The Devil of Perfectionism

So already, when a word comes up in multiple places in a short period of time, I pay attention to it. Last week, I read the word "perfectionism" in three different places, all of which warned people away from it.

 

In my experience, perfectionists invariably want something good, and want to do something good. What separates them from others similarly motivated is their belief that doing everything right, that doing every little thing "excellently" and to the highest standards, is the best path toward their cherished aspirations. 

 

Being perfectionists, they're often both comforted and intimidated* by the word "best." They're often accustomed to doing things very, very well, and they fall back on the old habit of striving to meet high individual standards when they don't know what else to do in pursuit of their goals.

The irony is that according to what I read, pursuing perfection is precisely what gets in their way. Too much attention to doing things perfectly often blinds them to other possible if less "certain" ways of working toward their goals. Forsaking perfectionism, they might find themselves listening more to others, thinking more about  others (as opposed to the idea of others); writing really rough, really terrible rough drafts; or wondering at length what the neighborhood crows have been cawing about all morning.** Forsaking perfectionism, they might find themselves in less self-inflicted pain, even if there's other pain to be felt.

So what kinds of problems and challenges make us nervous and uncertain enough to fuel our perfectionist tendencies? pull us out of our comfort zones? proclaim to us that we're not fully in charge? make us feel stupid and small, even lost--and sometimes, dangerous and harmful?

I wasn't surprised that Julia Cameron talked about perfectionism as counterproductive in Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity:

In light of all of this, I am not sure where we got the idea that in order to be 'real' artists we had to do things perfectly. The minute we see the world 'perfect' . . . , spontaneity goes out the window. . . . . (78) ***

When the goal is creating art, regardless of the type of art, we absolutely need to play and to experiment--and need to appreciate that "Anything worth doing well is worth doing badly" (79). In fact, creating bad art is generally believed to be a prerequisite for making good art. And the good news is that bad art, generally kept out of sight and earshot of others, usually doesn't harm them.

 

The next place I saw a take-down of perfectionism was in Rabbi Daniel Klein's column on the Hebrew College website. In "Elul: Beginning the Journey Home," Klein encourages his Jewish readers to examine their customary approaches to "teshuvah (repentance/returning)," often understood exclusively as "the process of reflection on and assessment of our actions and direction in life, making amends for misdeeds, and striving to live better lives."**** Having recently read in "a contemporary Hasidic book on spiritual practice" that "proposes that the core of teshuvah is not the self-assessment elements that lead to behavioral changes," Klein reveals that he is focusing his teshuvah efforts this year on "living with and in response to the God we find within ourselves and, of course, everyone we encounter"--and encouraging us to consider doing the same.

 

Not that how to do that feels obvious to all Jews. But relegating self-assessment to a secondary position makes being Jewish less intimidating during the annual High Holiday season of God's "judgment."***** The good news, according to the book Klein read, is that “'The Holy Blessed One does not require perfection, rather that we strive to serve with all our might….'" When it comes to teshuvah, the combination of sincere, effortful striving and loving intent atones, brings us closer to God, even when it doesn't yield "results." 

And that's the purpose of teshuvah: "reconnection to our unconditionally loving Source."  The key word is "unconditionally"--not conditioned on our achieving certain behavioral standards--which is not to say that we shouldn't strive and that we won't feel "regret for and sadness about our misdeeds." But perfectionism misses the point.

It misses the point in schools, too, where education--students' learning itself, students' coming to trust in their capacities to learn--cannot transpire outside of the relationships among teachers and students, each of whom bring with them each day the realities of their "traditional" positions in schools and society. And it misses the point in schools in which primarily BIPOC****** (black, indigenous, and people color) student groups, historically systemically deprived of the same quality of education as their white peers, are taught by white teachers.

 

I mention this because the third place I saw a critique of perfectionism was in From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Reflections on Race, Culture, and Identity, co-edited by Chris Emdin and sam seidel. Unlike so many educator critics who pick up their pens to call out the failures of school policies, political leaders, and other educators, the educators whose essays appear in this book put themselves under the interrogator's spotlight and share personal painful, discouraging educator moments. These moments led them to understand that their commitment to social justice and educational equality, especially as pursued by questing after mastery of their teaching craft--teaching perfection--could not make their whiteness a neutral reality for their students or themselves.

