Postscript: About Felix

In which a teacher explains how a chronicle began

The origin of "The Felix Chronicles" dates back to the fall of 2007, when, my work on my book Essaying the Past substantially complete, I began thinking in earnest about what would come next. I knew I wanted to continue in the (new) vein in which I had been working—writing about teaching—but I wasn’t sure how. As I groped my way through false starts, I began to understand that I would like to do something I have not often found in the discourse of education: capture the everyday life aspects of schooling, particularly the the life of the classroom. Most education writing I was familiar with tended to be prescriptive or theoretical; very little depicted the sense of a class in motion—the unfolding curriculum, the multi-directional conversations, and the constant stream of choices that go into the work of teaching a course.

My desire to record this aspect of the school experience was all the more ardent because I believed it was absent in the broader public understanding of education. In the spring of 2001 I had offered course in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard called the “The Culture of Schools,” which explored the way schooling is depicted and discussed in popular culture, and the sobering lesson of that experience was how little a role academic life had in that culture. I wanted to bring this overlooked facet to light on a page, and to connect it to other aspects of everyday experience.

That’s why, by the spring of 2008, I had begun drafting pieces in the shape of classroom episodes. The first was published as “Artificial Light” in Common-Place, the online history magazine for which I write a regular column. By the end of the summer vacation, I had generated dozens of such essays in the hope of turning them into a book.

Early attempts to get a book contract were not successful. In and of itself, that was not especially surprising or even troubling: Despite my veteran status, I’ve never found the publishing industry particularly easy to crack. But this time nevertheless felt a little different, in large measure because all media industries were in such upheaval. I never thought I’d live to see the day when books ceased to be commonplace; now, suddenly, their disappearance seemed conceivable. With a combination of fear, sorrow, and a hope that I could reinvent myself, I joined the great democratic throng and launched the blog you’re now reading as a vehicle for publishing what I had begun calling “The Felix Chronicles.” The title is both an acronym drawing on the name of my school— “Fieldston in Everyday Life Intellectual Exchange” —as well as a nod to the school’s founder, Felix Adler (1851-1933).

“The Felix Chronicles” ran in my blog for what was essentially the second semester of the 2008-09 school year, a year that included a presidential campaign and a meltdown of the global financial system, two events that loom in the background of these pieces. Their locus, however, was the school itself and the people in it, zeroing in on a single section of the standard 10^th grade U.S. history survey up to World War II, though I sought to protect the privacy of my colleagues and students by concealing their identities. (This could sometimes get me in trouble; I heard indirectly of cases where fictionalized people and situations were mistakenly believed or considered to be real.) I declared the experiment complete with the publication of the 36^th and final piece in June of 2009.

In reproducing them here as a complete set, I am mindful of the (non-linear) medium in which they appear. Taken together, the essays are about as long as a short book, though I don’t imagine many people would be inclined to read them straight through. While they are arranged in loosely chronological order (corresponding to the events they describe, not the dates they were first written or published), my guess is that readers will take them singly or in batches. And that’s just fine with me.

I appreciate any interest you may have in my work. Thanks for getting this far. And please feel welcome to leave any comments along the way.

—Jim Cullen

The Ethical Culture Fieldston School

New York, NY

Closing the (grade) books: Felix in repose

In which a school year, and an experiment,
are declared complete

The Felix Chronicles #36
Kim: A (That's easy.)

Mindy: B (That's easy too.)

Mark: B- (That botched final exam really dragged down his average. He's been erratic in recent months. Gonna let the chips fall where there may there.)

Joey: B+ (The numbers say B, but would the class have been half as good without his humor? His jokes themselves were signs of engagement.)

Grading. The final act, a postmortem ritual that gets performed after everyone but the administrative staff is gone (and even their ranks are thinned and days shortened). I generally dislike assigning grades, because I think it's overly reductive to denote an entire semester's performance to a single letter. I also dislike grading because it seems to be that there's a core conflict of interest between being a coach and being a judge, and I regard a teacher's job as essentially the former. Coaches have to make judgments too, I guess, and rank their players competitively. But there's still a sense of a team, a shared enterprise, that's generally missing in grading. At least there's the factor of class participation, which typically looms large in my calculus, somewhere between 20-30% of a grade.

Of course, using a figure like that implies that in fact something like class participation is quantifiable. It isn't. And even those things that seem quantifiable, like test scores, are suspect in all kinds of ways. Grading simply can't be objective, and I really don't see too much point in trying. I've long decided that it is first and foremost a pedagogical tool -- carrot, stick, way of sending a message. There are flaws in this kind of thinking, I know. But there are flaws with the alternative, too, and in this situation as in so many others, you simply have to pick your poison. I try not to be reckless, honoring talent and punishing laxity insofar as I can perceive them. But grading seems like as good an arena as any for a child to learn that life isn't fair, at least as far as human beings can engineer it. Not that we shouldn't try.

Nate: A- (I don't really think he deserves it, but the grades say so, and I have to err on the side of disregarding personal feelings.)

Sam: A- (Part of me thinks he should get the A, but the grades aren't quite there, and I feel like there's a whiff of complacency about him that I'd like to see him prodded into overcoming, which I hope I'll get to do myself next year.)

Erica: B+ (Another late collapse. Could see this coming. Actually, B+ is a bit of a gift.)

