Lefty Parent

The Case for Many Educational Paths

Cooper Zale — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:45:41 +0000

Starting in third grade with learning the multiplication tables, our son Eric started having a problem with school. By seventh grade he would not do any homework, had been diagnosed with ADD, was taking Aderall, had been through an IEP, and had had a number of sessions with an educational therapist. When he got to the point in eighth grade of writing “F**k Math” on his standardized math test, we pulled him out of school.

We looked at alternative schools with a more holistic approach to learning. The few public alternative schools we found were not really that different, they were equally bound by the standardized curriculum and high-stakes testing. We identified one or two very alternative private schools, but they were way too expensive. We ended up homeschooling Eric, and after some false starts, we worked out a path forward for his education that truly worked for him.

So Eric, now 24, is an accomplished young adult and entrepreneur who has partnered with three others to launch a computer business. Eric, the math-phobic kid, has spent the last two years as the Chief Operating Officer, dealing with all the personnel, logistical and financial issues for the business.

One Size Does Not Fit All

From our son’s experience, the experience of many other families and youth we know or have read about, and the sobering statistics about how many kids don’t finish high school, I have come to the conclusion that the ubiquitous, one-size-fits-all conventional instructional public school does not, and cannot work for every youth, no matter how fully it is funded or how much it is “reformed”.

Based on my research and direct experience, I am drawn to the conclusion that when it comes to education, don’t even try to argue that any one learning path can fit everybody, one size does not, cannot, and should not fit all!

Making Conventional Instructional Schools Better

From my past experience as a student, from talking to my kids and their friends about their school experience, and talking to friends who are public school teachers, it seems one of the main things that drags down the conventional instructional public school is that teachers have to try to teach all the youth who don’t belong or otherwise don’t want to be there. There is a mythology that if teachers are good they can motivate any student to learn the required material. But I hear teacher after teacher I know complain about having to spend so much time and effort trying to motivate many of their students to learn and at the same time deal with the behavior problems of those who won’t.

So many of the features of a standard classroom – rules clamping down on behavior, required graded homework, and copious behavior modification techniques – are there to try to motivate or coerce students to learn who do not want to be there. For the rest of the students, who are interested in what the teacher has to teach them, these strong-arm tactics and the general negative energy of the other youth can poison the classroom environment.

I ask teachers how different it would be if every student in their class wanted to be there. They generally roll their eyes and tell me that it would be wonderful, for them and for their students. Wouldn’t the conventional instructional school be transformed by just that one profound change, a teacher interacting with a classroom full of students truly interested in and grateful for the lessons the teacher was providing?

How Else Could a Kid Get an Education?

There are other schools that are significantly different than conventional public schools. Some are categorized as “holistic”, like Waldorf, Montessori, or those inspired by the education philosophy of John Dewey. Others are called “democratic/free”, like Sudbury Valley in Massachusetts and the Albany and Manhattan Free Schools in New York.

These “alternative” schools are generally private, because their educational approach is so profoundly different than the conventional instructional schools. They are more student-directed, including allowing those students leeway to work at their own pace and focus more on areas of interest. This can be great for a self-motivated student with some keen interests, but not necessarily in sync with the state standardized approach to testing and school in general, which assumes, for example, that every fourth grader has had the same instruction in English, math, science and social studies.

I believe that a lot of the kids that struggle in our conventional public schools would do much better in one of these “alternative” schools, or even being educated at home (if the family has the resources).

A Third Voice in the Education Debate

As a lifelong liberal and Democrat, I find it ironic that Republicans are often closer to the many educational paths position. They are more likely to support homeschooling, “school choice”, and giving more educational decision making to parents. Then again, Republicans have also been the strongest proponents of scripted learning (like Open Court) and high-stakes testing, which makes it so difficult for truly alternative public schools to pass muster.

I would like to see the dialog and debate on education and educational policy include a third position that champions “Many Paths” and educational alternatives behind a banner of liberty, democracy, and self-direction, within a context of local community responsibility for educating their young people.

I believe that embracing the idea of “Many Paths” to transform our education system, is sound policy for the 21st century. The dimensions, complexities, knowledge-base and skill sets needed to maintain human society and facilitate our continuing evolution require a profound move away from the “command and control”, one-size-fits-all education system that we developed in the 19th century to address an earlier phase of our evolution. Today’s challenge is to create an enriched environment for learning so that our youth can find satisfying and rewarding careers that also contribute to their communities, which in turn would contribute to our larger common good.

Thoughts on Teachers Wanting a Voice

Cooper Zale — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:27:36 +0000

Teacher magazine published the results of a survey of 40,090 K-12 teachers, possibly the largest national survey of teachers ever completed and including the opinions of teachers in every grade and every state. The survey, “Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s School,” was conducted by Harris Interactive and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic Inc. You can download the full report at: www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/100646_ScholasticGates.pdf.

Here are some of the results I found most interesting…

1. A majority of teachers value non-monetary rewards, such as time to collaborate with other teachers and a supportive school leadership, over higher salaries.

