Grumpy Gus on the Local School District Promise

Sometimes I refer to my husband as "Grumpy Gus." He just has a way of looking at some things as if the glass is a quarter full, and I have a way of being annoyingly Pollyanna. And that makes for a good balance. But today, I want to write in the skin of Grumpy Gus, because... well, I am Grumpy Gus about this one.

Here's the deal: our local school district has articulated the following "school district promise": "All students will realize their unlimited potential." I saw it the other day on the sign at the neighborhood school and I nearly snorted, right then and there. There's so much wrong with that kind of "promise," I hardly know where to start.

Well, maybe with "promise." If you're going to promise something, you'd better be able to keep your promise. This is not a motto. It's not a wish. It's not a dream. Any of those would be less offensive. No, it's termed a "promise." And they can't keep it.

The reason they can't keep it is the next word: "All." Come on, Mr. Superintendent. I assume you had to take educational statistics at some time in your academic preparation. You should know better; you can't use the word "all," unless you really mean "all," and you can guarantee "all." "All" is a qualifying word that should put up red flags all--and I mean all--over the place. Very rarely can we say with confidence that all people will do something. In fact, the only thing I can think of in the moment is that, short of the second coming of Jesus, all people will die. Not even all have the chance to be born. So "all" is a word to be avoided. You just can't make "all," happen.

And when you combine "all" with "realize" their potential, it gets worse. Now you're saying that you promise to get every last one of those sweet children to a point that not a single one of us in this world reaches. This starts to get ludicrous.

But wait! Not only have you just said something that in practicality means NOTHING, but you said that each child has unlimited potential. No, no! That is simply not true. Every person has limits on their potential. And those limits are different for different people. I simply cannot become an airplane-designing engineer, even if I study engineering for the rest of my life. Even if I had started studying it way back in college. I just don't have it in me. My potential has limits because my physical body has limits and my mind has limits and my interest level has limits. To say that I have unlimited potential is goofy. And it's not useful.

To say that I'm going to reach my unlimited potential is not mathematically possible, either. If you've studied limits in calculus, you know that. when something is unlimited, you never can reach it. The logic just doesn't work. The arrow goes up and and up into infinity without ever touching it's limit.

This "promise," "All students will realize their unlimited potential," is the kind of thing that makes education as a profession look like airy whipped cream instead of the solid meat-and-potatoes it should be in our society. Educators should be thinkers, should make sense, should be the types of people that you can depend on their word when they give it. Whipped cream may look delectable, but the meat-and-potatoes is what will sustain a body for growth. (Well, the potatoes, anyway, if you consider that I'm a vegetarian.) Let's stop being people of fads, stop being people who think there's a silver bullet to solve every child's problem, stop saying silly, fluffy things that don't hold up, and be real about the promises we make to families who have hope for their children.

Maybe our promise should be this: "We'll give our very best, our 100% effort, as educated professionals to help your child learn, grow and thrive." It may not be flashy, but it's solid. That would do it.

Third Culture Kids and War

Far Eastern Academy administration/classroom building, Singapore. I did all my high school here. Photo by Randall Jones.

On our Facebook group for Far Eastern Academy (Shanghai and later Singapore; now closed) alumni a couple of weeks ago, one of my third culture kid friends whom I'll call DeAnna posted the following question:

This week I've been thinking about how growing up overseas has shaped my life, and just woke up from a dream about the 1971 war between Pakistan and India. It's neat to be able to research that war online and find out more about what was going on politically at the time (as I was only 8). I'm curious about how many of you directly experienced war while an MK/missionary. Would you mind sharing the year(s), location(s), and a few thoughts about your experience?

A fascinating discussion-starter, I thought. And indeed, it proved to be so. So let me share with you the responses (using pseudonyms), and let them speak for themselves:

