One of the best
things about my job at the School Board is watching as that vigorous glimmer in
a young students eye is dimmed for the first time. Actually, dimmed is great
but if I’m being honest, what’s best is when that inner light is snuffed completely.
Watching a young person realize that the sky is not, in fact, the limit, that
all their dreams will not come true, when you know that you’ve broken them
completely. That, to me, is magical. It’s why I still love this job after 25
years.
Sadly,
I don’t get to see that look very often, since I’m so frequently stuck back at
the office. Pushing paper while other folks get to give out the bad news and
have all the fun. Once in a while some angry parent will come by my office to
fight for a music program or funding for an art department, and sure,
pretending to listen to them rant and rail is a kick, but it’s still not as
wonderful as really just shattering a child, knowing that you’ve left them no
options other than to conform or fade away.
This one parent, a single mother,
was in my office recently all upset because the School Board decided that there
would be no money for the High School to perform a musical this semester. You
should have heard her! “You people expect every student to be the same, that
you can fit everyone into the same box the same way and expect them to come out
all right! But they won’t come out all right! These children need to express
themselves” and all this.
It
was a hoot. But you know, at least this one mom got it. So many times I’ll be
talking to someone and they’ll take this tone like they’re trying to give us
down at the School Board the benefit of the doubt, like we’re really doing our
best with limited resources to navigate the terrain between federal regulations
and individual needs and the needs of the faculty and blah blah blah. Trust me,
that is not what’s happening. You’d be blown away if I told you how much money
we get for after school tutoring and arts programs, for new musical
instruments, all that garbage. The hardest part of my job is figuring out how
to get rid of all the money so no one notices! I won’t give away all my secrets
but I’ll share one particular success…a couple of semesters back we needed some
new bunsen burners for the chemistry department at the High School, and after
doing some research I realized that if we ordered them from the Ukraine we’d
have to pay exorbitant shipping fees AND they’d barely work. Wasted a lot of
money that way, and picked up a commendation from the Superintendent of Schools
to boot.
Have
you ever seen this movie Repo Men? Early
Estevez, look it up. There’s a scene in the movie where Estevez’s character is
at a grocery store, and every item in the store comes in the same bland,
generic blue and white packaging. It’s absolutely spellbinding, absolutely
beautiful. That’s the world I work for every day, a world where inspiration has
been dulled down to fulfill necessity alone, where you don’t have to worry
about what soda to buy, you just buy the soda there is. And then you go home
and watch TV.
And
unlike these students, with their paltry dreams of superstardom or whatever,
mine is a dream that will come true.
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