Rejection

News item: Colleges are rejecting kids in record numbers!

I dread the week-and-a-half pocket of time in which my students get their "Dear John" letters. I work with a lot of neat individuals. Intelligent. Talented. Humorous. They're not perfect, but I know I'm fortunate to work with kids the caliber that I see in my school.

And nearly all of them will get rejected by at least one college.

Perhaps the most perverse of perverse incentives: It's in the selective colleges' interests to get many student to apply. Then, they accept the number they were going to accept anyway, which means the percent of applicants to whom they say "yes" falls and they become even more "selective." Gheesh.

One student who I hold in high regard told me of how she had been a victim of "yield protection." Revolting. These are children, not bonds.

I've often counseled my students to not let this system turn them into a number, which is what the college admissions process does. I guess that number isn't necessarily the kids' GPA (modified, weighted, or not), class rank, or SAT score. It's the number they become when they become one of the 90-some percent who get told no.

Surely the madness will be done in 2024 when it's Sam's turn to go through this process, right?

Right?

One Month On

In the midst of what was, for me at least, a bewilderingly busy winter the Eagles won a championship. Still somewhat hard to believe. Sherry took a photo of me just seconds after time expired. In it I'm standing still, with my right arm folded underneath my left, with my left hand scratching my chin. It's not a pose of jubilation, but of calm disbelief.

There are other pictures from the party we attended that night. The look of joy is pretty obvious on them.

For those of you reading this who don't live in the Philadelphia area, it might be hard to convey the feeling Eagles fans felt upon winning that Super Bowl. The best I can convey the feeling, though, is to suggest that you consider the film Rocky, a Philadelphia story if ever there was one. What me and my fellow fans experienced was akin to watching Rocky for, I don't know, the 30th time.



But this time, Rocky wins.

The particular scene from that film I can't shake comes in round 14, when Rocky is knocked down, rises, goads Apollo to resume the fight, and Apollo just looks to the canvas in disgust.

Thoughout this year, I kept remarking to my friends that this Eagles team won games that Eagles teams don't normally win. It was a season characterized by wins that didn't follow to this team's historical form. It was a season that reminded me of the joys of being a fan. It was a season that reminded me of the thrill in watching inspired leadership and unlikely heroes rising to the occasion.

There will not be another sports victory that I watch that will be as stunning as that one.

Humility

When I first came into teaching, my district had a staff developer named Jackie who preached humility to us as educators. Teachers, she said, cannot guarantee results. Our job is about making outcomes more likely.

(and that's true of other professions too)

Any discussion of school safety leads to promises individuals can't keep. Teaching isn't an exact science, nor is school safety. The grownups at schools follow a bewildering number of protocols to ensure the safety of students, and those grownups get it right more than 99% of the time.

The Columbine tragedy took place near the end of my first year of teaching. Every year of my career has been marked by effots to make schools safer. We have turned them into virtual fortresses.

And, still, tragedy occurs.

So now the gun-rights zealots, in an attempt to impose their own Sharia law of gun-toting citizenship, want teachers to be armed. It's such a senseless, insenstive, and deadly idea, I don't know how to respond to it thoughtfully. I'll simply point out that it won't guarantee that there will never be another school shooting, it won't guarantee another death due to firearms in the schoolhouse.

The Columbine tragedy occurred 19 years ago this spring. Schools have changed many protocols. A whole generation of students have moved through the K-12 pipeline learning how to perform a variety of drills. But the broader community has lacked the will to do anything that will make it less likely there are victims of gun violence at schools.

Like pass a law . . . one law . . . to make it harder for a bad guy to get a gun.

Fatigue

She's* right, we are clustering around the president and the chaos he sews like pee-wee soccer players. I've had enough of him.

I guess I'm tired of all the winning.

*Ruth Marcus, Washington Post columnist whose weekly essay I've come to look forward to every Saturday.