• DeAnna: I do remember seeing the bombed oil storage tanks when we returned, but didn't know that the attack on Karachi was called Operation Trident! And then there was Operation Python...
• Cindy: I lived in Vietnam from 1968 to 1971. It was an experience most don't get to have. I got shot at, had hand grenade thrown at me, had the Vietcong try to kidnap me, was in an area that was being bombed and had soldiers die in my arms. It certainly gave me a perspective unlike anyone else unless they lived in war. I also had some fabulous times there as well - like hitchhiking on helicopter's to go to the gorgeous beach's, riding a tank just for the fun of it on an army base being the only woman with all those GI's, etc. Brings back many many memories of being a teenager in Vietnam.
• Connie: We were in Saigon, too, 1974-75. The GIs were gone, only Marines left to guard the embassy. Tense inside the city - I remember going up to the roof of the hospital to watch the bombing around the perimeter. A most beautiful country, weary from decades of war. Made me a pacifist for life.
• Margaret: We evacuated from Korea in the middle of the night, June 25,1950. It is a very vivid memory for me. 700 women and children transported from Inchon, Korea to Sasebo, Japan in the hold of a merchant ship. We were 3 days on the ocean. We spent a few days at the Navy Hospital and were taken by train to northern Japan. Our fathers flew out of Korea the next day and found us in northern Japan. We were the first foreign children to arrive back in Korea 1954.
• Lynette: I was at FEA '62 to '66. If you've ever seen the Linda Hunt movie called the year of living dangerously, that's what Indonesia and Singapore were like during that time. It wasn't exactly war, but Singapore went through independence while I was at FEA, and we experienced riots, lockdowns, and a lot of fear because the British evacuated their own citizens, but the Americans had no plan. Our biggest fear was the Communists that were infiltrating through beach landings every night. When we went on our 30 mile jungle hike, we came across many communist hiding places. I thought it was very exciting, but it was also quite unsettled and dangerous also. I also  lived on a Okinawa from 1950 - 1960, and the Korean War was being supplied militarily from Okinawa. We experienced blackouts and air raids drills daily, and as a child growing up, I thought we were at war. We had fighter jets screaming overhead, practice bombing runs and anti-aircraft drills etc. and the beaches were covered with soldiers drilling with aircraft carriers off shore. I still have some fear of the dark because of all the night time drama. And of course we were living in a village surrounded by all the remnants of the bloodiest battles ever fought.
• Vickie: Vietnam war was going on when I went to FEA. The furloughed soldiers would come to port for a little R&R. My cousin came one day. While kids were at home in the good old USA burning our flag in demonstration....we knew what they obviously did not know....how precious it is to live in the land of the free and the brave....how beautiful to see our flag flying her colors high...how our soldiers throughout history have fought to keep it that way...even when it was a ridiculous war to begin with.
• Patrice:  I was over there during the Vietnam war....we couldn't go camping at one place because the soldiers were fighting there that weekend. I was rather mad about it! I remember all the soldiers coming in for R&R in Singapore and us going out to see the ships.
• Marie: There was never war where we lived in Malaysia, but I remember being somewhat fearful because I'd heard the adults talk about the Domino Theory: Vietnam was falling Communists, so Laos and Cambodia would be next, then Thailand, then Malaysia, and that was us. There was Communist guerilla activity in the highlands and jungles of southern Thailand and Malaysia, and at times they interfered with travelers. I remember hearing that a farang (foreigner) family had been pulled over, going through the mountains at night in the south part of Thailand, and everyone was made to get out of the van, and they were robbed and then shot. We traveled through those mountains one night not much later, on our way to Phuket, and I was really frightened and did a lot of praying, bedded down in the back seat of the VW van.
  In another vein, there were times when the race tensions got hot in Malaysia. At one point race riots erupted in Penang between the Chinese and the Malays, and one of our friends, a Chinese lab technician, was stoned to death as he rode his motorcycle home from a shift at work, passing through a Malay kampong near the beach. The word went out during a week-long, 24-hour curfew that if you stuck your nose out of your house, the police would shoot it off. I was unhappy because my parents made us go to school during that time, saying that the curfew didn't apply on the hospital compound where we lived and went to school. They just didn't want people out on the public streets, my parents said. I was imagining going down the back steps of our house on stilts, and the whizz of a bullet as my nose would fly off my face. Not such a comforting thought. I have not, by the way, been able to find anything in a cursory search for historical notes online about those race riots.
• Tim: We were in South Korea at the beach one summer when a North Korean submarine attached the US missile base about 5 miles from where we were staying. The next morning solders were digging fox holes in our front yard and scouring the country side looking for North Korean solders that may have gotten to shore.
• Eric: Tim, remember all the gun emplacements at the bridges and the further you got out into the country the more check points and military pill boxes. I remember one time when some north Koreans came down and we had troops running through our back yard and all through the woods around the house. A big concern for my parents was always that the North Koreans would come down when we were scattered all over Korea and they would not be able to find us. I guess it was as not to great of a concern because we stayed for quite a few years and us kids never worried about it.
• Michelle: I lived in Pakistan during that same Pakistan and India war that you did, DeAnna. We were at our school, Pakistan Adventist Seminary, about an hour from Lahore. One day we heard a plane fly over and then there was a huge explosion. It was so loud that we thought a bomb had fallen. But we found out later that a plane had been shot down by another plane and the impact of the sound, tore locks our of doors and broke windows on our campus. Every night we had a blackout and weren't allowed to turn on any lights or use head lights on cars. It was a very scary time for me. We would dive under the table every time we heard a plane go over. To this day, I startle easily at loud noises!