From my experience as a student, and as a parent with kids who were students, there are three key aspects that define a school or any other educational setting: content, process and governance. With conventional instructional schools most of the focus (at least from a parent’s point of view) is usually on the content of the instruction; what subjects and what knowledge within those subject areas is being taught. To a lesser extent, the process (the pedagogical methodology) can at times be the focus, for example all the discussion around scripted learning programs like “Open Court”, or about taking into account “kinesthetic” versus “auditory” learners.

The third aspect, governance, usually gets short shrift. Most parents I think presume schools have a hierarchical “chain of command” where students are told what to do by teachers, who get their marching orders from principals, and so up the “chain”. In other community organizations (including parent-teacher associations) people expect there to be more of a democratic model of governance, with committees and boards, etc. facilitating group decision-making by various “stakeholders” in those organizations.

But this first report finding that I am highlighting speaks to the aspects of process and governance, indicating that teachers are seeking more of a role in how their schools are run. As my mom always used to say, “The teachers should run the schools!” She was not a teacher herself, but had a husband (my dad) and many friends who were.

So why do most schools at least appear to reflect the “command and control” governance of say the military over the more democratic governance of most community organizations and our political process? That’s a whole discussion in itself that books have been written about… but let’s move on.

2. A majority of teachers support tougher academic standards, even national standards, but would also support differentiating instruction so kids are taught according to their abilities.

Our public schools are so OSFA (one size fits all). Statewide programs are developed to try and teach every kid the same thing, the same way and the same age in classes compartmentalized into four separate and generally distinct subjects… mainly English, math, science and social studies.

That regimentation puts an extra burden on teachers to redirect a diverse group of students with a diverse set of interests back to “the program”, rather than facilitating them really exploring their interests. If a kid wants to plunge into algebra for a few hours, the teacher, rather than facilitating this great self-directed deep learning, has to be the one to tell the kid to stop and open his or her history book.

So differentiating instruction and taking into account abilities would tend to go against the OSFA principle and put the teacher more in the mentor/facilitator role rather than the more onerous (I would imagine) traffic cop/drill sergeant.

3. A majority of teachers are not opposed to standardized tests, but want to see their students and their own performance as teachers judged on multiple measures rather that the results of one test.

It has been a staple of dystopian sci-fi stories to dehumanize people through excessive regimentation and reducing them to just numbers and statistics. Isn’t reducing the evaluation of a human being’s progress, whether adult teacher or youth student, to a single number also a dehumanizing experience?

Is it even an effective measure of someone’s capabilities or progress? More and more people inside and outside the education community are realizing that evaluation based on one measure is not a robust methodology and also leads to teaching to the test. I am heartened to see teachers pushing for (or at least yearning for) multiple measures.

What the hell!… aren’t we in the 21st Century! Mass production is long gone in favor of niche marketing. Why are schools still so 19th Century in the way they operate and judge success?

Effective School Governance for Teaching and Learning

Cooper Zale — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:04:49 +0000

I saw in the most recent Public Education Network “NewsBlast” that Part 1 of the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2009: Collaborating for Student Success” has been published, this part focused on “Effective Teaching and Leadership”. It reminds me once again of the issues faced by our democratic system of governance and whether our public school systems promote or run counter to the ideals of democratic governance.

To set the context (and as I have said repeatedly in other posts) we are in a historic transition in the world and its institutions from patriarchy to partnership, from hierarchical pecking orders to circles of equals. In a patriarchy, the governance model exists within a hierarchy of “superiors” and “inferiors”. At the top of that hierarchy are the people considered to be “leaders”, below them are the rest as “followers”. The “leaders” are charged with making the important decisions and exercising control over (and have responsibility for) all the “followers” below them.

The partnership model with its circles of equals is just the opposite. There is no big hierarchy, and “leaders” don’t make decisions that “followers” then follow. Leadership is in fact reframed as facilitating decisions that are made by everyone involved, generally by using the democratic processes of majority rule or even consensus, either formal or informal. In the business world some companies have experimented with or even adopted more of a partnership model, I’ve heard it described at some business seminars as “turning the org chart upside down”. In the political realm, we talk about countries governed “by and for the people” by its “citizens”.

I’ll stop for a moment and recommend you get used to the word “governance” if you have not done so already. It is a general term for all the methodologies groups of people use to make decisions. It is applicable to both a handful of people planning the agenda for a PTA meeting, to thousands of people formally playing their roles in making decisions in a national government. In many cases these days, I think it is a more appropriate substitute for the word “leadership”, the latter connoting more the patriarchal subset of people at the top of the hierarchy considered leaders.

So given all that, let’s go back to the MetLife survey of teachers that caught my eye. According to the survey, 69 percent of teachers across the country believe their voices aren’t heard in the debate on education and the governance (there’s that word) of their schools. The survey also finds that 67 percent of teachers and even 78 percent of school principals believe increased collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on improving student achievement. When I read this my first thought is that these schools are caught up in the patriarchal model, and the adult staff sees a benefit to transitioning to more of a partnership model.

The survey also finds that 80 percent of teachers and 89 percent of principals believe that a school culture where students feel responsible and accountable for their own education would strongly improve student achievement. I can’t resist wondering what percentage of school students across the country believe their voices aren’t heard in the educational debate and governance process. What do you guess? High 90s?

