As we struggle for space at Bismarck Public Schools, I came across a book that framed up for me the ability to vision first and then but vision to action. Please read this book by clicking on the link and when the book opens, clicking on each page after you have read it. And take time to dream!
As an English teacher, teaching about the Salem witch trials always raised my ire. The poor accused had to drown to prove they were innocent of witchcraft (witches floated; non-witches sank). Death by drowning seems like a high price to pay to prove innocence. As a social studies teacher, teaching about the Bill of Rights always raised my joy. A fundamental right of being an American is that one is innocent unless proven guilty beyond a doubt- a basic civil right hard wired deeply into the American psyche.
You may or may not be aware of the story from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that broke a couple weeks ago. The Bismarck Tribune did a follow up story
(http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/bismarck/north-dakota-education-officials-investigate-suspicious-test-scores/article_1346ded0-8034-11e1-b324-0019bb2963f4.html).
To recap: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed test scores in school districts across the country. The story came one year after a major cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools. This analysis was done to identify schools in which student test performance decreased or increased significantly from one year to another; shifts which the newspaper is interpreting as abnormal or suspect.
The AJC reported that 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts, including Fargo and Bismarck, had suspect test results with more than 10% of their classes “flagged” between 2008 and 2011. Bismarck Public Schools had one flag year with 11.11% in 2009
compared with 5.68% in 2008 and 5.26% in 2010 and 2.3% last year on the ND State Assessment (NDSA).
In response the AJC story, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has sent identical NDSA data to its technical advisors at the Center for Assessment in Dover, NH for analysis. At this time, there is no indication of suspect test scores from any school in North Dakota. In fact, the data indicate a wide range of variability from one year to the next which is what we would expect. Once the study is complete we will receive more information on the findings.
In the meantime, I’d like to stress that:
• The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and Bismarck Public Schools (BPS) have comprehensive security measures in place for test documents;
• BPS employees involved in state assessment receive training on test security and confidentiality. Principals are required to document that this training took place.
• State exams are stored in a secure manner from the time they are delivered until they are shipped back to the vendor.
• Tests are numbered and assigned to individual teachers and must be accounted for when they’re packed for shipment and when they are received by the test vendor.
• Much of the content of the test changes from year to year so it is virtually impossible for teachers to know ahead of time which questions will be on the exam. Because the questions change and the students taking the grade level test change each year, comparing one year’s test data to another year’s test data isn’t 100% clean.
• A cop would tell you there is generally a motive for a crime. Our teacher evaluations in Bismarck Public Schools are not tied to test scores. Their pay is not tied to test scores. Students’ advancement to the next grade is not tied test scores. What motive exists for anyone to cheat?
• Having said all that, the doors to BPS are open to anyone wishing to examine testing practices or to ask questions or interview staff. We haven’t any test response sheets in house to look at, though, because those are sent away for scoring and never returned to us. Yet what we have is wide open for scruntiny. Come on in!
At BPS, our single focus has been on teaching students to build the achievement level and skills needed to perform well on tests, in the classroom and in life. We’ve worked diligently to improve student achievement, using more than one source of data (ie. MAP tests, classroom exams, and common formative assessments). One data set would “cross check” the other.
BPS has found no evidence that state exams were cheated upon. And while I shall without question swiftly and thoroughly investigate accusations of testing impropriety, what I shall not do is pretend that an accusation is proof. It wasn’t in Salem and it isn’t in Bismarck.
Sometimes I hear, “If it was good enough for us, then, it’s good enough for them, now”. I hear this when my elders whom I respect deeply speak about public schools. Though my respect for my elders is real, I respectfully take them to task for their “good enough now” statement. These photos help explain.
These photos are of my paternal grandparents. Grandma Lempi (Finnish for “love”, I am told) and Grandpa Walter Perala. Notice the telephone in Grandma’s photo. It is a rotary dial phone and it had a party line. Though I can’t recognize the home in this photo, I recognize the telephone. We had one similar to it growing up. We had one telephone and one television which had one channel. So my siblings and I spent a considerable amount of time rubbernecking on the party line when our German born neighbor talked to her relatives in the homeland. Can you imagine how you would feel about rubbernecking today? Not a chance you’d allow it.
