Wisdom imparted during school visit
Wednesday night, Aidan had 95 pages to read of “The Odyssey” before he could play on the iPad. He had had a week to get there. When I picked him up in the Kipcap, he said, “I finished the whole book, Daddy.” And he dove into Minecraft.
“Wait. Prove it. Tell me the plot,” I said as I turned the engine on.
“This guy goes to Troy and comes back.” While technically correct, this wouldn’t pass Mr. Brettschneider’s quiz.
Our family doesn’t do academics. Zane only goes to class because he’s surrounded by a desert. Krypto failed obedience school, and he was the bright dog in the family. Bandit has never learned how to wag his own tail.
Spent last Thursday with tweenagers at San Lorenzo Valley Middle School in Felton, the first vacation day that I’ve taken since I got promoted back in February.
Felton is a small town (4.6 square miles) in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The 2010 census put it at 4,057 residents. For comparison’s sake, there are 11,902 outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsiorians (Excelsorites?). According to that same census, there were 27 same-sex married couples in town, or 1.6 percent, which makes it gayer per square inch than the City-That-KnowsHow, with 13,220 or 1.52 percent of the total.
Felton has a few tourist attractions, the Felton Covered Bridge and the Bigfoot Museums, and passionate teachers like Matt McMillan.
Matt has been talking me up with his students, so as I drove onto the campus I had the status of a rock star. Forrest, an eighth-grader, had been waiting outside the classroom all morning just so that he could get me to autograph his copy of my book. The only people in San Francisco who want my autograph are the ones down at Wells Fargo, and even then only on the bottom of my mortgage check.
The faculty had filled the auditorium. Eileen, another English teacher, brought her fourth-grader along. Rob, the math teacher, brought his math students, because the lesson was more important than the lesson plan.
An eighth-grader named Shiloh, who had heard me two years ago, told me that I was “his idol.” Compare this to Aidan, who when I told him that he actually had to read those 95 pages said, “You do know you’re the worst parent ever?”
Just before I spoke, eigth-grader Mackenna arrived, breathless, saying, “Mr. McMillan, I know I was out sick for your test yesterday, and I only came in today because Mr. Fisher-Paulson was speaking. After he speaks, I’ll take the test.” Let’s be clear: I am not worthy. I had written out a speech the night before but, of course, the printer in the blue bungalow chose that hour to die, and so most of what I said was off the cuff. Here is the gist of what I said, the second letter of Un-Saint Kevin to the Feltonians:
Aude Aliquid D ignum: D are to do something worthy. I have more decades behind me than I do in front of me, and the only wisdom that I have is “D o not settle for mediocrity.” Within you burns a fire, and its light wants to shine.
When I was 13, I decided to write. I did not decide to become a deputy sheriff. And yet I have achieved both because I chose to wake up, face an empty page, write down my truth. And my truth was that kindness matters.
Truth requires courage. In front of me I see basketball stars, nuclear physicists, senators, political activists and the next Beyoncé. You need to do only two things: Believe in yourself, and do the work. I’m gonna quote Goethe here, because he says it better, “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”
At that moment, a young woman stood up and announced in front of 200 classmates that she was bisexual. Maybe the census was right.
I drove down to the Santa Cruz mountains to teach, so of course what I did was learn. This next generation has a strength and an audacity that I never possessed back at Elizabeth Blackwell Junior High School in Ozone Park, N.Y. They started the day believing in me, but they ended the day believing in themselves.
And they will do great things. So long as there are teachers like Matt, who never let the educators get in their way. Inspiration matters. Mackenna, by the way, earned an A.
I drove down to the Santa Cruz mountains to teach, so of course what I did was learn.