Further survey results show that 73 percent of school students agree it’s their responsibility to do the work it takes to succeed in school, but only 43 percent of teachers say all or most of their students exhibit this sense of responsibility. My first thought again is that these teachers and students are caught up in the patriarchal model, with the majority of students acknowledging they are responsible for their learning but a majority of teachers indicating that students are not exercising that responsibility. From the point of view of the transition from patriarchy to partnership it all makes sense.

Just look at the parallels. We live in a country that decided to fight for its independence because of “taxation without representation”. We have a country built on the premise that citizens have a stake in America and are therefore more likely to take responsibility and accountability for it (including fighting to preserve it). We have a history of more and more disenfranchised people fighting successfully for the right to vote and become fully enfranchised citizens.

We also look around the world and see that the countries that are more authoritarian, more blatantly patriarchal, and do not fully enfranchise their people as citizens tend to be more corrupt, and have a populace that feel less responsible and less willing to apply their energies for the common good. So we continually push for all countries to move more in the democratic direction, because it is better for us and better for the whole world.

Yet given all that, why do we continue to have a public school system where two-thirds of the teachers do not feel they are involved in the governance of their schools? To make an analogy, most teachers don’t feel like “citizens” of their schools. They are not part of a circle of equals governance model and instead are the “inferiors” toward the bottom of a patriarchal hierarchy where the real governance decisions are made by far-away “superiors”, educrats, politicians and other decision makers they don’t know and will probably never meet.

And taking this one step further, why are the students generally not involved at all in that governance? No wonder most teachers feel that students are not taking responsibly in their education. Students are not “citizens”, not “stakeholders” of their schools!

I urge you to ponder this dilemma, and consider that it may be well past time that we transform our venerable public education institutions from the patriarchal to the partnership model of governance. My mom always said that “the teachers should run the schools”. My thinking now is to agree, but take it one step further and let students participate in that governance as well.

FYI… the survey questioned a national sample of 1,003 public school teachers and 500 principals of grades K through 12, and 1,018 public school students in grades 3 through 12. The complete survey report can be found at: http://www.metlife.com/about/corporate-profile/citizenship/metlife-foundation/metlife-survey-of-the-american-teacher.html?WT.ac=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation&oc_id=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation

Little More than Test Scores

Cooper Zale — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:19:24 +0000

I ran across a summary of a report from a Los Angeles based non-profit group called the Advancement Project (www.advancementproject.org/) on the Public Education Network (PEN) “NewsBlast” (for February 26, 2010) that comes out every several days. Their white paper is titled “Intertwined policies cause widespread alienation & worse” and can be viewed and or downloaded at www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/test-punish-and-push-out-how-zero-tolerance-and-high-stakes-testing-fu.

From the PEN summary of the report I read…

A new report from the Advancement Project examines the joint effects of zero-tolerance discipline and high-stakes testing, which in it its view derive from the same ideological roots that have “turned schools into hostile and alienating environments for many of our youth, effectively treating them as drop-outs-in-waiting.”

This is the concern expressed by many alternative educators for years (particularly since Clinton’s Goals 2000 and its Bush/Kennedy successor, No Child Left Behind) but rarely heard from either liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans.

I took just a peek at the Advancement Project’s web site to read their basic statement of who they are and their mission…

We are an innovative civil rights law, policy, and communications “action tank” that advances universal opportunity and a just democracy for those left behind in America. We believe that sustainable progress can be made when multiple tools—law, policy analysis, strategic communications, technology, and research— are coordinated with grassroots movements.

Apparently the Advancement Project was founded in 1999 in Los Angeles and Washington DC by veteran civil rights lawyers who were looking for new ways to dismantle structural barriers to inclusion, secure racial equity, and expand opportunity for all.

Continuing with the PEN summary, the report finds…

While the increased securitization of schools is disaffecting for many at-risk students, “the emphasis placed on test results above all other priorities has an alienating and dehumanizing effect on young people, who resent being viewed and treated as little more than test scores.”

They are speaking of a disconnect between the humanistic values we strive for in our adult society and would hope to impart to our youth, and also hope to be reflected in our society’s institutions on the one hand, and the reality of at least in some (many) of our schools, particularly in more at risk communities. I can recall from my own kids’ experience in public schools the constant ranking of test scores and grades and boiling a young human being down to an “A Student” or “C Student” etc. My kids were in school to learn about areas of knowledge of interest to them, not to be constantly evaluated, particularly in such a reductionist way.

The PEN summary goes on to say that the organization’s report also…

Finds that the end result of “these intertwined punitive policies” is a “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which students throughout the country are “treated as if they are disposable, routinely pushed out of school and toward the juvenile and criminal justice systems.”

The report cites statistics showing a dramatic rise in school-based arrests coinciding with the passage of NCLB. Almost 250,000 more students were suspended out-of-school in 2006-07 than just four years earlier, when NCLB was signed into law, an increase of 15 percent. Giving schools the benefit of the doubt, maybe the increased focus on academic achievement in at-risk schools brought more attention to students who were disruptive and not going with the program, likely much more prescriptive and laser focused on improving reading and math skills for the high-stakes tests.

