The good folks of Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic School gave us flowers. (Photo by Penny Wong-Matzelle)

I often write posts listing the questions kids ask me during school presentations, but I don’t always tell you how I answer those questions. Penny Wong-Matzelle has two daughters at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic School (SSCM) in Deer Park, N.Y., and this article she wrote for the Deer Park-North Babylon NY Patch about our visit to first, second and third grade classes there last Monday lets you in on how I answered one of them. “The most poignant question came a short way into the Q & A session from a small girl in her neatly pressed SSCM uniform.”Penny wrote.

The question that girl asked was, “What does it feel like to be blind?” I’ve been asked that question in other school presentations. My answer changes with my mood. When things are going well, I don’t notice my blindness much at all, and just shrug it off. That morning I’d woken up in a motel room, though, so the article said, “She went on to describe how it can be frustrating at times, because it just takes longer to do certain things and she has to remind herself to slow down and take her time to avoid fumbling…”

I love that Penny thought to mention that the girl who asked was so small, and that her uniform was “neatly-pressed.” It gives me such a great image. It wasn’t the only visual detail Penny Wong-Matzelle included in her article — here’s another one:

The enthusiastic students of SSCM each had questions burning in their minds and the only thing Mrs. Finke may have missed out on was not being able to enjoy seeing the number of hands that flew into the air when she announced it was time for some Q & A.

And then there’s this:

Mrs. Finke’s demonstration of how Whitney works to guide her to the nearest exit brings nearly every student quietly to their feet as they lean forward and crane their necks to watch the pair make their way down the hall and back, stepping easily in stride with one another.

Without being able to see the audience during our school visits, I’m left to assume/imagine/hope the kids aren’t napping. I’ve had parents and teachers tell me their kids really liked our presentation, but I’ve never had anyone spell out visual details the way Penny Wong-Matzelle did in this story. Thanks, Penny – very fun to imagine a bunch of first, second, and third graders leaning forward and craning their necks as Whitney leads me out of a classroom!

That’s us at Daniel Street School in Lindenhurst; clearly, Whitney is ready for her close-up.

Whitney started every presentation we did on Long Island this week with a whine and a moan. She wasn’t scared of the kids. She wanted to play with them!

Who can blame her? The kids were cute, cute, cute, but somehow Whitney managed to settle in and lie down by the time we got to the Q&A part of our presentations. Hearing them ask in those adorable Long Island accents made me want to gather them all up and play with them, too. Some examples:

• What happens when you have to go down stairs?
• Which is your favorite dog?
• How do you eat ice cream?
• How can you write books if you can’t see??
• How do you plant?
• How can you use the remote to watch TV if you can’t see?
• But what if the ice cream is in a cone?
• Can your dog have babies? Why not?
• How do you know which dog is your favorite if you can’t see them?
• How come you are so pretty?
• How can you drive?
• Dr. Who started in 1963 and you could still see, did you ever watch it?
• How come you have to change dogs so much?
• How do you know what your hair color is?
• Is your dog with you all the time when you’re at home, too?
• I liked the Fourth Dr. from the planet Gallifrey and he had a robot dog named K-9 and I liked it when Nyssa was on, too, so which one was your favorite Dr. Who?
• Can a Seeing Eye dog work with more than one persons?
• How do you feel if you’re blind?
• How do you know where your dog is if you can’t see her?
• What if you had a glass and you were walking to the couch and you went to sit down and your dog was there and you got to the couch and you dropped the glass and it broke and got all over the place?

Whew! Whitney and I spent three entire school days with students on Long Island, and trust me, we both slept well afterwards. No wonder teachers get the summer off. They need it!

After my presentation to one of the kindergarten classes at Harding Avenue School in Lindenhurst on Tuesday, a boy raised his hand to let me know his dog is blind, and that his family is teaching her to go up stairs without being able to see. I’ve had Kindergartners tell me before that they have blind dogs, blind friends, even blind parents. I assume they’re telling me a story, and I usually comment on how lucky they are. I responded to this boy by asking, “Are you a Seeing Eye kid, then?”

The kindergartner liked that idea, and his teacher asked if he might want to tell me why he has to teach his dog to go up stairs now. “We were living with our Grandma,” he said, explaining they just moved into their own house. “It has lots and lots of stairs, and it’s way, way, way up high.” That little boy wasn’t just telling me a story. Their family dog is old, and she really is blind. His family’s home was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, they’ve finally just moved into a new house, and it’s on stilts.

During breaks from my talks, the school principal and teachers explained that Harding Avenue has 400 or so students, and 163 families from the school were displaced by Superstorm Sandy. Outside of this little mention of the new house way, way up high, though, the resilient kids never mentioned that storm. The temperature was in the sixties the day I visited, the winter snow had melted, and after I answered all their questions and took Whitney’s harness off so they could rub her belly. Then they ran outside. Recess!

