Month: March 2025

My husband and I have continued watching the Master Class series of lectures on the Tudors and the Stuarts. We are coming to the end of the forty eight episodes and there are certain ideas that stand out from one king or queen to the next.

The ruling class of England during that time consisted of royalty and Parliament with the two institutions struggling to determine who should be in charge. The kings believed in their divine right to be the head of state but that political philosophy constantly came into question as time went by. The budget and ways of funding dominated much of the concerns of the times. There were continuous attempts to forge alliances with the power brokers of Europe. Finally religion and which brand would be endorsed and supported by the government became a front and center issue. 

As I watched the lectures I found a bit of amusement in noting that everything changes in the world while at heart staying the same. The program might just as well have been describing modern day issues in the United States today. The names of leaders and countries are different but the problems seem to be similar even hundreds of years later. 

In particular the issue of religion became quite bloody during the tenure of the Tudors and Stuarts. The enmity between Catholics and Protestants and even between differing Protestant sects often led to one group or another being burned at the stake. There was a dark irony in the fact that the religious groups seemed to have little or no concern about killing each other to stay in control of the government. Somehow the ideas that Jesus preached did not always comply with what the religious leaders of the time were preaching. 

I can’t help but think that the founders of the United States understood that religion had been  at the heart of civil wars and persecution in England. Thus came their insistence on enshrining freedom of religion in the Constitution. I do not believe that they would be happy about the new efforts to put prayer and the ten commandments in schools and on public display in the halls of government. I suspect that they would know that praying in Congress and suggesting that our president was sent by God creates a dangerous and slippery slope. They, much more than those of us in the present, knew how ugly religious wars could be. 

I am a deeply spiritual person but I do not want my government dictating either my beliefs or anyone else’s as the model for our nation. Faith and how to experience it should not be forced or denied. Each person’s relationship with or without a higher being needs to be respected without judgement. It is in creating an official religion in any country that incredible problems arise. The history of the world is rife with stories of civil wars and wars between nations predicated on religious grounds. 

Furthermore, our founders made it clear, and George Washington reinforced the idea, that we should not have or even want a king. Nor should we be constantly worried about who is going to become our next leader. The English obsession with succession resulted in the kind of intrigue and death that we don’t want to encourage in our own government. We should be quite wary of anyone who seems to believe that they and they alone have all of the answers that we need. History has proven that handing over authority to one person or group leads to autocracies rather than democracies. 

There was purposefulness in the creation of the three branches of our national government. The idea was to be certain that no single person or group would be able to seize all of the power. The idea of checks and balances was important to our founders because they understood all too well how dangerous it was to concentrate power in one person or one group. George Washington eschewed the offer to stay on as president indefinitely. He disliked the idea of political parties vying for their specific ideas rather than understanding that their duties were to serve all of the people. Washington was well aware of the skirmishes between Whigs and Tories in the British Parliament from which the United States had gained its independence. 

Our nation has already endured one civil war. We should be wary of any leaders who constantly encourage angry divisions among us. It should gravely concern us that our current president takes great delight in openly attempting to limit the rights of individuals and groups that he dislikes. Instead of attempting to bring the many differing beliefs together he seems to find great joy in hurting those with whom his own views do not overlap. He has purposely created a schism among our citizens that often comes dangerously close to inciting the kind of political and actual wars that have plagued the world for so long. Our founders and Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of learning how to work together regardless of our individual philosophies. In practice that means making room for everyone to feel comfortable, not creating executive orders to diminish their worth and their rights. 

The freedoms of the United States are a delicate commodity. The are predicated on the idea that we are all equal regardless of our various ways of choosing how to live. We can come togehter in a community of tolerance or hark back to dark times when people insisted on forcing their ways on everyone. History tells us that such thinking has never worked to the satisfaction of the whole society. We would do well to be wary of those who would consolidate power into one person or group and then dominate those who think differently. We should all be very afraid when we see such things happening and in this moment the evidence that our nation is backsliding to a darker time is quite clear.

