Images and Memories

 

Some come from houses, some from apartments, some are homeless. Their caregivers may be parents or step-parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or foster parents. English may be their first language, but, it may not be. They may walk to school, ride a bus, or be driven by a family member. They may be typically developing or have any number or disabilities.

Today they are getting ready for the first day of school. They all live in Howard County.

It’s really quite amazing that we expect the public school system to accommodate every child, from every background, with every assortment of gifts and challenges. Howard County has seventy eight schools that serve students from preschool age through young adulthood. According to Superintendent Michael Martirano, there are 56,500 of them this year.

I’m trying to imagine what 56,500 students looks like.

Most of us went to school, and it’s likely that the majority of us went to public school. Our memories are personal and specific to the time period of our childhoods. I remember the annual trip to Sears for back-to-school clothes, the smell of the old school buildings when you first walked down the hallways each year. I remember the feeling of infinite possibility when we opened a brand-new, beautifully illustrated “reader” and the over-powering dread of being called to the chalkboard to work a math problem in full view of the entire class. 

What do you remember?

My children’s memories are different. Your memories are different. But, whatever those memories are, one thing is constant: public schools have been asked to take on more responsibilities and to provide more services year after year after year. Almost all of those services support children in ways that make learning  possible.*

If we make any mistake when we think about our schools here in Howard County, it may be that we still think of schools as what they were when we were young, and we think of students as people like us. It’s only human nature to carry around that image in our heads. But schools are much more than that now and students are more diverse. If our expectations are too small and too narrow we will view much of what we see as “wrong” or “unnecessary” or “a waste of time and resources.” 

We need to think big: to see beyond our personal memories and expectations. It isn’t that those things aren’t valuable. It’s more that they are pieces of a much bigger puzzle. Schools deal with that bigger puzzle every day. They aren’t perfect, because human beings aren’t perfect. Schools benefit from our engagement and participation, languish without community support, are fragmented by parents who see themselves as authorities whose right is to dictate rather than work alongside of others.

On the first day of school that little piece of ourselves that remembers - - good memories or bad - - awakens and gives us a flash of our pasts. If we have children in school it gets all mixed up with their experiences and our hopes for them. Everyone seems to love those First Day of School photos because they speak to that annual ritual of new beginnings we all remember.

I often lift up teachers and those who work in our schools in my writing. I have a great deal of gratitude for who they are and what they do. 

Today I want to lift up every member of our community who is raising a child and will be sending them off to school. (Mine is going back to college to begin her senior year, so I have some of those same feelings.) I want to try to remember that we as a community are as varied as our children.

Some of us live in single family houses, some in apartments, some of us are homeless.  We may be parents or step-parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, or foster parents. English may be our first language, but, it may not be. We may walk with our children to school, put them on a bus, or drive them there. We may have disabilities; we may not. We may be employed, or looking for work, or retired.

In school our children learn that the world is naturally diverse and that good communities are successful when they honor and support that diversity. What about us? Do we move on from our schooling and retreat into worlds of people who are mostly like us? Adult life gives us many opportunities to stick with our own and no where near enough chances to stretch out of our comfort zones.

This year I am challenging myself to keep all of that in mind as the school year progresses. Not everyone with children in our schools is living the way I live or thinks the way I think. Yet we all live in Howard County. As much as I sometimes struggle with that, I want to get better at accepting it.

*I have my doubts about high-stakes standardized testing.