Next, look at my Grandpa Walter’s photo. He is the man on the left. My Uncle Paul says of his dad, “He sat that way often, leaned forward and enjoyed a Camel, before anyone knew we were supposed to hate cigarettes. His cupped hand is holding ashes, probably because Ma (Grandma Lempi) threw his ashtrays out in the yard everyday, her polite way of suggesting she didn’t care for cigarette smoke in her house.”
These photos show a simpler time. But let’s be honest about two things: first, life wasn’t simpler at that time for that time. Life was more complex at the time of these photos than it had been a generation before,when homes had no telephone. And second, while a few of you might wish to step back in time to visit, few of you would wish to stay, even if you could. Why? Each generation works hard to improve life for the next generation. Going back to hand rolled Camels and party lines, to single paned windows and wooden chairs sounds more lovely that it would play out to be.
Jobs were plentiful at the time of this photo. A person didn’t even need a high school diploma to be employed in work that would pay well enough to provide for a family. That simply is no longer true. Just as the cellular telephone replaced the party telephone, the global competition for jobs has replaced a guarantee that there will be unskilled work available. Today, to earn a living wage, all students need K-12 education plus technical training or liberal arts education. All students. All. Every one. Each one. That is very different from the days of this photo when approximately only ten percent of the population had post secondary training.
There are two reasons we should invest in the upcoming generation. One is altruistic. If those who came before us, my Grandpa Walter and Grandma Lempi and my mom and dad gave up so much for me and my siblings to have a good future, then don’t I owe as much or more to my own children and my grandchildren, Roman and Emrie? I believe I do owe this debt. We all owe this if we have benefited from others sacrifice, others investment in the common good.
The second reason is purely selfish. By investing in the next generation, in schools and education and children, we are “paying it forward.” Good schools helps our communities thrive. Homes tend to hold their value in communities that are thriving. Young families seek communities with good schools. Business ventures seek communities that are thriving, and the direct payback is obvious.
There is something good in the giving: good for those with us, those who come after us, and good for us, ourselves, in so many ways. For that reason, we might say, “If it was good enough for us, then, how can we make it good enough for them, now?”
“People think the cutting edge is sharp. The cutting edge is very dull. It is very foggy, and you don’t know what the right answer is.” Dr. Jeffrey Dranzen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (Life, Bismarck Tribune, Tuesday, January 10, 2012).
Case in point: the Facility Master Plan. We are (the District is) deep into the development of the Facility Master Plan. The project is on course and it is mid-course. Much has been discovered; much remains to be discerned.
When I was a teacher, I sought to have my eighth graders engage in complex work. They did this happily, more or less. Often the bell would ring before their work was complete. This left them frustrated. I explained that itchy feeling of unrest was nothing more than disequilibrium, that finding solutions to complex issues involved personal investment and personal growth – and those involve disequilibrium because the answers aren’t simple. My students often shouted as they left my classroom, “I hate disequilibrium! I am tired of thinking!” or “I don’t want to think. Just tell us the answer.” Dr. Dranzen’s statement about the cutting edge really hit home with me. I believe our Facility Master Plan is cutting edge work, and as such, it is by nature “very foggy”.
In the fog, there is lack of crystal clear information. When that happens, people seeking clarity might make stuff up. Perhaps this is due to pure physics…”an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion … unless acted upon by an unbalanced force” (http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/u2l1a.cfm). The Facility Master Plan, the unbalanced force, is a change process. Change involves motion, which creates unrest or disequilibrium. Sometimes people seek to put their world back into to balance, to leap to the results, if you will. In doing so, stories get created because facts don’t exist yet. If the stories are really juicy, they may be whispered. Doing so doesn’t make the stories any truer, but telling them may give the storyteller the feeling of control and balance, the idea that the unknown is really known, but it is just being hidden. I am here to share the bad news that our period of disequilibrium is real and shall continue for a bit. As much as you may hear “answers”, know that no recommendations exist. They can’t; we don’t have all the data. And data doesn’t provide answers. It provides tools “in the fog” so our Board can determine timely and appropriate answers to a very complex set of issues created by increasing enrollment.