 

In the book's first essay*******, Maya Park discusses how, as a first-year teacher, she came to view "my imperfections as a teacher as inseparable from my racism," which led her to embrace perfectionism as "my tool against racism" (4). After a particularly disturbing and probably harmful interaction with a student, she concluded that "To pursue perfection was to dehumanize us both" (6). Needless to say, she needed to try something different; and she did.

 

In a later essay, Adam Seidel also explores the temptation to resort to perfectionism, even when it doesn't seem like the best response to a perceived problem, because what a better response might be seems vague and potentially self-incriminating. Seidel describes a moment in a summer staff meeting when, instead of trying to make sense of some disturbing data about the college graduation rates of their former students, the teacher group recommitted to their usual approach to preparing their students for success in college: "we are going to have to work harder to make sure our lessons are vigorously prepped and practiced, our school systems and expectations are tight, and we build a culture that celebrates academic achievement" (128).********* In a nutshell, they said to themselves, "Let's get even better at what we're always trying to do better rather than even think about doing something really different."

"The Man Who Swallowed a Bird" by Scott Ketcham

But Seidel recognizes the problem with this: "we
were working to turn passion into a pathology--one that builds on a foundational belief that 'better is good enough' or more specifically that 'better than is social justice,'" which he comes to understand "in the context of white supremacy" (129). In light of this realization, Seidel changes his behavior in his own classroom: "on my best days, I shifted my practices, hovering above my interactions with students, listening with a closer ear to my language an how power and whiteness were held between us" (129).

But he doesn't quite know how to lead his staff to the same realization and to co-created shifts in practice that might lead to "true" educational quality and social justice. Toward the end of the essay, he explains, "I wasn't confident enough to try and be wrong. The stakes feel obvious now, and I'd like to think I would do things differently if I could go back, but whiteness and power and perfectionism were holding me back" (130).

Adam is my former student (as is his brother sam), and it pains me to read about his "shame and fear" (130). But I so admire his courage in "going public" with his story of coming up short and regretting it in retrospect. And I also know that his sharing of his story, along with his analysis of what was operating inside of and around him, and his feelings about it then and now, is an act of leadership that encourages the rest of us to be brave enough to stumble into this difficult problem space with others and be as genuine and unguarded as we can be. Again, perfectionism is not the answer, and when it becomes the comfortable fallback when we don't know what else to do, it uses up the valuable time and energy that could be devoted to a critical problem.

One of the biggest problems with perfectionism is that it's too often accompanied not just by disappointment, but by crushing self-loathing.********* There's work to be done--whether it's the work of making art, doing teshuvah, or doing right by one's students. Self-critique must necessarily be part of that work at some point. But this is where Julia Cameron again comes to the rescue, often reminding her readers to "Be gentle with yourself while you grow accustomed to your new mental and emotional terrain" (Cameron, 141). In my experience, the devil retreats when the pressure to be perfect dwindles, then disappears. After that happens, the real work can be done, even if it takes a while, is often discouraging, and almost always refuses to conform to a linear path.

 

* Illustrations and quotations about perfectionism accompanying the following: MacNaughton, W. (2024, April 14.) On perfectionism. DrawTogether with WendyMac. https://club.drawtogether.studio/p/on-perfectionism-69a

** Photo included within the following blog: Petrak, C. (2014, March 4). A murder of crows. Tails of birding . . . and things with wings. http://tailsofbirding.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-murder-of-crows.html

*** Cameron, J. (2003). Walking in this world: The practical art of creativity. Penguin Random House.

**** Klein, D. (2024, September 1). Elul: Beginning the journey home. Hebrew College. https://hebrewcollege.edu/blog/elul-beginning-the-journey-home/

***** Original drawing accompanying Green, E.C. (2021, March 5). The triumph of teshuva. Times of Israel. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-triumph-of-teshuva/

*(6) Screenshot of photograph included in the following: Chatterji, R., Campbell, N., & Quirk, A. (2021). Closing advanced coursework equity gaps for all students. Cap20: The center for American progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/closing-advanced-coursework-equity-gaps-students/

*(7) Park, M. (2024). Can we water ourselves and our students at the same time? In Emdin, C.& seidel, s. (Eds.), From white folks who teach in the hood: Reflections on race, culture, and identity (pp. 3-11). Beacon Press. 