I once read an article from a professor at Harvard University who had created a multi-lesson review of literary classics for working and retired adults. He found great enthusiasm for his seminars from people who admittedly had dreaded reading the works of Homer, Shakespeare and other renowned authors when they were younger students. The more seasoned audience of learners brought the insights and maturity of their own life stories with them and more enthusiastically related to to the tales, poems and characters in the works of authors from hundreds and even thousands of years ago. 

I have always enjoyed reading and thanks to my high school English teacher I voraciously devoured books of poetry, epic adventures, romantic fiction, and spellbinding plays. I became familiar with the best writers of all time and learned how to relate their tales to my own life. I understood how to look for metaphors, irony, allusions in their highly crafted words. I learned about ancient heroes and myths that continue to be celebrated to this very day. I considered myself to be adept at critically analyzing any volume that I opened, and yet as I grow older I find that revisiting my favorite books and some that I once detested has allowed me to reach a higher level of understanding and appreciation for the greatest writers of both the past and the present. 

As a young person I had not suffered much other than the tragic death of my father. Mostly I was an innocent who was not able to relate to the anger of Achilles or the jealously of Othello. I knew of difficulties in people’s lives but was still mostly removed from intimate knowledge of such things. After almost eight decades of life I read the old masters with a new set of eyes and a greater appreciation of how they have used words to paint vivid pictures of all of our human emotions. I am able to see that characters from ancient Greece are not that much different from humans of the modern world. We are still ravaged by conflicting emotions that influence our behavior and sometimes lead to tragedies. 

Somehow my own personal growth has taught me that the classics of literature are more powerful than I ever imagined. They demonstrate both human evolution of thought as well as the sameness of our conflicted natures. We still have heroes with clay feet doing what they believe to be the best for humankind. Nonetheless we are wise enough to see the foreshadowing of danger when broken individuals assume power. We know that the Hectors among us do not always win the day. Sometimes they are humiliated and defeated but their goodness lingers and inspires for all time. Life can be brutally unrelenting just as those old stories depict but with determination we are able to overcome the challenges that seem to wear us down just as Odysseus did. 

Of late I hear many people insisting that education should be practical. We should emphasize more math and science and engineering. They insist that business skills should be more important than the liberal arts. They would prefer to replace English and History classes with courses that provide students with a trade or a direct route to a high paying job. Somehow the old feeling that a proper education should include the arts is falling into disrepute in many quarters, but I would suggest that many of today’s problems result because of a general ignorance of our past and an inability to use words instead of weapons to solve disagreements. Critical thinking demands abilities beyond simply learning how things work. We must also be aware of how people behave. We learn those things from literature, poetry, the arts, the stories of our past, the social sciences. 

It may sound strange for a long time mathematics teacher to advocate for a branch of learning that seems so removed from what societies seem to require to function well. While we definitely need a variety of skills I would argue that we also must possess a deep understanding of people. So much information comes from studying how we are the same as our ancestors and how we are different. Our knowledge requires the classics as well as the modern.

in many ways we would do well to focus education on showing young people how it all fits together like the weaving of a magnificent carpet. Creativity is the mark of our human natures. It distinguishes us from the other creatures. It has always been the key to progress, but rather than seeing ourselves as somehow better than our ancestors of old we would do well to know both what they did right and what they did wrong. It is the only way to attempt to avoid the mistakes of they made. It is the best way of being able to discern truth from lies. 

I’m enjoying my journey with the classics. I am annotating and parsing the words for deeper understanding. I am learning that when we strip away all of the modern conveniences that we enjoy our human natures are not that far removed from the people who walked this earth thousands of years ago. Acknowledging this helps in realizing that regardless of culture, wealth, language, religion or other differences we may have when all is said and done we are more alike than different. Seeing that truth makes it clear that our first job should be to find ways to live in harmony and peace, knowing that sadly we have to also overcome our warlike tendencies in the process. We can learn much from both the folly and the success of the past. 

