So…the week that I got no response regarding the absurd rise in my taxes, the shoddy demolition and construction on one of the ruined houses on our block continues.

Here’s what I wrote to the mayor:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

We’ve met on a number of occasions regarding education matters (I’m part of the team that started the Workshop School). I’m writing about a neighborhood matter.

I have lived on the 4700 block of Hazel Avenue for 19 years. It is outside the Penn catchment area.

My taxes are supposed to triple as my house is assessed at $150k more than it could possibly be worth.

Two recent events:

1. No one at the Office of Property Assessment will tell me anything more than my initial appeal has been denied. They told my neighbor that they didn’t have time to read the documentation we sent. Frustrating that a house is evaluated as worth MORE than many houses in the Penn Catchment, putting me in a position where I can’t afford my taxes because of a school my children cannot attend. Don’t get me wrong, like most good liberals I would happily pay more in taxes for our schools, but fair is fair.

2. On September 6th I reported the demolition and construction that was occurring on a house on my block. It is a full gut of the building. (4721 Hazel Ave). They are tracking construction dust (Lead? Asbestos?) everywhere. They have no permits. Now they’ve begun re-construction. Still no permits. Still no response from L&I.

With a block that has exactly nine owner occupied homes out of forty-four buildings, we are struggling to build a community. It is a great block, one that I’m raising my children on, one that’s four blocks from the public school I helped start. It’s a block where my son and I delivered signs for both of your campaigns.

A little help here would be greatly appreciated. A phone call from someone at OPA (I’ve left multiple messages and exchanged emails and gotten nothing) would be very helpful. L&I might want to address illegal and un-permitted construction fairly quickly.

I appreciate your help.

Sincerely,

Cancer chewed up my outdoor garden time. Trying to get started again.

1. Burpee: Lettuce Vivian
2. Burpee: Basil Mammoth
3. Burpee: Basil Genovese
4. Burpee: Lettuce Little Gem
5. Seed Savers: Lettuce Winter Density
6-7. Seed Savers: Arugula

Arugula appears to be indestructible, so I started extra. I need to fill the various hydroponic pots at home and at school. Hoping for 30-40 viable starts out of 98. Hoping that my sweltering classroom can support winter basil growth.

I’m going to use my school hours as the timer — turn off the lights when I leave and turn them on when I get home — at least until I get a real timer. Maybe this weekend.

Liked this article from last week, particularly this paragraph:

“…they(the tablets) struck me as exemplifying several dubious American habits now ascendant: the overvaluing of technology and the undervaluing of people; the displacement of face-to-face interaction by virtual connection; the recasting of citizenship and inner life as a commodified data profile; the tendency to turn to the market to address social problems.”

to be back in the School District of Philadelphia:

A scene from an episode of Louis CK’s show, Louie.

The violinist:

This is my work. It’s what I’m best at. Meeting our students and their parents yesterday was a simultaneously a thrill and a reminder of the responsibility one assumes as a teacher. I cannot wait to see what we can do together. It’s really hard to explain to non-teachers the thrill of a newly assembled classroom and the first time you get to meet your students. We have an amazing building, an unbelievable staff, and a new way of doing things. I met my students and they are AWESOME. AWESOME.

The shower:
Will there be a strike? Will there be any resources? Will I be teaching eighth graders who had a series of subs for their classes last year, who want to learn but who haven’t been given much of a chance? Will the overheated rhetoric around school reform overwhelm what I’m trying to do in the classroom? Will TPS reports get in the way of the trust I want to develop with my students?

To be continued…

We’re walking in the Wissahickon yesterday and we start playing what we call the Ninja game, where one person closes their eyes and the others see if they can touch them without being heard. We play for a bit and C. declares the following

I can hear everyone except myself!

I thought this was a perfect metaphor for what we’re trying to do in education. It’s easy enough to hear others and identify their false steps. How do we learn to hear the twigs we break, the sand that we rub off the back of our shoes, or the stones that we dislodge?

As Townes put it:

We all got holes to fill
them holes are all that’s real.
Some fall on you like a storm,
sometimes you dig your own.

Hard to say it better although I think Rocky does pretty well.

(Re) reading book four of the Harry Potter series with the kids (book-on-tape in car and out loud to KC). I was poking around in the garden this afternoon and I wanted Mad Eye to stand behind me and bark “Constant Vigilance !” I try and get to the garden some every day but even in a 15’x15′ space there’s amazing stuff and damaging stuff happening in every corner. If you’re eternally vigilant, you’re ahead, but as an amateur, it’s more of a series of new questions to ponder:

why does parsley, when it comes back, arrive with long, thick sprigs and many fewer leaves?
why are squirrels so impossibly evil?
how did I miss the perfect moment to wind the cucumbers up the trellis? how do I move the thicker shoots into position without breaking them?

It’s not just gardening, I think. How much of the everyday would be better if I were constantly watching each action and decision…

Like all teachers in PA, I have to earn 180 hours of Act 48 credits to keep my certification active. (Active, not valid, because my level two cert is permanent but it can become inactive if I don’t do these hours).

I sat down with the SAS system and signed up for a number of on-line courses. I started one — Teaching in the 21st Century: The Need for Change — with my usual drinking from an ashtray face on — but with each day and each assignment, I’m liking the work more and more. It’s not that questions or assignments are particularly novel. Some are good and some are mundane. It’s that I’m being forced to think deeply about what I’m doing (and what we’re doing) in our school. And I’m being forced to write about it, even for a teacher/professor I’ve never met and will likely never meet. It’s surprisingly (and shockingly) helpful.

“The more that higher authorities impose standardized procedures and demand that school-level people adhere to them, especially when these procedures have demonstrably limited merit in their particular situations, the greater is the likelihood that strong people will not join the profession, or if already in it, stay in the work but a short time — Peace Corps volunteer-like — even when the allure of working with children is an extraordinarily powerful one.”

Theodore R Sizer, The Red Pencil: Convictions from Experience in Education (New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2005)87.

Back from vacation and spent forty minutes early this morning working on the front gardens. I figured that I need to add a third category: landscaping. While I pulled a bunch of weeds and took care of the various plants in the front yard, it was less about tending my garden as it was making it look great for passers by. I may be gardening when I tend to our three street trees but when I’m pulling weeds, I’m actually working the landscape.

I don’t know. Another category to ponder.

At the end of the fall, I planted a bunch of garlic. Through the winter and early spring I watched them grow. It was awesome — three feet tall and I thought we’d have garlic for the next year. About six weeks ago, I harvested the scapes, carefully trimming off the ends, trying to leave enough green for the plants to keep growing.

They’re all dead. Wooden husks. No garlic for me.

I’m still not quite sure what happened. Did the various heat waves wipe them out? Did I cut off too much? I know I didn’t over-water but did they not have enough water? Did I not give enough compost to that particular bed? Did the weeds on the other side of fence siphon all the energy from the soil? I’ll pull them out to assess the bulbs tomorrow.

In the end, though, I’m just a gardener. I love my garden but the failure means I spent a shade more at the co-op or TJs or Acme; no one is going to starve. What must it feel like to watch a field and see your food supply disappear or your ability to purchase what you need through the winter wither away. And what does it mean that someone else takes on all of this risk?