PS

Mrs. Antonelli’s 2nd grade class at Harding School came up with a way to thank me that I can hear, and that you can see:

So it’s amazing (or in this case perhaps ridiculous) what people can get used to. Well, it’s amazing what I can get used to — I wouldn’t attribute what I’m about to explain to the entire human race.

Since around last Christmas, the “m” key on my built-in laptop keyboard hasn’t worked. For awhile, it would come and go if I did a machine-gun staccato dance on it. Of course, that would result in a bunch of extra “m”s and the need to delete.

I checked it out — the repair will require around $200 and replacement of the entire keyboard. I’ve procrastinated not just because I’m cheap, but because it’ll require giving up the computer for longer than I want.

So my “m” has become the equivalent of one of those boxes that doesn’t get unpacked after you move your household. Eventually, it becomes like a permanent furnishing that you walk around without a thought.

I get around this “m” thing easily enough most of the time … I plug in a full-size external keyboard. But when one’s not available, I have to copy an “m” from an existing document and paste it in as needed. Of course, if I need a capital “M” I need to copy that, and if I need to just copy an paste a phrase, well, you get the picture.

Having the name Mike doesn’t help, of course. M’s sort of an important letter to me. Beth suggested I change my name to Ike Knezovich until I get the key fixed. But of course, that sort of becomes Iknezovich, with the ike blurring audibly into the rest of my messy name. That triggered another thought: going all Apple on it — I could become iKnezovich.

Anyway. All this name talk with Beth reminded me how used to my own (last) name I’ve become. It’s not exactly Smith or Jones. (For those who’ve only see it in print, it’s pronounced Cah-NEZZ-oh-vich).

There was a short spell — it was after college at my first real job — that I seriously considered changing my name. I was a researcher for a consumer magazine in Washington, D.C., and I was constantly on the phone leaving and spelling my name. That’s K, N-as-in-nancy, E, Z as in zebra, O, V as in victor, I, C, H.

I began to wonder: Over a lifetime, this might cost me months or years of time I could spend otherwise. Maybe something shorter would be more practical.

Besides that, my name absolutely slays some people, and it always has. Every first day of school and every first role call ever since, I’ve learned to be at the ready. As the teacher or group leader gets closer to the Ks, I look for the contorted face, I wait for Mi—-chael (stretched out to buy time) Kah, Kah … and I rescue them by interrupting and completing the pronunciation.

“Ah, just how’s it’s spelled,” they usually say, in relief. And they repeat it out loud in wonder, and for memory’s sake.

On the phone it evokes all kinds of reactions, and all more for the couple years I lived in the South, where the kind of vowel-lacking ethnic names that are common in Chicago are quite rare. “Woooo—eeee!” The voice on the other end would say. “That’s really something. What is that?”

Quite a few people look at it, then come up with something completely unconnected from the actual letters in my name. “Table for Mr. Mike Kazanski? Did I get that right?” I think lots of people know people with Polish names and sort of reflexively add a ski to any name that is remotely Polish looking to them. Folks often try to guess the origin, and most often wrongly guess Polish. (It’s Serbian.)

So, back to the 80s at my first job — I did think about changing it. But then I started paying attention to how often much simpler names got botched routinely. For example, I worked with a woman with the surname of Rudd. Her first name was Gillian.

Since I often had phone duties, I’d field calls for her. “Hello, is Ms. Galleon Rude there?”

I’m not making that up. And there were other variations. And so, I thought, why would I go through expense of changing my name only to have it botched and butchered anyway?

So, I not only got used to it, I can’t imagine being called any other name (though that happens often enough).

No one at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference handed me a book contract last week, but I still call my trip with Whitney to Seattle an unqualified success.

I didn’t expect AWP to be such a huge conference – over 700 exhibitors, and hundreds and hundreds of sessions. The “overflow” hotel Whitney and I stayed in was huge, too — it boasted 800 rooms.

The conference hall was seven blocks away from my hotel, but without ice or salt to contend with, that walk was a breeze for Whitney. The thing she struggled with most? Threading us through the gigantic hotel lobby. I’m not shy about asking for help, but a lot of the hotel workers spoke English as a second language, and some of my peculiar needs were difficult for them to understand. Here’s one example that happened when I thought I was at the concierge desk but wasn’t quite sure.

• Me: Is this the concierge desk?
• Woman: Concierge desk.
• Me: I need help figuring out the best way to get to the convention center.