*(8) Seidel, A. (2024). Much like all of the last. In Emdin, C.& seidel, s. (Eds.), From white folks who teach in the hood: Reflections on race, culture, and identity (pp. 125-130). Beacon Press. 

*(9) Photo accompanying the following: Sheryl. (n.d.) Say goodbye to perfectionism, and unleash your creative genius. thecreativelife. https://thecreativelife.net/goodbye-to-perfectionism/

Dog Days Reflections--Or What I Read This Summer

So already, first of all, the word "reflections" in the title of this blog is somewhat misleading: I haven't been reflective AT ALL this month. Recently I bought the birthday card shown in the adjacent photo to put aside for the November birthday of a dog-loving friend. All month long, I've been more like the dog on the right--jumping up and looking out and changing my mind about what I'm seeing--than like the philosophical, "looking inward" dog on the left. Consequently, this blog is not profound.

 

Second of all, the phrase "Dog Days" in this blog's title is also somewhat disingenuous. This year I completely forgot about the Dog Days, that time of year when "the Sun occupies the same region of the sky as Sirius, the brightest star visible from any part of Earth . . . [that's] part of the constellation Canis Major, the Greater Dog."*  

 

I suspect that if I'd been out at our cabin sometime between July 3 and August 11, I would have been aware of them: In rural upstate New York, it's hard to avoid seeing constellations in the night-time sky. 

 

But I was in Quincy, living through the final weeks of my kitchen remodel, and then the period of kitchen resettlement, which included not only putting my old kitchen things into their new kitchen places, but eliminating the evidence of the weeks of construction--not so much ashes to ashes, as dust to dust. My mind was ping-ponging, ricocheting between "there or there?" 

 

It was exciting and fun, but it made it hard to settle myself down and be Sirius (okay, bad pun) about writing: the space in my kitchen had taken over the space in my mind. 

 

But seeing out was not just about looking out of windows and noticing squirrels that were really leaves. Or looking into new kitchen cabinets and wondering what object really would be better in a different spot. It also meant looking outside of myself and away from my morning pages (I've been doing Julia Cameron's Walking in This World course this summer, as I mentioned in my July post) and into books. Once I started reading other people's writing, I kept reading. It felt good.

 

Once I'd finished reading Sarah Hurwitz's Here All Along, I picked up Queen Bess by Maria Vetrano. Vetrano's literary agent is one of my former Marblehead High School students** who recently fulfilled a long-held professional dream by founding Green Light Literary + Media, LLC, which she owns and operates. I was honored to receive an advance copy from her, and I loved it. As the Simon & Schuster website explains, "Self-made billionaire Dakota Wynfred is convinced that the only way to save American democracy is by putting the last Tudor Queen in the Oval Office." The book is scheduled for release on October 15. 

 

Just as I was wrapping up Queen Bess, a very different book came to my attention, one co-edited by one of my former Cambridge Rindge and Latin Pilot School students***, and containing chapters written by several others of them.**** I haven't finished all of From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Reflections on Race, Culture, and Identity--of course, I began by reading chapters written by "the Cambridge kids"--but already I'm thinking thoughts I haven't thought before, and remembering moments as a teacher when I wish I'd done better or accidentally did well. As one of my former Cambridge bosses***** has said on a number of occasions, "I am always learning from my former students." I am looking forward to reading this book in its entirety and continuing to learn.

Days after the official end of the Dog Days and the arrival of White Folks, my husband Scott and I headed out to our very low-tech cabin, where I tend to do my best reading. Given our quarter-mile walk to the cabin from the road, we think hard about what books to bring since bringing them means hauling them. I brought four books--a work of fiction, a work of non-fiction, and two books of poetry, all of which I read: immersion is so much easier in a place without alerts, notifications, and a beckoning television screen.

 

The first of the books I read was written by a former CRLS colleague****** and published in 2002. Who Will Say Kaddish? A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland combines autobiography, history, and on-the-ground inquiry centered around the questions of who is really Jewish and how (and when) Jews choose to identify themselves to themselves and others, Jewish and non-Jewish--questions that persist in 2024 in America, Israel, and elsewhere. Since Scott read the book, too, we had lots to discuss.

The two poetry books I read were perfect reads for rural Berlin. The late Rebecca Elson was an astronomer who wouldn't have overlooked the Dog Days. According to A Responsibility to Awe's back cover, she viewed poetry as "a necessary aspect of research, crucial to understanding the world and her place in it." 

