A couple days ago I sent in my second article of what I billed as whetting voters appetites for the November school board elections in Duluth. What follows in parentheses is important to consider: (Discursive stories of Harry’s education. Today’s episode, Admin.)
There will be about 20 of them but as I’ve jotted down anecdotes and ideas I know there is a lot I won’t be able to fit into a commitment of about 15,000 words. And while I intend to write about some of the candidates I am in no way inclined to endorse anyone officially except maybe Alanna Oswald. She was my great discovery. She is still a gem on the Board. But, as my first column said its rare for a single Board member to make important changes by themselves. Most School Boards are a little like Sisyphus intent on pushing his great stone to the summit of the mountain.
My succession of anecdotes will generally fit under one of seven categories: students, teachers, Administrators, Superintendents, School Boards, Parents, Politics. The next reader column is Sittin on the Shitter thus my crude homage to Dock of the Bay in the title of this post. I designated that one as being about Admin but of course it was about my teaching as well. For better or worse like Systemic Racism schools are all part of a larger system. Systems are deeply interwoven and while you can take a thread out of a system to tell a story its telling doesn’t free it from all the other parts of the system. So a School Board is part of a system. Individual Board members might find that frustrating or comforting depending on whether they want to shake things up or maintain something they closely identify with.
What should always be remembered is that Schools are there to teach children. Just what they are meant to learn and what they learn are subject to endless debate. So, this afternoon I’ll try to write about students or about me. Harry Welty a kid with endless curiosity and an awkward devotion to the truth.