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is nothing like a walk in a cool quiet interesting place. For me that would be somewhere that is not warm but not too cold either. The sky may be cloudy or sunny as long as rain is not imminent. I like being somewhat alone on a trail that leads nowhere and to everything that I love to see. If I have a companion I want it to be a person who knows when to saunter beside me in silence and when to quietly speak about important matters or make appreciative comments about what we have seen or consider talking of differing  philosophies about life. 

I don’t want to worry about time or how I look or what I will do next on the perfect walk. There will be no particular goal pushing me to increase my stamina. It will be leisurely enough to allow time to sit on an old tree stump to gaze at the sky or to watch the antics of a squirrel. It will provide opportunities for finding treasures like colorful leaves or interesting rocks to stow away in my pockets. 

On the perfect walk I will learn something that I did not know before embarking on my adventure. Perhaps it will be an interesting thing that I see or a comment from my companion. Maybe it will simply be a new kind of pleasure from being so close to nature or a feeling of peace from perfect silence. Those are the kind of moments when I feel so comfortable with myself and with the world. For a time I have no worries or appointments or thoughts of things I must do. 

I have had some glorious walks along rugged trails in the Rocky Mountains with my husband and my two daughters. I have seen a rainbow stretching across the horizon and encountered a moose grazing just ahead of my approach. I have walked in warm sand along the ocean with a grandson and spoken of spiritual things with a granddaughter under the canopy of some of the largest trees in the world. 

Sometimes I walk alone around my neighborhood listening to my favorite music or tuning in to podcasts. I go into myself and walk mostly for exercise but at times I see something that makes me smile. I enjoy seeing my neighbors working in their yards or children laughing while chasing each other. I like being alone and thinking about how nice life can be without a great deal of fuss. I work out ideas that have been swimming in my head and feel a sense of gratitude for the place where I live and the people who are my neighbors. 

I once walked for miles with my mother and brother after our car broke down. We were in the middle of nowhere in a time before cell phones. Our only hope for rescue was to find a public place that was open and had a phone. Our path lay on a little traveled highway so we had no clues as to how long it might be before we reached civilization. Somehow with her usual optimism my mother made our unexpected journey fun. We were downright proud of ourselves when we finally reached a service station and hitched a ride with a mechanic who worked there. Of course this all happened in the days when every gas station had a mechanics’ bay and someone was on duty to pump gas, check the oil and clean the windshield. 

When we got back to our car we learned that the battery was dead but the kind man who had rescued us charged it up and sent us on our way without asking for a dime. I have always remembered his kindness and how my mother insisting on giving him a tip. That unplanned walk taught me about how we should all behave when someone is in trouble. That man will forever be a hero to me. 

I hope I never reach a point of being unable to walk. I totally agree with Mr. Emerson’s ideas of how it should be done. I look forward to those special times in the coming year and hope to share such moments with people that I love.  

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting us. —-E M Forster

Who among us has not dreamed of a particular life that never happened the way that we thought it would? Disappointments are part of everyone’s life. We think we have everything figured out and something comes along that dashes all of our efforts into the dust. We find ourselves unmoored, wondering how to salvage the bits and pieces of the life that is no more to create something new. It is always a challenge.

Some things that happen to us are traumatic and just wishing away our sadness is not the answer. Nor is trying to cheer ourselves with platitudes about how the setbacks will only make us stronger. We know instinctively that such ideas are rarely true. Perhaps we can’t even understand how things went terribly wrong. We feel a deep hurt and maybe even anger. Those feelings are very real and ignoring them only drives them deeper into our souls. 

If we are lucky we have understanding friends or a partner who does not attempt to hurry us through our grieving for the life we have lost. Maybe this person just sits with us and allows us to vent, to cry, to feel a bit sorry for ourselves. This is not a time for advice, only support and compassion. It will take time to adjust to the new reality. We have to realize the closure of a chapter of life that once had so much promise and is now gone. Moving forward will come later but not in the heat of the moment. 