 

My poetry reading group hoped that reading Kathleen Jamie's The Overhaul would let us experience the landscape and people encountered recently by one of our members on her trip to Scotland and northern England.

The fourth and final of my cabin reads was James by Percival Everett. I saved it for last because I was so curious about it. First, because I know The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so well, having taught it to six years' worth of Marblehead High School white ninth-graders (hardly the same experience as being a white teacher teaching it in "the hood"), ******* I was curious to see what parts of Twain's work Everett would maintain and how. I was also curious what he would add to the narrative because Huck and Jim aren't always together in Twain's book.

Second, I was curious because I'd recently read Everett's The Trees, a history-based novel that managed to be really funny and deadly serious as it dealt with the topics of systemic racism and white supremacy. Would Everett manage that same mesmerizing balance here? The Trees is great, and must-read for anyone who'll never forget Emmett Till, whose body was discovered sixty-nine years ago today.

And James is great, too--funny, terrifying, disgusting, depressing, deadly serious, deeply touching, inspirational. I can't do it justice in one short paragraph. But I can talk about my first impressions briefly. Over the years, I've read a number of novels about the experience of enslaved Americans that made important lasting impressions on my mind, heart, and imagination--most recently Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend. But James layered other sensibilities and possibilities of enslaved experience onto the images I'd accumulated and ideas I'd developed. 

As I read, I found myself using the word "grotesque" to describe many of the manifestations of the institution of slavery that I encountered in the book--and language is very important in the story. Like other grotesque things, slavery was twisted--and therefore twisting of almost anything and anyone it touched. Ironies abound in this novel--and the people in the novel who've become blinded to them, willfully or not, become grotesque. If these grotesque people are white, they become especially dangerous and deadly.

So I missed the Dog Days this year. And introspection was much less pressing than inspection--of my new kitchen by the city electrical, plumbing, and building inspectors. I may not have looked inward much this summer, but I did do a lot of looking outward and through--specifically through the eyes of the writers whose books I read this past month. I enjoyed it and was enriched by it. And if you've made it this far, thank you for reading!

* Farmers' Almanac Staff. (2024, June 7). What are the Dog Days of summer? Farmers' Almanac. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/why-are-they-called-dog-days-of-summer

** That would be you, Maura Phelan.

*** That would be you, Sam Seidel.

**** Those would be you, Adam Weinstock, Adam Seidel, and Eli Tucker-Raymond.  

***** That would be you, Ray Shurtleff.

*(6) That would be you, Larry Mayer. I'm proud to be your writing partner: I learned so much from your book about how to intertwine autobiographical narrative, non-autobiographical narrative, and exposition. And your questions linger in my mind.

*(7) I stopped teaching Twain's book when I got to Cambridge when the only African-American student in one of my classes told me how difficult it was for her to have her white classmates respond to the racism in Huck's world only intellectually. I wish I'd had some of the professional learning opportunities my younger colleagues have had recently to help them become more responsive teachers of literature that elicits strong difficult emotions in our students. I still believe that Huckleberry Finn, is a great book, an American must-read and must-discuss. But that doesn't mean one must read it before the age of 18.

*(8) “Good Smells: A Memoir of A Lifelong Pursuit” by Clancy – image copyright Sue Clancy 2019. Image accompanying and screen shot from Clancy, S. (2019, February 13) reading and books in art. sue clancy -- artist. https://sueclancy.com/2019/02/13/reading-and-books-in-art/comment-page-1/

The Teaching-Indoctrination Confusion

So already, when did teaching become synonymous with indoctrinating? And when did teaching history to students become synonymous with indoctrinating them with "the lesson to be learned" from it? Finally, when did withholding historical facts and artifacts from students become the antidote to indoctrination?

These questions all re-entered my mind this morning when I saw the headline of the "Political Notebook" feature in today's Boston Globe: "Education issues top GOP's presidential race." According to this feature, Republicans are especially targeting race- and gender-related curriculum and instruction.

Oh, how we fear facts because of the conclusions students might draw from them!

I have a theory about why the "teaching=indoctrinating" belief is so robust among many Americans whose goals are not obfuscation and political power. It's less about their psychologies and sociological needs than "the articles" say. 

My non-research-based belief is that their own educations were more indoctrination-centered--or at least, interpretation-centered--than inquiry-centered. In other words, as students, more often than not, they were handed conclusions rather than asked to draw them. So they fear that students today are being similarly told what to think, and even what to believe.

