Why do I keep doing this?
their neighborhoods? Does the state know how to get in touch with absentee parents who have no contact information? Can the state provide supervision at home to ensure these children go to bed on time, and get the nourishment (emotional and physical) they need? Does the state believe the caring educators at these schools haven’t been trying to address these social issues for decades? Bring it on, state. If you have the solutions to all these problems, stop holding back. Share your secrets with the rest of us.
So I ask often ask myself: why do I keep doing this? The same problems that were in the headlines forty years ago are still there. Only the names have changed. Test scores are not where they need to be. Buildings are aging. There are suicides. We have bullying. Bad things happen on school buses. There is widespread frustration about state testing demands. Superintendents come and go. Many good Lakeview Middle School seventh-graders work in their outdoor classroom garden.
families are fleeing public schools for private schools, charter schools, or home schooling. Yes, it seems like I’ve done these stories before: many, many times.
Why do I keep doing this? Recently, I figured it out.
During my school visits, I take pictures. Quite often, those pictures reveal sheer wonderment, true joy, and unabashed happiness. The pictures show second graders at a low-income school, never before exposed to art class, admiring their work in a public showcase. They show the entire student body at an elementary
school, supporting their principal as she geared up for the Ironman competition. They show 7th graders in their outdoor classroom, getting their hands dirty in the garden before they clean out the chicken coop. They show children who have never been more than fifty miles from their homes, raising money to fly across the nation to compete in an academic contest.
Every one of these stories was on the news, on-air and online. The other area media outlets do positive stories as well.
When I report these stories, and take pictures, I try to be a fly on the wall. If, as the school board member said, the media only reports the bad, you would have no way of knowing how hard teachers are working to be creative, to think outside the box, and to come up with new ways of engaging children in our video game-obsessed world. Hopefully someone saw these stories.
As I transfer the pictures from my camera to the computer screen, I sit and stare at them. I see the bright eyes and the big smiles. Some of these children have great home lives. Sadly, many of them do not. What they have at school is a shared experience that is forming who they will be as adults. I’m seeing hope in those pictures. I’m seeing discovery. I’m seeing joy.
That’s why I do this.
David Carroll, a Chattanooga news anchor, is the author of the new book “Volunteer Bama Dawg,” a collection of his best stories, available at ChattanoogaRadioTV. com, or by sending $23 to David Carroll Book, PO Box 15185, Chattanooga, TN 37415. You may contact David at 3dc@epbfi.com