OK: Getting On The Satan Chaplain Train

The push for school chaplains is moving across the country, pushed by the National School Chaplain Association, a group that pretty clearly hopes school chaplains will be a means of putting a particular brand of Christianity in schools. 

So far the movement's two big wins are in Texas and Florida, where the legislatures actually passed a law allowing anyone who wants to call themselves a chaplain to get into schools that set up the chaplain post. In Texas, the big pushback came from actual professional chaplains, and so far, one charter school has decided to bring in a "chaplain," because a real chaplain has actual training, sometimes specialized, and follows a set of professional ethics and is not, in fact, just some untrained true believer who thinks Jesus wants him to go recruit some children. In fact, several states have said no to the amateur hour first-amendment-busting bill.

Florida also passed a "chaplain" law, and that led to a predictable next step, which was for the Satanic Temple to announce that they would also be offering chaplains, with said announcement followed by Governor Ron DeSantis declaring that he couldn't read the plain English of the law that he would forbid any such thing to happen. 

The law is written to avoid any obvious First Amendment violation; in fact, it doesn't even require the "chaplain" to have a religious affiliation. But never mind-- DeSantis will tell you what is and is not a legitimate religion.

Well, if Texas and Florida are going galumphing off into far right field, you know Oklahoma will be close behind.

So here comes SB 36, passed through the House and now facing the Senate. The bill is a step up from the versions in Texas and Florida and some other states by virtue of some amendments to the bill. It requires the "chaplain" to have some sort of "ecclesiastical endorsement from their faith group" indicating they are an "ordained minister or member in good standing." It even requires them to have a bachelor's degree and some graduate work. The House also added a "no proselytizing" clause. 

None of this really addresses the issue that chaplains are not trained as child mental health professionals. Nor does it make it any less a violation of the First Amendment.

Critics have noted that the bill has one particular religion in mind. But you know some other group is cued up and ready to go. And Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters has come out swinging.

Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell.

Legislators have also announced their inability to read and their misunderstanding of the Constitution opposition to the Satanic Temple. SB 36 simply wouldn't invite the Satanic Temple to send ministers to school children, said one group. 

Instead, it gives permission for the local school boards to decide whether to implement a chaplain program, leaving the decision to the duly elected school board members who represent their community’s values. Additionally, parents can decide whether or not to let their child participate in the program.

All true, but it skips over the part where the Constitution forbids discriminating against an employer on religious grounds. This is not news. The Good News Club, a program of the Child Evangelism Fellowship way back in 2001 won its case before SCOTUS that it must be allowed to have an after school club like any other group. And that was followed by the Satanic Temple winning cases to have its own after school Satan club in districts, because the First Amendment is clear on not allowing the government to pick and choose which religions are okay.

Dudebro Walters is not a dummy. He most certainly knows all this (he was an AP history teacher). But he's got an audience to play to. So here he is on Fox News, sitting in an office, playing the rightwing hits.

Asked to respond to the Satanic Temple's stated intention to expose "harmful pseudo-scientific practices in mental health care," Walters says 

I am not surprised that people who worship Satan lie. They are liars. What they are trying to do in worshipping Satan is ruin the lives of children, undermine the very Judeo-Christian values of this country and destroy our schools.

The Satanic Temple has always been pretty clear that they do not worship Satan, but are on a mission to push back against those with a theocratic bent. Walters declares 

Satanism is not a religion and we will not allow them in our school. Our bill will not allow Satanists into our schools. It will only allow religions, religions that we have protected in our country since the outset.

Sooo much baloney here. The IRS says that the Satanic Temple is a religion. And if we're going to have state officials going around declaring what is and is not a real religion, there is all sorts of bad trouble ahead. This has been a tough line for us to draw as a country, because "since the outset," we have not protected all religions. The Puritans of Massachusetts used to banish or execute folks of different religions-- and I'm not talking about the Salem witch trials, but folks like Mary Dyer, who was executed in Boston for being a Quaker who wouldn't stay properly banished. Or we could talk about when the Baptists had a fun nickname for the Catholic Church and/or the Pope-- the whore of Babylon.

