AN OPEN WINDOW POLICY

You know how there are some places where employers
have an open door policy. You are supposedly "free" to
come in and air your greivances, and maybe speak
"candidly".

Well at my old high school, the school's Headmaster
aka Principal has an open window policy for the
school's students.

I returned to my alma mater today to drop off some
gifts from this summer's trip to Italy, and to visit a
friend who is visiting from Japan. My friend Yumi
attended our alma mater for nine years. Her father had
been sent to the States in order to work and then he
and his wife returned to Japan, when Yumi was in the
seventh grade. Luckily he allowed her to stay and
finish up her education at the school. If it weren't
for that decision I would not have gotten to know
Yumi. We worked together for two years as leaders of a
grassroots diversity advocacy and action group, which
we cofounded with two other students.

After saying my goodbyes to Yumi I walked past the
Headmaster's office window. I didn't expect for him to
be there, but he was. I waved, and he waved me around
to the old mainstay, an open office window. The
Headmaster's Office is right off the Senior Quad. It's
huge, but I know it's sometimes hard for him to have
meetings in there, because he as hundreds of students
yelling as they walk past. Most days his window is
left open I guess unless he needs to filter out noise.
I remember during our freshman year scavenger hunt
climbing out of that window, instead of walking out of
the door.

The headmaster and I always have these funny
exchanges. I asked him if he's trying to get me banned
from campus, for still causing a ruckus after earning
my diploma. He laughs it off, thinking "Hell yeah," on
the inside. I've gotten to know him well over the
years, his poker face isn't good with me. What can I
say if I'm a little subversive? I ask him about
getting on the payroll. He tells me about the
realities of teaching. I told him that LoCo is
teaching me about how to "negotiate for proper
compensation." He shoots back that "No one who teaches
here is properly compensated," which is probably more
true than not. But that probably was said to make me
stop asking for a job as I actually get closer and
closer to graduating from college LoL. He then picked
up a magazine off his desk and read to me a passage
which is attributed to a variety of people, one of
those people being Alan Brinkley, the Provost at
Columbia.

That quote speaks volumes about the levels of
ignorance, illiteracy, and intolerance which plague
our society.

That quote said simply:
"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is
a lost tradition."

Deep, deep, deep.

Time for me to work, work, work and sleep, sleep,
sleep!

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