Learn With ThemJoel Weber's learning, teaching, growth, teens, & Holden High School blog
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When Ed was about 11 years old, he knocked on Dan’s door down the street in Richmond and asked if he could mow Dan’s lawn. This changed their lives. Ed’s buddies were hanging out, robbing houses, and getting into trouble. The only way he knew to stay out of that trouble was to be able to tell his friends that he had something else to do. Dan said sure, mow my lawn, and pretty soon Ed was asking for other jobs to fill more of his time. Dan always found work for Ed. In fact, after a few years, they became such good friends that Dan invited Ed to move in with him.
It was shortly after this that we first got to know Ed and Dan. Because of the kind of person Dan is, and because he is a teacher, he looked for something that would work for Ed. Ed enrolled back when Holden was called Contra Costa Alternative School (CCAS). My first real conversation with him was on his first day, in the morning, in the bathroom, when he told me how nervous he was because he hadn’t been in school or learned anything at school in years. He wondered and worried how he would do. It was very hard at first. Ed was rusty at school, and it was never his favorite or easiest thing anyway. But he came every day, he came on time, and he worked hard. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a student who worked so close to his potential. His family still lived down the street; his brother was regularly getting in trouble, and Ed tried to help out but never really got support in return. Where he got the energy to work so hard in school I will never know. He had lots of trouble with the small amounts of homework we gave in his first year, but Dan always helped him, and he learned how to complete the stuff, often by doing marathons in the last week of the semester. CCAS has a college style schedule that is not the easiest to read. Ed had trouble finding his classes for months. By his second year, though, he was reading his schedule like a pro. Ed was never anything but respectful to us. He was one of the most likeable kids we ever had. But we struggled with him like crazy about rules and about substances and alcohol. At one point he was restricted to campus because he drank alcohol in Orinda. At another point we quizzed him extensively about whether he had been smoking marijuana on campus. He always denied doing anything wrong. He was afraid to admit if he did something wrong. We think this was because he got beaten before he moved into Dan’s. We tried to invent situations where he could tell us the truth about doing something wrong. It never worked. In his senior year he was near the end of his chances to quit using around school. We smelled alcohol on him from time to time. He still denied it. We said he needed treatment. Finally he and Dan suggested that he provide us with a breathalyzer to check the next time we smelled alcohol. We never smelled it again. He may have stopped drinking before or at school on that day. Ed struggled and we struggled. Like all the students, he always had an advocate on staff; his psychological counselor. This served him well and helped insure that the rest of the adults didn’t overreact. We also helped him hook up with Kris Picklesimer, a wonderful psychologist in Lafayette and longterm friend of the school. Kris did marvelous work with him one on one exploring good and bad, faith and love, lying and truth. As someone from a family where no one had ever graduated from high school, Ed was in some ways very different from all staff. But he learned, and we learned, and we always loved him. He completed all his work and was ready to stand for graduation. Every year in the week before graduation we had a senior dinner at my house. As part of the dinner, kids could confess anything they did at school and there would be no consequences. Ed came to the dinner under the influence of alcohol. I really didn’t want him to stay, but I really did. You don’t take senior dinner away from somebody. At least we did not. I asked him if he had been drinking and he said no. Staff reluctantly decided that we’d let him stay. But later came the confessions. It turned out that Ed had really needed to drink to fortify himself to say what he needed to say. He said he drank or smoked marijuana every day at school and even supplied some other kids. He admitted that he had drunk before he came to dinner. This was the first time he had ever admitted any wrongdoing, and again, without the alcohol, I’m not sure he could have admitted it. So over the next couple of days, I’m wondering, as I do from time to time, ‘Am I an idiot?’ We knew he had been using some, but every day? Shouldn’t we have guided him to treatment a long time ago? We thought and thought and talked and talked about this in meetings for a few days. We realized that Ed had grown profoundly as a person in his four years, even while he was using almost every day. Dan and the school and the substances actually created a container for him in which he could grow and grow. In retrospect I don’t think we would have done anything different. It isn’t the normal pattern of a four year student to use substances in this way. I really can’t think of anyone else with a pattern like this, especially including alcohol. It’s not that we would want to change school rules, which say clearly: no substances or alcohol at school or in Orinda or before school. But Ed was Ed, and somehow he figured out his own way to bumble through and come out the other side. If he hadn’t found Dan, he might be dead now. If he hadn’t found CCAS, he would not have finished school and he would have felt like a failure. But the thing about Ed is that he not only finds opportunities, he uses them. He made the best of those opportunities, and the staff has only the greatest respect and love for him. At Ed’s graduation he had everyone in tears. He was so nervous, but he made such a beautiful speech. Here it is, in part: “… at Holden, when I first came, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t read; I couldn’t even understand half of the words that were being said in class, because, to tell you the truth, learning is hard for me and when I went to school in Richmond nobody cared if I tried, nobody cared if I attended or not, nobody cared if I could learn and nobody even cared about me. That’s the truth. Before I came to Holden, every day at school was just surviving. Hanging with the gangs was the only way I felt safe because in Richmond, I was different, and in Richmond, if you are different and no one’s got your back, you’re not going to survive. I was different at Holden too. I came with my own problems, but when I looked around, I saw that other people came with their own problems too and instead of kicking me out, the staff at Holden helped me to overcome my past and they are helping me even still.” When it was the next graduate’s turn to speak, all he could do was sob. We have had many great graduations, but Ed’s might have been the greatest. We learned so much from him, and he benefited so much from being at CCAS. I think there are lessons here for how we’re supposed to teach the children. Bill Clinton doesn’t understand learning as it must be implemented for kids. Jerry Brown doesn’t understand this either. They are neither of them qualified to prescribe what a school district or country needs by way of educational standards, because they don’t stop long enough to perceive, cherish, and learn from individual kids. In fact the term ‘educational standards’ is wrong, but that’s another story. I believe that what we do is really very simple. In a way it amazes me that there aren’t CCAS’s everywhere. I don’t think there are more than a couple of dozen schools in the country like ours. Lucie Hupp reminded me once that we said we loved the kids before we knew them. This is true, and to me a very religious idea. We take all the money we can find, invest in adults who want to work with kids, respect them, learn from them, and love them. Maybe these are the keys. Love them before you know them. Be prepared in humility to learn from them. Give them support till you can’t support them anymore; then support them some more. We have been accused of offering ‘relentless support,’ and I think that’s true. How is Ed doing now? Kris has continued to work with him, shaving his fees as need be, getting Ed in an Vocational Rehabilitation program from the state. Ed is training for janitorial service, and getting the highest grades and most honors of any kid ever to go through the program. Just writing this stuff brings tears to my eyes. So Holden will find more Eds, and they will find us, and we will learn from them, and they will learn from us, and we will love them, and they will love us, and these are great, great things.
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Copyright Joel B. Weber 2013 forward. Disclaimers: This blog is not affiliated with Holden High; views are my own. I have no official connection to Holden other than Director Emeritus and friend. Dates and many student names have been changed; facts have not. Archives
December 2014
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