• Laila: Uganda post independence - civil war between mountain tribes and lowlands tribes - father the political go-between - never knew if he would return or not. That was 1964-1968. Then post independence in Belgian Congo - barely in control gun toting thugs everywhere - us behind high fences with guard dogs - saw some pretty scary things from a child's point of view - that was 1969-ish onwards...my mother will undoubtably have different adult recollections different to mine.
• Rhonda:  I lived on Guam from 1967 to 1972 during Vietnam War. The bombers left Guam at 3-ish a.m. on their bombing runs to Vietnam. Remember seeing them returning in the late afternoons. Whenever there was a typhoon, you always knew they would be closing the schools when they evacuated the planes. When I moved to S Korea in 1972, there were real air ease drills ever month. We grew up in some strange times and places. In S Korea, every winter there was talk of the north invading the south. There were machine gun nests on top of every police box, and they were at every major street corner. All the major bridges and road were built with explosives slready in them to be exploded if the north came south, and out in the country were miles and miles of tank traps--looked like dominoes marching across the land. Basically, I had an amazing childhood! Saw things and went places you don't even know to dream about, and my younger kids have grown up all in one place.
• Margaret: Thanks, DeAnna, for jogging our memories from our unusual childhoods. Does anyone have PTSD from all this?
• Connie: I think my brother has struggled with it for years.
• DeAnna: It's been so interesting to read all these accounts of what was just "normal life" for us all. I remember vividly the blackouts leading up to the war, the bomb shelter we built with mattresses and 50 gallon drums in my sister's and my bedroom, dad sneaking out to listen to the BBC and us waiting anxiously for him to return, my baby sister refusing to let go of Mom's neck or take her shoes off, seeing the flares in our yard, etc. I remember the day we found out we were going to be evacuated and my sister had taken some diapers to hang out on the roof when the air raid sirens went off. Mom and Dad charged up the stairs to get my older sister and younger sister  (who had crawled up after her); they got back down just as two Indian and two Pakistani fighter planes shot at each other at treetop level over our house. I remember being crouched behind a door; we all thought the house was exploding. Mom and Dad still have the shrapnel we picked up from our roof and yard. When we left, my favorite doll (Raggedy Ann) was in the closet behind the bomb shelter so I couldn't get to her. When we returned six months later, the first thing I did was run to the closet and Dad helped me move the bomb shelter so I could get her out. She now lives in box of treasures I've hauled all over the world - you all know how that goes. After Pakistan, we moved to Okinawa. I remember the stories of Desmond Doss (http://www.homeofheroes.com/profiles/profiles_doss2.html) and often visiting the escarpment where he saved 75 fellow soldiers. There was a monument marker located in the yard of our school that honored his life and sacrifice. Live ammunition was often found in the caves all over the island. The island was home to several military bases. Every morning we would hear the sonic boom of the SR-71 taking off, and I can still see it as it would glide in low over our school during recess in the afternoon when coming in for a landing. We all share such amazing and unique histories! People often ask me what it was like to grow up all over the world, and I always respond that, as a kid I didn't know anything different so it was just life. How valuable to have had those experiences; to have been exposed to the world and to appreciate that we are part of something much bigger than where we were born! There is no doubt that we were all affected and shaped by the things that were "normal life" for us as kids (as were our parents). I wouldn't trade it for anything!
• Rhonda: The SR-71 was my favorite plane! After it was declassified, they used to bring it to air shows and I went to every one. I got to talk with s couple of the pilots once. Still the most amazing plane.
  I know I had an amazing childhood that my own kids don't understand--when I moved back to the states I didn't want to go anywhere because we would "drive"--I was used to flying if we had to go somewhere.
• DeAnna: Rhonda, I agree! We had a friend who was a mechanic on the SR-71 and when it would take off on weekends or evenings they would invite us over for "hamburgers" at a particular hour and we knew that was the clue to go to Kadena and watch it blast off. It was so neat to see!
• Rhonda: By the by--this has been fascinating to read other similar stories--we all relate cuz we were in similar situations. My husband has no clue so never talk to him about it.
• Suzy: It's fascinating to read all this and know that my father was fighting as a soldier in Vietnam at the same time as the parents of my friends were going in as doctors to the same place. I love reading the history and the stories. Keep them coming!
• Margaret:  There isn't much wrong with the USA....All us third culture kids know what wrong looks like.
• Lena: We got to Bangladesh towards the end of their war, (or the war aftermath). We saw terrible things, truck loads of dead bodies going by the school. Street side executions.... There were also armed robbers that came to our school. Multiple times my parents would put us in the hall and put a mattress on each end of the hall. The missionary just before us, Pastor H. was shot and killed there, so that made it feel very real. The robbers stole the transformer that sent electricity to our school, so we were without electricity for about 9 months. We cooked on bricks outside and used kerosene lamps at night. Also, around the same time there was a famine in the country probably related to the war. You could have all the money in the world but there wasn't enough food. My dad lost about 40 lbs and my mom was about 100 lbs. When we went on furlough my siblings and I all grew about 3 inches in 3 months. The missionaries in Dhaka did better. They could get to the ration lines. My mom finally went to India to get us some food. Part of it was stolen in customs. Poor people; they were hungry too.
  Bangladesh was a pretty rough place, I really enjoyed getting away to FEA. I find I don't talk about it very much, and when I do it's just kind of matter of fact like...God got us through some tough stuff.

