(no subject)
I had an interesting conversation with some ladies from the PTN while helping at the 8th grade social. They were standing in the back of the kitchen, talking mostly about the new principal. I was overseeing the students at the concession stand. They were doing a good job; they didn't really need to be overseen. I was eavesdropping.
"She just needs to learn, this isn't Madison. Not everyone is as liberal here as they are down there."
My interest was piqued. I asked if they'd actually met the new principal. There had been a meet and greet session for students, staff, and parents to get a chance to meet her, but it had been cancelled because her mother in-law had died and she had to fly to Trinidad with her husband to attend the funeral. I didn't even know where Trinidad was until I got the email about it. It's by South America. Anyway, one of them had met her because she'd been on the hiring committee. But she didn't sound too happy about having met her.
I asked what she was like.
"Well, she's from Madison."
"She'd been a principal down there for a long time."
"She's a black lady."
"She's really nice."
"I kinda get the feeling she's on a mission - when she came in the room, she sort of marched in there - you could tell it was time to get right down to business."
They went on to talk back and forth about their first impressions of her. One of them mentioned something about her having mentioned that the PTN was surprisingly homogenous, considering the racial makeup of the school. The two PTN ladies seemed taken aback, as if this woman was accusing them of being racists.
"We don't descriminate - I mean, if you have a pulse, you can be on the PTN!!!"
I mentioned something, half under my breath, about how perhaps they weren't being welcoming enough, and they sort of scoffed at my suggestion that they were anything less than entirely hospitable when it came to the subject of new PTN members.
At this point, I withdrew from the conversation. I knew I probably wasn't going to get very far with these ladies, especially standing in the back of the middle school kitchen next to the popcorn machine, over loud hip-hop music booming out of the gymnasium across the hall.
I really started to think, however, about wanting to come back next year. I had sort of given up when I heard there was not enough money to have a full-time member next year. But I think I would really like to work with this woman. She seems like she's got her head on straight. And for a school with 25% students of color, 60 staff people and only one staff person of color (an English as a Second Language teacher), an all-white PTN, a largely Hmong Stundent Council, and a huge class divide, I think she's going to have a lot of people's heads spinning. I'd like to witness it, and I'd like to stand by her in her efforts to turn things around.