Ellen: A (I'm simply going to disregard the 84% she got on the first test of the semester. It was an outlier. She'll obsess, fruitlessly, if I factor it in, and I told her to forget about an makeup assignment for extra credit.)

Chris: B- (He's been limping along all year. Last semester he got a B; I hope his folks will notice the deterioration.)

As far as I can tell, there are basically two grades at this school (and every other one I've worked at in the last twenty years): A and B. There are the gradations between them, and a big jump between B+ and A-. As my colleagues often say, you gotta work hard to get a semester grade of C or less, though I'll sometimes slap one on a weak essay. Students fail my exams all the time, but I can't think of a single instance where I flunked a kid for a whole course.

Alec: B+ (Love to make it higher, but can't find an excuse to do so. Again, this isn't about my affection for the kid.)

Samantha: A (if only I could make it higher!)

Beth: A (Ditto!)

Jason: B (He kinda slipped between the cracks. I feel bad about it. If I get another chance, I'd like to work a little harder to pull him in.)

Becky: B+ (She'll be mad about this, and I'm likely to hear about it. But it's what she deserves.)

Susan: A (Really shaky in terms of numbers. But she's been so reliable in class. And that research essay on Amelia Earhart was really terrific. She tells me she's already signed up for "U.S. Since 1945," and her Mom is lobbying to get me again.)

For me a class never seems to end so much as it fizzles. We get to the last week of May and we're chugging along into World War II. Then it's time for review, and we play a round of Jeopardy!, using the same set of clues every year. I give a class session over to discussing he final essay question, which I hand out in advance of the exam, but it usually runs out of steam about halfway through.. At the end of that last week we play a game of whiffle ball, which I enjoy very much -- I play very competitively and will be bragging for weeks about striking out Tom, star of the baseball team, with my curveball -- and savor the company of these kids, who will soon disperse. (It's when my team is at bat that I learn things like Becky's plans to study art at Bennington or Roy's ambitious plan to go to Antaractica.) And then I have a session where I just answer any questions they might have, a session which typically peters out. Then we have finals, and the class meets a final time on the last day of school, when I turn back exams and sign yearbooks. But it always seems anticlimatic. I always feel like a living organism is dying. I'll have many of these kids again, but never in this configuration. It makes me sad.

Lisa: A- (Pretty much a straight row of grades there.)

Liza: B+ (Never got to know her well, but academics are secondary now; she's a nationally ranked tennis player.)

Roy: B+ (Nice surge at the end there.)

Tom: B (He found Becky, and the clock, far more interesting than anything I ever said or did. Maybe he'll wake up next year.)

Unlike the seniors, all these kids will be back. As, God willing, will I. But I've decided that it's time to retire our friend Felix; the chronicle you're now reading will be the last of its kind.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that it's difficult to chronicle a school year during a summer vacation when there's no year to chronicle, as it were. I probably could keep this going for a while. For one thing, there's always been an element of imagination in this enterprise. I also had a backlog of pieces that I wrote before I started publishing them on this blog. You may have noticed that I've been running some of them, many of which are set in the fall months, here on the cusp of summer. But sooner or later, I'd find I had a dearth of material, real or imagined, to work with.

A more serious problem is attention of an unwanted kind. While I believe many, if not most, of the thousands of visitors I've had to my blog have kindly read my work with an understanding that I'm trying to capture aspects of everyday school life in a way that illuminates issues for consideration and reflection, there have been some indications that my posts have been fodder for gossip. Beyond that, I've always known that I've been walking a tightrope here. While I don't believe I've committed anything remotely resembling libel or slander, the possibility for misunderstanding and hurt feelings has always been a risk, one that only increases the longer I do this. I made the decision that the potential good in terms of honesty and clarity justified launching this experiment, but understood that my final responsibility is to my students and institution. I'm going to stop before I unambiguously cross a line.

I do so with some regret. I've enjoyed this project, and would like to see it continue. But I'm glad I did succeed in publishing three dozen of these pieces, and do hope they will be the foundation for further work of a similar kind in the future. Please keep an eye out for it.In any event, I do intend to try and keep this blog going with pieces about teaching as well other subjects in the realm of American history in everyday life (I recently signed on to review books for the History News Network).

I'll end here with a few words of thanks: to my students and colleagues at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. To Felix Adler, the man who founded the institution, and in whose name these chronicles were written. And to you, dear -- and I do mean dear -- readers. Merely stopping by to say hello has been appreciated. But please know that you are welcome, now or later, to grade me on the work I did here.

And please continue to come by. I will labor to be worth your time.

JC

Coming soon: A postscript and the complete Felix Chronicles, with links, at this blog.

Peaks

In which we see a teacher
working on relaxation

The Felix Chronicles, #34

“Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history,” Abraham Lincoln once told us. But that’s never stopped us from trying. Not even me.

By any measure—meteorological, solar, the annual calendar or the academic one—we are entering the heart of summer, and it’s time for our family vacation. This is a trip we’ve been looking forward to for months. The six of us—my wife and four kids, ranging from ages seven to fifteen—of us pack up our minivan, pop a David Sedaris audio book into the stereo and drive into bliss, gas prices be damned. We’re headed to Smuggler’s Notch resort in northern Vermont, about 30 miles south of the Canadian border.