Certainly my own my eighth-grade US history class was centered on the interpretations drawn by my teacher. She taught that the Civil War was fought about states rights, not slavery; we, her students, weren't asked, based on our considerations of various speeches and events, what we thought the Civil War was fought about.

Interestingly, that I had been taught an interpretation of American history was not something I understood until well into my teaching career, which emphasized inquiry and critical thinking with awareness of perspectives. But my teacher wore a Confederate uniform to teach the Civil War and wrote "Save your Confederate money, boys--the South will rise again" at the bottom of our tests and quizzes--and this was in late 1968, just months after Martin Luther King, Jr.s assassination. I can't say she didn't have an agenda in sharing her interpretation.

I know: you may be thinking that I'm confusing indoctrinating with interpreting. And I do understand there's a difference. Indoctrination is a deliberate practice aimed at shaping beliefs about--as opposed to understandings of--how the world works, has worked, and should work, often for the purpose of keeping people in the fold or winning them over to a side or a cause. In contrast, interpretation, even when it's too passionately communicated or unsuccessfully hidden, doesn't have that aim. What alarms me is when students aren't given the chance to draw and honor their own conclusions, even if those conclusions are tentative works-in-progress. And especially if those conclusions might rock the boat.

In addition, I get disturbed when opinions are presented as indisputable truths. I feel pretty confident that students in inquiry-centered classrooms, on encountering Nikki Haley's recent pronouncement on Twitter that "CRT [Critical Race Theory] is un-American," would immediately ask, "From whose perspective? According to what criteria?"

I do appreciate that teachers have always wielded a lot of power and still wield a lot of it today. After all, they grade kids. And I also know that many teachers are themselves products of educational systems in which the teacher's interpretation was gospel and had to be learned--essentially memorized and parroted back. Furthermore, I believe some teachers may not realize the degree to which they are communicating if not necessarily imposing their interpretations and beliefs.

I remember thinking this some years ago when I was a teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. When several students arrived late to study hall one day and I asked why they were late, they explained that they'd been studying with other students for their test in the Advanced Placement English class the next day. "We were agreeing on what Mrs. ______ (name withheld) thinks about ____________ (title of book withheld) so we could give it back to her on tomorrow's test," said one boy.

Their teacher, my colleague, loved literature and loved students. Thanks to her focus and dedication, her students could skillfully detect evolving literary motifs, identify significant narrative structures, and perceive subtle variations in tone. But despite their having gained great meaning-making tools from her, they still believed that she expected them to interpret literature as she did--and would grade them in accordance with her expectation.

Frankly,  I don't believe any of them would have accused her of indoctrination. But I do wonder if expressed zealous interpretation can be a precursor to indoctrination in some instances. 

That's all the more reason inquiry-centered teaching is essential. The solution to the education-as-indoctrination slippery slope is always to make central students and the facts, information, artifacts, and arguments that, ideally, compel them to apply their developing critical thinking abilities. Students can be taught and trusted to draw their own conclusions about "what happened and why," the way the world works, and causes and effects, even those that cross borders and decades.

If the solution to the teaching and learning problems that Republicans identify is to hide historical reports, events, and artifacts, then they must be very afraid of what students might conclude on the basis of them. In the best cases, teaching leads to learning, whether or not we like what students learn.

Cambridge Memories of My Dad

So already, my very sweet, very kind 94-year-old dad, Ben Soble, passed away peacefully on Saturday, December 12, one more of COVID-19's many victims. That's him to right, smiling proudly right before a holiday concert performance by his senior living community's choral group, which he joined as a 90-year-old. In my whole life, I'd never known my dad to be, or even to aspire to be, a choral singer. But at Orchard Cove in Canton, MA, music and companionship beckoned, and my dad heeded the call, with enthusiasm.

Needless to say, as the word spread that my dad had passed, many reached out to my sisters and me to share stories and memories. That's when it struck me that I had a very particular set of memories that members of my extended family might never know unless I wrote about them--though I suspect that what they reveal about my dad's nature and values will not surprise anybody. Hence this blog.

Geographically speaking, the memories I'm going to share are Cambridge-based, generated just north and northeast of Harvard Square. 