The issue that jumps out at me with my focus on “many paths”, is that if the standard instructional approach or standard curriculum does not work for a particular youth (like it did not for my son Eric), a mostly one-size-fits-all array of public schools does not give that kid’s family any real choices on where this “fish out of water” can find a more appropriate learning environment. Maybe the youth would do better in a venue that was more experiential and real-world than academic.

But with the one-size-fits-all mindset of many school districts, the “fish out of water” kid is simply “lazy”, “unmotivated” or “disruptive”. Since there are no real alternative paths available, the bureaucracy does not want to acknowledge that a particular school could be an appropriate learning environment for some students but not for others. Also if the conventional wisdom prevails that the only kind of meaningful formal education is the teacher administered, standards-based instructional kind, then it may be way to far outside the box for the adult school staff to even go there.

And finally from the PEN summary …

These policies have become mutually reinforcing the report argues, changing the incentive structure for educators, “putting many teachers and administrators in the unenviable position of having to choose between their students’ interests and their own self-interest.”

What a problematic model for cooperation and collaboration between youth (student) and adult (teacher). The teacher is the agent of a state-designed and state-directed institution that is committed to serve all students, whether or not this particular educational setting is appropriate for all those students.

From meeting my daughter Emma’s ninth-grade teachers and hearing her anecdotes about what happened in class, I could see the teacher’s difficult juggle between getting the students proficient on a pre-fabricated curriculum and facilitating a classroom experience that engaged the true interests of the students. When I asked Emma’s math teacher what he did to try to make geometry relevant, he shrugged and shook his head and wistfully said the there was no time for that. Emma’s history teacher said he had stopped class discussions about the more interesting topics in the text, because most of the students were failing the tests. He had them spend class time instead outlining the text chapter they were studying instead, each student working silently and individually at a pretty rote task.

Both those teachers were obviously stressed and unhappy with the situation, but they were muddling through and not rocking the boat. Her geometry teacher was hoping to perhaps retire in another year or two.

My take was (and still is) that real problems with individual people are not solved by bureaucratic solutions developed in faraway venues by people who rely on statistics rather than actual relationships with those individual people. This I see as one of the main shortcomings of the educational solutions put forward by my fellow progressive democrats. Their intent may be humanistic, but their programs are designed and implemented by state (and now even national) bureaucracies, which are unfortunately (by their high degree of separation from the students, families, teachers and administrators affected by those programs) tend to keep pushing the results away from humanistic outcomes, a kind of “Peter Principle” of sorts.

Alternative Charter School

Cooper Zale — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:43:54 +0000

Progressive Education Philosopher John Dewey

For her graduate school thesis, our friend Brenda opened an alternative charter school in the fall of 2000 which our daughter Emma attended for her three middle school years. Emma’s mom worked as the school counselor for four years, the first two as an unpaid intern, the last two as a paid staff member, and also served for a time on the school’s Board of Directors. The school was launched with about 120 students, offering kindergarten through sixth grade, which grew to include seventh and eighth by the third year.

As a person who believes that our education system is way too “One size fits all”, from the beginning I applauded this experiment to create a school on a different model than the conventional instructional school. In fact, many people can’t even conceive that there could be any other sort of school than ones that focus on…

1. Delivering a pre-set, state-mandated standardized curriculum, compartmentalized into separate, siloed language arts, social studies, math, and science “subjects”.

2. Using standardized textbooks and lesson plans featuring teacher-led instruction rather than student-led exploration.

3. Delivering the curriculum almost exclusively (except for occasional field trips) in a “classroom” arranged with desks or tables and chairs.

4. Segregating students into “grade levels” exclusively with kids their own age.

5. Having every student in a class learning the same thing at the same time.

6. Evaluating and ranking students based on published letter grades rather than a list of skills and knowledge content mastered.

7. Setting school rules and managing student behavior with rewards and punishments meted out by the teachers and other adult school staff with little or no input from the students.

That is the only kind of school most people have had experience with, but in a number of the above points, this school dared to be different. That all said, some kids do thrive in a conventional school environment, but many do not, and an educational program designed to be more experiential (like real life) has great appeal to a number of students and their families.

Brenda already had considerable experience running a school, since she continued to own and operate two preschools, one including some early elementary grades as well, that both our kids had attended. I always saw her forte as being sensitive to the individual talents and interests of her students, the needs of their families, and delivering a humanistic and developmentally appropriate program in a non-bureaucratic way. She also had a flair for managing the operational side of an educational enterprise, particularly working within a tight budget.

Brenda supplemented her own expertise by hiring a very talented program director, Scott, who brought in an integrated social studies core curriculum based on the educational ideas of John Dewey. Part of the Dewey approach was to make the classroom more student-led and experiential; where the teacher functioned more as a facilitator than an instructor, and was skilled enough to drive the curriculum based on the students’ interests rather than preset lesson plans.

