Looking for Truth in Onaway

 I sat through two-thirds of the policy committee's meeting on Wednesday, and here's what I took away. They had asked the school's law firm to send an attorney to answer questions. The man was polite and helpful, despite long, circular discussions that went on and on. He told the board some things that should clear up controversies that should never have happened. *They cannot go into classrooms and look at teachers' grade books. That information is available in other places, so they don't even need to. *They cannot wander the school halls looking for violations of the handbook. They should not consider themselves one-person investigators of any situation. *They should not take parent/citizen complaints that have not already been made to involved staff. Chain of command is important and works efficiently in most cases. *They can name a school board member to hiring committees. I'm thinking that question came in reaction to the football coaching job. *They can as

  Last night, I attended my first board meeting in person since January. (The whole broken leg thing has been a real downer.) I’ve been watching them on FB (thanks, Stacy), but it was good to be there and be able to hear and see better. It was great to see the board functioning as it’s supposed to. The event was a workshop to examine ways to update the school, a process that has been planned for some time now. A citizen committee has looked into the possibilities. Community members were canvassed as to which updates they thought were most important. A firm was hired to look the campus over and make recommendations. Now the board is hearing from those entities, and they will decide what we must have, what we should have, and (maybe) what we’d like to have. The recommendations will be made public soon, so the taxpayers are informed. It’s the way school business goes. Always has. What was great to me was seeing our board members interacting with each other in a civil manner. They

  I used to start every year of 10 th grade English with a unit on advertising, as a way to teach kids to think about persuasion. While we’re all aware of ads, we often don’t stop to think about how they convince us to buy a product. What we looked at back then could be useful now, in this time of confusion about what is true and what isn’t. When someone makes an argument, for a cause or an idea, ask yourself: 1.        What is being “sold”? In advertising, that’s easy, but in other areas, it’s more difficult to see what you’re being offered. Solutions to a problem? A person or platform to vote for/support? Just as you have to decide whether you really need butt deodorant, you also should think about what politicians, from national to local, are trying to sell you. Right now, in many cases, it’s fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of those who are different. 2.      Who is making the claim? Knowing a person’s goals and motivation helps us understand why they sa

 At Tuesday night’s board meeting, a comment was made by a board member that upset me. I don’t have it verbatim, but it was something like this: Old teachers shouldn’t be allowed to attend these meetings. Let me tell you about old teachers. They’re educated . In order to become teachers, they had to leave Onaway and see a bit of the outside world. They read . And they know how to read between the lines and figure out what someone isn’t saying; what they really mean. They care. After twenty, thirty, sometimes more years in the school system, they care about it. They know how the system works, and they know its flaws. One of the biggest problems a school can face is a board member (or four) with an agenda. Work on everything else tends to stop while this person (these people) rant about their favorite subjects, which are either wrong or don’t focus on real goals for improvement and advancement of all students. They know people . Like many former teachers, I taught every student

  I once had a student chastise me—gently, but sincerely—for telling my class that Richard the Lionheart might have been homosexual. It isn’t a big deal, except it’s one explanation for why he left no heirs, despite having a lovely bride. It meant we got his half-crazed brother John as king when Richard died. Hence the Magna Carta. The student stayed after class to share her opinion that kids (in this case 10 th graders) should only be told “good things” about famous people. History should be uplifting, she maintained, showing us how to be the best we can be. Knowing that came straight from her father’s mouth, I didn’t argue, but thanked her for her input. Too many are sliding into that mindset these days. According to some, it’s bad to admit that our country has faults. It makes students feel “ashamed” of their race and their heritage. I have issues with that mindset. First, truth is truth , no matter how much we might dislike it. I admired Bill Clinton as a President, but wh