When I’m at a hotel alone, I like to ask the doorman to confirm I’m starting off in the right direction any time I go out somewhere. I explain to the woman that I’ve been using an exit over there, and I point over my shoulder to what I hope is the exit I’ve been using. I tell her there never seems to be a doorman there. the Woman is absolutely silent. I try again. “Is there another exit somewhere that has doormen nearby?” The woman remains totally silent. Must be just one more in a series of hotel workers who haven’t been able to understand what I’m asking for.

• Me: I guess you can’t help me then?
• Woman: The yoga center, yes. There’s one a block away from the hotel.
• Me: Yoga center? (I decide to speak slower.) I am looking for the con Venn shun center.
• Woman: Oh, yes, lots of people who stay her use that yoga center, it’s very good.
• Me: (uncharacteristically speechless)
• Woman: Okay, we Look forward to seeing you during your stay here, then.

That’s when it dawns on me. This woman is indeed the concierge, but the reason she was quiet for 15 seconds at a time is that she was on the phone! She was listening to the person on the other line! “Oh, I’m sorry,” I laugh. “I didn’t realize you were on the phone!” The woman is not amused.

• Woman: How can I help you, then?
• Me: I need help figuring out the best way to get to the convention center. I’ve been using that exit over there (once again pointing to what I hope is the exit I mean) but it seems confusing. Is there another entrance to the hotel that might be easier
• Woman, sounding perturbed: Not really. You just go out that door and head up Fifth street.
• Me: So I head out the door and turn left?
• Woman: You just go up Fifth Street.
• Me: So I’d turn right?
• Woman: You’d head north, up Fifth Street.

That’s when another thing dawns on me. “You must not have been able to see my Seeing Eye dog,” I say, pointing to Whitney at my feet. . . “I’m blind.”
The concierge stands up, peeks over her desk, and apologizes. She’s so mortified, in fact, that she leaves her desk to walk Whitney and me all seven blocks to the convention center. After that, we did countless back and forth trips on our own. Not to say we never got lost. Whitney and I got turned around dozens of times, and it wasn’t until our last day there that a Good Samaritan pointed out the hotel I was staying in was round. “They’re two big towers right next to each other, like two giant hair curlers.” She was a poet, of course.

It didn’t take me long to realize that one of the best ways to make connections at a conference is to travel with a Seeing Eye dog who tries oh so hard to do the right thing but can’t always find the right elevator. Or the coffee bar. Or the woman’s bathroom.

I grabbed hold of every elbow offered to me at the conference, and I met as many writers and publishers while looking for elevators as I did going from table to table at the book fair. None of them promised they’d publish my next book, but all of them took interest in my project, and a few asked me to send the rough draft their way for a look. Some journal editors said they might be interested in publishing excerpts, too.

I collected as many business cards as I gave away, and my writer friend Linda Miller read them out loud on my digital recorder during a lunch together at my hotel.

That’s Whit and me and first-graders on a previous visit to Long Island.

I still have to transfer the information from those cards onto my talking computer, but who has time? Whitney and I are busy now preparing for our next trip: we head to the airport again Sunday for three days of school visits on Long Island!

Warning: This endless winter has me cranky.

And I’m particularly cranky lately about the drumbeat of BS about education “reform.” And it is BS. Whether it’s Michelle Rhee and Students First, or what’s her name and Teach for America, charter schools  (which in Chicago is just another avenue for political corruption), vouchers, school choice, selective admissions, magnet schools, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind,” or whatever the latest magic bullet gimmickry, it’s all BS. Now this BS definitely serves the interest of some folks (they get big salaries, start their own foundations and pay them selves handsomely), but none of the beneficiaries are in classrooms.

Mostly these hucksters blame teachers and/or their unions. And you’ll see numbers from these con artists, and from lazy or naïve reporters who regurgitate them. But they are BS. They always look shiny on first pass, and none of them hold up to scrutiny. None. You can look it up.

Lots of folks pay better attention to this stuff than the mainstream press. Here are some sources I like, and if you have some time by all means use comments to share.

• Alexander Russo’s This Week in Education
• The Beachwood Reporter (not strictly an education site, but good work on Chicago schools)
• The daily howler

Let me share the most recent Chicago Public Schools debacle. It goes like this: There is a mandate to administer a version of a standardized test that is known to be outdated and not valid. A group of teachers has said they will boycott administering the test, and the Chicago Schools chief – Barbara Byrd Bennett – has threatened to revoke those teachers’ licenses.

I’ll spare any more detail and just say that Byrd-Bennett is the typical hired gun administrator hack who comes in to do the dirty work of her boss (in this case, Rahm Emanuel). And she isn’t even a resident of Illinois, let alone Chicago. Chicago teachers must reside in the city, and the system spends a lot of time and resources policing that policy.