"Satanists want to destroy families, want to destroy kids' lives," Walters continues. He gets out the chaplain talking point that "we've had chaplains in the military, chaplains in Congress" (trained professionals, but, you know, chaplains) and then he pivots to another point.

Under President Trump, you didn't see the Satanists believing they could actually inject themselves into schools, but under President Biden, he has really cleared the way where they feel very emboldened to try to get in there and influence our kids and they are not going to send our kids to hell.

Well, one of the more recent Satanic Temple victories came courtesy of a Trump-appointed judge. But in fact the first round attempts to launch After School Satan Clubs all came when Trump was President, including the first successful attempt in Tacoma, WA. If Walters were serious about getting his facts straight and not just working on his national profile, he could have discovered this by looking at Wikipedia. 

And that religious tax exempt status that the Satanic Temple got from the IRS? That happened in 2019, under President Trump. TST had previously rejected the idea of pursuing such status, but when President Trump signed the "religious freedom" executive order in 2017, church president Lucien Greaves told members, “As ‘the religious’ are increasingly gaining ground as a privileged class, we must ensure that this privilege is available to all, and that superstition doesn’t gain exclusive rights over non-theistic religions or non-belief."

And if you're still wondering which religions the bill is aimed at, Walters has more

We want the influence of Christian ministers. We understand that Judeo-Christian values were the foundation of this country. In the 1960s the Supreme Court weaponized the federal government against Christians. We have allowed our schools to be state-sponsored centers of atheism. 

This fits with the other Dominionist baloney that Walters has espoused, his stated intent to elevate and center one particular brand of Christianity. The same problem keeps tripping these folks up-- that darn First Amendment. You can't write laws that specify that only one brand of Christianity is to be elevated, so you say "religion" when you really mean "my preferred religion." But you're stuck with the language you have, that "religion," means that all brand of Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Buddhism and the Satanic Temple all get to play.

Folks like Walters only have a couple of choices for a fix. Either you officially codify your brand of faith into law, giving it protection and support. Or you leave the code wide for "religion," but you install an official government agency to declare which religions are "real" and may have the full benefit of the law.

Either of these options should terrify Americans, both those with the Christian faith and those outside of it. Walters knows better, and the fact that he's willing to play these games, presumably because he wants power and attention on a greater stage, marks him as a person not remotely serious enough to have any position of authority. 

P.S. Also in the news this week, an Oklahoma man has been indicted after he traveled to Salem with a pipe bomb to blow up the Satanic Temple.

Failing Charters Go Private

Last month, Amelia Pak-Harvey at Chalkbeat Indiana ran a story about a failing charter school that had been approved for a new lease on life--as a private school.

Ignite Achievement Academy was supposed to improve its "checkered academic record," but instead the State Board of Education gave it a unanimous thumbs up to become a private school. Specifically, a private school that can cash in on Indiana's school voucher program.

This is not a new dodge. Annie Waldman wrote a piece for ProPublica way back in 2017 that found 16 troubled charters converting to private schools that could grab taxpayer-funded vouchers. 

As Waldman pointed out, this was a bit of as shift. There was a time when private schools converted to charter, because charters could collect taxpayer money, and private schools couldn't--yet.

There has always been some tension between charters and vouchers, because they represent two different stances. First, the funding.  Let's say that the funding is an actual stream that leads to an actual pond. Traditionally, that pond was used strictly for thirsty public school systems. The charter approach has been to insist that they be allowed to drink from that pond, too. The voucher approach is to interrupt the stream itself, redirecting it away from the pond and off to a hundred other little locations.

Second, the overall goal. Real charter fans see charters as a sort of supplement or enhancement of the public system, while voucher fans would be just as happy to burn the whole public system down. And of course, a whole lot of charter supporters have been the foot-in-the-door crowd, seeing charters as a way station or halfway house to sort of while away the hours until vouchers could finally stomp freely over the landscape. 