They are much related to my many years as a choral singer and public high school teacher. That's why on the adjacent satellite view, you see labeled Sanders Theater and the Swedenborg Chapel, where my various singing groups performed during my student- and post-student days, and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where I taught for twenty-six of my thirty-five years in public education.

It makes sense to begin with my student days: my parents were Sanders Theater regulars because they attended all of my Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and Radcliffe Pitches concerts. 

My Parents, Two Years Ago--Not at Sanders Theater

When the Pitches sang our first-ever Sanders concert, my parents were warmly welcomed in the group's onstage introduction because  they'd provided so much support during the group's first year--among other things, my dad was always willing to lend his station wagon when we needed it.

Forty years later, when the original Pitches performed again at Sanders Theater, my parents were in the audience again--in roughly the same seats they'd sat in forty years earlier--and were again specially welcome by the group's emcee. You can imagine how thrilled they were! As one of "the girls," as my parents called them, wrote to me in a note last week, "Joan, your dad was such a wonderful 'Father' to all of the Pitches. We loved having your mom and dad in the audience, cheering us on, at all the really big Pitch concerts at Sanders."

After I graduated from college, I still sometimes sang in Sanders Theater as a member of Back Bay Chorale. Soon, though, my parents had to acclimate to crossing Quincy Street and heading to the Swedenborg Chapel in order to hear me sing. It was one of the places the Oriana Consort regularly performed. My husband Scott had already been a longtime member of the Oriana when I joined the group and first met him. 

As he had in the past, my dad quickly made a positive impression on my fellow singers in the Oriana Consort. One former member of the Oriana, someone I've come to know well during the last few years since I began singing in several Hingham-based groups,* put it this way: "I'm thinking of your father's bright smile, and of all the times I saw him, beaming, beside your pretty mother after a concert. His was one of my favorite faces to see in an audience, as he was so obviously delighted to be present."

Recently, the Oriana recently recorded a virtual choir performance of Stephen Paulus' "The Road Home"; if you watch all the way to the end, you'll see that my dad is one of the COVID-19 victims to whom the group dedicated their performance.  Sadly, several current members of the group have also lost parents.

My fellow former Oriana singer was right about my dad's general delight in being present: frequently when I asked him what he really liked in a concert, he'd tell me, "I liked it all." 

"Delighted to Be Present" at Marina Bay With My Cousins and Mom

He had that same embracing enthusiasm about family occasions, especially if they happened in restaurants where there was something new and different to eat: "I liked it all" was something my dad often said about lunches and dinners, too.  

CRLS Seen From Broadway

But back to Cambridge--and to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), where I taught for most of my public education career. For my first thirteen years at CRLS, I taught in  CRLS's democratic alternative school. 

Annually, the Pilot School produced a variety show in which the students sang, danced, rapped, and performed scenes and skits, many of which they wrote collaboratively.** The play was always too long, the school's theater was always too hot, but my parents came every year. They enjoyed watching the students relish being in a play that they had helped to conceptualize and write--and watching the students grow up. "The boy who had the lead in the ____ scene--I think he's eight inches taller than he was last year," my dad once remarked; "The girl who sang ___ --she lost a little weight since last year; and luckily, she didn't sing as flat as she did last year," my mother shared one year.

But it was the annual Pilot School Academic Festival, which featured students' best and most interesting academic work, that really spoke to my dad. CRLS was (and still is) a large urban high school necessarily charged with educating all kinds of students; and as a proud public school product himself whose immigrant parents had arrived in the USA speaking no English, my dad was perpetually interested in how--and how well--CRLS managed to meet the individual learning needs of its diverse student body.

Part of the CRLS Student Ceramic Mural Depicting the Students' Homes***

At every Academic Festival, there was always a table covered with student essays that attracted far less attention than the more visually appealing posters and projects displayed on the nearby walls and easels. But it was at that table that my dad always positioned himself and spent the evening reading students' papers. 

In the days following the Festival, my dad always had comments to make about what he'd read--and learned about the students. "One student had some very interesting ideas about The Scarlet Letter,"  he once remarked. "I was really surprised that a teenager would write with such excitement about the New Deal--but he needs to keep working on his writing skills," he said on another occasion. "I think your students have been learning some things about American history that I was never taught in school," he noted one year. That last remark led us into a whole discussion of dominant narratives and missing perspectives and voices.