While we don’t have all the data back, we do have some. We have reports on “the bones”, “the heart”, and “the wallet” of each building. The bones: each building has been examined in detail by the local firm J2. They have reported on the physical integrity of each building. Workbooks of spreadsheet data have been refined into a single “grade” for each building. This data shall help the Board know when it makes sense to expend capital (“put money into a building”) and when it may be unwise to continue to make large capital investments in a building that has lived its useful life.
The heart: each building has had an educational assessment report as well. This shows each building’s ability to house necessary staff so that children can be educated. As you well know, education has morphed over the last sixty years. A building can’t always morph to meet those new expectations. Thus, a building may not have adequate space for both physical education and dining. Music teachers and technology labs may simply not have a place to locate. Speech therapists and school nurses and special education teachers may not have space that is respectful to their nature of their work, which is a polite way of saying a broom closet does not an office make. Eventually the report will show what kind of investment would be needed to make the building educationally sound.
The wallet: reports show the cost per student to run each of our buildings. That data will be helpful to anyone interested in efficiency. In fully understanding “the wallet”, more than cost-per-student is needed, though. The cost of upgrades for the physical plant (“the bones”) as well as the cost for educational services and programs (“the heart”) is important.
Finally, this process is quite inclusive. Interested community members from both the internal community and external community have attended meetings to learn and to share their points of view. Community feedback will be used by consultants in the “potential solutions” and “recommendations” phases.
Somebody once told me there is not much to see in a small town – but what you hear makes up for it. The Facility Master Plan process is purposefully deliberate, cautiously slow to avoid the “act in haste, repent at leisure” situation. If you wish to stay informed, data sets and a meeting calendar can be found at http://www.bismarckschools.org/district/master-planning/ . You are most welcome to participate in the remainder of the process.
North Dakota is sparkling in the limelight of national attention. I find that both wonderful and humorous. It is wonderful because the warm, welcoming vibrant community, the community of North Dakota deserves positive recognition. It is humorous because it seems to me that North Dakotans accept their state’s fame with a half-smile and a shrug. After all, there is work to do and little time for glory. Personally, I have found it mildly thrilling to have a welcome so real that it consists of a quick, friendly introduction followed by a “roll up your sleeves and get to work” way of life. That works for me in a most comfortable and comforting way.
Of course, natural resources are driving a lot of North Dakota’s fame. Most of the time, natural resources references oil and coal. But this time, I am speaking of the people of North Dakota. I would argue they are North Dakota’s greatest natural resource.
Just this week, I was marveling at the BHS / CHS student blood drive, the “Blood Battle”, which will be held at the Career Academy on December 28. Students planned this and executed the entire drive. Our students can be amazing.
The BPS Foundation Alumni Report indicates that great kids grow up to be great people. For example, inducted into the Hall of Fame for 2011-12 are Mel Ruder (Class of ’32), Jim Simle (Class of ’57), Greg Nelson (’86) and Sara Hill (2001). These folks collectively won a Pulitzer Prize, coached the F-M Acro Team who performed at half-time nine NBA All-Star games, produced seven Grammy Award winning albums, and one became a Rhodes Scholar who won the Henderson Prize for the best thesis in Biochemical Sciences. She wants to be on the team that cures breast cancer. In addition to this impressive list, I recently reviewed a book written by a CHS grad entitled All In. This book, about General David Petraeus, is expected on book shelves in the next month. This book is slated to be big seller and was three years in the making.
Amazing kids. Amazing adults. Rock solid North Dakotans!