I suspect that each of us has a story of loss to tell. Maybe someone for whom we cared deeply died too soon. Perhaps we failed at a job that we thought we would be able to do. We might have thought that we had a person’s love for a lifetime only to find that it was fleeting. We have to set aside all the hopes that went along with the life that we thought we had. It is so disorienting that we almost feel as though we are no longer of this world. Our interactions with people feel strange. We have to put one foot in front of the other in a kind of pretense that we actually know what we are doing and where we are going

We often talk of “wallowing in self-pity” as if it is a terrible way to be. The truth is that sometimes we have to allow ourselves to wallow a bit before we have the strength to chart another course. As long as we don’t get mired in the muck we are just experiencing the natural emotions that follow tragedies and grave disappointments. As onlookers we should remember to be compassionate, not judgmental. Never never should we suggest that somehow the person reeling from a horrible situation should just get over it or, even worse, count it as a blessing.

They say that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Maybe that is true sometimes but we all experience difficulties that seem downright unfair. We feel weak and vulnerable and it’s not the time to hear people hinting that we are somehow been lucky. We might reach that conclusion on our own farther down the line, but it is something that we must discover on our own, Never should it come as a suggestion from a well meaning person who seems to be clueless or even uncaring about how devastated we are feeling. 

It’s difficult to be hurting when others seem to be moving right along. We see their happy photos and read about their magical lives and wonder why we got showered with manure. It’s also difficult to be around someone who is attempting to work through a moment of pain. We rarely feel comfortable when someone is falling apart. Our urge is to fix them immediately and that would be exactly wrong. We have to accept them as they are in the moment while assuring them that we are there for whatever they need. Sometimes what they require is silence and maybe a hug or someone who will cry with them. 

We humans do indeed scab over our hurts and even if they heal there always seems to be a scar. It is in our natures to get up and try again. If we are patient and have a bit of luck along with our own efforts we may find a new kind of unexpected happiness and reward. Sometimes we even get exactly what we needed all along. 

There is no looking back and dwelling on what ifs but they will surely come from time to time. It’s okay to mourn and to imagine how things might have been as long as we do it with a smile and then rejoin and celebrate our new lives. Each of us will find ourselves changing course many many times and learning more about ourselves than we could have possibly imagined. The lives we live will twist and turn and challenge us hurt us and even make us wiser but there will always be a new road to explore. Hopefully it will be kind.

I landed my first job in a public school when I was nineteen years old and a student at the University of Houston. I competed to earn a post as a teachers’ aide at Elliot Elementary School in the Denver Harbor neighborhood of Houston, Texas. Since I had attended private Catholic schools all the way through high school, I hoped to get a feel for life in a public school before I invested too much time and effort in pursuing a degree in education. 

This was back in 1968, when I was as green and naive as they come. I had hardly ventured out of my neighborhood for most of my life up until then. Aside from my third grade year when I attended five different schools and lost my father to a car accident, I was a sheltered as anyone might be. I had no idea what I might encounter in a public school located in the east end of Houston, Texas not far from the ship channel and the home where my mother had come of age. It was located in a neighborhood where the people and the cultures were different from my experiences. 

I took to the teachers and the students immediately. The school had a welcoming spirit and the outstanding educators whom I was hired to support were eager to use me for more duties than just watching children during lunchtime or running off worksheets and tests on the mimeograph machines. They urged me to interact with the students, to manage reading groups, tp tutor one on one or in small groups. I was busy all day long and I loved every minute of the adventure. I felt assured that I was indeed preparing for the right vocation. 

