A long-awaited treat

You grow up with certain literary figures and it’s almost natural to imagine them in a movie … for example, “Matthew Looney,” of course … but I had long ago given up hope that the most cinematic of them all would make his way to the big screen.

I’m thinking of a young Belgian journalist who survived adventures around the globe, thanks to the help of his talking dog, an opera singer, a zany scientist, twin detectives and a sea captain with a vocabulary that could blister paint.

It was a treat to read one of my big brother’s copies of his comic books — and even more exciting when at the age of 4 I got my very own.

But I’d long ago given up imagining Tintin would ever make it to the movies. He is after all a superstar of international — but not American — fame.

When news of a movie started bubbling a couple years ago, I gave them no credence.

So Friday’s premier may be the high point of winter vacation.

Just to be clear, we’re talking about a guy who owns a pair of Tintin socks and who named the stray cat we adopted in Morocco Tintin. I have an official Tintin pencil box and a Tintin T-shirt from Vietnam.

You can tell it was only natural, then, when I brought a few of my Tintin books in to share with my students before break began. They were mildly interested, even a little concerned when they saw my editions in Dutch and French.

Around the house we’ve been looking for time to reread “Secret of the Unicorn” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure” before we see the movie. My sharpest memories are of the Thompson twins trying chewing tobacco at sea and Professor Calculus’ first shark-shaped sub collapsing in the middle of the lab, so there are a lot of blanks to fill in before Friday.

And some big questions to answer about a movie I thought I’d never see made: Imax? 3-D? Or watch in a regular old theater?

Big district under big pressure

An education think tank just released a report on what the city’s central school district needs to do to turn things around. The Star’s initial story is here.

A key finding: the central office needs to be dismantled and replaced with a much smaller organization.

That’s not an altogether new idea. No one may have put it so radically before, but there have been efforts — just none that have been successful. The received wisdom is that the last superintendent who tried to overhaul the central administration of the district lasted less than three years.

Which I always read to mean there are people inside that building who have a lot of political pull. Will it be enough to survive another effort to streamline things?

The plan also calls on district control to shift from a school board to the mayor. So far, the mayor has been carefully crawfishing away from the proposal. Whether he is waiting to see what kind of support the plan will garner or is opposed to it remains unclear. He may want to use his political capital on other issues … it was his opponent, after all, who campaigned on the idea that the mayor should be more involved in education. That view didn’t usher her into office, so Mayor Greg Ballard may be reluctant to embrace it.

For now, the plan is just that – a plan. How political leaders respond will make all the difference. State lawmakers would have to be involved in eliminating the school board, for example.

Which means what lies ahead for Indianapolis schools remains mostly a list of unknowns: what flaws are wrapped into that 160-page plan? Are the basic ideas solid — such as creating a network of “choice'” schools with a high degree of autonomy? Who, if anyone, will try to bring it into action? Can the district pre-empt outside action by more internal reforms?

For all those uncertainties, though, the unveiling of any top-to-bottom plan to fix that struggling institution has to be seen as a welcome ray of light.

Unhappy holidays

There’s no better way to usher in the staff holiday party than with an hour-long meeting about the prospects for state takeover.

It’s the kind of news that is beginning to feel a little par for the course: I leave a dying industry amid waves of layoffs, land a job that is eliminated after a year only to end up at a school that seems all but inevitably headed for state takeover and drastic changes that may or may not entail the loss of my job.

I don’t think that is exactly how things will turn out, but sometimes you just have to wallow in the darkest possibilities. For the gallows humorist, that’s where you find all the best punchlines.

So the party was a little subdued and perhaps not as well attended as it had been in the past. As for the meeting beforehand, it included top officials from the district office but was short on specifics and solutions.

For teachers who have been invested in the school for years, the future is even more discouraging than it could be for me. I’ve barely put down roots, so while change could be difficult it would hardly be unimaginable.

I was trying to go back through news reports of the state decision last summer to take over some schools but not all of those on its list of target schools. I am sure at the time there was some explanation for how the choice was made, but I couldn’t find it. I did see that even those schools that remained with their districts had added oversight and the chance of takeover in another year.

My school has been failing to meet state and federal benchmarks for just about as long as anyone can remember, so I don’t think there’s much of argument to be made that the state shouldn’t at least be looking at what has gone wrong and what is being done about it. Whether the state could do any better, and whether coercion is the best way to instill change at school already trying to reinvent itself, are perhaps more reasonable questions.

A student teacher saw the answer simply as this: cut class sizes in half or hire two teachers for every class. And add mandatory Saturday school.

Which only leaves the question of  … how exactly do you pay for all that? Because the question is not really how to help students learn more. It is how to do that without spending any more money.

That seems to be a favorite management riff regardless of the field: do more with less. You could argue it is a world view for the Marines.

I’m just not sure it translates to success in education.

I couldn’t make this stuff up

Recently received a polite and professional rejection notice on a submission I proffered about my experience moving in to teaching. Fair enough — in Morocco I had an entire wall covered with rejection notices, so they’re disappointing but not defeating.

Except that this one noted that “fiction, as I’m sure you know, is just about the toughest thing to sell.” At first, I simply assumed that the next line would be something about how that is exactly why they were so excited by my non-fiction offering … but alas, no. I am apparently a “fine storyteller” but the reviewers did not “fall in love” with my “novel.”