Andy Rotherman (of reformy Bellwether) offered a quick visual analysis that hits the mark. As more and more voucher bills pass, charters will feel the pinch. After all, why run a charter that has to keep some authorizer happy when you can collect taxpayer-funded vouchers that come with no regulation, oversight, or accountability?

It's one more way that magical market forces do not make a good substitute for actual oversight, accountability, and regulation. Ignite is a perfect example. About to be held accountable for your failure? Change your name and move to another sub-sector of the ed biz. It's a trick the private sector already knows, like the drilling company in my neck of the woods that was sued repeatedly for ruining well water, so they declared bankruptcy, escaped the consequences of their failure, and soon formed a new business with the same folks.

Charter and private schools have additional advantages. First, the market for their business is constantly turning over. Second, they only need a small sliver of the total market to be viable. So just keep marketing enough to keep pulling in fresh customers, and it's unlikely that any of your previous failures will catch up with you any time soon.

In the meantime, watch for more and more failed charters, or charters that just want to operate in an accountability-free sector, to jump into the unregulated world of private schooling. 

ICYMI: Feeling Appreciated Edition (5/12)

Was it a good week? Do you feel appreciated now? Good, because it's time for the world to move on to other things. But in the meantime, here's some reading.

A teacher spoke out against offering 'opposing' views on the Holocaust. It derailed her career.

NBC ran an excerpt from Mike Hixenbaugh's new book about the right wing assault on education. Among other features of this story, a peak at how far these folks are willing to go to ruin life for the people they disagree with.

When Conservative Parents Revolt

Some more Hixenbaugh. This time at the Atlantic, looking back to Reagan prequel to curent culture panic.

How going back to the SAT could set back college student diversity

I missed this story when it ran at The Conversation back in April, but it's still worth a look.

Press Reports Ranking American High Schools Mislead the Public

Jan Resseger walks us through the debunking of US News high school rankings, because they are just as dumb as you think they are.

Yes, The Boston Globe Can Report Who Is Funding K-12 Dark Money Interests. Or Not. It’s a Choice.

Maurice Cunningham, dark money expert, points out that certain major media outlets could report on that sort of thing if they really wanted to. 

School districts working with anti-LGBTQ groups can cost your kids’ schools millions

In Pennsylvania, the Independence Law Center will help your district craft anti-LGBTQ, anti-diversity, anti-reading rules, and they'll do it pro bono. Just don't be surprised if it ends up costing you some real money.

Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names

Sam Cabral reports for BBC News about one district's crusade to honor treasonous losers.

Judge partly sides with plaintiffs suing to stop Arkansas’s ban on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘indoctrination’

Benjamin Hardy reports for Arkansas Times on a setback for the governor's repressive plan. 

Disingenuous Republicans want to force overworked NC public school teachers to post all lesson plans online because indoctrination

Justin Parmenter blogs about the newest plan to make life more miserable for teachers in North Carolina.

Arizona’s ‘universal’ education savings account program has become a handout to the wealthy

A Brooking study discovers some non-shocking news-- Arizona's vouchers are mostly just a taxpayer-funded subsidy for the wealthy.

5 takeaways about segregation 70 years after the Brown decision

Jill Barshay at Hechinger takes a look at current data about segregation in US education. Not entirely encouraging.

The unexpected explanation for why school segregation spiked

Laura Meckler at Washington Post. "Unexpected" is doing a lot of work here, because lots of folks totally expected this-- the secret ingredient in renewed segregation is school choice.

Wealthier and Whiter: Louisiana School District Secession Gets a Major Boost

School district secession continues to be a popular way to re-establish segregation. Beth Hawkins reports for the 74. 

Want to show teachers appreciation? This top school gives them more freedom

A radical notion, reported for the AP by Terry Spencer. In Florida, of all places.

