Rising Out of Bereavement Through My School Project

Bereavement, I was told by a good fiend, is not Depression.  But, I replied, I know Depression and it certainly feels the same.  My friend admitted that, yes, symptoms are pretty much the same, but the cause makes a difference.  Well, I’ll take his word for it.

But since having such an intimate relationship with my mother’s death last May-at her side for all of her dying and especially when she drew her last breath-I continuously feel sad, near tears most of the time.  I sleep a lot:  I stay in bed for upwards of ten hours just to move to a recliner to fall asleep a couple of hours later.  I do not shave or bath for days.  I eat irregularly, overeating for a few days, near starving a few days.  And I’ve wondered if the sharp pains in my ankles preventing me from walking for days aren’t a physical expression of this whole thing.  I need a lever, something emotionally powerful enough to break the Depression and let me get on with living.

Levers are activities undertaken intentionally knowing they produce positive feelings.  Such positive feelings being the motivational foundation for powerful action will allow an individual to put all coming on him into proper perspective, to see opportunity, rather than burden, to be enabled, then, to comfortably, and healthily, deal with each and every circumstance, including the terrible loss of a mother.  The idea is to over time leverage the positive feelings continuously re-enforcing the good feelings until operating from the positive feelings becomes almost routine. 

Under the might of Depression, regardless of cause, starting a lever action is very difficult:  as I keep on saying, Depression paralyzes the easiest things from being done and the hardest things, forgetaboutit.  But, as if by heaven sent I came into the orbit of two educators working at the same school in the great state of Wisconsin a bit over a month ago.  Through our budding friendship I have rekindled the passion for serving those like my son, the Twice-Exceptional, the most orphaned of disability groups in our country!  And it is that re-fired flame which has levered me enough from the Depression for me to again take another crack at translating my school concept on paper to brick and mortar.

I originally developed the school concept through the years 2003 to 2005.  I called the institution of learning for the Twice-Exceptional Rockaway College in that I had the intention of siting it near where I live in Rockaway, New York City, and in that it housed an integrated progression in social, emotional and cognitive development through early college.  I thought to establish two major units:  Rockaway College School containing a unified pre-school/kindergarten and an elementary school; and Rockaway College holding a personal growth secondary education intake in The Venture School, the secondary education program in The Lower School and the early college in The Upper School. Graduates of the Upper School having gone through The Lower School would earn both a high school diploma and an Associate of Arts degree.

During the last big push to establish the school, 2005-2007, I relied on parents in my immediate neighborhood to be the development, fundraising and start-up team.  Unfortunately, they were very disinterested in the whole project.  Now, I’m turning to professional educators for teammates.

My intention is to use this blog to detail the project.  Then, having identified communication venues targeting professional educators, especially in and around New York City, where I live, I would place ads, or notices, or whatever, in these venues asking the interested to read the blog posts, and if what they read sounds something with which they would like to be involved, to email me at ljfayhee@gmail.com, so we could talk.   

So, to kick the detail off let me give a brief history of the project.

Conception:  I discovered “Democratic Education” in the late 1990’s, but got down to work in Democratic school program development in earnest during 2000-2002 helping an “interest based” school, The Backporch School, Denton, Texas, form an outdoor education program.  However, I got really down to business during the New York City Democratic School start-up group between 2003 and 2005 when I collaborated to produce The Brooklyn Free School (BFS) and a New York City New Century Schools’ application for the “School for Democracy”.  Most of that time I was learning by doing in that while I had the outlines of what Democratic Education was about, the particulars where not yet in mind.  As time accumulated, my understanding of the processes did as well.  Thus, by the end of the two year endeavor I had both the outlines and a good deal of the particulars of Democratic Education in mind and down on paper as my Rockaway College concept. 

At this point, I had yet to become as knowledgeable about the population Rockaway College is to serve as I would, the spectrum of gifted and talented and, especially, the Twice-Exceptional.  I had only a general notion on how Democratic Education could serve the needs of the Twice-Exceptional as well as the others on the spectrum of gifted and talented.  But, I felt I had sufficient grasp of what I wanted to do and the student population I wanted to serve for me to collect folks in my immediate neighborhood to help develop Rockaway College as an application for a NY State Charter or one of the new, small schools NYC Department of Education was developing at the time, or a private, independent community school.  I started the Rockaway College Project in June 2005 as an administrative structure through which to construct the school. 

Outreach:  I “got educated” to the Charter Law, the application process and all the attending details preliminary for formal application for both Charter and for a new, small City public school.  In fact, I spoke with just about everyone who was anyone in the NYC Department of Education having anything to do with Charter Schools and with the new, small schools at the time, 2005-2007, including one of an eventual  two short conversations with the then Chancellor.  Additionally, I went for advice and guidance to the New York City Charter School Center which remains a non-profit helping those in the Charter School Movement here with all sorts of issues pertaining to the spectrum of Charter School needs.  Also, I took most of the free fundraising classes offered by The Foundation Center in Manhattan.  More, I had been at the beginning of The Brooklyn Free School and witnessed how the founder went about establishing it.  So, I felt prepared to facilitate a Rockaway College development, fundraising and start-up group applying as a public entity or establishing itself as a private community school.  The one thing I lacked was people to form the team.