Fat, Part 3

Freshman year in college, Fall 1980

[This is the third part of my "Fat" series, begun here and continued here. I'm writing this series to work through some thoughts, so skip it if this isn't your thing.]

The summer before my freshman year in college--I had decided to attend my father's alma mater in eastern Washington state--we spent the summer in Europe. We did a lot of walking while there, and I lost another 20 pounds from when I had graduated from high school. I remember buying slim grey pants at a store in Austria, and thinking that they were exorbitantly expensive, but being proud that I fit into them.

When we got back home to Malaysia, I packed up my things in the two weeks I had at home, donned my custom-made brown suit--we dressed up to fly somewhere on an airplane in those days--and boarded the plane for the United States. I had a rock in the pit of my stomach, not knowing if I would see home again. You never knew, back in those days. I guess you still don't.

Sorry for the glaze; this is a picture of a photo in my old albums, covered by protective film .

The first year of college was exciting, and was an adjustment. During that year I made friends with the Rose boys, who had also grown up as missionary kids during their childhood in South America. They felt like my tribe. Steve, on the left, has remained a best friend of mine to this day.

The guys came to the little podunk airport near our college to see me off at the end of my freshman year. I was indeed getting to head back home to Malaysia for the summer, and was happy to be doing so. I'd missed my family sorely. As you can see, I had put on more than the "freshman fifteen" during my first year of college. I had not managed the cafeteria well, and no one had forewarned me that this could be a challenge. I never heard the term "freshman fifteen" until I was back in higher education, working as a professor.

And so I had to go at it again, the summer after my freshman year. My brother and I drove--yes, drove; he had gotten his driver's permit--to the swimming club every day and I swam laps and watched what I ate, working that 20 pounds off again. And so it went through college. A bit up, a bit down, but generally under control. Working at camp in the summers and being required by the camp director to exercise daily, helped.

Ginger and Case with Mephistopheles

This picture was taken during my junior year in college, when my brother and I were sharing our first little car, a used Civic. We named it Mephistopheles after the character in our Freshman Honors readings. Meph took us many places and lasted a surprisingly long time, long after his heating and cooling system gave up and we sweated our way back and forth on the drive from college to home. My parents had moved back during my sophomore year and settled a one-hour drive from us, in a fairly nondescript city by the Columbia River.

Again, it's surprising to me to look at my old pictures and see that I was doing pretty well, size-wise. Until putting together this series, I had not realized that. What was my picture of what I should be back then, anyway? Something unrealistic? Unattainable? Was I a size 12 girl trying to be a size 8? It's incredible to think that some girls my height think both of those sizes are too large, now.

On college graduation day

I graduated in 1985--having taken off a year off to live and work in Finland after my junior year--and headed off to my first teaching job in a two-room church school on the Oregon coast. I taught grades 1-4 in one room, eighteen students, and breathed a sigh of relief when my first graders actually learned to read. 

By now my weight was staying pretty steady, higher than I thought it should be, but not in a very unhealthy place. 

After getting two years of teaching experience, I thought it was time to head to graduate school. So I moved to California to get my masters degree in Administration and Leadership. I had no interest in being a school administrator; I wanted the degree as a tool for the future, and it was the default specialization. I wasn't interested in either of the other two areas of specialization--Curriculum or School Psychology. I had no clue, back then, that my default specialization would open every career door for me after that.