Inside a rural Iowa school district’s fight to save public education

There's a lot to dig through in this story, but eventually you arrive at the root of the problem-- Iowa's decision to give state funding to schools on a per pupil basis. It's a warning for every state following a similar path.

ChatGPT Both Is and Is Not Like a Calculator

John Warner at Inside Higher Education with some smart thoughts about some not-smart thoughts about ChatGPT and its ilk.

Utah fields nearly 4,000 “bogus" reports in first week of trans bathroom ban

Utah set up a hotline so that folks could report any violations of the state's trans bathroom ban. It has gone about as well as you might expect.

The Grinch Who Stole Teacher Appreciation Week

Nancy Flanagan on the business of guilting teachers into a few extra miles.

Stuck on the Merry-Go-Round of Bad Ed. Policy for 40 Years!

Nancy Bailey does a quick inventory of the junk we've been stuck with through forty years of bad corporate reformster baloney.

The Breach of a Face Recognition Firm Reveals a Hidden Danger of Biometrics

From Wired. A data breach in Australia is a reminder that surveillance includes collecting a lot of sensitive data that may or may not be well protected.

The BASIC programming language turns 60 — Dartmouth BASIC started it all in 1964

Ah, my fond memories of programming in BASIC on punch cards back in 1979. Happy birthday to a generation's first computer programming language.

Meanwhile, over at the Bucks County Beacon, a piece about the group that's pushing school chaplains. 

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MO: Put Those Lazy Kids To Work

Add Missouri to the list of states that wants to do away with those silly laws intended to protect the rights of children in the workplace. Because Kids These Days need a good swift kick in the workplace.

Currently Missouri requires schools to sign off on work permits for 14 and 15 year olds to make sure that everything is in line with laws restricting what work children are allowed to do, and when (employers are required to describe the job in detail on the form). But legislators are considering a bill to do away with that and fix it so that all students need is a parent's permission slip. 

This may seem like a less-than-great idea. It allows parents to undermine a child's education in order to make a few bucks. And it removes the already-meager protections that stand between children and unscrupulous employers. Sure, a fourteen year old is totally able to stand up for their rights under the law (which in Missouri, where those rights don't include things like break time, are meager already). But businesses need more meat widgets. 

Maybe you agree with the St. Louis Today headline that says, "Bid to loosen Missouri's child labor law would help businesses--but not kids." But you're mistaken.

And here comes Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch to explain. 

Reisch has shown her keen grasp of student-related issues before, like that time she went on Facebook to claim that Columbia students were dressing as animals and using litter boxes. Yes, that story. The superintendent said no, and she kept at it. When pressed for actual evidence, she cited the need to protect her confidential sources. So we know she's familiar with bogus claims and lying. 

Reisch had some words to offer in support of this bill in particular and child labor in general, and it's quite a view into the thinking of some folks. After decrying the division and pointing out that this is a good bill that everyone should vote for...

You know, at what point are people going to be self-responsible? Some people seem to think the government is the answer for everything. You know, free food, free health care, free this, free that, free, free, free. But it's not free. These young kids need to be taught self-responsibility, and I can tell you my personal story. I started working at age nine, and I continued to work throughout high school when I was fourteen, fifteen. 

She wanted to get a drivers license, and her parents said they couldn't afford to put her on the insurance. "Much less a car," she adds in a tone suggesting disdain for those spoiled pampered kids who get cars. She worked. Her older brother worked and got a car. And it didn't affect any grades-- she still got As.

My parents always asked me, "Cheri, how do you get A plus?" Well, Mom and Dad, you get 100% on your homework and you do extra credit. And throughout high school when I was working twelve months out of the year, my high school counselor came to me and said, "Cheri, you're bored. You've got enough credits. Graduate early!" I graduated early out of high school, went to work full time--

Working full; time while going to school. It is good for these kids. And you know what these kids of today are? Majority of them are lazy! They don't know what work ethic is! But they know how to play video games all night! They know how to join gangs! They know how to get into trouble! Get a job and be responsible!