The resort sits on over 1000 acres of ski trails, though the principal draw for us is the 70 acre village at the base of three mountains. We’ve sublet various condominiums for the last few years, some of them as part of a family reunion with my in-laws, with whom I’m happy to say I get along well. Within an hour of arrival, our bags are unpacked, and within a day we visit three of the resort’s pools (all of which feature water slides), play miniature golf, go to the arcade, get some ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s concession, and (thanks to cousins and other relatives who take the kids off our hands) nap on the couch. Within 48 hours, I’ve polished off a mystery novel.

And by the (Monday) morning of the third day, I’m getting restless. I now remember the thought I had last year that as glad as I am to have come up here, I’ll be really glad to go. And I wonder: Will I be able to make it through the work week like this?

So when I spot an entry in a resort brochure about a guided “wike”—that’s a cross between a hike and a walk that’s just about my speed—focusing on local history, I’m chomping at the bit to go. Fortified by a tuna melt and my wife’s blessing, I put on my running shoes and head for village, where I encounter a motley crew of other tourists, all of whom are better equipped than I am. My own preparation has been virtual: I’ve spent some time googling to get a better feel of where I am and what I’ll see.

I quickly learn that the most obvious form of history here in Jeffersonville, Vermont is geologic: massive continental plates pushing, bulging, pressing gigantic formations above and below the ground, only to have solid rock whittled away by chemicals in the air over millions of years. The more recent rhythm of natural history is literally glacial—a set of ice ages dragging tundra to spawn the rolling waves of green that give the state its (Francophone) name. Over the course of day, that green will be enveloped in clouds of gray that turn pink as the sun sets, blurring the line between earth and sky, reminding me of just how small the human presence on the face of the planet can be.

For much of the past half-millennium, Vermont has been liminal space, a border between the Iroquois Mohican and Algonquin Abenaki, who were then forced to share it with the British and French. When, at the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763, the territory presumably became British, only to have its sovereignty fought over between New York and New Hampshire, each of which chartered towns in the hope of collecting patronage and taxes. By the time the local militia of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys were performing terrorist/freedom fighter acts against New York officials and declaring an independent republic, the American Revolution was getting underway—which of course is why their insubordination was possible in the first place. Vermont wrote a constitution, abolished slavery, named ambassadors, and flirted with union with Canada before becoming part of the Union in 1791, part of a broader deal that allowed Kentucky in as a (balancing) slave state.

The region I hiked today is part of the township of Cambridge, founded in 1781, when the Revolution was still raging. The center of Cambridge incorporated itself as Jeffersonville in a town meeting in 1827 in honor of Thomas Jefferson, who had died the year before (so had John Adams, but apparently “Adamsville” was never in the works, which is a bit surprising since flinty New England was Adams family turf). I was amused to read that Jefferson at the time was popular “in some parts of the state,” the implication clearly being that in others he wasn’t—not surprising, since Jefferson had wrecked the New England economy with his deeply unpopular Embargo Act in 1807, part of the run-up to the War of 1812 that choked the region’s access to international markets and led to talk of the region seceding from the Union. A gap in the mountains nearby became a secret passageway for illegal goods traveling back and forth between Canada; hence the name “Smuggler’s Notch.” It would later be a transit point in the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves, and for illegal liquor during Prohibition.

Such excitement notwithstanding, Vermont had peaked economically and demographically by the start of the Civil War, its ambitious young natives (like Abraham Lincoln’s great rival Stephen A. Douglas) long having scattered to the west. The site of the terrain I traverse includes the property of a saw mill owner in the late nineteenth century. The mill actually had an electric generator, so the Industrial Revolution really did touch here. But Vermont nevertheless remained a backwater, where land could be acquired for a few dollars an acre well into the 20th century.

It was only in the 1960s that Vermont’s population began to reverse a century of demographic decline (though one still hears now inaccurate assertions that there are more cows than people). The engine of its reemergence was automotive. Smuggler’s Notch was established by a group of skiers in 1956, the same year President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the interstate highway system. In the sixties, it was discovered by IBM executive Thomas Watson, who developed the village, demonstrating the long reach of corporate power to transform the hinterland at the height of the American century. (He divested his interest in the project following a heart attack.) For decades now, Vermont has had a reputation as a bucolic haven from urban civilization, yet this reputation, and the state’s prosperity, would have been impossible to establish without successive waves of technological innovation. Lord knows without them I’d never be here.

I come back from the wike refreshed and ready for family action that includes a trip to the pool and a meal with the extended family. But when everyone, including my early bird wife, has gone to bed, I grab my laptop and head for the livelier of the resort’s two bars. What the hell: Nerd’s night out. The house entertainer, “Good-Time Charlie,” is taking a break from his performing duties to show classic videos from the seventies and eighties. (I’m dazzled, and saddened, to see the prodigiously gifted Michael Jackson, who looks so damn uncomfortable trying to pass himself off as a regular heterosexual.) This is not exactly a hot club scene; “Smuggs”—doesn’t that aggressively-marketed nickname give anyone pause?—is a family resort and last call comes dismayingly soon after 11 pm. By then I’ve restocked my glass with another Jack Daniels on the rocks and have begun writing the prose that you’re now reading. I know: I’m one of the more ridiculous features in this tiny human landscape. But it’s no joke when I tell you that this is what happiness feels like.