In this blog, I wanted to focus on another North Dakotan headed for the national spotlight, Miss Ariana Walker. Ariana is Miss North Dakota. She shall represent the great state of North Dakota in the National Miss American contest on Saturday, January 14, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. You will be able to watch it on ABC.
Ariana Walker is a 2009 BHS graduate who attended Pioneer, Miller, and Simle. Bismarck has not seen a home town girl in the Miss American contest for about 10 years. Ariana is obviously talented, clearly beautiful, and very bright. However, her heart is what makes her a national champion. Ariana has made the Ronald McDonald House Charities her personal platform. Her fundraising and service to the Ronald McDonald House Charities have benefited many families needing housing during long medical treatments.
In addition, Ariana was one of thousands of volunteers along with the National Guard who stepped up to pitch sandbags to save communities. She counts herself lucky to be on a team of volunteers who made a difference. And she is sassy enough to suggest that pitching sandbags isn’t a whole lot different from being in a Miss American contest. I am eager to see what the rest of the nation makes of Ariana!
You can weigh in on Ariana’s – and North Dakota’s – opportunity to sparkle in the national limelight by voting. To vote Bismarck’s own Ariana into the Top 15 as America’s Choice, go to www.missamerica.org/videocontest, scroll down to Miss ND 2011 Ariana Walker, and click “Watch Video & Vote.” Be sure to click the little round dot to actually vote. You will receive a confirmation that your vote counted. The voting deadline is January 12, 2012. Ariana said, “There have only been three North Dakota women who have made the Top 10 in 90 years of Miss America. There’s now a Top 15, and one girl will be named America’s Choice based on the number of votes she gets online.”
It is my hope that North Dakota once again gets noticed for its greatest natural resources, its people. Vote, tune in, and find out!
My mom is 75 years old (or young….or maybe, “timeless”). A few months ago, she joined the world of Facebook. Minutes after signing on, she was friended by all her nine children, her grandchildren, and a host of distant family, friends, and acquaintances. It is joyful for me to see on fb people who love her and whom she loves communicate using social media.
Contrast the image of my timeless mom with this picture of my granddaughter who is two. She has not joined Facebook yet but she can find her favorite videos on Youtube with very little help. For example, she can play (and play and play again and again and again until I can barely appreciate it any longer), “Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” While Youtube displays the music video, Emrie follows closely and does the hand motions with deep concentration. She has learned this important large muscle and fine muscle hand movement work at her daycare. Serious but smiling, she nods her head to the beat and laughs when each monkey falls off the bed. When all the monkeys have fallen off the bed and bumped their heads, she knows to touch the screen and bring them back to do it all over again. In addition, when the monkeys no longer entertain her, she knows how to select other videos from the list on the right of her screen. It is important to note that while she is employing technology, Emrie is learning language and learning to equate her hand movements with the song’s words. No wonder she takes it so seriously; this is eye-hand-musical note-gesture business is complex work for a two year old.
Marc Prensky wrote an article a long time ago that speaks to the contrast of my mom on Facebook and my granddaughter on Youtube, these two wonderful females with 73 years difference between them. Prensky entitled his work, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. Says Prensky, people like my mom and me “speak” the digital world with an accent. We came to it as though we were immigrants to a foreign country. People like my granddaughter “speak” the digital language like a native, like a natural.
So what does this mean for education? Prensky implores administrators and educators to understand the brain’s plasticity – its ability to change, depending on stimulus. “…there is no longer any question that stimulation of various kinds actually changes brain structure and affects the way people think, and that these transformations go on throughout life. The brain is, to an extent not at all understood or believed to be when Baby Boomers were growing up, massively plastic.“ Simply said, experiences such as being drenched in technology can change how the brain works.
”Our children are furiously retraining their brains in even newer ways, many of which are antithetical to our older ways of thinking” reports Prensky. He adds, “Children raised with the computer think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential. Linear thought processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning for brains developed through game and Web-surfing processes on the computer.”