No matter what tone of voice you imagine while reading that, I guarantee it doesn't match the contempt for These Kids in Reisch's delivery. The rant was followed by a vote for which the bill won first round approval. 

This is where they are in Missouri-- kids don't need that fancy book learnin' (which you can get around with some extra credit anyway)-- just get 'em to work so they can learn that life is hard and unpleasant and they need to suck it up. Though Reisch is also the rep who was sued because she blocked a constituent on Twitter for saying things she didn't like, so I guess sucking it up is only for certain hard parts of life.

With this kind of hostility toward children in elected officials, it's no wonder that supporting education is not a bigger priority. But that's how it goes with "self-responsibility"- I'm responsible for myself and the rest of you can go pound sand because you're not my problem. And that includes all you lazy, freeloading children.

PA: A Voucher Bill, Again

Voucherphiles in Pennsylvania has tried to push vouchers again and again and again and again and again and again. They've been particularly encouraged by our Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, who is supportive of vouchers for some reason. Last year they cobbled together a new version of the same old same old in hopes that it would meet his requirements, and instead he left them at the altar.

But Pennsylvania, particularly under a Democrat, would be such a policy win for voucher fans that they are unlikely to give up, and so here we are, once again contemplating this year's version of Lifeline Scholarships, aka more Pennsylvania school vouchers. 

Let's take a peek at SB 795 and see what features are included in this pass. 

Managed by the State Treasury, with an option to hire a third party to administer the program. So this voucher program would not be touched in any way by the education department.

Eligibility? No limits on income for the family of the student. Students are eligible if they are within the attendance boundary of a low-achieving school; that would also mean that students who are already attending a private school could grab one of these vouchers. Also, Pennsylvania defines a "low-achieving school" as one in the bottom 15% of Big Standardized Test scores, which means no matter how well the state does, somebody is always in the bottom 15%.

Funding? Shapiro has explained that he won't support a voucher program that takes money from the public school pile. So this bill proposes that the funding will come from... somewhere. Seriously. Here's all the funding language in the bill (under 1708-E):

(a) Establishment.--The Lifeline Scholarship Fund is established in the State Treasury. All interest and earnings received from investment or deposit of the money in the fund shall be paid into the fund and used for the purposes authorized by this article. Any unexpended money and interest or earnings on the money in the fund may not be transferred or revert to the General Fund but shall remain in the fund. 

(b) Funding.--The fund shall consist of money that is appropriated, given, granted or donated by the Commonwealth or any other government or private agency or person for the purpose established under this article. 

(c) Continuing appropriation.--The money in the fund is appropriated on a continuing basis to the State Treasury for the purpose of administering this article.

So, funding from somewhere. A neat trick, given the GOP is currently set on cutting state revenue by billions via a tax cut.

Costs? Sure better figure out where that funding is coming from, because this will get pricey fast. K-8 vouchers are $5K. Grade 9-12 is $10K. Special ed is $15K. That will be indexed to school spending increases, so it will be going up every year. 

Voucher schools are forbidden to charge extra to voucher parents or provide kickbacks to parents. That does not address the issue of private schools hiking their tuition to take advantage of that free state money, even as they encourage all their families to go get a voucher.

Accountability? A standard feature of voucher law these days is to deliberately avoid accountability. We already that Pennsylvania's current voucher system funds an astonishing amount of religious indoctrination and discrimination. Like most voucher bills, this one includes language that the private school remains "autonomous" and the state may not regulate them in any way. 

The Auditor General may (not "shall") conduct random audits of lifeline scholarship accounts. Nonpublic schools that want to receive voucher dollars need simply indicate so to the state; there are no checks, requirements, screenings, minimum competencies, or academic requirements that they need to meet. Just criminal background checks on employees, and be nonprofit. 

