Good Teachers

The Cornell Alumni Magazine, after reporting that Gabby and I are recovering apace (seriously..... I'm a news article in my alumni magazine... this just keeps getting stranger and stranger....) went on to profile two other alumna, Michelle Rhee (former head of the DC public school system) and Randi Weingarten (president of the American Federation of Teachers). 

Two smart women, two very different ideas about what's right and what's wrong.

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Arizona's legislature is on a rampage, reducing its contribution to public education and cost-shifting much of the rest to the counties.  My school district's latest budget update* includes these delightful tidbits:

• General Fund revenues have declined by one‐third in the last 3 years

• FY ’11 shortfall estimated at up to $(825) M followed by $(1.4) B in FY ’12 – excludes more than $1 B in suspended funding formulas

Did you notice that last phrase?  That's more than $1,000,000,000,000 of unfunded mandates, $1 Billion which was promised but is now in limbo.  We are talking about almost $2 billion dollars which were budgeted but never arrived. 

How can you run a business that way?

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And then I went to Prince Elementary School last week.  Miss Levine's class wanted to read me their stories about kindness.  How could I resist a room filled with 5 and 6 year old authors?  Most of the students hadn't learned the alphabet when they started class in August.  Here they were in March, proudly following along as Miss Levine's fingertip pointed to their words.

Picking up a fallen friend, helping the teacher when she needs it, sharing and caring and gratitude for the clothes their parents provided -- simple acts of selflessness that reminded us all of our better angels.  

Their reward for writing and drawing and reading?  The chance to hug me (seriously..... this was a big deal in that classroom) and then the surprise I'd brought just for them.  Extra t-shirts from the race CrossFitNow put together 14 days after I was shot, a fundraiser for Tucson Together, have been languishing in my garage since mid-January.  Outfitting 24 kindergarteners and their assorted aides and assistants and principals and teachers was a no brainer.  Look at how happy they are:

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Think the story can't get any sappier?  Rest assured, it can.  The principal's 5th grader attends her school.  He would have been a classmate of Christina-Taylor's brother had his mother not put her money where her mouth was, talked the talk and walked the walk, and enrolled her son in her school. 

Would you invest with an advisor who didn't have her assets heavily invested in the same instruments she was recommending to you?  Why should education be any different?  This principal is telling her clients, her constituents, the parents of her students that she values her son's education as highly as she values that of their children. 

Isn't this the kind of employee you'd be likely to reward?  Bonus?  It doesn't seem to be the kind of person from whom you would withhold basic resources.  Not that she couldn't make do without them, but because she shouldn't have to do without them.  
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And so I have to wonder.  How can anyone deprive those faces of anything and everything they need to learn and flourish and grow? How is that a good thing?  How can grown-ups let egoism and territoriality and politics and money interfere with helping each one of these little humans become all that she can be?  How can we create the kind of America Christina believed in if we shortchange their education?

It's a mystery, denizens.  An absolute mystery.

*Budget figures for the Amphitheater School District can be found by following this link.