Commencement

In which we peer into the future on the first day of school

The Felix Chronicles, #33

Morning, first day of school, opening assembly. The student body chatters on the sun-dappled quad; my colleagues and I dot the rim. Summer heat and humidity linger, in no apparent hurry to depart. The collar on my new white oxford shirt is already damp.

A series of speakers go through their paces. The principal welcomes the students back, and gives a special nod to the seniors, who whoop it up: their Moment has come. The senior class presidents – white male, black female, the winning political combination for the past few years – make announcements, all of which are met with disproportionate enthusiasm, some of it mockery. The new head of school comes forward to say how excited he is to be a part of the community. Figuratively speaking, we’ve all been here before, but nobody seems to mind.

My eyes and mind drift, just like everybody else’s. I see my son in the corner of the quad, legs bent, knees in the air: this is his home. Black jeans, red dress shirt untucked, white basketball sneakers with black laces and red trim. Looks effortless, just the way he intended. Truly amazing that the hopeless dork I was in high school could have produced such a child.

My gaze shifts to the broader sweep of the student body. I feel a combination of envy and pity – capturing that sense of promise would be nice, but boy am I glad to have gotten a few things ahead of them under my belt. I look into the faces and imagine some of them as middle aged. Some, I think, will weather well; in others, I see sagging jaws and wan expressions.

And then there’s Marcus, now a junior, isolated in the crowd, plucking the grass and probably wishing he was anywhere else. High school can’t end fast enough for him. Caught cheating on a Spanish exam in June, the dean decided against disciplinary action – his overbearing single father and evident, self-loathing penitence made anything beyond an F on the test seems like piling on. I’ve actually got some hope for him. His overall grades are pretty good; notwithstanding Dad’s unrealistic expectations (no doubt a factor in the cheating), he’ll probably get into a decent college. His skin will improve, and I can imagine him putting on a few pounds. I picture an appealingly incredulous fiancé trying to imagine him as the ungainly kid he currently is, a momentary flash of pity giving way to instinctive affection.

All right kids, have a good year, the principal is saying. The buoyant chatter returns as the gathering disperses. I’ve got about forty minutes before my first class. One last bout of hurry up and wait. The beginning always takes so long to arrive.

Gaming the system

In which we see that it's what --
and who -- we don't see that matters

The Felix Chronicles, #32

Rick is writing his final Civil War research paper on an Xbox game, which he has hooked up to the classroom Smart Board and is playing in front of his classmates. Not exactly an orthodox topic for an academic essay, but I see a real workshop opportunity here, both in terms of engaging him in something he's passionate about, and in raising intellectual issues in places and in ways they might not otherwise get raised.

But we're not off to a promising start.

"Those graphics suck," Eddie points out as Rick puts a sniper in his sights and fires away.

"And the lack of interactivity is really lame," Aaron adds. "What happens if you go off into the woods there?"

"You can't," Rick says. "It doesn't let you."

"That is lame," Darius notes. "You gotta wonder about the developers here. Did they pour all the resources into marketing? I could have probably done this on my two year old MacBook Pro!"

Hmmm.Darius has said virtually nothing all semester. Here he sounds like a management consultant critiquing an entire product line. But this isn't quite what I had in mind -- and while the class as a whole is engaged at the moment, I suspect we're going to start losing altitude soon.

"So how would you compare this game with comparable games out there are the market, Rick?" I ask.

Somewhat surprisingly, it's Darius who answers for him. "There's no comparable Civil War product," he says, "except for Blue/Gray Field Command. In that game you're a four-star general trying to supervise overall strategy."

"Well that's interesting," I reply. "Here you're an individual soldier performing a localized mission."

"That's right," Rick says. "You sometimes complete the mission only to be informed that your side has actually lost the battle."

"That in itself says a lot," I note. "This game is more like The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming lost at Chancellorsville, while the game Darius is talking about is more like The Killer Angels, Lee and Longstreet debating whether to engage at Gettysburg. Am I right Caroline and Zack?"

Caroline, who's working on Red Badge, and Zack, who's doing Killer Angels (actually the lousy film version, called Gettysburg) nod. But that's all they do. I'm disappointed. I thought this would open things up a bit.

Aaron still has his eyes on the screen, tracking Rick's movements. "I see your job is now to clear that barn over to the left. So you can get a change in mission halfway through?"

"Yeah. This happens a lot when you play 'Easy.' In 'Medium' and 'Hard' you'll typically take longer or get killed before you execute the original orders."

"Don't tell me you actually get yourself killed in this game," Darius says.

"Of course he does," Aaron says. "I swear to God it took three weeks for Rick to steal his first car on Grand Theft Auto at my place after I first got it.

I see Chantel roll her eyes. I decide to seize on this.

"Oh," I say with mock solemnity, "So you're also appalled at Rick's ineptitude at Grand Theft Auto? Well tell me, Chantel, how long did it take you to steal your first car when you played it on your Xbox?"

Chantel smiles wryly, recognizing that I'm not serious. "Actually, I don't have an Xbox."

"Don't have an Xbox? Wow. Why, that means you can't play this game or Grand Theft Auto!" Laughter.

I shift my gaze sharply. "Caroline: How 'bout you? How long did it take -- "

"I don't have an Xbox, either."

"And you, Tanya?"