Scott and Brenda both were strong believers in internal motivation rather than external rewards, so there was no “token economy” of stickers or other chits accumulated for “good behavior” and cashed in later for pizza parties or homework passes. Scott also implemented an extensive program of conflict resolution, teaching both the teachers and students conflict resolution techniques, which were employed wherever possible instead of using the more typical punishments of conventional schools.

Student evaluation was done by indicating which of a list of skills and content they had mastered rather than by letter grades. Homework was given to help teachers assess students’ skill and content knowledge acquisition, but was not “graded”, so parents were actually encouraged not to help students with their homework so the teachers could get a more accurate assessment. In a particularly interesting innovation, the conventional “parent-teacher” conferences were replaced by “parent-student” conferences where the students themselves presented their portfolios to their parents (with the assistance of their teacher) and evaluated their own strengths and weaknesses.

Scott and Brenda hired teachers as best as they could find and opened in fall 2000 with eight classes and over 100 students (including our eleven-year-old daughter) with a mix of white and minority families and a number of special-needs kids as well. Based on what I’ve read most charter schools are less diverse and with a smaller percentage of special needs kids. Again, Brenda’s operational skills helped her find extra funding (including one-on-one aides) for the special needs kids.

From the beginning there were significant challenges. A few of the initial teachers took naturally to the Dewey-style integrated curriculum designed to be more learner-driven than in conventional schools, but others continued to struggle and never mastered it, and half the original teachers did not last the year or were not rehired for the second year. It quickly became clear that, despite Scott’s considerable passion and expertise as the program director, it took a very special sort of person to teach the Dewey method.

Also for many of the students, particularly the older ones who were used to external behavior controls in school, the lack of punishments led them to feel that there was no reason to follow any rules that they did not want to. The school followed a progressive philosophy, but was not explicitly democratic. The students did not participate with the adults in developing school rules, so tended not to have as much “ownership” in the place as they could have. Also the focus on conflict resolution took a lot more staff time than simply meting out the conventional detentions and revoking privileges for bad behavior.

For many of the families, it was later discovered, that their motivation to put their kids in the school was not because they liked the alternative program, but because they liked that the school was small. Many families turned out to not be supportive of many of the innovative alternative features of the program. So many parents helped their kids with their homework, though asked not to by the staff, to the extent that some of the teachers could not tell if it was the student (or the parent) who had mastered the skills. When told that their child had broken a rule and gone through conflict resolution rather than punishment, the parents took on punishing their kid anyway. Some parents even actively lobbied Brenda, Scott and the teachers to make the program more traditional.

Into this truly experimental mix, we enrolled our daughter Emma in the sixth grade class for the initial year of this school that was launched with kindergarten through sixth grade, and planning to add seventh grade in year two and eighth in year three. Also Emma’s mom (graduated from her Marriage and Family Therapy Masters program but still needing to do internship hours before applying for her license) joined the staff as the school counselor. Both Sally and I were excited to participate in this program to try and bring a progressive vision to a city where the Los Angeles Unified School District with its 700,000 plus students and thousands of schools was known for its stultifying bureaucracy and one-size-fits-all approach.

For the first four years under the five-year charter, the school had mixed results. It continued to be difficult to find and keep good teachers, particularly those who could really implement the more student-driven Dewey curriculum. The school’s standardized test scores did not make the grade, in no small part because the program was not designed to teach to the test. Scott, rather than being able to focus on continuing to develop program and teachers, was instead more often than not in firefighting mode, including having to spend the last quarter of the first year replacing a fired teacher in our daughter’s troubled sixth-grade class. (More on that in another post!)

After the mandatory school district review in the fourth year, the LAUSD district decided not to renew the school’s charter. With the support of many of the parents, Brenda, Scott and company were able to work out a deal with the district to re-charter the school under a different charter with a more conventional educational approach. Sally decided that she did not want to continue in her role and Emma had already matriculated on to ninth grade at another school. But the school lived on, as far as I could see now cleaving more closely to the conventional instructional model to have a better chance to pass muster at the next review.

For Scott, Brenda, Sally and the rest of the staff, it was an object lesson in do’s and don’ts, and how difficult it is to try to bring a different educational path to a school district fixated on a singular one-size-fits-all approach to schools and a state with voluminous educational content standards that make innovation that much more difficult. Initially radicalized as educational iconoclasts by our son Eric’s school experience leading to pulling him out and homeschooling, the difficulties this alternative charter school encountered pushed us farther over the edge to now advocating a complete transformation of our country’s education system.

Update on My Status

Cooper Zale — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:17:51 +0000

Me today post staples and haircut

Just a quick note that I have had a really good couple weeks of recovery and am back to writing and typing reasonably well. I am right now working on completing my “Confessions of a Lefty Parent” book proposal that I plan to send to a literary agent that my brother Peter has a connection with. I hope to be posting pieces on my blog again by the end of this week.

I appreciate all of you checking in presumably to see if I am posting again.