I can only imagine why: an improbably mundane protagonist, humdrum setting and no real resolution of the underlying conflict. Probably thought my narrative too derivative of Cervantes — needed more Camus or maybe even some Atwood. Personally, I think it veers too much to Lovecraft or Poe already.

I can only figure someone was rushing when they cut-and-pasted the rejection notice together, and assume that no one paid to evaluate submissions would mistake non-fiction for fiction. But the whole incident is inspiring me in new ways.

After all, I can now add “failed novelist” to my resume, without the bother of actually having written a novel. Next I think I’ll try a simpler literary form: a screenplay for Troma Entertainment. Might be something like “Middle School Science Teacher A Go Go,” maybe, or “It Came from Beyond the Cafeteria …”

“There’s only one thing wrong with the new science teacher … He teaches at two schools!”

Unexpected annealing

Today was just one of those days that underscore how working with others and trying to help people grow can be draining, funny, exhilarating, overwhelming and wrenching … and somehow all I’m left with to express what happened is a pile of worn cliches.

On the upside, I had three students who volunteered to stay after school to work on a project. I remember one of them asking if they could come after school to work on it, and the next thing I remember is waking up staring at the ceiling with one of my kids fanning my face with a copy of the Periodic Table and another one calling for somebody to bring the smelling salts.

A lot can go wrong in a day and still be offset by an hour or two with a few students excited about what they are doing and being creative about doing it. In this case, it is kids putting together one of my favorites, a stop-motion video. The topic is chemical bonding.

I missed the chance to run for a second day in a row but I can’t complain too much.

The day also included a missed lunch. Two other teachers called me in to join them for a chat with one of the most likeable eighth-graders, a student who suddenly had stopped working, become defiant and started dragging down other kids to boot.

I can’t really say anything else, except that by the end of the conversation, because of circumstances outside of school, I was feeling a little rude and defiant, too — and incredibly full of admiration for this student and the dedication the teen showed for a struggling family.

As thankful as I was to finally understand what was happening with this student, I also came away amazed at the skill of a colleague who managed to pull the information out of this guarded and taciturn child. At first I thought her approach all wrong as she seemed to sound angry with the teen, but her tone changed and resistance became futile in the face of her persistence and honesty.

Probably one of the most painful — and best — meals I never ate.

A real test?

Buried in a blog over at the Washington Post was this example of a statewide exam from 80 years ago … you had to pass the test to pass 8th grade.

It’s worth a few minutes to look over.  I wouldn’t imply it is perfect, but I love how much more open the questions are. For example, you had to sum up one of your books from “Reading Circle,” listing specific information such as author, genre, etc.

I don’t know that we still need a test for penmanship or hygiene (OK, maybe for some students!), but this test seems at least to ask for less ability to guess and more ability to apply learning than many given today.

Ratcheting up the pressure

The prospect of the state taking over the school still feels remote and implausible, even though any clear-headed analysis would probably indicate it is at least a strong possibility. The state seems eager to seize schools and the odds of us turning the corner in the next four months or so seem long.

The signals are clear, though, that the chance of takeover is sparking some changes. There seems less willingness, for example, to give the very worst-behaved students extra chances.

I am not sure that was a top-of-mind factor as No Child Left Behind was drawn up, but it makes perfect sense. A bored and disengaged student not only threatens to drag down his own test scores but those of other students, too, by making it so much harder for them to learn. Suspending or moving to expel that kind of kid may be one of the quickest way to improve test scores.

Regular public schools in Indianapolis have long complained that charter schools do this as a matter of routine, pushing out troublesome students who then return to their home districts. The anecdotes are countless but the hard data to prove the practice widespread has been underwhelming so far.

Many a teacher would love for administrations to be more serious about getting the worst behaved students out of classrooms so that the vast majority of students would have a better chance at success.

Where does a public school’s obligation end, though, to meet the needs of all students? The benefits for society increase, after all, the more education a person gets … right?

When it comes to losing your job, though, sympathy for a screwball eighth-grader gets thin fast. How much risk should my family face if you don’t want to learn?

That’s the kind of calculus being done about now by any serious educator operating under the cloud of possible state takeover. If the state says the time for excuses is over, so then too may be the time for sympathy.

Star Wars

Employees and fans of The Star rallied outside the Downtown offices today to protest staffing cuts, pay reductions and job outsourcing by a company that continues to be so profitable it can grant departing executives seven-figure bonuses.

My former colleagues just found out they’ll be asked to take yet another week off without pay in the early part of next year. So far, it looks like only one local news outlet covered the rally. Their story is here.

Management declined to comment, which is always disheartening. Instead they offered a vague implication that the hubbub is all just a union bargaining tactic.

But the union is not asking for higher wages or better benefits. This is a union that already has accepted pay cuts. Instead, the union is fighting for the kind of quality news organization that serves the entire city.

That’s the point veteran Statehouse reporter Mary Beth Schneider was getting at when she had the courage to talk on camera in a clear and reasonable way about the savaging the newsroom has taken.

That courage itself may be the loudest rebuke to a management unwilling to emerge from its self-imposed cloak of silence.