She shakes her head, smiling. "Nope."

I sound desperate: "Christina?"

"I don't have one either," she says. "I steal my little brother's to play Space Invaders."

A roar of laughter.

"Well thank God for that. For a minute there I was beginning to worry we were going to have a problem with gender bias there. But I guess you've saved us from that, huh, Christina?"

"I guess so," she says, smiling.

"You get my point, though," I say to the class as a whole, as a few kids nod. "One way of being to figure out what's going on with a document -- or, in this case, a game -- is to ask who it's likely to appeal to. And who it isn't. In this case, it appears the game in question has a strong appeal to boys, though our statistical sample is admittedly small."

"Actually, I'd say the appeal here is mostly young boys," Rick says. "The level of play is fairly simple compared with some others I've played."

"Yeah. And also it's less violent. I'm afraid of Grand Theft Auto 4," Christina says. "My mother won't allow my brother to get it."

"And this one is endorsed by the History Channel," Rick notes.

"Okay," I say. "I think we're beginning to get somewhere. One way Rick will be able to develop his argument in his essay will be to focus on this question of audience. But we can ask a similar question about content -- we can ask what's not there."

I pause for dramatic effect.

"I guess it's time for me to share a little secret with you, gang. You see, I've decided to quit my day job and become a video game designer myself. I've come up with something I think you'll find interesting. It's called Contraband." I adopt the voice of a movie preview announcer:

You are an officer on the Underground Railroad. In your hands is the awesome responsibility of saving human lives and striking a blow for liberty. Your mission: to blaze a path for a group of escaped slaves as they make their way from an Tennessee plantation across the Ohio River to a secret station outside Cincinnati. One wrong move and they're back in bondage -- and you're back in jail for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. Will you take the challenge?

"Whaddya think? How long you think it will take to ship a million units?" Lots of smiles. Darius is shaking his head, as if I'm an incorrigible child.

"Why not, Darius? Isn't this a good idea?"

"Sorry, Mr. Cullen. I think you should stick with your day job."

"But why?"

"Because nothing really happens."

"What do you mean nothing really happens? You have to think hard! You have to evade capture! You have to endure racial insults!"

Hearty laughter at that. (Maybe a little too hearty?)

"All right, Darius, I'll keep my day job. But I hope, Rick, and the rest of the class get my point here. Which is that sometimes figuring out what you don't have means figuring out what you don't have. It's often what isn't talked about that can be as revealing as what is."

I look up at the clock. "One thing we don't have, today at least, is more time. Caroline: You're on tomorrow, yes?"

"Yup. I'm showing a clip from Glory."

"Excellent. See you all then. Oh -- and one other thing."

A few faces look up expectantly from closing books and backpacks.

"Anybody know where Kermit was today? Field trip? Sudden illness?"

Nodding heads. "Uh -- I think he may be sick," Darius says.

Kermit missed class yesterday, too, and missed the exam we had last week. This morning I saw him playing frisbee on the lower field with his buddies. I make the appropriate notation on my attendance sheet. This isn't going to be pleasant -- tedium, for me, aggravation for Kermit, and, in all likelihood, anger for his parents, who will be getting an e-mail from me later today. In high school, at least, gaming the system tends to catch up with you.

Positive Steps

In which we see that school spirit can be dangerous to your dignity

The Felix Chronicles, # 30

They catch me as I walk by the reception room after getting my mail, my colleagues – previous victims looking for company – shouting for me as loudly as the members of the pep rally organizing committee. I had hoped to escape this meeting, but I’ve been caught. I won’t be the last. I see our Principal, Mary, is here as well. I remember she performed at last year’s pep rally, and swore never to again. Now she’s complaining and being teased like the rest of us as we await our orders from an impressively lively but focused senior who informs us that we’re to be the finale of this year’s rally and that she’s going to teach us a very simple dance. Yeah, right.

Twenty minutes and multiple playbacks of Rihanna's "Disturbia" later, I’m thinking this won’t be so hard, when she says, “OK, now we’re ready for the next part.” Al, the Senior Dean, seeing and sharing our collective alarm, kindly informs her that this as far as we’re going to go. Some protests from the girls, but quick agreement that we can simply repeat the routine we’ve been taught and that should be fine. After that, everyone is to improvise. There’s lots of joking as we leave the room with instructions to assemble two days later for the big event at the gym.

I am not looking forward to this. And yet I seem to find myself practicing my shovel step in front of the mirror after I put on my tie with school colors on the big day, and experiment with hand gestures later alone in the men’s room. At lunch I ask an older colleague, an alum of the school, if there were pep rallies back in the early seventies when she graduated. “Naaah,” she says. “We were way too cool for that, protesting the war and school policies.” I remark that teenagers somehow seemed older back then, and she demurs with the understated certainty of someone who knew that world too well to be impressed by it. She asks me if there were pep rallies in early eighties, when she correctly estimates I was in high school. It was a transitional time, I say. That kind of stuff was coming back, the reinvented nostalgia of the Reagan era.

