“Why Are There Ketchup Stains On The Walls?”
Noting That Odd Display of Progress & Regress in Urban Education
“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves. . . and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.”
― John Holt
Initially just a sanity-outlet some 20 years ago, my Social Studies Department Head, Martin R. Kaye and I began trading journal entries on various pedagogical problems. I eventually entertained compiling such observations into an ambitious treatise, Know the Child Left Behind.
An empathetic Marty would gently prod me, “Bill, we have to write all this down, at the very least, to never forget how not to run a school.”
Now, 20 years later, you, dear reader, are privy to some of this ambitious vagary.
Anyway, back in the late summer of 2004 (incidentally, just before the October birth of our first child), the staff had been commemorating the retirement of our long tenured superintendent serving almost 14 years (98 in superintendent years?) — with some genuine enthusiasm for the unknown incoming leadership.
At the inagural staff meeting, we awaited some kind of inspirational message, perhaps even some sorely needed goal-setting summaries.1
After the principal’s brief introduction, the room erupted into wild applause. Our desire for this new chief administrator to take us to an educational promised land indeed triggered a slightly overzealous welcome.
Standing before us, a mirage of cartoon-like bubbles could have popped up over our nodding heads. One must have read, “Any new attendance policy?”
Another, “Any fix for overcrowded classrooms?”
“Any idea what you’re getting yourself into? . . .”
The Always-Highest-Salaried-in-the-District began reciting a life-narrative resume about growing up as a statistic who never should have made it. And then. . . while describing the trek from the front of the building to the media center, the strident voice could not help but notice the condition of the building, asking, “Why are there ketchup stains on the walls?”
Most teachers are a paradox of grumbling optimists.
I remember staff looking at each other curiously.
Why are there ketchup stains on the walls?
I had never asked this myself after several years of employment. Why the stains on the walls?
What did this mean?
Should we be impressed at the mild indignation over the overall lack of cleanliness in the building, including numerous ketchup smears on various surface areas?
Do they really care?
Kenosha, Wisconsin, August, 30, 2020. Community clean-up of a boarded-up building, after the August 23-26 rioting, where police and protester violence had horribly claimed two lives (plus two million in city property damage, and at least 20 times that in business properties).
Photo by the author.
We did appreciate the apparent attention to detail upon the initial inspection. It even became a quick discussion topic, a sense of shared optimism to start the school year.
Most of us did not suspect such probing as empty rhetoric, as an indicator of more trouble to come. Most teachers are a paradox of grumbling optimists. We complain because we actually believe real changes can occur with our workplace, our staff, and especially our students.
We truly wanted to believe in promises to profoundly improve the school’s academics, including the chronically failing, the truant students in runaway hallways, the disorganized athletics and fine arts, in promoting clean and safe buildings.
25-year-old wall stains in a school stairwell can hide in plain sight, as fossilized reminders of past chaos and conflict.
Alas, the newly hired leader’s question would not show an overall willingness and ability to attack and alleviate problems cracking like fault lines in the very foundation our school. Instead, it would come to symbolize a bureaucratic willingness and ability to only verbalize select concerns before refraining from further real action.
In a calamtious rush to double student enrollment (mainly for the state’s per-pupil funding allowance), we would eventually face unprescendented challenges in every classroom, in every hallway, in every counseling office. . . .
Soon forced smiles from that administration would rest upon an announced catch-all slogan, to be repeated endlessly: “Moving from Good to Great.”
Or as some staff would later mumble in response:
Good grief.
POSTSCRIPT:
20 years later, an educational edifice older than me (i.e. over 62 years old) is finally getting a double coat of fresh paint to accentuate the installment of a building-wide, fully functioning heating and cooling system, along with rest room renovations.
The necessary repairs from a wide variety of setbacks, exacerbated during the pandemic lockdown, demands restored dialogue as much as any remodeling.
After 18 years, my old friend and colleague Marty had left teaching in our district to become a principal in another, then a consultant-for-hire exploring how schools still often spend “too much time on instructional consulting and not enough on climate and culture.”
He still periodically checks in on me, slightly amazed I have not yet retired from my ever challenging full-time teaching gig.
Mr. Kaye also has volunteered the past two years at Oxford High School in their continuing recovery from the horrific November 30, 2021 mass shooting which tragically took the lives of four students and wounded seven.
Ultimately, we know true reform does not rest on the physical improvements of aging structures, or even a long-delayed pay increase across the employment spectrum. It remains rooted in further developing the human relationships within — and beyond — the walls of our ongoing attempt at meaningful education.
TO BE CONTINUED. . . .
Note: this anecdote occured several years before teacher side-conversations would be covertly substitued by terse texting to sympathetic co-workers.
Teachers, police, doctors, lawyers and more (possibly even politicians) choose their profession based on a belief and drive to do some good in this world. I think they are amongst the most disallusioned of groups when the reality of what they are up against vs. what they want to accomplish becomes a daily issue.
I am so grateful for the teachers in my life, and those that continue to teach me. It's an upward - and quickly becoming a dangerous struggle. Teaching that small group of students that are able to listen is literally saving lives.
Like a home that is clean and welcoming, you enter to refresh, renew, relax and enjoy. A school or workplace that is disintegrating before your eyes cannot offer the peace of mind, the safety and restful, inspiring atmosphere to learn. It breeds discontent, abandonment, depression and a general ennui in students and teachers alike.
Students will find outlets for excitement and acceptance elsewhere. Rarely in activities that add to their life expectancy.
Teachers and admins will leave or spend their time climbing out of the hole of beaurocracy, eating away at their energy to teach and offer students a safe place.
We should be building up the base of our next generation for the future. This would seem the most important goal in our lifetime. I don't know how it continually gets pushed to the wayside.
I hope you get the pool restored.
I hope they fix up the building. A clean place with fresh instills hope.
I'm so relieved the ketchup stains weren't blood.