A Gratfying Day - the Blog was Published in the Newspaper

This past Friday two very good things happened. It was my daughter's 30th birthday. Although we could not be with our daughter, her GGF (good, good friend) and GGF's MH (mesmerizing husband) were. Do you wonder why I am the queen of acronyms?

The second thing was that I had an editorial printed in our local paper. The editorial was the blog the I wrote titled "An Elegant Solution for Education." (See below) The paper changed the headline to, "Education Would Improve With A Healthy Dose of Respect." They didn't change anything else, as sometimes happens. The best part was the response. I have received; over 20 emails, and a couple of calls. I am not counting the emails from friends to whom I emailed the article and they were forced to reply kindly. They did. The emails from strangers have been incredibly kind and supportive. Twenty emails might not sound like much but I was thrilled. (Last year I corresponded with a writer who appeared on a segment of Oprah and she said she had received six emails as a result of her appearance. Six for an appearance on Oprah!!)

In making the plunge to being a thorn-in-the-side of the district I realized that when people say "Somebody ought to ..." (and I am guilty of that) I was going to be that some body. Last fall I wrote an editorial that saved, at least temporarily, a good reading program. I am a tenured teacher so they can't fire me. Yes, yes, I realize tenure protects many incompetent teachers. The real question is, will this editorial do any good?

I believe it will. I am a great fan of Malcolm Galdwell's wonderful book The Tipping Point. It made me realize the power of grass roots efforts, and that the high mucky-mucks really need to pay attention to those of us in the trenches. Remember that in Ancient Sparta there were 25,00o citizens and 250,000 slaves. The citizens lived in constant fear of a slave rebellion. I know the school districts would not have to worry so much about rebellions (re: strikes) if teachers felt valued and respected. What a concept: treating employees with dignity. (This should be a given in ALL of life!)

I was so grateful for all the supportive emails I received. Only one was from a grumpy person, who although he could find nothing wrong with what I had to say he did blame all of the ills of education on the National Education Association, which he mistakenly called a union. I thanked him for his comments.

Thank you to my son-in-law, Brett. You got me started on blogging.