By the time the school day is over, I’ve reached a state of positive dread. I wander over, late, to the old gym, which by this point is packed – not with only students, but administrators, staff, and parents. Great. The noise of the percussion ensemble – a string of snare drums pounding in unison – is deafening. I can feel my metabolism rising as I take a stand near my dancing partners, joking in each other’s ears like infantry waiting out the artillery barrage before the offensive assault. But I can’t help but be distracted by the festive air of the event. A towering arch of balloons has been set up at one end of the room, with a series of student emcees at the other. Each team is summoned to walk through the arch to the cheers of the gathering, and the players are ready for their moment. The field hockey team is dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and pause at center court to wield their sticks like swords. The volleyball players are dressed as boxers, and stage brief matches. Boys Cross Country are all dressed like Eminem in Eight Mile, their captain – a tentative student of mine – rapping with verve as he calls out the members of the football team. When it’s their turn, the star quarterback executes his play involving the much beloved cafeteria lady, she catching his nerf-football pass at mid-court to the wild approval of the crowd. My son, donning his jersey and looking surprisingly buff, walks through the arch with two teammates, their deliberate pace reminding me of Johnny Cash. Oh boy, am I going to embarrass him.

We dancers get our cue. I turn my head and see Mary walking in the other direction – I can’t believe she’s ditched us! I’m tempted to call her out, but there’s no time. A few minutes earlier, I was helping my colleagues remember the routine, but once the music starts, I find myself hopelessly out of step. The sudden appearance of the school mascot beside me isn’t helping any, nor is the flash of a camera in my face. Before I know it, the routine is over and I’m thinking about making a beeline for the exit. But then I think: The hell with it. I’ve gone this far and I might as well enjoy it. I start dancing in the now-dated way I did when party music meant Kool and the Gang and Whitney Houston. By now whole clumps of people – the pep rally organizers, field hockey players, the emcee – have joined in the fun, and I find myself struck at just how good a dancer my contemporary Phil, a gray-haired math teacher, is. On my way out the door, I hear kind but insincere compliments on my performance.

Back at the administration building I run into Mary, and tell her that I’m deeply disappointed by her failed leadership. “I suddenly had to go to the bathroom,” she says, not even having the decency to suppress a smile. “I almost didn’t make it.” She pauses, finally rendering a mischievous grin. “But you, I see, were feeling pretty good, bustin’ a move out there. Who would have figured?”

“What the hell,” I reply, heading out the door for home. “You’re only middle-aged once.”

Mercantile Exchange

In which we sell the value of an education

The Felix Chronicles, # 29
(Photo by Nina Freedman)

Open School Night: The longest day of the year. We have a full day of classes, then a break, then a dinner given to us by the school, then a couple hours of ten-minute classes for the parents. By the time we get home, it will be about 10 p.m. That’s not so bad, except that it takes a while to decompress before you can get to bed, and the next thing you know you’re back at school. It always feels like you’ve never left. That’s why I think of this as one of the most grueling weeks of the academic calendar, rivaled only by the cresting frenzy in the final weeks of the school year.

I love it.

Open School Night is the one evening of the year in which I can imagine what it feels like to be famous. Everyone seems to know who you are, which is fun, though I’m always mentally scrambling to place faces and recover names. But there’s an enormous sense of good will and people are usually willing to help you out. (“Hi, I’m Mindy's mom.”) Some of my colleagues complain about overbearing parents, and advise new faculty to run out the clock in their mini-classes so as to forestall windbag disquisitions or impertinent questions. Those risks are real enough, and I do encounter such situations occasionally. But they’re the exception, not the rule.

Open School night is the last Thursday in September, and by now, I’ve developed a series of routines around it. I live close enough to school to return home after classes, and use the late afternoon interlude to catch up on housework like laundry and a late-season lawn-mowing. I change into clean clothes with a necktie with some kind of history motif, and head back to school to savor the annual dinner, which allows me more time to chat with colleagues than I typically get at lunch. After that I head back to my office, actively avoiding the parents who have begun to congregate in hallways and on the Quad, as I haven’t yet psyched myself into performance mode. I spend a few minutes with the family directory to brush up on names I’ve forgotten or want to know, and then head to my classroom, which by this point is full of parents, with more to come as they grope their way with the help of student volunteers decked out in special T-shirts indicating their role as helpers.

I have a standard pitch, which involves identifying myself and saying how pleased I am to be working with their children. I survey the shape of the class – the various units, the major assignments, how the course fits into the larger curriculum, and so on. I ask if they have any questions, and when there’s a moment of silence that follows, I scold the parents for their lack of class participation and say that their children put them to shame. If, after the requisite chuckles, they’re still reticent, I ask how what I’m telling them comports with their own experience of history. In the back-and-forth that always begins sooner or later, I tell them that they are all a real presence in my classes, that these kids invoke them all the time. I think they’re pleased to hear that. And, in general, I think they’re pleased with my work. To a great degree that’s because they want to be pleased with my work. Literally and figuratively, they’ve made a big investment in this place, and I want to help them feel good about it.

On this night, as it happens, I have a class with two financier fathers, in a week in which there’s been tremendous volatility in the stock market. One I know from various committees and encounters at the school, and he greets me heartily. The other, who I only know by reputation, is more self-contained. After I finish my schtick this latter father asks me if I include current events in my classroom. The answer is yes – I’m typically asked, and explain that I refer to the presidential race – but this time, I steer my answer by going in a different direction. Just today, I tell them, we were discussing British imperial trade policy, the Navigation Acts, and the concept we’ve come to know as mercantilism. Mercantilism is a relatively abstruse concept, and I often find in my teaching that the best way to explain what something is involves telling them what it isn’t. In this case, I say, I run the my story forward and say that in the otherwise inconsequential year of 1776, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, in which he argued that the best way for Britain to advance her interests economically was not to manage them from London, but rather to let participants in the market proceed as they see fit. The invisible hand, and all that stuff I know you all understand.