Note the long jacket to cover the too-wide hips. We women have our devices.

During that year in grad school I lived with Lois, an old high school roommate from my Singapore days. Lois tried to be helpful in my focus on getting my weight down, and I appreciated that in varying degrees. It can be pretty tough when your best friend takes you on as a project. I recall one time when we came back from church and decided to make hot dogs for lunch.

"How many hot dogs do you want?" Lois asked, getting the fry pan ready to brown them.

"Three," I said.

"THREE???!" she practically shouted, in horror.

We laughed, and I downsized my order of hot dogs to two, but I was also embarrassed and irritated. It's not a great feeling to be told off for your food choices, especially in that very moment when you want some particular food, and you want a substantial portion of it.

Doing filing in the Administration and Leadership department

That year I worked as a graduate assistant at the university a 35-minute drive from the place where Lois and I were house-sitting for her parents, who were in South America. My favorite place to go for lunches was the little burger joint down at Five Corners, about a mile from the university. Their veggie-burger was big and delicious with mayonnaise aplenty to smooth its travel to the tummy. And the tummy was where it settled, indeed.

Fixing the cap for my fellow grad assistant, Joanne, before we marched.

And so I graduated with my masters degree at the age of 25. I was headed for a teaching job in a suburb of Los Angeles, having gotten the offer from a principal with whom I'd done my internship and whose style I admired. I wanted to learn more from working with him. 

At this point I was more focused on the future and where doors were opening for me, than on my fatness or thinness. Again, I realize that the "fat girl" image was always with me, but it didn't consume my thoughts. Life did. And that was a healthy thing. 

There has always been more to life than my body; I've realized recently that my priority has typically been more on brain work than on body work. And for the most part, that has not been a bad thing.

[to be continued]

At the Darkest Time

Photo from here

[I meant to blog every day in October, but got derailed by life. Well, it was a good try...]

"But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son..." Gal. 4:4

At a very dark time in history, one of the darkest as people suffered under the iron hand of Roman rule, Jesus was born on this earth. Whatever you think of who Jesus was--and there aren't many options, as C.S. Lewis points out--that event of His birth changed history and brought something to this world that, if taken seriously and without self-serving motives, makes our world a better place.

I was thinking about that this morning, about the incarnation of God at the darkest time in history. Several people I know of are going through darkest times right now.

My mother is losing her memory, and knows she is confused. It causes her anxiety. Some days she doesn't know who my dad is. He's just a man in her apartment. Not threatening, not familiar,...just a man.  Yesterday she didn't know who her own son was when he came to take her to breakfast, nor did she recognize that the cute twins with him were her granddaughters. One of these days she won't know me. I'm trying to prepare myself for that time. I know it will be very painful for me. I will grieve, and the nature of this kind of disease is that the grieving will be drawn out over time. Darkest times.

A friend of mine has been diagnosed with cancer. It has spread through her body, and she is struggling onward with the best attitude she can muster, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches to make her days as hopeful and as good in quality as she possibly can. She has one son, a young adult who recently graduated from college, whom she loves dearly. She faces darkest times.

Another dear friend recently lost her mother, who was everything to her. I have thought several times that, in the demise of her own faith, my friend placed her mother in the "god role." And that worked pretty well, as her mother was a godly woman, a woman of faith. My friend does trucking for a living and used to talk on the phone with her 90-year old mother as she drove that truck full of frozen berries, strawberry plants or corn across this country. Now there is no mother's voice at the other end of that phone call. There is no longer a god-figure for her. She is distraught. Darkest times.

Others I know are facing darkest times with work, with family members who have hurt them, or with financial difficulties that seem insurmountable.

But Jesus showed up in this world's history at the darkest time.

He always does.

My friend with cancer writes that she had a sense that Jesus was propped up on an elbow, lying next to her on her radiation table, going through the procedure with her and calming her. She felt His presence very closely in that moment. We don't always sense the presence of God with us, but I believe that He shows up... especially in our darkest times. Not to pull some magic trick and make it all better. Not to convince us that He exists where we have insisted on proof. But He, the creator, the sustainer of life, is there with us. In our darkest times. And the world is a better place because He comes.

For that hope, for that assurance, for that reality, I am already celebrating this Christmas. Oh, Jesus, come into this world! Be amid the darkness in the minds of loved ones. Be around those whose bodies are failing them and whose worlds are growing darker. Travel alongside those who have been bereaved, and bring warmth and comfort and light. Be with those who experience darkest times. Be ... in our world.