After pulling out my particular brand of Peruvian Dark Roast, grinding in an outrageously expensive Burr Grinder, scooping exactly 12 1/3 scoops of coffee into my French Press, boiling water but then letting it cool to exactly 208 degrees, steeping the coffee for exactly six minutes, pouring 10 oz into my favorite cup along with 1 tbsp of half and half and 1 tbsp of sugar, I sat down to read the New York Times magazine only to find this piece.

Favorite quote:
I am secretly obsessed with the idea of perfect anything. I am weak and searching and desperate, just once, to have a perfect thing.

Having just spent entirely too much time and energy on my perfect cup of coffee, I feel you Mr. Maron.

So I’m running home today, 5.72 miles via the 76 access roads, listening to the music I’ve always liked but now have critical approval for, and I hear this line again:

“And this is for the questions that don’t have any answers.”

It’s been a tough week. Cancer roared back into my life the week I observed a loss from 25 years ago. We’re working crazy hours to keep our students on track and grow our new school.

So much of teaching and parenting is about dealing with the questions that have no answers. How do I inspire kids? How do help my own children cope with the issues I still struggle with? How do we found a school that’s true to our own ideals and gives kids honest post-graduation choices? How do we create individual solutions for kids facing massive structural inequalities?

I can’t answer these questions — they have good and better answers — but I can try. That’s all I can do. And I can look with bemused attachment, if not compassion, at those who have believe that the truly important questions in life have easily defined answers.

Well, today has been a sad ol’ lonesome day
Yeah, today has been a sad ol’ lonesome day
I’m just sittin’ here thinking
With my mind a million miles away.

Lyrics, dude, recite ’em some lyrics.

Telegraph Road
Dire Straights

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a pack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
Made a home in the wilderness
He built a cabin and a winter store
And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
And the other travellers came riding down the track
And they never went further, no, they never went back
Then came the churches then came the schools
Then came the lawyers then came the rules…

Read this poem today with the students, from The Paris Review.

Favorite lines:

Once I entered, I never left
and never stopped going back;
and I’ve never got away from
the aura of toolshops.
It’s like my home ground,
it teaches me useless things,
it drowns me like nostalgia.

Tried to drive at the question of what will be there home ground in five years…what will be their “Tool Shop” when they get older.

Posted and then tying strings across…

Wow. Got there at 8:15. Things started at 8:40 (major, probably inappropriate pet peeve — if things are supposed to start at a certain time, particularly in the golden time of a weekend, then start on time).

But all in all, a day of well-constructed activities and thoughtful questions. They asked us not to publicly talk about it, which is fair, so I won’t write much more.

Most striking thing: I would have been thrilled to have had ANY of these folks as a vp or a principal when I was West. There’s a lot of talk about the lack of administrators in training but I thought everyone there would make a great principal. I also admire and respect the fact that they did not do a national search but instead sought folks who were committed to Philadelphia’s schools.

I did get to run to the awesome Free Library Bookstore, The Next Page, and get a bunch of books:

1. The Modern Library Editions of The Odyssey and The Iliad, for $5 each, with dust jackets in amazing shape. This was a great find as I slowly spiral towards book collecting.

2. I like Garry Wills. Here I was at an interview about leadership and here was his book on leadership. Hardback, great shape.
Garry Wills, Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

3. This looked good. Tom Piazza, Devil Sent the Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America, Original (Harper Perennial, 2011).

4. I had just finished reading “Cage Busting” and while I read this book awhile ago — it’s one of the many “let’s look at school reform over an extended period of time and try and make some sense of it” books — I Wouldn’t buy it new but liked it at $5.
Frederick M. Hess, Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform (Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

5. I like Adam Gopnik, too, and liked what I heard about this book.
Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon, (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2001).

Then I got to watch my son get a game-winning, walk-off hit. Sweet.

We started a program. Now we are starting a school. I have a few credentials. I do not have a principal’s certificate yet. I need one.

I interviewed at a local university, one where I currently adjunct. At least a year and at least $20k. There are other programs that are more expensive and then those that cost less and take longer. I’ve rarely never encountered someone who raves about their principal cert program other than the occasional person who talks about how painless it was.