But, I continue, what I also told your kids today is that we’re now living in an time of neo-mercantilism. That in an age of Aramco in Saudi Arabia and sovereign wealth funds in China and Indonesia, traditional corporations like ExxonMobil and Lehman Brothers (which has just gone belly-up) are becoming quaint relics. More and more, the wealth of nations is just that – trade as a form of national aggrandizement.

“How much time do you spend on this?” this father asks. I can’t quite tell whether he’s testing to see if there’s any substance behind this little piece of curriculum, or he's implying that I should stick to my day job and leave the finance business to others.

"Not a lot," I answer. "Because as much as I want kids to understand that the past has real relevance and continuity in the present, I also want to convey its strangeness, the way people in other times are truly different in their assumption and beliefs." Here I make a little digression into my discussion of tolerance, and how a concept we tend to regard as a shared value was looked upon with disdain and even abhorrence when it came to Catholicism in seventeenth century England, for example. That tolerance is just another way of saying that you don't give a damn.

Our time is up, and people shuffle out, some pausing with warm thanks and hellos. The other banker is beaming like a proud parent. “I endowed this guy,” he seems to be saying. There’s a good deal of truth to that, of course. Every once in a while, I feel like a celebrity around here. And every once in a while, I feel like the hired help. Probably good to feel both. Occasionally.

Better

In which we see two assemblies -- and some solitary reflection on a meeting between a senator and a teacher

The Felix Chronicles, #28

An almost eerie silence prevails in the hallway outside Room 211. Though it’s late morning on a school day in January, no one is here; the only sign that anyone is at school at all is the row of untended backpacks are lined up outside lockers. I begin to walk down the hallways to the auditorium, my pace quickening so that I may join my colleagues and students for the history in the making.

I don’t want to miss out this time. On Election Night, I was distracted by a fever that would soon become a cold. I was, moreover, worried about my daughter, who would be having substantial dental work done the next day (which proved to be less fearsome than I expected). I heard the victory speech in a haze, half asleep, but uneasily so, in my bed. So it is that the private and personal trumps the public and collective. All the more reason to savor this day.

But as I pass junior dean’s office and the empty student commons, I remember another day. This was a warm June evening in 2006. I had been in Washington for a meeting, and was waiting in the terminal at Reagan National for the US Air shuttle to take me back to New York. We were delayed because of lighting, and so it was at one point that I looked up to see my U.S. Senator, Chuck Schumer, chatting beside freshman Senator Barack Obama. I overheard talk about a fundraiser in Manhattan. Something about Scarlett Johanssen. I heard someone fret that if we didn’t board soon, there would be no point. Senator Obama mentioned a horrific flight one of his colleagues had made recently.

A few minutes later, I saw Obama standing alone, and pushed aside my reserve and got out of my seat. I walked up to him. “Senator,” I said, “I want to be able to tell my children that I shook your hand,” extending to reach the one he instinctively extended. “I’ve been following you back since the primary,” I said, referring to his unlikely capture, in a crowded field, of the 2004 Democratic nomination for the Illinois Senate seat he went on to win, a triumph that made national headlines even before his celebrated speech at the Democratic National Convention that summer.

“So what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I was at a doing some consulting work at the Smithsonian,” I explained. "National Museum of American History."

“Good, good. And what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a high school history teacher.”

“Even better!” I knew he had used similar, even identical words many times with constituents and starry-eyed strangers like myself. But I appreciated the essential decency of honoring ordinary work, and his ability to convey a sense of warmth.

“Well, anyway, I’ll be cheering for you.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

He left shortly after that, leaving me with a cherished memory, one that fueled a trip to Pennsylvania two years later, where I campaigned on his behalf with a group of faculty and students. The highlight of the trip occurred on a quiet street in black suburb on the border of Philadelphia, when a pair of my seniors separately knocked on the door of a house where a bachlorette party was taking place, and where they were plausibly mistaken for the afternoon's entertainment. (No one was thinking about the content of their character that day.) I smile at the memory now as I ascend the steps to the auditorium. As I do, I hear a brass band. And when I push open the doors, I hear the roar of the school, augmenting that of the crowd at the Mall visible on the gigantic screen in the front of the room, which cuts to the president-elect arriving at the podium. Private wish has become public will. Yes we could; yes we did.

Cheer

In which we anticipate a winter wonderland

The Felix Chronicles, # 27

The phone is ringing when I arrive in my office at 8:17 a.m. on the Thursday morning before the winter break. I pick it up while simultaneously trying to slip out of my coat.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Cullen?"

"Speaking."

"I'm so glad we've reached you. This is Ruth, Jason's mom? We met on Open School Night."

"Yes of course. How are you?" In my mind I see nothing, no name, no face. But Jason will be enough to work with. I drape my coat over my desk chair, pull my laptop out of my briefcase, and power it up.

"Well, I've been better, especially in this market. I'm calling about the History Day project. As you know, Jason's working with Tom."