The Lifeline vouchers are at least restricted to tuition, school-related fees, and special ed services fees, and not trampolines and Playstation consoles.

Bottom line? This newest iteration is not the worst voucher program anyone ever proposed. It's just regular old bad. Financial drain from some un-named source in order to have taxpayers fund more discriminatory, unaccountable and unsuccessful schooling. Plus subsidies for families that are already putting their children in private school. Plus whatever more junk will be foisted on the state further down the road, because at this point we well know that the first voucher bill is always just a foot in the door, with the rest of the leg soon to follow.

This is not a good bill. It needs to die, and it would be lovely if Shapiro would help kill it instead of nursing whatever voucher brainworm is chewing away at him. 

Elon Musk Has Some Education Thoughts

Elon Musk has some thoughts about education, and because he's Very Rich, Fortune Magazine decided it should share some of those thoughts, despite Musk's utter lack of qualifications to talk about education. 

Reporter Christiaan Hetzner mostly covers business in Europe, so it's not clear how he stumbled into this particular brief piece, which appears to be lifting a piece of a larger conversation into an article. I'd love a new rule that says every time an outlet gives space to a rich guy's musings about areas in which he has no expertise, the outlet also publishes a piece about the musings of some ordinary human on the topic--maybe even an ordinary human who is an expert in the area.

Hetzner launches right in with both feet.

More than a century ago, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Well, Elon Musk is a doer with a lot of children, and he’s reached the conclusion he doesn’t want his kids to learn from some has-been or never-was simply because they landed a job in a local school thanks to a lack of competition.

It's not clear if Hetzner is editorializing or trying to channel Musk's point of view (I think perhaps the latter), but somebody here is really full of it. I'm not going to argue about Musk's doer qualifications, though his ability to profit off the work of others and his interminable botching of twitter leave me unpersuaded of his genius. But this characterization of teachers is some serious bullshit. And things aren't going to get better.

Over his lifetime, teaching fundamentally remained the same experience: an adult standing in front of a chalkboard instructing kids.

Of course, I don't know how they did things in South Africa when little Elon was a young emerald prince, but the "school has never changed" trope is tired and silly and a clear sign that someone knows little about what is happening in education, which has been highly interactive for decades. 

But sure. There is still an adult in a classroom, much as cars are still four wheels, one in each corner. But perhaps that's because Musk appears bothered that the shifts in tech that are "upending the labor force" haven't yet touched teachers. 

Musk calls for compelling, interactive learning experiences. His example is that, rather than teaching a course about screwdrivers and wrenches, have them take apart an engine and in the process learn all about screwdrivers and wrenches. I'm sure that my former students who learned about operating heavy machinery by operating heavy machinery, or learned about welding by welding, etc, would agree. I'd even extend his argument to say that instead of trying to teach students to read by doing exercises and excerpts, we could have them read whole works, even novels. 

But just in case you're not catching who Musk blames, Hartzen notes that Musk says that the system failed students because "the talents of the teaching staff tasked with imparting this knowledge to their students were sophomoric at best."

Then Musk throws in an entertainment analogy. Teachers are like the "troubadours and mummers of yesteryear who traveled from one backwater to the next, offering their meager services to those desperate for their brand of amateur entertainment." Education today is like "vaudeville before there was radio, TV, and movies." Which compresses a variety of different developments, but okay. 

Then along came Hollywood, and a critical mass of the most talented screenwriters, directors, and actors around joined forces to produce compelling and engaging content that can cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, what? We're supposed to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into education? And does this idea still work if we notice that the "content" cranked out by Hollywood is only "compelling and engaging" to some people. 

Finally, Musk throws in a reference that Hertzen calls "bizarre"-- thespians entertaining the locals in Small Town U.S.A. with a "low-budget rendition" of the caped crusader couldn't compete with Christopher Nolan's Batman. 

Are we sure? Are there not people who wouldn't be interested in either? Are there not people who find live performance far more compelling? I may be biased here, but we just spent two weekends playing to packed houses of folks who could have just stayed home and listened to the album or watched the movie. 

