Columns & Editorials

The academic condition of students in America is alarming. There are four million 4th graders in the United States. Three million or 75% of them cannot read proficiently. With a statistic like this, I wonder why schools focus on trivial matters that have nothing to do with literacy or other authentic learning.

5 months. It has been 5 months since the unthinkable happened. The creators of the Walking Dead teamed up with George Orwell and Dean Koontz and wrote a book about a virus that took over a globe. Heck, Isaac Asimov penned the intro and convinced us other worlds in other solar systems have been decimated, too. Stephen King was really busy, but he did a fair bit of editing. What we have here, folks, is Eyes of Darkness meets Asimov’s Guide to Earth and Space meets 1984 meets Tommyknockers meets that episode where Negan and his bat are first introduced. It’s a nightmare, or not, depending on who you ask and whether you favor Fox or CNN. And, in Texas, where we need to change our state motto to Go Big or Go to Cali, we can’t decide whether we want to go to the beach, go to a protest, or go into a bunker for the rest of the year. In the words of Zach Galifianakis as Marty Huggins in The Campaign, “Bring your brooms because it’s a mess.” One thing is clear. We, as a society, were unprepared for this pandemic. We have forgotten so many things: how to entertain ourselves, how to unlisten to people without the act of violence, and how to just breathe in a space without advertising to the world that you are just sitting and breathing in a space. For some of us, one thing is apparent. Y’all ain’t cut out for this! Others of us aren’t having such a big issue. We are the chosen ones. We are the only children of the world.

He knew it was getting real when they went after his girlfriend. The law is like that. They hit you in your soft underbelly where it hurts the most. He’d half been expecting such a reaction, however. They’d gone after many of his friends and most of his co-workers. He’d long realized it would only be a matter of time. Just last week (wait – was it only a week ago) there’d been that really odd clicking noise on his phone. Tapped? Seriously? And, that black car parked across the street by the park, hadn’t that been in the same spot for days? The few as yet to be accused friends he still had left in this world were running from him as if he were a plague – totally understandable. He did not blame them. Finally, there was nothing left to do but leave. Maybe he’d go abroad, look up Charlie, see what was shaking. Maybe he could even sweet talk Delores into going with him. One thing was for sure. There was nothing left for him here. Everything he had worked for was gone. For him, this American dream he’d chased tirelessly had erupted into the great American nightmare. Rosebud, out.

I love education and take teaching human beings seriously. The social consequences of academic failure are very costly, especially for the disabled and minority learners. To give less than our best to our nation’s learners is unconscionable and contributes directly to the failure of Americans in the global business, medicine, technology and military arenas. If we are to be the America we once were, quality education for all students is critical. Therefore, we must examine closely public education and where it is headed in America.

Finally, a day to celebrate parents of all kinds! It takes a certain willingness to choose to become a parent; a knowing that the life you are living will be forever changed. And the parents in Forney ISD are a pretty special collection. Now, we have all chuckled over the memes that showcase the “types” of parents that come through the pick-up line at school, the class parties, the sporting events, the daily office visits for forgotten supplies and lunches. However, the important thing to remember is that these parents show up for their kids because they take the “parent” job seriously.

The current climate in the United States is showing the nation perspectives of life that many may have not experienced or even considered. Some of these perspectives may be hard to see, acknowledge or imagine they are real, even though they happen every day somewhere in the United States. For those who were born and raised and work in a town or city they have never left, their perspectives can be quite limited.

“How did I get here?” Surely, that’s something you’ve asked yourself a time or two lately. Whether you look up one day and realize half a century whizzed by, or whether you just can’t fathom the luck, or the misfortune, that has fallen into your lap, we all question reality at times. That’s what I’m doing today, just sitting here and trying to retrace my life steps enough to solve this non-Covid, nonrace-related dilemma. Mine is animal centric. How did I come to have four inside dogs? Don’t forget the cats. Why are there six animals living in my house? It’s probably because I’m an insane animal aficionado. Why, just yesterday I deliberately ran late to pick up my mom for her teledoc appointment because I spotted an armadillo and decided to follow it FOR TWENTY MINUTES. I could not leave and go about my day until I abandoned my truck and tracked an armadillo, like a Lewis & Clark guide. Don’t worry. I didn’t touch Mr. Nine Banded. Did you read that Colorado State research paper, too, the one about proof the leprosy that 9 banded armadillos carry can spread to humans, especially in the south? It’s just that armadillos remind me of tiny dinosaurs who eat tons of things I don’t like, namely fire ants, aka armadillo caviar. But, back to my motley crew. Let’s take Poppy the Pug, for instance. No, don’t take her. I’m not ready, yet.