"Yes.” I sort of do know that. It's on a master list somewhere in my inbox. I begin to rustle through it.

"A thoroughly depressing subject, if you ask me." Now I do remember: They're doing the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Originally, they wanted to do World War II. I told them the subject was too broad. They've narrowed it down to the bomb, and are working on a website. The first draft I saw was not too promising. Big slabs of text, relatively weak in conceptual organization. Technical glitches. Normally, one or both of them will be working with Joey. But Joey has grand plans for a tabletop reenactment of Pickett's Charge that he says he's been working on since July with Roy. Ominously, I’ve seen nothing new on Jason and Tom's project since they handed in the the first draft earlier this month, only a string of e-mails asking questions that could be answered if they studied the original assignment.

Then I realize that I've not been paying close attention to Ruth, who has been explaining the series of obstacles Jason and Tom have encountered. "It doesn't help matters any that Tom is out there somewhere in Elmsford, or maybe it's Valhalla. He never wants to come down the city, and I can't just drop everything to get Jason out there for one of their marathon sessions. Did you know that they spent all night working on this Saturday?" There's more than a hint of accusation in her query.

I'm tempted to ask how I would know that, but bite my tongue. I also imagine an empty pizza box, a Madden NFL game on a laptop, and Ludacris blaring from the port of an iPod. Still, I feel a twinge of unease. Truth is, the History Day Project has long been a sore point among some administrators and colleagues, who think it asks too much of the kids at a difficult time of year. We have revisited the subject from time to time as a department, and concluded that the pluses outweigh the minuses. For grading purposes we like to have a grade-wide substantial assessment at the end of the semester, and see bona fide value in a group undertaking in which students get to choose their topic and work on it in a planned sequence of stages. And some of the final results are truly extraordinary. Alas, that's not going to be the case here.

"I'm sorry hear that,” I say soothingly about the all-nighter. “I know that this is a difficult undertaking. That's why I always emphasize at the start of the project that students need to think carefully about with whom they're going to work and to emphasize that the quality of their collaboration is an important dimension of what this is all about. I also emphasize that they stand or fall together, and that if one kid coasts and another kid does all the work, that itself can be a valuable lesson."

"Well, I'm not sure I agree with you about that,” she says. “Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that Jason has handled this perfectly. He can be lazy. But I knew as soon as I heard that he was can be working with Tom were going to be problems here. Tom is a nice kid, but I don’t think he’s capable of pulling his weight, intellectually or otherwise.”

Not a kind assessment, but not an inaccurate one. I look at my computer screen. A small red box is flashing at the bottom right-hand side. It's the weather widget. That thing is always flashing red or yellow. More about drawing your eye to advertising than providing useful information. I click on it just the same.

"What I don't understand," she continues, "is the timing of this project. Why does it have to be just before the holiday break? We're leaving for St. Bart's on Friday morning. We’ve planned this trip for months, I'm pulling the kids out of school to take it.”

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY, says the web page I’m now reading. Snow begins in the morning; six to ten inches by tomorrow night. Will she get out in time?

"Well,” I respond, “this is something we periodically have discussed going back many years. We've learned from experience that it makes more sense to have the project due before the break so that really we clear the decks for kids to have a real vacation. Nobody likes to have a big project hanging over their heads during the holidays." Actually, I have traditionally had this assignment due a week before the break, but watching my own son scramble to do his project (a documentary about strategic bombing -- the boys always seem to go for war) has led me to conclude that more time really does make a difference. He’s largely keeping me out the loop on this one, I’m happy to say. His partner’s dad is a documentary filmmaker, so that's where they're getting most of their help.

"Well I've got to tell you, an assignment like this really wreaks havoc on family life."

"Again, I'm sorry to hear that. Is there something you'd like me to do? Would you like to talk with the boys?”

“That would be good," she says. "But what would really help is giving them more time. I don't think these two really understood what they’ve gotten themselves into, and the geographic factor has really proven to be a major complication, especially because Tom has basketball practice during the week and coming up with good times to collaborate has been a major, major problem."

I can't resist a smile. Normally, I'd be in a position I really hate: having to say no. To accede to this request would not only precipitate an avalanche of similar ones -- the word would be on the street almost immediately -- but get me into trouble with my colleagues, as we've all sworn a blood oath to hold the line in the face of these pressures. I realize I'm taking a chance here, but if my bluff gets called, I can say I was certain, however mistakenly, that there was going to be a snow day.

"Well, I don't like to do this, but understand extenuating factors in this particular situation. So I'll allow Jason and Tom a little more time to finish this up. As long as I have it we get back from break, there should be no harm done."

"I really appreciate that. I want you to know that Jason loves your class.”

"Thank you. I enjoy working with him."

"The best part of this," she tells me, adopting a confiding, even conspiratorial, tone, "is that Jason will be spending the second week of the break with his father. For once in his life, the man will actually have to pay attention to his son's needs. Can't wait to see that."

"Glad to be of service," I say with a chuckle. And though I don't know why, I mean it. Though she's given me little reason to think so, I suspect her grievance with her ex, whoever he is, may well be legitimate. "Happy holidays, Ruth."

"Happy holidays to you," she replies. Pause. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Cullen.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that. And please call me Jim.” But she’s already hung up.

Turned out to be more like a foot (and they got out in time). Thank God.