In other words, coming into our classrooms, to our dinner tables, and to our society are youngsters with brains wired to work differently than our older brains. Much is gained when we learn how to teach in ways that understand how the “new brain” learns! Yet children whose brains have been restructured by technology to crave “twitch speed” need something in addition to a new way of teaching. They need built into their technology-based learning many opportunities for both reflection and critical thinking. Those two vital skills are not taught at twitch speed. But says Prensky, they can and must be taught.
Prensky suggests he has the tool for teaching these very skills. I am hopeful that the vital skills of reflection and critical thinking to which my mom is a native are also skills to which my grandchildren will be natives. Check out Prensky yourself at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf and see if you agree.
Remember the old woman who lived in a shoe? The one with so darn many kids she didn’t know what to do? The “Old Woman in the Shoe” nursery rhyme is over 200 years old yet the issues of overcrowding in our schools is very current. Case in point: this school year, Bismarck Public Schools has 51 too-large classes. In other words, in 51 classrooms across the district, the student-to-teacher ratio exceeds the district’s standard. Those 51 classes should be divided into 102 classes – but there are no classrooms available. BPS enrollment is growing (nearly 11,000!) while our buildings grow older and more crowded. BPS saw the
largest incoming kindergarten class ever this year. And Burleigh County
birthrates tell us that was no fluke and should continue into the future. The
pressure for space will increase.
While we have accommodated those large classes with extra help, such as with teacher assistants, many of whom hold a teaching license, we know that super large classes are just not how we wish to do business. But like the old woman who lived in a shoe, our enrollment numbers exceed our capacity. There simply is not enough instructional space for the increasing number of students that BPS is experiencing.
Portable classrooms have seemed like a good short term answer to overcrowding. Two facts took my breath away: 1) did you know that the total square footage of “temporary” portable classrooms in BPS is greater than the total square footage of Solheim Elementary? And, 2) many of our temporary classrooms are a quarter century old? In other words, a person could attend school in a portable, grow up, graduate, have babies, and send them back to the same portable classroom. Students can be housed in portables but the core space of gyms, cafeterias, libraries, and computer labs are not enlarged to handle the extra students.
I have thought about this overcrowding issue for many weeks. As I was baking bread on Sunday from a recipe in the Tribune (“bread that even you can bake), I paused to think back upon “the good old days”. For my grandmother, baking bread was no novelty, no past time. She baked it to feed her family (and given the stories I have heard about my dad and his brothers, she may have “whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed” from time to
time). Grandma Lempi did not have a microwave, a baking stone, an electric oven, or a mixer with a dough hook. She had herself, a bowl, and a wood stove. And for the time in which she lived, that was enough.
People often state “if it was good enough for me then, it is good enough for these kids now”. I would argue differently. In my Grandma’s era, students could graduate or not, and still be gainfully employed, make enough money to raise a family, and have enough free time and conviction to help build communities. Today, that is simply not true. There are few jobs that offer a living wage for those who drop out of school. We wish all our students
as adults to be employed well enough to be “givers” rather than “takers” in terms of raising a family and helping build a community. Thus, the education system for today has to be different by design from the one used back “in the good old days” when drop outs were expected.
As Bismarck grows, there is talk of a third high school and more elementary buildings. The School Board has decided it is time to develop a Master Facilities Plan. The goals are to plan for short term space as well as plan for the next five years, and project into the next ten years. This blog invites you to share your voice in the Plan.
Bismarck Public Schools honors the ideal that these are the community’s schools. They are not the Board’s schools, not the superintendent’s schools, not the staffs’ schools, not even the students’ schools. Collectively, they are our schools, belonging to all. Thus, all our voices matter.
A number of external community meetings will be conducted. Specifics on these meetings can be found on our web page, http://www.bismarckschools.org/district/master-planning/ .Please review this meeting schedule and let us know if you will participate.
The link includes instructions on how to get involved.
Sometimes organizations give lip service to public input. Let me be clear; that’s not the case here: BPS School Board sincerely seeks public input- from the external public as well as the internal public. The meetings around this Facility Master Plan will offer the chance to define what 21st Century school buildings should have and a chance to compare what BPS currently has and a chance to offer input about what the future of BPS buildings should hold.