Here’s a program, then, that will provide a route to principal certification. Free. I had to apply.

It’s run by the New Teacher Project (tntp) and sponsored by the Philadelphia School Partnerships (PSP). I think.

I know TNTP was started by Michelle Rhee. It looks like a lot of TFA folks are on their staff.

Anyway, tomorrow I miss my weekend day, my son’s baseball game, my daughter’s softball game, a long-run with an old friend, a chance to finish a Hilary Mantel novel, and time in my garden so that I can report to an interview at 8:30 that will last until 6:15. I had a shorter interview for an academic position at a terrific liberal arts college.

I’m supposed to read a chapter from Rick Hess’s book — Cage Busting Leadership — and the executive summary of The Irreplaceables. The chapter from cage busting wasn’t bad and was fairer than I thought it would be. You could see how the union folks would hate it; for example, you can generate a clean slate by crushing the union or you can generate a clean slate by starting a new school with the union as a partner. I also thought much of the general advice was spot on — you can’t think about teaching without thinking about the situation within which people teach — if not particularly original or deep. Begin with a quote from the Matrix and end with a line from Swingers and your target age group becomes readily apparent.

I struggled with The Irreplaceables. There are some good, even great, teachers in most buildings. But their greatness isn’t just about test scores and at least the executive summary seemed to show that test scores are the sole way of measuring an “irreplaceable.” I’ve seen average teachers completely elevate their game when part of a great team and I think I’d rather be the leader who builds a team than one who identifies some teachers as too valuable to lose.

Sorry for rambling. My famous friend and neighbor suggested that I blog about this experience.

I had this phone interview yesterday with a thoughtful teacher leader. The questions focused on failure: what’s a failure I experienced as a teacher, as a leader, as a teacher interacting with a parent, as an assessor. The questions were fine but called for distinct stories, for specific examples and interactions I had with kids around school.

And I have those stories — when things broke down, when my perceived level of student understanding didn’t match the reality, when I failed to communicate with a kid effectively, when my expectations were not met. I struggled with the questions because as a teacher, a father, and a human being, I fail pretty much continuously. I make mistakes with my students each day. Of the thousand decisions I make each day — how should I talk to this student? How should I structure this assignment? How should I offer help? What should I suggest? Should I be funny or serious? Should I bring up past conversations or not? Should I talk about what I know of their life, their family, or merely hint at it? Should I ask questions or give advice? — a significant portion are decisions I’d reconsider.

Yet I also have clear ideas about what I want for my students. I want them to use their significant social and academic skills to solve real world problems. I want them to monitor their own learning and to be able to adapt to difficult situations. Each conversation, each interaction via email or gchat or in the comments section of a paper, I’m trying to get them towards these goals.

But what felt weird about this interview is that it seemed like you could isolate certain factors. Let’s look at the way someone asks questions without any sense of the context of the class. Or let’s look at the student work without any sense of where in the year it was written or what real world purpose it might serve. Let’s ask teachers to forget about everything except how they’re completing one particular task.

Don’t get me wrong…I understand the impulse. If we can block from our minds the social and cultural worlds of a school, a community, and a city, and pretend that they have no impact on what the classroom might feel like, then we can laser in on one point. And if we declare that all a teacher needs is guidance on a few areas, areas that can somehow be isolated, then we can believe that we can improve education without addressing the structural inqualities that permeate American life.

We’ll see whether I make it to the interview stage…

Got to Larry’s shop and found four things:

A Ted Sizer hardback in great shape that I hadn’t seen before. He was the school leader of my high school until the year I arrived. I wish I’d met him. Horace’s Compromise remains one of the better books about what it means to be a teacher. I’m interested in this memoir.

(Theodore R. Sizer, The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

Tom Sugrue’s latest book. I didn’t get it when it first came out and was thrilled to see a hardback in great shape.

(Thomas J. Sugrue, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

A book that I must have read a review about because as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted it.

Frederic Raphael, A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus (Pantheon, 2013).

And lastly, a book on a mathematician because I’m always looking for books for my math and science teachers. Will post citation later.