In spite of my enthusiasm there was one aspect of the school that made me feel uncomfortable. The students classified as having special learning needs due to both mental and physical disabilities were segregated from the rest of the school. Each morning small buses headed for a drab building in a far corner of the school property. There the special education students spent their days encased in a kind of mystery since I never really saw them or witnessed what was happening in their classrooms. They even ate lunch just before the other students arrived at the cafeteria. Somehow their plight seemed lonely and it almost felt as though they were being hidden away like some tragic mistake that nobody wanted to see or discuss. 

There came a time when an outbreak of flu left the faculty depleted to the point that I was moving from one classroom to another attempting to fill in for the absent teachers. Eventually there came a call from the special education building and I found myself walking across the lawn with my throat in my chest. I had know idea what I was going to find and how I would deal with it given my total lack of experience with such things. 

There were only a small number of students in the building and for the most part it felt as though they were mostly being watched over without a great deal of concern for making academic progress. Everything about the furniture and lack of color or a sense of creativity was depressing. Most of the students seemed almost unaware that I was even there. Now again a fight would break out or a child would begin screaming for no apprentice reason. I felt very uncomfortable in the situation and decided in that moment that I would definitely not consider specializing in teaching students with learning needs and physical disabilities. 

I eventually earned my degree after a few fits and starts. I began teaching four year olds in a private setting and while it was delightful I wanted more of a challenge. Before I had a chance to try out a public school the nuns at my church recruited me to run the religious education program. While I loved the idea of being the first ever lay person tasked to carry out that job in our parish, I eventually felt a call to finally work full time in a public school. As if someone was trying to send me a message public school positions were few and far between so I went back into the classroom via a private school where I literally taught all of the middle school mathematics. 

It was not until 1984, that I finally began working in a public school setting. By then Jimmy Carter had created the Department of Education whose main duties involved administering special programs, with a strong emphasis on strengthening the education of special needs students by creating training and guidelines to include them in regular classrooms whenever possible. Their isolation ended and even those with the most difficult problems learned in sunny rooms with dedicated specialists creating individual learning plans that allowed the children to expand their abilities and work toward being part of regular classroom interactions. 

It was glorious to see them smiling and confident and doing so well. The difference that the new guidelines and support systems made for them were breathtaking and I found myself feeling rather drawn to the joy of watching them succeed.

I will never forget an occasion when I had a room full of special needs students sprinkled in with a group of students who did not meet the specifics of a special education rubric but were nonetheless reluctant learners who needed extra time and differing styles of teaching to engage them. I was using mathematics to demonstrate critical thinking skills to them when a group of visitors from the administration building suddenly appeared to observe what was happening in my classroom. The kids rose to the occasion and showed off their knowledge and confidence in every way. Later I received a sweet note from one of the visitors commenting on how exciting it was to see the “advanced” students in action. Little did she realize that over one third of the students had been from our special education department. 

I think about this as there is a push to end the Department of Education at the federal level. I find myself feeling frustrated at the lack of understanding of what that wonderful agency actually does. I might first say what it is not. Not once did I receive orders to teach in a particular way or to use specific tools to teach a concept. What I did get from them is funding for special projects with students who need more time and variety to learn. I saw my mathematics department suddenly qualifying to receive manipulatives, calculators, and computers that enhanced my lessons. I saw with my own eyes how vibrant and excited my special needs students were. The Department of Education accomplished that and so much more. 

It saddens me that people who have never taught children a day in their lives seem to think that they know what children need better than the teachers. They see the Department of Education as a waste of taxpayer funds and somehow believe that the agency is peddling woke propaganda and deciding what and how teachers will teach. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I hope that life does not become more difficult for our students with dyslexia, autism, dysgraphia, brain injuries, learning disabilities, anxieties, blindness, deafness, emotional illnesses, Down’s syndrome and so many other difficulties. The Department of Education has made learning more and more possible and much happier for so many young people. I would hate to see all of the progress go away based on misconceptions of what the agency does. The segregated rooms in the back of the property are no more. Our most needy children are being loved and taught to be productive members of our society. What could possibly be a more worthwhile investment?