Make no mistake about three things: 1) “democracy is not a spectator sport”; it is participatory; 2) as much as each of us deserves to be heard, having our say is not the same thing as getting our way; the goal is to find a collective vision; and 3) the world really and truly is run by those who show up. Please use this as your personal invitation to participate.
This old woman would be pleased to see you there and learn your perspective. (And while there will be no broth and bread served at the meetings, neither will anyone be
whipped soundly and sent to bed!)
A few weeks ago on Sunday, I stumbled into the walk-in clinic, my head pounding. I was sad. I couldn’t hear well; noises were muffled, as though my head was under water. I was unable to smell the area restaurants. Food didn’t taste good or bad; it didn’t taste like much of anything. My eyes burned and felt like they were being pushed from my skull.
My throat burned; swallowing was a struggle. Every joint in my middle-aged body protested movement. I needed an intervention, and I knew it with each of my five senses.
The nurse at the clinic took my blood pressure and listened to my heart. She asked me what I weighed and recorded my lie without flinching. The doctor came in and looked in my ears, nose, and throat. He listened to me breathe. And then he told me I was a sick girl, and he designed a plan to make me well.
An hour later, I was back home on the sofa with my medicine in my hand. I was sick of being sick. I followed the doctor’s directions to the letter. Ten days later, I felt healthier than I had in a long while.
At BPS, our work as teachers is not so different from that of doctors. We need to use data, some observational, some pen-paper assessment data, to build a “standard treatment protocol” for our learners, those really struggling like I was and those who appeared to be doing well but may not be growing in skills as much as they could.
And in order to do this work, our teachers need time to do it – uninterrupted time. They don’t have time during the regular work day because, unlike clinic professionals who see patients one by one, our teachers work with groups of 15 to 30 or more. Teachers do the
testing and interpret the results and then plan for instruction which will improve
academic outcomes for students. This work takes focused, quiet time.
While some might argue that time can be found in the summer, I would argue summer is not timely. The use of data to inform instruction can’t wait until summer any more than I could have waited eight months for my treatment. When it comes to data-informed interventions, timeliness matters. We need to respond to what is happening with a child’s educational growth over the course of the year, not only at the end of the school year. Work like this needs to be spread out over the school year because we are measuring each child’s growth over the school year. We want to know, “How exactly is what we are doing helping each learner grow?” As teachers, we are learning how to do this work better each
time we are given an opportunity to engage with data, work with our peers, and
design our teaching and learning experiences.
Having said that, make no mistake that two things are very, very hard:
1) Changing the school day is frustrating for families. It creates the need to adjust schedules and perhaps find daycare. Families are busy and change comes hard;
2) Changing how educators use data is audacious work. As a professional educators, we are living and working in an era that is “data driven”. For many of us, use of student-specific data that we can use to change-up instruction is new. We haven’t always done our
work that way. But we are learning to.
The BPS main webpage has a “frequently asked questions” post regarding late starts.
Trust that we will monitor the effectiveness of late starts as opportunities for professionals to study data to inform teaching. Your response is important as well. You may wish to share with your children’s principal during the school year your family’s perspective
on late starts.
It is said three of the most powerful phrases in the English language are, “I am sorry”, “Thank you”, and “I love you.” This blog employs at least two of those phrases.
Let me begin with the apology. I wish to apologize to parents for the substance of the AlertNow! emergency message sent out in early September. This message was intended to test the AlertNow! database and to share a message on attendance. While there needs to be a test of the system each year, and thus, a message sent out to all contacts, the opening statement of the message should have been, “This is only a test. There is no real
emergency.” As the message was structured, it took several seconds for
listeners to discern there was no emergency, that this was a test message.
Several seconds may sound like a short while but let’s be frank here – there is
no such thing as a “little while” or “few moments” when the very safety of one’s children is under question. For the unnecessary fear and anxiety caused by my trial run AlertNow! message, I sincerely apologize. Expect better from here on out.