My scar

Cooper Zale… aka Leftyparent

Help Me Support North Valley Caring Services

Cooper Zale — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:28:20 +0000

FYI… I am recuperating well this week from my surgery Feb 1 to remove a 3 centimeter hematoma (blood clot) from my brain caused presumably by my bicycle accident last November. I am off work and my other normal volunteer activities until my neurosurgeon sees a CAT scan that shows my brain has returned to its proper position inside my skull from where it was displaced by the blood clot. But one of my yearly efforts is too critical to let even this stop me…

It’s nearly March again, and the one time in the year I pitch my circle of family and friends for a donation to a worthy cause…

I am soliciting donations for the Saturday, March 20 North Valley Caring Services (NVCS)} Bike-a-thon to collect pledges to support this vey crucial community organization located in and supporting a very poor, at-risk, mostly Hispanic community just three miles east of where I live in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

The Langdon/Orion Street neighborhood, where NVCS is located, is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles, known for its gang activity, poverty, homelessness and dense population. North Valley Caring Services continues a herculean effort to help that marginalized community help itself. Their current programs include:

* A breakfast program and food pantry for the neighborhood residents and homeless folks in the area

* Early childhood education classes

* Parenting support including English classes

* After-school activities for children and teens

* Referral & health-related services

The need is particularly great this year, because of our “Great Recession” and the fact that NVCS will soon be losing their “First Five” grant, that has been a major source of funding their programs for pre-schoolers and their parents. I was thrilled to be able to raise over $700 last year, urging my friends, familil and extended network to make a pledge to NVCS in honor of my April 2 birthday.

At my U-U congregation we help NVCS and the community it supports in other ways to. We collect food every Sunday for their food bank. During the winter holidays we buy outfits for all the younger kids in their programs, which are given to the kids by Santa at the yearly NVCS Christmas party. Since we llive in an area where many people have citrus and other fruit trees in their yards (and much of it falls on the ground and rots), I am helping organize an effort to go on Sunday afternoon and pick people’s friut and take it to the food pantry. It seems crazy to have a yard full of rotting oranges when two miles down the street people don’t have enough food to eat.

So this year, because of my brain injury, I will be riding only in spirit, but gathering even more pledges for my at-risk neighbors to the east, and the wonderful organization that supports them.

I would welcome any pledge. I pitch my family and fellow congregation members to pledge a dollar a mile ($26 total) or whatever. Even $5 or $10 would be a great help. If you would like to join the effort, and maybe honor my April 2 birthday to boot, you can email me at czale@socal.rr.com or call me at 818.298.5386.

My Surgery

Cooper Zale — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:52:17 +0000

An update for everyone… As a late emerging issue from my bicycle crash in November, I apparently developed a blood vessel bleed in my brain after CAT scan and MRI which had been clear. It developed into a hematoma which was finally detected by another CAT scan on Feb 1.

Immediately after the scan I had successful surgery on Monday, February 1, to remove an inch and a half hematoma (blood clot) from the right side of my skull which was putting increasing pressure on my brain and could have soon led to brain damage and death. I spent the next five days in the ICU at Kaiser Woodland Hills while they drained excess fluid out of my brain and monitored my initial recovery. I was very relieved to be sent home on Saturday to begin a two to three month convalescence while my brain slowly returns to its proper position where it had been displaced by the blood clot. The recovery process is particularly challenging for me because my (hopefully temporary) disability is focused on my fine motor coordination in my left hand (I’m left-handed), making it difficult for me to write or type. (I am writing this with somedifficulty!)

Given all that… I am blessed with all the assets one could hope for to make a complete recovery. I have my partner Sally who continues to rise to this difficult occasion in every possible way, plus our kids and Sally’s parents and extended family. I am also currently a full-time employee of Kaiser (not a contractor like I was last summer) so I can go on short-term disability on at least part of my normal pay and have a wonderful and understanding boss who will hold my job for me during my convalescence. I am also blessed with having a great group of comrades and fellow travelers at the Onion.

Bottom line… I am grateful to be among the living with my brain basically intact and a path forward to hopefully complete recovery. I will do my best to keep you all posted!

The Phase

Cooper Zale — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:37:20 +0000

FYI… a number of circumstances have kept me from posting these last few weeks, but hopefully I am back to regular posts…

Starting in early July of 1996 just prior to her seventh birthday, our daughter Emma had her world disrupted by a series of calamities over the next two years that profoundly shook her world and led eventually to a severe separation anxiety that she, her mom and I would come to refer to as “The Phase”. Somehow I think giving this issue a name and referring to it almost as an entity unto itself, helped Emma finally put it behind her and move forward with her life.

I (who generally never got sick) developed a high fever at the birthday party for one of Emma’s friends and the next day went to the hospital and was diagnosed with a ruptured appendix. It could have been much worse than it was, because my body had managed to create an abscess around the rupture, saving me from possible serious infection and the need for emergency abdominal surgery. Instead, my doctor drained the abscess and had me spend the next three days in the hospital getting intravenous antibiotics while my body recovered. I could have my appendix removed more routinely a couple months later once I had fully recovered.

We had a big family trip planned to go with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles to Colorado for several weeks of vacation. My doctor cleared me to go but said I would have to take it easy, including taking naps every afternoon. For the first time in their lives, their previously (seemingly) indestructible dad was having a significant health issue. I assured them that I would recover completely and be fine, but kids sometimes don’t process the present and future the same way as adults. In August I finally had my appendix out with a very routine procedure and our world returned to normal, at least for a few months.

