‘We’re talking superhero-level empathy’
Jason Patera was experiencing a series of alarming symptoms, all of which he refused to be alarmed by.
The ringing in his ears? Probably an unfortunate byproduct of his years as a drummer.
The facial numbness? Probably left over from a root canal.
The headaches? Probably sinuses.
Doctors agreed with that last one, scheduling him for nasal surgery in the spring of 2020. Then COVID-19 showed up, his surgery got canceled, and Patera went back to life as normal-ish.
Patera is the head of school at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, an independent high school for performing and visual arts on the city’s Near North Side.
I’ve visited several times over the years for stories, and I always walk away profoundly grateful it exists and that a guy like Patera runs it.
In 2019, I wrote a column about Patera’s Annual Dispensing of Unsolicited Advice — a list of things (new each year) that Patera would tell his 17-year-old self, which he reads aloud at the senior lunch. (It’s brilliant.)
In May 2020, I wrote about Patera, a group of teachers and administrators, and school security guard Van Jackson driving 400 miles to hand-deliver diplomas to the graduating seniors, who were locked out of festivities by the pandemic. (Students commute to the school from as far away as Wisconsin and Indiana.)
Shortly after that epic gesture, Patera’s dad died
from COVID-19. Whatever attention Patera was giving his nagging symptoms — in and among running a school and adjusting to remote learning and grieving his father — dwindled to almost nothing.
Eventually school returned to in-person, and Patera began to contemplate rescheduling the nasal surgery.
Then the ringing in his ears got worse. A member of the school’s board of directors urged him to get an MRI.
“I got that phone call that nobody wants to get,” Patera said. “‘We actually need you to come down here and talk about what we found.’ ”
What they found was a large, benign brain tumor. Doctors successfully removed it in February, but Patera is left permanently deaf in one ear. One half of his face is now paralyzed,
a condition that may improve, but may not.
“In the last month or so I can feel my face wake up a little bit,” he said. “I can chew a little better. I can start to close my eye. Most of my lunch still ends up on my shirt, but not as much as a few months ago.”
One of the things that drew me to Chicago Academy for the Arts, and to Patera, is the climate of belonging that permeates the building.
The school launches kids to Juilliard and Yale and the Berklee College of Music. It cultivates and churns out world-class artists. It boasts Grammy winners and physicists and entrepreneurs (and Jake from State Farm!) as alumni.
But it’s also a place where kids, over and over, told me they finally fit. They finally felt loved. Accepted. Celebrated. More than once a student told me
they contemplated suicide before they arrived there.
I asked Patera if his post-surgery life put him closer to walking in the shoes of kids who feel marginalized.
“People will do a doubletake when you’re spitting all over yourself,” he said. “I look in the mirror and sometimes it’s shocking. ‘Oh my God. What is this face?’
“But I also know I have no idea what it’s like to face real social obstacles,” he said. “I got dished up a healing pile of challenges. I might not have been ready to do this hard thing in front of me. But I’m learning to accept what is and be open to what is and keep a good dose of humor along the way.”
After a lifetime of being teased about his weight, Patera started training for marathons a decade ago and got hooked. Before the
brain surgery, he was on a streak, having run every single day for the previous five-and-a-half years.
Students and staff, knowing the surgery and recovery would break Patera’s streak, organized a schoolwide run the day before his surgery. At the end of the course, a box of cards and letters, hundreds of them, was filled with well-wishes and support.
“I’m reading letters from kids who’ve gone through far more challenging things than I went through or am likely to ever go through,” he said. “And they’re offering wisdom and perspective, delivered with such kindness and compassion. It was overwhelming.
“If they’re engaging with the rest of the world with any level of that kindness and compassion? Our future’s bright,” he said. “We’re talking superherolevel empathy, and it will undoubtedly change the world, in small and large ways.”
What does it do for a kid’s heart, for a kid’s sense of self, for a kid’s understanding of their worth, to see their kindness, compassion, empathy help heal the guy who runs their school? An authority figure? The one in charge, in so many ways, of healing and protecting them?
“We talk a lot about how important art is — the product of making art, and the process of making art,” Patera said. “We spend a lot of time helping them understand the power of their work, the power of their words, the power of their presence. You have the chance to make something that is going to shift how someone thinks. If you get used to feeling like your words and your work and your actions matter, you’re more likely to go through life acting like your words and your work and your actions matter. And they do.”
Music doesn’t sound like it used to. Piano playing, a passion of Patera’s, is challenging. Bike riding, another former love, is off the table until his balance returns.
“It’s easy to feel frustrated,” he said. “But it’s also easy to practice a lot of gratitude. My life has been a series of absurdly good fortune. I can never pay back this community for how they made me feel, for their compassion and kindness. But I’m wholly committed to paying that compassion and kindness forward, and I plan to do that for the rest of my life.”
What a model.