Reflection

September felt like a smooth drive. My lesson plans were in order, students were moving through the curricula, and I was able to grade and return work efficiently. We all flew from topic to topic with the wind blowing in our hair, learning and working with effortless exhilaration.

October felt like I was trying to walk all 110 students across the street. And the street was an eight-lane highway. That wind in our hair now smacked our heads hither and yon, the blustering gusts of cars, trucks, and busses as they flew past our tentative steps. I can’t get the group to stay together. Progress is incremental, slow, and incredibly fragile. We are stranded for weeks on small islands of white paint, walled in by life’s traffic on both sides. October was certainly the month where all the deeds crowded around me, pulled at all my strands of attention, and overwhelmed my energy. I couldn’t catch a breath or a break.

When I finally collapsed at home, hungry and utterly spent, my son would curl up next to me. It’s 8:30, 9:00 – the time of night when I’m supposed to be ushering him into bed, yet we both find ourselves entranced by a band of orange-clad misfits that flickered on our television during this month of pumpkins.

The San Francisco Giants.

The 2010 playoffs didn’t begin for our hometown team until the very last game of the season – the first Sunday in October. With one final win, the Giants earned their division title that propelled them into an historic month. I have never ever been a baseball fan, though I’ve attended several Giants and A’s games. Baseball on television always seemed to me a perfect sleep-inducer. Turn it on, lay down, and Lance and I are probably asleep after about an inning. These Giants, though, kept you awake. And they riveted us throughout the month.

My son became enthralled with this team and its standout personalities. Two weeks into October, he started talking about his Halloween costume. Lance had been absolutely averse to costumes for pretty much his entire talking childhood. He wanted NOTHING to do with costumes or trick-or-treating. He even refused to wear an outfit for his pre-school Halloween parties. My wife and I remained supportive, yet also a little sad. The two of us LOVE Halloween – the dress-up, the darkness, the freedom to be scary-goofy-garish-silly. We figured our foster girls would wear some kind of adorable (standard fare for the 18-month-and-under set), and as weary as we both were, we’d try to come up with something for ourselves. But Lance would be the adult of the group, holding the flashlight and encouraging his sisters (well, mostly the toddler Jeri) to ring the doorbells and say “trick-or-treat.”

Imagine our shock, then, when shortly after Columbus Day, our son says, “For Halloween, I’m gonna be Buster Posey!” To be fair, we weren’t shocked the first time. Last year, Lance thought he had a costume idea, but he ended up bowing out right before Halloween. We were stunned when Lance stuck to his idea. We’d take him to Target, buy a piece for his costume, and he was still into it. My wife actually grabs a Giants button-down jersey, and he gets more excited, not reticent! Is our son actually going to dress up after his three-year hiatus from the holiday?

We spent several October nights, often late nights, cheering on Posey and his ‘mates. Once again, I’m a non-baseball fan who was getting swept up by this hypnotic run through the postseason, and I could see my son riding that same wave. He had only showed a marginal interest in sports to this point. While my wife and I typically holler at the Sharks well into the Spring, Lance plays along but never really engages himself. Baseball – Giants baseball – seemed to strike the right chord.

The new romance with baseball propelled us through the chaos of October. It gave us a reason to celebrate at night even after the most turbulent days. It gave us a holiday the entire family could rejoice in. In fact, I found myself reflecting often about my own family as the Giants inched towards immortality.

My father was featured in a San Jose Mercury News column as one of the few Bay Area residents who would attend the first and last Giants games at Candlestick Park. The former was an outing with his father – the grandfather I never met who succumbed to cancer well before my parents even married. The ghost of Grandpa Andy pulls often at my father’s spirit. When he approached the age of Andy’s death, my father made a renewed commitment to health and exercise, a challenge most guys in their mid-fifties would shy away from. He is determined to enjoy every moment with his grandchildren; he reveres that time as a most precious gift that isn’t given to everyone.

Dad attends Giants games with his sister and mother on a regular basis, and he’s taken me and my siblings to both Candlestick and AT&T plenty of times. Indeed, I grew up with the Giants. They pulsed through our family like a finely woven seam that stitches together generations. The two times I tried to take Lance to see a Sharks game, he couldn’t stand the noise, but it looks like I have a duty now to bring him to the diamond, and move the tradition down one generation more.

The climax of our crazy month: the World Series and Halloween on the same weekend. Lance and I trick-or-treated for three days, starting Friday. We watch the Giants for three days, starting Saturday. On Monday, when the Giants sealed their first championship for the city by the bay, the joy erupted. Everyone jumped, hugged, hooted, hollered, clapped. Of course, Lance’s bedtime was nigh, and nobody cared. Even as I made a lame attempt to put him to bed, I had to turn on the upstairs television and stare, disbelieving, at all the post-game hoopla. I could not tear myself away from the moment. We all went to bed very late that night.

I called my parents as soon as the final out was in the books, and Mom answered. She had recorded the game for Dad, but he hadn’t watched it yet. He arrived home while I was on the phone with her, so I quickly hung up and asked him to call after the game. Thus, the party continued a little longer until I could share this moment with my father. He was typically understated. “These last few weeks have been pretty exciting.” He has followed this team since they arrived in California. Dad was a teenager then. He’s a few months from retirement, his team is finally a champion, and he thought it was “pretty cool”.

I reflected upon his family. While Grandpa Andy watched it all unfold from the ultimate skybox, Grandma has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several months. In October, she has deteriorated rapidly. Recently, during one of my father’s weekly visits, Grandma didn’t recognize her own son. I hoped that something inside Grandma’s indomitable spirit could recognize what the Giants had done, even while trapped inside a body that kept so much of the world out of her reach. Somewhere in the ether, my father could re-connect to his parents and share this triumph with that generation one last time.

The Giants defeated the Rangers in the World Series on November 1, 2010. As these copious paragraphs attest, this month has been one of reflection for me. It is a practice too often neglected in the field of education (and several other fields, I imagine). In the modern school, teachers, students, parents, and principals are all pressured to practice their craft to perfection and produce results that are the envy of all. We sweat over every page of reading, writing, arithmetic, test data, attendance reports, progress reports, and report cards. When professional development rolls around, it is often hailed as the panacea of our flawed practice, and teachers are exhorted by their superiors to instantly adopt new methods, new strategies, and new procedures.

What if professional development took on a different goal? Perhaps every inservice ringmaster need not be Willy Loman desperate to sell the wonder drug for all that ails our schools. Perhaps each new perspective could be considered with some… perspective. Each time a new idea, a new concept, a new take on teaching is presented, a school need not and should not swallow it whole. There should be a process of thinking and reflection. Perhaps the new idea runs contrary to a teacher’s practice. Is it really reasonable to expect that teacher to abandon what she’s been doing wholesale? Or is it a chance for her to reflect, and consider the notion that perhaps her routines could be improved? A principal or superintendent, even one who is desperate to improve the plight of their schools, must not blindly subscribe to the theories that are touted as “the next revolution” in education. There should be reflection and careful consideration of whether this latest fad fits into the needs of the community, the mission of each school, and the vision of the district.

I write these words from a hotel room in Lake Tahoe. My wife and I used a four-day weekend to get away, affording us some much need relaxation and perspective. It is more than a little tragic that the only respite from the hurried traffic of our lives – the only opportunity to reflect on my family and vocation – lies 300 miles from home.

I hope I can teach my children to make that time for themselves in their own lives, in their own homes. I wish I could find more time at school to model that behavior for my students. I wish the same for all the Giants in the weeks after the ticker tape is swept away and the dugouts are cleaned out. I’m thankful for everything they’ve given my entire family.

Especially Buster Posey.