That discussion mattered years later when the removal of Confederate monuments became a major issue across America--and in my parents' den at Orchard Cove. When my mother made a nostalgic "Gone with the Wind"-influenced argument for keeping the monuments in place, my dad persuaded her to change her mind with one really good question: "Thelma, would you have wanted to attend the Adolf Hitler Middle School?"

In addition to the topic of how the teaching of American history was changing, my dad was also interested in the pros and cons of standardized testing programs and the factors that made it easy and hard for non-English-speaking students to become proficient English speakers. A couple of years back, when there was a ballot question about charter schools, he asked me to provide him with readings so he could educate himself about the arguments for and against them. 

But as much as educational issues and debates interested him, ultimately it always came back to the students for my dad. He understood that events and experiences played important roles in the way the students saw themselves and their futures. I recall his concern in the early 1990s about how the kids were feeling, and what the school was doing, in response to the police beating of Rodney King; similarly, in 2013, he had questions about how the students were making sense of the Boston Marathon bombings, especially since the Tsarnaev brothers were CRLS graduates whom some of the kids knew personally.

Actually, the second cohort of Kimbrough Scholars

My dad was also attuned to the positive events and experiences that affected students' lives. When the first cohort of CRLS Kimbrough Scholars traveled to Mississippi to further civil and restorative justice efforts related to a Jim Crow-era cold case, he remarked, "These children will never forget that they got to work on something so important."

Whatever education-related topic we were discussing, the background question was always the same: what would give every public school student the best possible chance to succeed, to have a good present and future life? It definitely reflected the values of somebody who liked people, who believed all people deserved to have a comparable chance to embrace opportunity, who believed all people should get to feel good, at least some of the time.****

With the Arizona Sobles at The Townshend in Quincy in Fall 2019

He was also interested in what had become of the kids, something he knew I sometimes knew from Facebook. A few years back, when I told him a former student had opened a new restaurant in Central Square, his immediate response was "When are we going?" We never got to go to La Fábrica Central together, but we did have a great steak dinner at Davio's last winter right before the pandemic changed everything.

I'm starting to ramble, I know; so let me conclude by saying that I'm glad that I got to go to several of my dad's choral concerts over the last few years. It was least I could do, considering that he and my mother had attended 150 of my performances--I think this is a conservative estimate--over the years.

And so in honor my musical indebtedness to my dad--actually, I'm indebted to both of my parents for so many musical and nonmusical reasons--I end with some choral music. It's the second section of Tarik O'Regan's "Triptych,"  which begins at minute 4:29 of this YouTube link. The first part of the section sets an adaptation of a text--Roland Gittelsohn's meditation in The Gates of Repentance (1978)--that will be very familiar to many Jewish readers of this blog post; in fact, my nephew, who's a rabbi, included it in the materials he provided when he officiated at my dad's graveside funeral on December 15:

In the rising of the sun and its going down,

      we 

      remember 

      them.

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,

      we 

      remember 

      them.

In the opening buds and in the rebirth of spring,

      we remember them.

In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,  

      we remember them.  

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn, 

      we remember them. . . .   

When [we're] weary and in need of strength,

      we remember them. 

When [we're] lost and are sick of heart,

      we remember them. . . .

So long as we live, they too shall live,

For they are now a part of us, 

      as we remember them. 

 

Thank you for reading all that I've shared here. It's comforted me to write this, to have shared with you some stories you may not have known, and to have listened again to the music embedded here. Happy New Year to all; and please, please stay very safe!

* Specifically, I've been singing in the Unicorn Singers and Broad Cove Chorale--the former a mixed group and the latter an all-women's group--and in the Crossroads Singers. The Crossroads Singers are a 6-person vocal ensemble that annually--at least when the world isn't in pandemic mode--offers 10 minutes of poetry-related seasonal musical entertainment at the annual Old Ship Church Winter Solstice Poetry Reading. Scott and I are two of the six.

** Note: the staff sang, too, so I count the Pilot Play among my performances that my parents attended, too.
*** Photo by Kristin Knowlton Daugherty; thanks, Kristin!

**** And definitely the question of someone who always chose to play golf at public golf courses, which often meant showing up and becoming part of a random foursome that was getting ready to tee off. Because he often did this at the Fresh Pond Golf Course on the Cambridge-Belmont line, he sometimes ended up playing with one or more of my CRLS colleagues. As a result, one of them always greeted me not with "Hello, Joan, but with "How's Ben?"