Look, some analogies fail because they aren't a good match for what they're analogizing, and some analogies fail because they are wrong to begin with ("this is just like the way a hummingbird lifts tractors out of tar pits"). Musk manages to fail both ways. But, you know, he's rich, so he gets to have his terrible insight elevated by a major magazine. Add that to the list of things that interfere with meaningful education discourse in this country.

Aunt Peg: An Appreciation

Margaret Feldman was born and raised in my small, the daughter of a musical family. Her father led the Baptist Sunday School Orchestra, and by recruiting members for that group brought a great deal of musical talent to the area. Like many folks in this area, her father had struck it rich in the newly burgeoning oil business. In his case, he developed a method of refining oil into a lubricant for watches and founded the Fulcrum Oil Company. It made him a healthy income, as did the jewelry store his father had started years before.

Margaret was a standout athlete at our local high school. After graduation she went on to Vassar. When she graduated, the second world war was heating up in Europe, and she went to work in DC in the office William Donovan at the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor for the CIA. Through her work, she came to know a wide variety of people from many walks of life and parts of the world (including Moe Berg, the baseball player who was also a spy).

But at the end of the war, her father had passed away, and so she came back home to run Fulcrum, becoming one of the few female CEOs in the country. Along with other women running a company, she was profiled in a Dun and Bradstreet publication in 1959. 

She got her teaching papers and went to work at Franklin High School, the same school she had graduated from years before. She taught English and quickly became department head. She retired in 1970, only because the district at that time had a mandatory retirement age for teachers. Several board members voted not to accept her resignation. 

Aunt Peg (her nickname by this point) stayed involved in the district. She substituted, and even when she was not working, she stopped by. Never married, no children of her own, she watched over those of us following in her footsteps. She dropped copies of the New York Times crossword in some teachers' mailboxes. Her ability to reach out to a vast web of contacts was legendary; she once presented a teacher with a baseball newly signed by a major league player. She held a summer "reading club" for select students from the school, a combination special tutoring and summer school program. When a new teacher arrived in town and made Peg's acquaintance, she lobbied hard for her hiring. That was Merrill, my work sister, about whom I have written before. 

When Peg passed a little more than thirty years ago, many of her former students gathered together, raised funds and created a foundation in her name. That foundation funds an annual essay competition for students in all of the county's high schools. They get a prompt, the essays are submitted, the director of the competition whittles down the stack, and then a group of local high school teachers judge the essays and select a winner. There are scholarship dollars, and a pair of traveling trophies that are engraved with winners' names and which sit at the school of the year's winner. 

For years, Merrill was the director of the competition. Now I do that job. We had the reception for the finalists and winners last night. As we heard each finalist read their essay, I looked around the room and realized that I was the only person there who had met Peg face to face. 

It is hard to estimate the reach of some teachers. I never had Peg in class, other than as a substitute, but I got to know her more as a teacher. Some of the teachers who inspired me were inspired by her, so I guess I was a sort of professional grandchild of hers, and my own students-now-teachers are great-grands and so on. Peg was old school, neither warm nor fuzzy, but fiercely dedicated to literature and writing and what we could learn from them about ourselves. There was never nonsense in her classroom, not even when she was subbing, but there was plenty of humanity, and a demonstration of how wide and deep and rich a life could be, even if it started here in our small town.

When you retire, you become a sort of ghost. You step off that boat careening downstream and you are left behind, out of sight around the bend, so swiftly it can take your breath away. Every year, the competition gives me the chance to remind a few people about who Aunt Peg was, but it's clear that her influence has mostly outlived her name, her memory. 

That, of course, is the gig. Most teachers don't even have a tiny award named after them; they do the work, exert the influence, fire up another set of students, and the effects of their work get passed along, hand to hand, linking an unforeseeable future to an unfathomable past. Happy teacher appreciation week!