Oy.

Anyway, back to “reform.” I’m all for meaningful numbers being part of decision-making, but numbers are a product of human conceit—tests are flawed and biased, there’s widespread corruption in test rigging (when Rhee was head of D.C. schools, she presided over and ignored a cheating scandal, and Atlanta is the latest example)—but somehow we fool ourselves into thinking they are objective. They are not. Numbers should inform judgment, but they are not a substitute for judgment made by experienced educators.

By educators, I don’t mean the likes of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who’s never spent a day running a classroom. There’s a whole class of these self-imagined masters of the universe who think you should run a school like a business. I got news for you: It’s not a business. It’s a lot HARDER than that, you bean counting MBA idiots.

That’s young Esther. She wouldn’t like any of this stuff, because she’d seen it before.

I know this, because I am the son of a badass elementary school teacher who taught her whole life, and succeeded in spite of lame administrators and  flavor-of-the-day fads. Let me tell you about Esther Knezovich (nee Latini). She did not work school day hours. At home she did mountains of bureaucratic paperwork, created materials for bulletin boards and special events, typed out mimeograph tests and handouts, and was on the phone constantly with kids’ parents.

I remember this vividly, because it left me feeling like, “What am I, chopped liver?” I felt the same way when we’d be at the local grocery store. A parent would corner her and I’d have to wait until they finished talking about that parent’s kid.

She didn’t always have summers off—sometimes it was summer school and others she took classes to maintain her credential.

She believed in the union and collective bargaining, but was not naïve enough to think all teachers were as committed. She tried to take young or foundering teachers under her wing. That was difficult, though, because the administrators by and large were a teacher’s nemesis, not his or her partner, and were often flunkies whose management style was to persecute particular teachers for one reason or another, and to do everything they could to pit teachers against each other.

And, from my own experience, I can tell you that I don’t remember principals or superintendents but I do remember every K-8 teacher I had, and most of my high school teachers. And you know what? Some were better than others, some were flaky; I really disliked some but somehow I made it. And not a one was incompetent. And not one of them kept me from learning if I wanted to.

That wanting to and being supported is a pretty big part of the equation; it’s obvious, yet we spend fortunes and too much time testing and testing to tell us this:

• Healthy neighborhoods and regions that are economically sound have solid schools.
• Poverty and crime riddled areas have poor schools.

Doh.

So what do we do? We play shell games with selective admissions and magnet schools, siphoning off the best students—who play a critical role in the culture of a school—writing off the neighborhood school, weakening it and the neighborhood.

Doh.

Here’s my non-data driven proposal for pretty much any school system, but especially for Chicago.

• Fire the top 2/3 of the administration. Arbitrary? Sure. What we’re doing isn’t working. Let’s take out top-heavy dead wood. We can always increase the ranks if needed, and probably, we’ll find we can get leaner still. (BTW, this absolutely has to be done in higher ed, where administrative bloat is largely responsible for ridiculous cost inflation.)
• Do one round of standardized tests early in the year, and one at the end. Or maybe just the end.
• You want to make teachers more accountable? Fine—but let’s give them back their classrooms. We want accountability from teachers on one hand, but we keep chipping away at their hegemony in their own classrooms. We dictate what they teach, how they teach it, how they test it. And then we change it. And we let parents treat teachers like they’re store clerks because flunky administrators want schools to be like businesses who serve customers. BS.
• If I were tsar-emperor, there would be no career administrators in policy-making positions. Classroom educators would be rotated in and out of those jobs (and no Ph.D.s necessary) for, say,  three-year terms. It’d give them a kind of sabbatical from the front lines, a view of what the bigger picture looks like, and when they were making the sausage, they’d be doing it knowing they’d be eating it one day when they go back to the classroom.
• Finally, there would be no magnet schools (at least at the K-8 level) or selective admissions, only neighborhood schools. (Here, like testing, selective enrollment is riddled with insider corruption. Bruce Rauner—Republican candidate for Illinois Governor who doesn’t even live in Chicago—clouted his kid into an elite Chicago public high school with a $250,000 donation to it. And that’s just the latest example of rigged admissions.) If a school underperforms, it would be (doh) an indicator of the health of the local neighborhood. That school wouldn’t be punished; instead it would get more resources (tutors, teachers, social workers, day care, after school programs) not fewer. Ideally it would become the hub of the delivery of a broad range of services that would help lift up the school and its neighborhood.

I feel like I’m a conservative on this issue. We don’t need gimmicks. We don’t need to undercut teachers. We need a simple commitment – in will and resources – to make public education work.

OK, thanks, I feel better. But it’s snowing again.