Friday, June 17, 2011

Making a Difference

If you ask people who their favorite teacher was, they can usually come up with one name, sometimes even two or three, but rarely more than that. And often these are people who have graduate degrees, so they’ve have a lot of teachers to choose from. In my case, three teachers stand out from the time I started Kindergarten in 1943 until the time I finished graduate school in 1967

Not that I didn’t have more than three good, competent teachers along the way. But, the kind of teacher I am referring to are the ones whom you remember after you have forgotten all they taught you. Who inspired you, gave you confidence, saw qualities in you that you never saw in yourself, and who changed the course of your life.

Having taught high school myself and seeing the impact she has had, I have no hesitancy in asserting that my wife Brigitte is one of those teachers. She is retiring at the end of the school year after 38 years in Fairfax County Virginia, the last 36 at Langley High School in McLean, VA. She has taught English and virtually every History course imaginable, in both the regular and A.P. curricula.

The list of her teaching-related accomplishments is long. Among others, she’s had summer fellowships at Georgetown and Harvard, spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union as part of a program sponsored by the University of Richmond, participated in a group Fulbright program that took her to China and Tibet. And, she was named Fairfax County Teacher of the Year for 2009-2010.

Impressive, sure, but what has made her truly special is the lasting impact she has had on literally hundreds and hundreds of students for almost four decades. If we had kept all the cards and letters she has received over the years from former students they would fill up several drawers. Not just testimonials from graduating students flush with the joy of just finishing high school or her class, but from students who graduated years, even decades, ago.

Two years ago, a former Langley student from the early 1980s, and now a businessman from Minneapolis, returned to the McLean area for a Langley High School reunion. As he and his former classmates sat around talking about their high school days, the name of Mrs. Lavey came up time and time again as their favorite teacher, he said, and the one who made the most difference in their lives. He delayed his return to Minneapolis to stop by Langley to tell Brigitte that.

A former Langley principal wrote recently that “Brigitte was the single best teacher I saw in action during my years in education.” His career included forty years in public education, 25 years as a high school principal in five different communities, twenty years as the chair of committees that accredited high schools for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in the US and Europe, and six years at the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education planning and implementing professional development institutes for practitioners.

When Brigitte told her current principal that she was retiring, but assuring him that someone else would quickly fill her shoes, he said, “Brigitte, please. Michael Jordans come along very rarely in life”

She’s going to be a tough act to follow indeed. And, now out of self-preservation, my challenge is to help her channel all that dedication and passion and energy into meaningful activities in retirement. Otherwise, we’ll both go crazy. She has a wide range of personal interests, including art, photography, and writing, along with teaching, so it’s a matter of finding the right fit.

Wish me luck.

Gerald E. Lavey

Monday, June 6, 2011

Sex in the City

What are the chances of a U.S. representative by the name of “Weiner” being caught for allegedly twittering a photo of his … ah, “wiener?” Couldn’t happen, right? It would have to be a creation of The Onion. But, it did happen, showing once again that our nation’s capital provides an endless supply of material that “trumps” fiction any day. It wouldn't have been so bad if the Congressman's name had been, say, Johnson.... oops, that doesn't work either....

Once asked where he got his material, syndicated Washington Post humorist Art Buchwald, all he had to do is read the morning paper, dash off his column, then head to lunch at the San Souci. With the treasure trove of material now available, he would have his column finished by breakfast.

For instance, there is Sarah Palin showing a little political “leg” on her bus tour, with the news media panting behind her, hoping she’ll show a little more, when all she’ll show is how dumb the news media is for treating her as a serious candidate. She’s not going to run; she’s having fun teasing the news media and making a bundle of dough with her Fox platform and side shows. If she ran, she would be fully exposed as an empty dress, as she was in the 2008 campaign.

Then, there is Mitt Romney, the one serious candidate to emerge thus far from the loyal opposition, who is impersonating Harry Houdini, contorting himself in an impossible effort to escape the signature accomplishment he had as Governor of Massachusetts – health care reform.

One thing you’ve got to give Rep. Weiner, though, is that we know he has – shall we say, the required physical manly equipment? But, I would suggest to him and to the other members of Congress that there’s a better way to show that one has “the right stuff” – and that is to have the proverbial balls to stand up and show a little political courage. And they wouldn’t have to twitter a crotch shot photo of that. It would be there for all to see and admire.

But, that will not likely happen and the failure of “members” of Congress and other politicians to do so is the greatest obscenity of all.

Gerald E. Lavey

Friday, June 3, 2011

Profiles in Courage – Or Maybe Not

Shortly after posting the tribute for Memorial Day(“No Greater Love”)on my blog, I thought to myself: What if politicians were willing to give up their political lives for a cause greater than themselves — the good of the country, in other words — as our young men and women are willing to do with their real lives when they volunteer for military service?

Silly thought, I know, but what if? The thought lingered and teased. Then, just this morning, in today’s Washington Post, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, had an Op-Ed piece to that effect, calling on “members of both parties and both houses [to] publicly support the work of the Gang of Six,” the bipartisan group of Senators who have been meeting in an effort to deal with our national debt. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has taken a break from the talks but reportedly has not left the group.

While it’s admirable that members of the Senate are even talking to one another on a serious subject these days – indicating how low our expectations have sunk for the “world’s greatest deliberative body” – their efforts will go nowhere unless substantial numbers from both parties and both houses are willing to step forward. What do you think are the chances of that happening? Slim to none? A snowball’s chance in hell?”

Just think about it. Members of Congress are not being expected to surrender their lives, fortunes, or sacred honor. In fact, all three aspects of their lives would probably be immeasurably improved if they were only willing to work up a little spine, stand up to their political bases, and be willing to be defeated in the next election, if it even came to that. But, to do that, as Simpson and Bowles suggest, it would take the courage “to prod their own sacred cows into the cattle chute, and everyone give up something they like to protect the country they love.”

Sounds like a reasonable, honorable expectation, but the bogeyman of the next looming election has a way of shrinking politicians’ souls. As A.J. Rowling wrote in one of her Harry Potter books, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies; but a great deal more to stand up to your friends....”

Gerald E. Lavey