The founder of the BFS lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a hipster family residential area. He was a member of a local food co-op which has something like five thousand members.  It has a newspaper.  So, he authored a number of articles about the features and the benefits of Free Schools, asking interested parents to come to information meetings he scheduled in nearby venues. From these meetings he formed a start-up committee of parents who had committed their children to attending the school.  I figured I should do the same in my immediate community.  The neighborhood here is rather self-contained on the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula.  It has many families but they send their children out of the community to go to school.  I thought this area ripe for a school, even if it were an alternative one for a unique population.

To attract my neighbors to the project I wrote a series in our local community paper entitled “Square Pegs” telling the stories of children I knew in the schools where I taught who drastically needed a different way of formal learning.  I thought that the parents I wanted to attract would read these stories, identify with the children and thus would be much inclined to come to the information meetings I would schedule and from there they would be enthused enough to work to establish the school in or near the community.  I concluded the series with a brief outline of the Rockaway College concept. 

In concert with the last edition of the series I put together three follow-up meetings at one of the local parish halls.  I plastered the entire community with flyers and placed notices in the local community paper.  Occasionally, I was told by folks I passed while about the neighborhood attaching flyers to posts that they enjoyed the series, but very few people came to these information meetings.  Ultimately, the response was wholly negative by way of three sentiments:  1) We, parents, are fine with where our children are going to school and see no reason for such a different school; 2) Children need to be forced to do school work and we are very happy that now schools are getting serious about making kids do their work and we need no school which lets children do what they want; 3) We would be interested in your school if it were already working, but as it isn’t, we’re not-we do not want our children to be guinea pigs. 

During the time of these information meetings I found out my talking about this institution as “an alternative school” was a mistake.  It turns out about four years prior to my efforts there was a small special needs alternative City public school established on the outer boundary of this community.   Unfortunately, most of these special needs children were severely emotionally disturbed and the school folks were unable to cope with the constant disruptions and the more than occasional fights, all of which alarmed this community and brought much neighborhood opposition to the school.  Combining solid community opposition with an inability of the school folks to address the needs of those attending led the City to close the school and from then on the word “alternative” was wholly associated by the folks in this community with “crazy” special needs children and out of control schools.  So, as I was eventually warned, this community was about to raise holly hell against it if this school were to even look like it might come to be in or around the immediate area.

Still, I had hope, and so I returned to the person helping me in the Charter School Center looking for advice on the next step.  He said that as it turns out with these groups, there is one person who by default takes the responsibility to do the paper work.  Okay, I said, and returned home to begin the application work.  Unfortunately, almost immediately I discovered that while it might be true that one person is left by the others in the group to do all the work, there really needs to be a group, as much to demonstrate community support for the school as there being the governance/administration of the proposed institution in place at application time.  And, as it was so well shown, this endeavor was actually on the verge of being vocally, and other ways, opposed by almost the entire community; so, the inability to form a parent team definitely counter-indicated community support, no less than the absence of governors and administrators.  However, the even bigger hurdle came crashing down on me just as immediately as it became painfully clear that my entire Democratic Education design was well beyond authorizers’ parameters.  And no matter the way I tried to reconfigure it, the design remained beyond the Charter pale as well beyond the pale of the City’s parameters for one of their new, small schools.  I should have known it because the application to the City of a modified Democratic School, The School for Democracy, the one developed by the NYC Democratic Education start-up group, was turned down.   But, hey, one never knows unless one tries.  I tried, and was just as unsuccessful.

Second try at Charter:  Having no community support seemed not to have dented my thick skull as once again in the fall of 2008 I began talking to everyone who was anyone in the NYC DOE having anything to do with Charter Schools, even having a second short conversation with the then Chancellor.  I did have a conversation with the then head of the City’s Charter office who voiced support of most of the ideas I presented to him.  But, the happiness his words brought was dashed on the materials I collected to again prepare to write the application.  Although revised, these official documents essentially repeated the negatives I had faced before.  So, with reality solidly in my face, I folded the attempt to establish this school, as Charter, as a new, small school and as a private, independent community school in my immediate neighborhood.  However, one item in the material I found of interest and put it up front for later:  The first people to be recruited should be those who will form the inaugural board of trustees…ah, the money folks first-must remember that.

2e advocacy:  I spent the remainder of 2008 through 2010 going deeper into Twice-Exceptionality, revising my school concept as I learned more and doing the advocacy politics which eventually led to my co-authoring legislation recognizing 2e as a class of pupil throughout New York State in need of service differentiated from the mainstream.  All along I remained on the look-out for anyone I could snag who might help establish the school, especially being sensitive to the money folks.

Snagged a money guy!  Here was my thinking:  This school needs money; Republican politicians have money; when a Republican politician came into view I introduced myself.  In early August 2010, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the Republican candidate for our Congressional District.  As it was, and is, he lives in my immediate neighborhood.  After his loss in the general election in November I visited him at his home frequently. It turned out he has 2e in his family.  So, over about an eight month period we explored Twice-Exceptionality, the school and how to finance it.  Unfortunately, whatever money he had or who ever other money folks he could find went into his successful run for the seat in a special election in September, 2011.  With this disappointment, I stopped working on getting the school into reality.  Still, I remained on the look out for helpers.

And then came along my Wisconsin angels and off I go again.  Over the upcoming weeks I will be posting details of the Project.