Have you ever had a flashback to a long-ago experience in your life? Now, as an adult, you get to relive it with all of its emotion – be it excitement, happiness, or even terror. But this time it’s different. Now you are older and hopefully wiser. This time you are the adult observer – the one who remembers.
Lessons Learned Through Time
This happened at Public School 50 in Queens, New York, sometime in the spring, many, many years ago.
I can still see the faces of my classmates as I whizzed, non-stop, past them. I had been propelled from the threshold of the doorway across the oak flooring, past the students’ desks and amazed faces, past the teacher’s desk at the front of the room, and all the way into the coat closet. I did not stop until I reached the wall where, as I looked up, I came face to face with the coat hook that was about to poke me in the eye. It worked. I stopped crying and I was back in the classroom.
The whole incident started because I liked school. It was first grade, and I already liked the routine of school. I liked the smells of school: the glue, the waxed floors, and the smell of wet children coming in from the rain, dribbling drops of water onto the floor. I loved the books and all that they promised. I loved school and nothing could keep me from it.
Except – for a cold and fever.
Because of these conditions I was kept at home for days and then upon returning to my favorite sanctuary, I suddenly felt shy. As I stood outside the door with my mom, I tried to explain to her why I didn’t want to go into the room, but my words did not make sense. I couldn’t explain how my rhythm for school – my momentum – had been broken. I feared I could not get back into step again with so much that had been taught and learned during my absence. I didn’t know how to say any of this in words, so I stood there obstructing the doorway and cried.
My teacher, Miss Mahoney, and my mother both attempted to cajole me into entering the room, but I knew deep inside of myself that I would not return to that classroom. It was a firm decision that I made, and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I expected to simply turn my back and leave the building with my mother.
It was then that Miss Mahoney, undoubtedly concerned about getting back to her students and her lesson, took action. She drew back her arm, expertly swung it forward, landed it squarely on my back, grabbed my brown and cream tweed coat with its fake fur collar, and gave me the push that sent me flying across the room and back to my studies.
And so, I learned. I learned about the limits of my control. I learned how to face the mighty will of others. I learned about the strength of a parent and a teacher working in collaboration. I learned that school and learning must go on, and on, and on. I learned, and I became educated.
Many years later, in my role as a school principal, I remembered those lessons and recounted the story of this incident to Lisa, my trusted secretary. The administrator of a school in the 21st century must constantly juggle multiple concerns: safety, instruction, achievement, staffing, and facility issues among them. On that day, as we prepared students and staff for standardized testing, my concerns were appropriately focused on student attendance and achievement.
Student attendance, along with achievement data were used to measure each school’s Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. AYP determined accountability for each school under the No Child Left Behind Act. So not only was it important that students do well on the tests, but they had to be there to take the tests.
And so, it was with these concerns in mind that I hurried to add my assistance to a problem reported to me on my handheld radio: there was a student who refused to come into the building. Whatever terrors he faced, they had overwhelmed him, his mother, his teacher, his counselor, and the campus monitor. All had tried to convince him to enter the school. Now it was going to be up to me. I would have to use all my knowledge of learning and child development, all that I knew about school administration and local and federal laws to solve this dilemma.
Would I try Miss Mahoney’s effective technique?
No. Doing that would require extensive documentation of the entire incident: witness statements compiled from everyone at the scene, a medical examination of the child, a criminal investigation of me, intervention by juvenile protective services, my explanations to parents and staff along with my refusal of interviews with the media, and of course, my termination.
None of this would help us achieve AYP.
