Trailing Dreams of America, 2005

....PJClements & American Journeys

Trailing Dreams of America: Conversations down the road

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* Chapel Talk to Peddie Students, September 19, 2005

* Presentation to the Faculty, October 17, 2005

* Reports from the roads (originals via LiveJournal.)

Sabbatical Address to the Faculty– October 17, 2005
Patrick J. Clements

Sometimes our work here is a job. Old fashioned get up in the morning, feel like you’re punching in and heading up on the roof with the rest of the crew, hoping it doesn’t get too hot too soon so the tar goes soft early, busting it until lunch and wild stories from Hank, and then hanging on until break, and a smoke, and then whew!, anyone can make it until the afternoon whistle.

Sometimes our work is our profession. Put on the tie, the khakis, standard schoolman’s clothes, head to our daily expertise and tend to the business of this day, our specialized, subtle techniques of crafting this task, advancing that project, focusing on today’s new idea.

Sometimes our work is our career, a patient unfolding of last year and next year, a reach for a new achievement, a path of work that comes clear over time.

Sometimes our work is our practice, the steady repetitions that make rituals of our lives and give us shape.

Sometimes our work is our vocation, what we do because we hear that this, for me, makes the most sense.

Our work is never one of these, and every day and year it’s an odd mix of all of this. What distinguishes what we do here at Peddie, or in any good school, is not the special nature of the institution, or of this institution, this school, for these are nouns, things constructed within our society. What distinguishes what we do here is our understanding of the fundamental activity inside the institution: it’s not a noun; it’s a verb. People invent themselves here. Young men and women create themselves here at Peddie. Metaphors that include phrases like “value added,” though very helpful for some analyses, don’t tell this story, nor do other marketplace metaphors. We are not providing specialized services for students and their families, though this idea is crucial as we examine our work. We are not, in the language of bureaucrats -- please God, please!-- “delivering education.” What we do is this: together, we create, every day, a community in which our kids shape their minds, adopt a practice of life, and, in the doing, invent themselves as adults.

Because we have chosen to be a residential school, we exploit metaphor, not in words so much but in actions, of how these verbs are best enacted. At home. We feed our kids, focus their lessons, fill their lives with work and play, encourage several forms of love to grow, and push out these fresh adults when it’s their time to leave home and go learn elsewhere.

As we live our lives here we model for our kids lives to be lived. Our best preaching is our actual practice. So, as I considered designing my sabbatical proposal, I thought that if my best teaching is my best practice, then maybe I ought to pay attention myself to Peddie’s unique language: our mission to challenge kids -- and ourselves too, no? -- to reach for levels of achievement not attempted before; our philosophy of honoring the dignity and worth of all; our steady practice of the five enduring values; and a dream, a kid’s dream, to head out on “howling adventures.” All these voices, plus a note from Melanie that read “Travel on or stay put,” together hollered, “Go ride your bike and talk to people.” So I did.

Last spring I rode across the country talking to people, asking about their Dream of America. For a teacher and student of American literature, for someone who believes in the value of layering different kinds of learning, this was an extraordinary, and scary, experience. I finally had to take my own advice and do what I’ve been coaching kids to do all along: read the books, and then go find out for yourself. That was the model: me and Whitman, and Twain and Steinbeck, and Least-Heat Moon and millions of travelers heading west, all in search of a Dream of America.

Specifically, I traveled a number of routes people have used to head to new homes in America. I traveled down the 17^th century Old York Road, Main Street in Hightstown, a route that connected New York and Philadelphia. From Philadelphia I headed west, as Germans and Scots-Irish did to settle the uplands, heading across Pennsylvania on the 18^th century “Great Wagon Road” all the way to the wall of the mountains, and then south and west up the Great Virginia Valley. I headed into and across the mountains on the Wilderness Trail, with Daniel Boone carved over the Cumberland Gap into the wilderness of Kentucky. I headed down into Tennessee to join the 19^th century Trail of Tears and one route the Cherokee took as they were forced from their mountain homes and removed to the Indian Territories. From Tahlequah Oklahoma I dropped south to Sallisaw, home of the Steinbecks’ fictional Joad family, and followed their route, and the route of hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners, heading across Route 66 to the promised land of California. Along the way, along these old roads, I talked to modern people, and asked then what was their Dream of America. What they said was pretty interesting.

But here we must change course for a few moments. As I was riding I too was wondering what was my Dream of America? And what would I learn from everyone I met? So too do I wonder what your Dream of America is. It IS an odd questions, sometimes in the asking, sometimes in responding. So, let’s get after it, together. Go to the last page of your handout, and respond to the question yourself. Feel free to use the prompts I’ve written; feel free to devise a fresh syntactical approach; feel free to doodle and draw as your write! Five minutes. Go.

So, what did people say? Sometimes their answer was in their words. Sometimes it was in their actions. The want peace and stability (Some were pro-war; some anti-war; all were worried about abuse in households they know); they want to be able to live a good life, one without inordinate hardship (Many mentioned better jobs; all wanted work with benefits and health insurance); many wanted government not to screw it up (national, state, and local politics), and to support better what was necessary (jobs for the region, education, drug control).

