Why attempt to write a novel about an inner city elementary school? Surely, most Americans have heard enough about public school failings. The problem is decades old and oftentimes a non-issue to those not directly involved in the system. Yet, there are so many Americans who are influenced by public schools, though it may painful to re-examine things, the urge to do so presses in on me and I cannot ignore it.
My fellow citizens battle urgent concerns at this time in our history. The economy is bad. Terrorism looms with a heavy and ragged shadow over our hearts and emotions and our land. People have lost jobs. Whole states are in economic crisis. Individual families are stressed to the limit, emotionally and financially. Most people, unless directly involved in the inner city school experience, don't have the time, emotion or energy to consider the issues.
I have selfish reasons for writing about the inner city school experience. I'm attempting to re-discover me and to rekindle waning enthusiasm I felt for teaching and my students. I loved and still love the daily chaos and noise. I enjoy observing children as they develop and evolve from age 5 to the end of 6th grade. I am not blissfully ignorant about their lives and how they might turn out after they leave our hallways. In annual ceremonies and rites of passage, they exit our school and head into the unknown world of middle school. I watch them with a wistful heart, knowing that some will make it and others will not. Many temptations, much violence and risk await them and there have been dark and sobering days when I heard of former students pregnant, on the streets or even dead. I chose and choose to stay and struggle in an inner city school. I return daily and face the challenge. Most of us in the system, face the overwhelming personal agonies of our students, a top heavy bureaucratic system and an inside view of excessive amounts of energy, time and tax dollars spent per child, with stoicism and diligent work. However, there comes a time to call things what they are. This year's appalling and unacceptable district graduation rate of 46%, is one of many examples of things needing to be called out. Debate rages on in our district over mayoral control versus board of education control. People ask me what I think and my response is always the same. The district is not willing to deal with what the real problems are...any new directive is simply another version of over-priced window dressing.
There are not enough crayons, drawing paper, hugs and children's smiles which can satisfy that inner drive, that longing I feel to create something out of the tangle in which I find myself. I want to create something new, something beautiful even, which is not bound and fettered to methods, educational lingo and curriculum, grant writing, funding and politics. I want life affirming honesty to shine in dark and dusty corners of this system.
I commenced writing in a rather scattered manner. I gathered materials in starts and snatches...interesting detritus of life, student experiences, school inter-personal dramas, and a treasure chest of old journals and articles. I purchased a computer. I stuffed a huge tupperware bin full of notes and writing ideas and then shoved it all into a bedroom corner where it sat for months. I traveled to New York City and met one of my favorite authors, Mr. Alexander McCall Smith. I came home inspired and excited about writing and then did...absolutely nothing...clearly my propensity to procrastinate, well entrenched.
My beloved Father spoke to me of needing a "kaboom moment" and my perceptive and more practical Mother told me to get going...to do this good thing which was required of me and was a calling. What the reader finds in these blogs, is a result...a tenuous beginning stemming from these admonitions. It is not the end product...but I look forward to watching the novel evolve.
The reader should feel free to view much of 690 Saint Paul as fiction. I weave these strands of fiction together into a larger picture of fact, impression, imagination and truth. I write what I see, hear, sense, touch, observe, assume and dream. I take creative liscence, writing in multiple directions and styles, while remaining sensitive to the privacy and dignity of each person I have known in this system. No one should assume any particular incident in this novel to be explicitly his or her own story.
My deepest desire is to communicate through the written word, the precarious paths of our students in the midst of a haphazard educational system, while at the same time engaging the reader with humor, pathos, reflection and hope.
Now is the time and now is the place. Dear reader, come and join me as I write this novel page by page and experience by experience. I desire your input. I respect your thoughts. I crave your insight. I want this novel to be written publically and openly because we all belong to the same nation. We all contribute in one way or another to our public schools, our children, their lives and the future. We all have a lot invested. It is a delicate and dangerous dance...but let the dance begin nevertheless!