Parents are asked to review the contacts names and numbers they put into PowerSchool which provides the data base for the AlertNow! system. Updating numbers due to cell phone or email address or landline changes is important. Parents whose information has changed should contact school building secretaries who can then make changes in the
PowerSchool data base. Thank you for doing this important work.
I need to say, “Thank you” to everyone who was at Hughes Education Center on September 19 when a lockdown was triggered. This lockdown review in my blog is not intended to scare anyone. People are still far, far safer in the average school house than they are in their own homes. Yet when we are caring for children we always want to ask in advance of the worst thing happening, “What do we wish we would have done?” and then we need to do it, ahead of time.
There were over 200 people in Hughes during the lockdown, most, but not all, employees. People reported being increasingly frightened and confused in the time following the lock down message, and yet, no one panicked. That says something about each employee,
each adult, and each child on the Hughes campus that day. I say thank you.
While no one would wish to repeat the Hughes lockdown, we were able to learn some valuable lessons which will improve our response in the event of a real crisis. A “thank
you” must be shouted out to the Bismarck Police Department who was flat-out
phenomenal during the lockdown at Hughes. With knowledge, skill, and great
leadership, they took command of the situation and handled it beautifully from
beginning to end.
Again, thank you to all my people at Hughes. Deep thanks and high praise for the Bismarck Police Department. Good work, team!
I was going to begin this blog with the statement, “I am an addict”. But when
I carefully read a wiki’s definition of addiction, with humility I realized
using “addiction” as a teaser is not funny, nor is it appropriate. “Addiction
can also be viewed as a continued involvement with a substance or activity
despite the negative consequences associated with it. Pleasure and enjoyment
would have originally been sought; however, over a period of time, involvement
with the substance or activity is needed to feel normal.[1] Some … include abnormal psychological dependency on such things as gambling, food, sex, pornography,
computers, internet,work, exercise, idolizing, watching TV or certain
types of non-pornographic videos, spiritual obsession, self-injury and shopping,”.[i]
So while I am not an addict, I do have a compelling and, on occasion,
unhealthy attraction to books. As long as I am admitting weaknesses of
character, I will state I am not an exerciser, at least not an exerciser
without a purpose. I recall the day someone asked me, “Do you lift?”
I thought about that before I asked the clarifying question: “Lift what?”
“Lift weights,” she responded with some incredulity.
I thought for a while. “Well, if they were in my way, I would lift them,” I
offered. Clearly, she and I were not going to be weight-room soul mates.
Walking is, for some, exercise. A long, rigorous walk for me requires I
have a place to walk to and a reason to walk there. I suspected for some time
that place of great attraction for me would be the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library. I’d driven past it but I’d never been in the door. Last week, I found the time (which is code for “found the motivation”, because let’s be honest, what gets
paid attention to gets done) to walk briskly to the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library. I felt rather good about my rigorous walk. Once in past the sliding doors, I whispered, “Holy Moly!”
The term “addiction” popped into my head because of the deep hunger I have for
books. Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library has acres of books: books upstairs, books downstairs, new books, classic books, children’s’ books, fiction books,
non-fiction books. Books! Books! Books! The way my heart was racing; I knew I
was in trouble. And not the short-term, work-your-way-through-the-issue-to-a-better-resolution kind of trouble. No, I was in long term trouble because: a) even an avid reader can’t work her way through a library as bountiful as Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library, and b) it is tough to take a brisk walk while reading a book. My exercise plan was under siege. It is then that I saw the library had a coffee shop. Books and coffee? I was so outgunned here. Holy Moly, indeed.
Much literature about addiction advises seeking “life balance”, that
elusive little creature. I figure I come closer to balance by knowing my weaknesses
(love of books, lack of love for exercise for exercise’s sake). Ironically, at
least for me, standing there in Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library, I knew there’d be any number of books on this very topic. I am going to treat myself for a library card in the very near future!
kincaid
Jonathan Albers
Paul Stevenson
tamara-j-uselman