Borderland

I’m not writing a New Year’s Resolution post. This is, however, an effort to get back into a more regular writing habit by taking advantage of some weather-induced down time. I’ve fallen off the blog bandwagon a little bit, and now I’ve got fifty open tabs on the browser that I could weave into a dozen different posts. But I’m doing none of that here.

What I have in mind is an example of how I learn by doing, and screwing up, using a couple of real world out-of-school examples. The reason this might matter to a teacher, or to anyone reading an education-related blog, is all the talk we’ve been hearing about innovation and experimentation in education reform. Take, for example, this article in the Washington Post on how Chicago Reforms Could be a US Model, where an education professor is quoted saying, “Duncan’s willing to try new things and see if they work, hopefully keep the ones that do and drop the ones that don’t. I expect that experimentation to continue on a national scale.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not keen on participating in experiments run by bureaucrats. Seems like there should be a release form for this sort of thing. And haven’t we had enough experimentation on a national scale already? Apparently not, if we listen to some of the geniuses who want to run things.

If we were serious about innovation, the ones who would be making decisions about what works, and dropping what doesn’t are teachers, principals, and parents, since they are in the best position to gauge it. And if a top-down trial and error model is what we have to look forward to for the next several years, then we should also wish Barack Obama good luck with that Afghanistan project:

The Pentagon calls its intervention in Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom. The emphasis was supposed to be on the noun. Unfortunately, the adjective conveys the campaign’s defining characteristic: enduring as in endless. Barring a radical re-definition of purpose, this is an enterprise which promises to continue, consuming lives and treasure, for a long, long time.

It’s 40 below zero in town today, and the weather report warns us that it’s going to get even COLDER in the next few days. When this happens, a high pressure cell sits on us and the skies clear – except in town where we get the foggy frozen version of hell from all the chimney-car exhaust. I’m holed up in a sunny -20 degree inversion layer at home today. Cold air sinks, and today at least, higher is better.

But that doesn’t mean we can be care free. It’s still pretty damn cold, and we need to get out now and then. Among other things, I haul water home from town in a big tank in the back of our truck, no matter how cold. When we built our house, the water hauling option was much cheaper than digging a well. Much cheaper. We think of this as being pragmatic, which simply means that we were willing to compromise and live with the consequences, come what may.

We go to a bulk water place with an outside hose that works kind of like a self-serve gas station, except that you put the nozzle in the plastic tank in the back of the truck. We empty it into a holding tank in the basement through a spout near the front porch. The whole system is indoors, except for the truck. In the summer, this is not a big deal at all. We never make a special trip to town for water. The entire family uses less than 100 gallons of water a day for domestic purposes. We even have a garden. One of the tradeoffs is that we need to own a big, clunky gas guzzling truck.

But things get dicey in the winter, which is another tradeoff. Physics lessons present themselves unexpectedly. Take, for instance, the law of inertia, which I was reminded of the day that the loaded 300 gallon tank crashed through the tailgate and slid out onto the road when I pulled away from a stop sign.

The new tank I bought had a siphon arrangement on the inside of it to help it drain completely. I found out that this didn’t work quite as well as it was supposed to when I brought a load of water home the following winter, turned the valve, and nothing came out. Bit-by-bit, residual water built up and froze around the outlet pipe inside the tank. The pipe had an elbow, so I couldn’t push anything through to break it or warm it. And, we don’t have a garage. The last thing I want is to drive around with a one ton ice cube in the back of the truck. Lucky for me, I have a friend with a heated garage. Now, I jam a broken shovel under the business end of the tank and let the left over water freeze at the other end, away from the valve.

I realized how much I’ve learned about this whole water hauling business one day when a guy walked up to me at the water place, and asked me for advice. He said he’d just bought a new tank and had never hauled water before. “Keep your strap tight,” I told him. He said he didn’t have a strap. “Then drive slow and steady,” I told him. And then I told him why. He said he’d buy a strap.

Hauling water in winter at 65N latitude is tricky, but the variables are finite. Teaching school is complex. After 25 years in three different schools in all the elementary grades, I have no list of absolutes other than to keep my eyes and ears open, and think about everything I do. When things don’t work out, I have to ask why and what I should do differently, but those things are rarely the same from year to year. I have more questions than answers, and I’d like the bureaucrats and politicians to respect that. I can still hope.

photo credit: Solar Wind Studios