In Cumberland Gap, TN, in Sue Webb's Country Kitchen I found part of an answer. I had a long talk about the region, town, and hopes with Joe Webb (long time resident of Cumberland Gap) and waitresses Patsy Johnson (originally from Kentucky) and Lorraine Nieto (14 years here since California). They filled orders, wrote up tickets, and talked with everyone on the run while I sat at the counter resuming the conversations when they returned. They feared a growing police state ("Did you know that right here in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, the police can run roadblocks and searches, for no reason? Six dollar an hour police troopers with no insurance and guns. Damn. I've been all over the world in the service, and there's less freedom here sometimes.") They nonetheless love their home, their land, and their freedoms. They want less stupid interference. They want more jobs in the region, “and good ones, with benefits.” They hope gas prices come down. They wish, or rather Joe wishes, that the state hadn't ruined the local fishing by adding Rockfish to the reservoir. "Rockfish, they're terrible fish, schooling and all the good fish you fish for in the first place. Rockfish, They're terrorist fish." Lorraine disagreed on loss of freedom: "We have more freedom here than anywhere. I love American, but everyone needs to get along."

Later, in Cape Girardeau , Missouri, Allan Maki, summed up one version of this, “That decent people not get screwed. Like the people in Pensacola [whose roofs had yet to be repaired a year after Hurricane Ivan} You don’t need to give good people much, just don’t take things away, don’t make them less.”

These larger selfless goals always seemed to include a focus on home, and on attitude. Jean Deckard, just outside Niangua, Missouri, “My Dream of America is that people get down on their knees and thank God for what they’ve got and quit bellyachin’ about that they don’t have.” This from a woman who’s spent 17 years being beaten by her husband, a woman who’d later marry the cop who came to the door to keep that first husband from shooting her.

And, for many, their words about their Dream of America become deeds. From a home deep in the woods of Crofton, KY, the words of Judy and Granvel Dulin. Judy picked me up in a parking lot in Hopkinsville, KY just as a purple sky of a hailstorm about swallowed us.. She took me home and I spent the evening with her husband, their three children, and a swarm of grandkids." Married at 16, and married forty something years since, she said “I'm sometimes really afraid for America. We're turning out carbon copies of failure. My Dream for American, is for kids to be raised right.” In a voice that seemed a smooth cousin to Shelby Foote's, her husband Granvel added "It's a rough row to hoe now. To change it, looks to me like you've got to start with the young folks, But have the teachers and leaders gone too far to know how to step back and fix things with the children? People aren't bad. Just lots of them are on the bad track." Judy added, "Somehow lots of parents just lost their vision. My Dream of America is to have parents step up the plate and do what they should do for our kids." Judy is a founder and Board Chair of the Heritage Christian School, an 11 year old charter school in Hopkinsville.

From Robert Lewis, a Cherokee man whose father is Apache and Navajo, "I saddens me to see that it is so often tragedies that pull Americans together. Here in Oklahoma City in April 1995, and at 9.11. The collective sense is powerful then, but the cause is sad. I'd like to see a more peaceful society, and an end to racism. They gloss over it an awful lot. I'd like to see equality between the sexes. Women are still considered subordinate, especially at work, where they are paid less." And then, sitting in buckskin beneath an arbor sunshade, the ends of his long black hair flickering in the breeze, he paused. "And I'd like to see more concern for education in schools."

However, as I traveled and connected to people, I noticed something new. In every home I stayed, I was taken out and shown some larger version of home. With the Dulins in Crofton, we drove for an hour all over Christian County (“That’s were the bald eagles now love, and over there, there’s some fine turkeys.” “I used to live on that farm, when I was a girl.” “And I stole you away!”) With 80 year old Ed Puglsey In Buena Vista Arkansas, I walked the neighborhood, and then rode 30 miles with him and his bike club on their favorite ride. With Charlie Russell in Fayetteville, I was driven all over town, to see the Waltons’ influence, so explore homes designed by Fay Jones and Jim Lambeth, to genuflect at the home of football legend Frank Broyles, and to explore the farmers market at the town square on Saturday morning. In Gallup, New Mexico, Jason Slesher not only took me to the Navajo market on Saturday morning, but drove also up into the Zuni mountains south of town in the fading desert light, near where he’s bought some land and is dreaming a house. I finally realized I was a guest in people’s homes, even when I was on the road, and that’s what they shared with me, their homes. The radius of what each person defined as home varied, but when people showed me their town, or their county, or their mountains, or the petroglyphs they’ve kept hushed up, or when they brought food out to me in the parking lot and then sang gospel music in the church hall during the rummage sale, they were sharing their homes. That’s was true no matter the lead time in hosting the traveler. It was true in the JavaCycle coffeeshop in Williams, Arizona, or in Elk Valley, Tennessee.

And in a way, that’s what we do here. We invite all these folks to come stay, we all share our lives while we teach and learn our lessons, and we get to shape them every chance we can.

This is not a new perception, but it’s deeper for me now than it was. If we’re to be teachers we need to be, we need to live the lives we want our kids to use, and in the doing we will practice ourselves being the people we prefer to be. And thanks to the Sabbatical Program, I go the opportunity to live a dream, and learn that lesson once again.

-- PJClements