environment.)

"Share the Love"

Further fueling my sense of injustice in the survey result is our most recent initiative, named by teachers "Share the Love." This was a tongue in cheek send up of our "Share the Warmth" coat collection project. Here, at the halfway point of the year, there are groupings of students we have unwittingly put together that have become toxic. Teachers beg for relief and semester seems a logical time for the proverbial second chance.

At first, teachers asked for the offending children to be banished. Period. Conceding to the realities of packed classes in all teams, they came back with the proposal to trade these most trying children among the teams. Win-win. Parents love it. Children love it. Teachers love it. Second semester is a second shot at success. And who knows, they may surprise us all. As I talked with some of the "share the love" students, each one smiled and talked about how cool the new team was going to be. Teachers expressed the same sense of optimism and possibility.

So, this was a week of trials and verdicts and truths reconsidered. So often, the easiest way is to do what we have always done is to accept the old truth as new truth. My world view of my fellow man was reconsidered and adjusted to come in line with my new understanding of the power of collective wisdom that comes from individual goodness. More lessons in humility. At school, those students who had met with disappointment and failure were given a second chance for success. More lessons in the power of hope.