In early December Sally was diagnosed with breast cancer. She and I discussed whether to tell the kids immediately or wait until we knew more about her prognosis. We quickly decided on the former, which felt more honest to us than trying to keep a dark secret from them, and acknowledged that our kids were capable of rising to a very difficult occasion.

So Sally and I sat Emma and her brother down and shared that their mom had a malignant tumor in her left breast. We told Emma and her brother that though their mom had this very serious condition, she was going to do everything possible to get better. I’m sure our kids felt our extreme stress because, pending Sally’s surgery and subsequent pathology analysis, we did not know in fact if Sally’s tumor had metastasized to other parts of her body, making her prognosis for survival more problematic. We did not tell Emma and her brother of this possibility, but we feared it quietly in our own hearts, and kids have a way of picking up on that sort of thing, even if only sub-consciously.

After surgery and the subsequent analysis, Sally was diagnosed with Stage 1 (best statistical prognosis for recovery relative to higher stages) breast cancer and would undergo six months of chemotherapy. We gratefully shared this relatively good news with the kids. To our adult minds with our understanding of medical matters these results were a great relief, Sally was not in imminent danger of death, and after six months of chemo, which we knew would take a toll on her body in the short run, she was most likely to have a complete recovery.

I don’t think Emma and her brother could process it so rationally (despite our assurances that their mom would get better) as they watched from February to June, while their mom had her treatment, lost much of her hair, and generally grew pale and frail. But Emma seemed to do pretty well during this whole period, better than we expected even. Looking back we feel that the family-like atmosphere of her small pre-school (with kindergarten and early elementary as well) which Emma was still attending during her mom’s chemo, contributed a lot to Emma being able to move along with her daily life.

When Emma’s second grade year ended in June, she continued with the same adult staff and many of her classmates for their summer camp, but the school was not planning to offer a third grade class. So our plan (which Emma was well aware of) was to have her transition from her small, friendly little school to a regular (much larger) public elementary school in the fall.

In early July of 1997, around the time her mom was finishing her chemo, Emma’s brother Eric had appendicitis himself and had to spend a night in the hospital. His was not ruptured like mine, but still a traumatic event, and now every other member of her immediate family had had a significant health issue. So it may have occurred to her, was something going to happen to me?

Her new school was in our neighborhood and just a short walk from our house, but it turned out to be a difficult year for Emma and the rest of her classmates. Their initial teacher seemed uncomfortable with her group, which included some very difficult kids, and left the school after a couple months (returning to the Midwest, from where she had recently moved). For the remaining seven months of the school year, the class had a series of two emergency-credentialed teachers, and then another fully credentialed one, none of whom having much success with the class based on Emma’s reports and our own observations.

Sally and I did our best to support Emma through this difficult year, listening to her reports and concerns, always giving her lots of love and encouragement while acknowledging that her new school was a really big change for her. As we approached the end of the school year, we felt a sense of relief that Emma had made the transition successfully, would be back to her familiar old school for summer camp, and would certainly have a better school year at the new school in the fall ahead.

I recall it was late that spring when Emma first balked at spending the night at her best friend’s house, a place she had previously spent the night at several times, with no problem. Then she refused to go on a retreat organized by her Brownie group that she had previously been excited about attending. I recall she would not even spend the night at her grandparent’s house. A full-blown separation anxiety had emerged.

Emma’s separation anxiety continued throughout the summer of 1997, with her unwilling to pretty much go anywhere except to summer day camp at her Buonora Child Development Center or with her mom and/or dad it tow. She wasn’t willing to spend time at friends’ houses or even at her grandparents, who lived across town, had seen her regularly all her life and loved her dearly.

We tried to continue to give our daughter lots of love and support and encouragement to share with us her feelings. But something in Emma’s nature made this whole experience additionally problematic for her. She had always been shy, and particularly uncomfortable with having attention focused on her when she was not at her best. I can recall that even when she was a toddler and she stumbled, fell and say scraped a knee that she got mad if everyone looked at her while she was hurt and crying.

So “The Phase” continued into the fall when Emma returned to her public school for fourth grade. She became extremely distraught every morning when I tried to kiss her goodbye after walking her to school. She insisted that I stay for 20 or 30 minutes before she would finally let me go and join in with class activities. We found a therapist who met with Emma once a week and tried to help her work through her issues.

Besides the therapy, and the general understanding and support from the adults in her life, what also seemed to help get Emma through this period was starting to identify this whole separation anxiety thing as a phase that Emma was going through now but would come out the other end of eventually. Sally, Emma and I would discuss “The Phase” as if it were some separate entity currently rooming of sorts with her. So at times when Emma was feeling uncomfortable doing something, she would tell us, followed by saying that “it’s probably The Phase”.

Finally, between the therapy, the love and support of her mom and dad and the rest of her extended family, and her own developmental process, we worked out with her therapist to let her go “cold turkey”, and start her school day after a quick kiss and a hug. Her self-confidence gradually returned, and I recall by the winter break she was again able to spend the night at her grandparents’ or friends’ houses and was comfortable being at her big public school on her own. Her mom and dad had no further health crises and life seemed back in balance. Emma continued to wrestle with her shyness, but charted a path forward (perhaps to address that issue) focusing on bringing a more positive attention on herself by doing well on all her schoolwork and the resulting kudos from her teachers.