There are infinite types of sickness, loosely defined as the act of being affected by illness, physical or mental. Sick can run the gamut from needing to take a day off after working in the hot sun too long to gathering the wagons and making your last wishes known. It is sniffles. It is the inability to slow down your brain even though that’s the only thing you want. It is cancer. It is the unwillingness of your heart to continue beating. It is certainly this Voldemort affliction we live in fear of today but dare not speak of. “I’m sick” is both something you tell your toddler on a Saturday morning when your headache means you don’t feel like getting up at 6 am and the first line over coffee when you don’t know how to tell your mom that some personified, potentially terminal demon is threatening your very existence. I’ve had these conversations, both of them. The latter one is disturbing as it starts with nausea and ends with tears. Sick, if I may give it a personality and use it as a proper noun, is scary because it almost always brings its tacky cousin Pain along for the joyride. You never know about Pain. Will he leave as soon as he gets vamped by a wicked city woman or will he stay way past his welcome? There’s your loosely veiled I Love Lucy reference. Pain and Sick are the ultimate villain tag team. The Joker was a bad dude. But, when The Joker and Catwoman joined forces, look out. There’s no defeating Cesar Romero and Julie Newmar. So, being sick is scary. There’s only one thing more terrifying – being the person who takes care of the person who is sick.

It seems the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in Texas and the rest of the nation has caused education administrators to rethink what school is going to look like in the Fall. Social distancing, the wearing of masks, the need for gloves, and proper sanitation and cleaning of classrooms may take a back seat to virtual learning, once again.

When we were children, we were, the majority of us, indoctrinated into a meat and potatoes world. A meal wasn’t a meal without some form of red meat and a root vegetable. I could go on and on about the role the government played in creating a post WWII food pyramid that shouted praises of what we had at our disposal during this unprecedented yet unpublicized foot shortage, rather than actually educating us on what was healthy. We’ll save that conversation for another day, since this whole entry is merely one of my attempts at a very bad analogy to introduce a very scary topic. Gulp. But, more about the meat and potatoes. We lived our whole lives thinking that was healthy! We shoveled in more meat. We gobbled down more potatoes: mashed with CREAM, laden with BUTTER, smothered in CHEESE, pummeled with SALT. What’s better than a little healthy - a ton of healthy, right? We meat and potatoes gluttened our way into rampant heart disease territory. We didn’t mean to. We really thought it was healthy. What a rude awakening. Our parents didn’t know better when they fed us. We didn’t know better when we first fed our children. Then, we woke up in a weird low sodium, meat is the devil, lactose problematic, potatoes are evil world that eschewed bad fats. It was hard, learning to eat better, but we began to see that it was detrimental to our survival as a people. Plus, veggies had gotten a bad rap all those years! Bring on the Brussels Sprouts! Welcome to analogy #1.

The last 8 weeks of the 2019-2020 school year ended in a whirlwind of chaos and uncertainty. Teachers, students and parents rode the wave into virtual learning that for the most part served no purpose other than justifying teachers’ paychecks. Diligent students participated in the exercise while many others enjoyed an early start to summer break. The overall success of teachers and students being thrust into virtual learning has yet to be determined. However, the reemergence of school in the Fall could benefit from a properly planned, staffed and funded virtual learning alternative.

Six months ago, who would have thought we’d be where we are today? Riding out a global health pandemic right into social protests and demands for justice and equality for African American people. We have never had dual social disaster before (at least as far as I can remember) and I hope we never have it again. The fact is, we are where we are. This unfortunate time provides a good opportunity for each of us as individuals to reflect on who we are, who we claim to be and who we endeavor to become.

It is nearly lunchtime on the Monday after Father’s Day. The house is eerily quiet. All I hear is the gentle gurgle of an essential oil diffuser, a snoring pug with a trachea issue, and the hum of a spinning washing machine from the next room. The little dogs are napping under the kitchen table, the big ones have commandeered furniture they ordinarily aren’t allowed to grace. Both cats are lazily stretched out on the bare mattress of my bed as the sheets are nearly ready for a transfer to the dryer. All is calm. All is bright. If a picture paints a thousand words, this Van Gogh is a masterful fake, for the personality of my home this weekend was anything but serene. See, the kids came for a visit.