holidays in the schools

Happy holidays? Why is that phrase fraught with mixed blessings in an education setting? Is it just the sugar?

More than 50 percent of my work as Artistic Director right now is teaching; collaborating on drama and /or poetry projects with grades K-12 in public schools. But I also get to see a snapshot of school "culture" when we perform our multicultural folk tales for school assemblies. Something every teacher probably knows: anxiety doubles just before school's out for holidays. When I remember this fact, I am much better able to give thanks for the joy of working with children and young adults, rather than feeling dismay at the challenges.

My first experience of the impact of days off on school culture was at Fremont High in 1993, when I was surprised to learn that students were often absent on Friday because it was the day before a weekend and on Monday because it was the day after the weekend. In this perception of the relativity of Time, Saturdays and Sundays sort of melted over into the days next to them. If you want data, you might look at the weekly list of suspensions. For example, the list for Oakland Tech High at the end of this week was twice as long as the previous week. When I was on campus there Tuesday and Thursday, I noticed students were twice as excitable as on other weeks and teachers twice as exhausted. When the closing bell rang Friday afternoon, heralding an entire week off for Thanksgiving, I felt as if the entire building, football field and portables breathed a huge sigh of relief, as they spit out students like watermelon seeds.

After Halloween, students are eating more candy, true. But in our warm up exercises in the high school class, few of the students were looking forward to the idyllic picture of turkey and happy family 'round the groaning board. Every Thanksgiving I get to review the inequity between the U.S. Consumer picture of Thanksgiving and the global reality of malnutrition and hunger. And I feel guilty about having too much to accomplish in class to make time to discuss the real meaning of the holidays with students. Am I just another person giving thanks that I'm not one of the people I just passed on the street holding a sign, "Hungry. Will work for food, God bless?" Is there something more meaningful I could say to people than "Happy Holidays?'