It continued to be important to Emma during the next couple years to be judged well by the adults in her world, and particularly her teachers (who in a conventional school are so much about constantly passing judgment on their students through their attendance and school work). Emma seemed to get totally focused on cranking out her required school work (on her own without any help from her mom and I), so much so that I became concerned that she was becoming too much of a “trained seal”, just doing all the tricks that the adults in her life wanted her to do. But that’s another story.

It continued to be a topic of family discussion and reminiscence for years about the events of 1996 through 1998, including “The Phase”. In retrospect, perhaps the whole thing can be framed as Emma just doing the best she could, given her nature and her limited experience, to be acknowledged and get through a very difficult period.

Saint Gotthard Tunnel

Cooper Zale — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:46:43 +0000

Nearly two months into my European odyssey, on a train from northern Italy to Switzerland, a weary traveler and somewhat of a lost soul, I entered what I recall as the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, under the Alps, and emerged into a completely transformed world and a new chapter in my existential journey with fresh insight into the human condition. (Note that I may have actually gone through a different tunnel of comparable length, as noted by someone who read this piece with a good knowledge of Western European railway geography, though at the time that was my recollection.)

It was early November, 1973, when I boarded the train in Venice headed across Northern Italy then under the Alps to Interlaken, Switzerland. My now lengthy trip was beginning to feel like one long ordeal and I was pretty tired out and longing to go home, yet determined not to do so until my money ran out. Add to my own personal ennui having spent the last few nights in Venice, a city that has a history of romantic ennui with its soot-stained brick piazzas, copious pooping pigeons, and looking like it had been raised out of the Adriatic and still in need of having the water damage cleaned up.

I recall the train left first thing in the morning on a sunny day with a temperature in the fifties. It was mid-afternoon before we reached the famous tunnel, an astonishing nine miles long, dug under the Alps between 1871 and 1881 at the cost of at least 200 worker’s lives lost. The sun still shone in a cloudless sky when we entered the south end of the tunnel, and though the actual time might have only been about ten or fifteen minutes, in my spent psychological state it seemed like quite a while, long enough at least for the blackness to capture my attention and my imagination.

Alone, rattling along in the all-encompassing blackness, a sense of dread flowed through me that the world, or at least my world, had suddenly ended. It was a month earlier on my trip that I had watched on German television the start of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, and then met an American soldier on a train, called back to his base to counter an imminent Russian military move against Israel. It all felt like the world was coming apart with me right in the middle of it an ocean away from home and family. And still the train careened down its path under the world.

From total blackness the train emerged from the north end of the tunnel into the other extreme, a white-out blizzard with thousands of large snow flakes impacting against the window of my train car. I recall it was ten or fifteen more minutes before I could see anything but white out that window, as the train found its way out of the snow squall. From my now cozy seeming compartment I could see a winter wonderland of evergreen trees punctuated by the occasional wood and stone houses all decorated in a thick icing of fresh snow. The train finally pulled into the station at Interlaken, my intermediate destination and transfer point to another train that would take me up to the mountain town of Grindewald.

I only had time to buy and eat some way to expensive railroad station food before I boarded my train to my final destination. The snow continued outside at a less frenetic pace as the train climbed upward into the mountains, stopping at every little village along the way. It was late afternoon and the end of the school day, and at every stop dozens of Swiss school kids either boarded or debarked from the train. They sat in the seats all around me, with their rosy cheeks, brightly colored hats and backpacks, laughing and chattering in what sounded to me like German, full of energy and enthusiasm for the daily adventure of the ride home from school.

I was a lonely soul surrounded by all this joyous youthful energy and hope for the future, and the irony of this scene was not lost on me. I had my reasons to be sad and reflective, but the world was full of other people with reasons for hope and joy. The view of the Swiss winter wonderland out the window was appropriately stunning and I was headed to what by all accounts was a gorgeous little town at the base of one of the world’s most photogenic and storied peaks. Not enough perhaps to get this eighteen-year-old to shelve his angst, but enough at least to give his darkened places glimmers of hope.

I arrived in Grindewald in the early evening and checked in to my youth hostel. On its upstairs balcony I looked out over the valley below at the lights of the town, though darkness and clouds obscured the view of the Eiger across the valley from my location. Like most youth hostels I stayed at I found other English-speaking older youth and young adults to talk, swap stories and even venture into town for a beer with. My extreme wave of angst had passed through me and moved on for now.

The next morning brought blue sky instead of clouds, and out on the hostel’s balcony, there across the little valley where the town nestled, was the amazingly huge mountain, with its jagged peaks gleaming white and silver and filling half the sky. I had somehow found my way, on my own, to one of the most spectacularly beautiful places in the world with a whole lifetime of additional adventures ahead of me. Yes I was still homesick, but I knew at some level that I had the courage and the agency to seek out and find a place like this. Other destinations would be attainable in the future when I was ready to seek them.