about a year ago, the MakeShift revolution was born of equal parts anxiety and creativity. anxiety and creativity are a likely pairing in most cases of  forward progress, no  matter how big or small. anxiety about the way things are leads to the creative resolve to make things new.

but on the subject of anxiety, perfect madness author judith warner suggests that many mothers are unwilling to be honest with ourselves and others about the sources of this natural maternal emotion:

“basically, it is acceptable to air all your dirty laundry about yourself, your husband, or your children but it is not acceptable to look beyond your family to suggest that there is something wrong with the world. it is not permissible to talk about policy, or economics, or culture… and this is because, i think, policy, economics, and culture are perceived as being things that we have no control over…. and so we fixate on those things we feel we can control — how our child holds a pencil, whether or not she eats gluten — rather than worry about what we can’t control: our economic futures, kids’ education, health care costs, whether or not we’ll ever be able to afford to retire….

the perversity in all this, of course, is that what we’re trying to control is precisely what one cannot control; you can’t shape and perfect human beings, pre-program and prepare them along the way. but you can — ostensibly — exert some control over what kind of society you live in…. you ostensibly have the power, en masse, to set the national agenda” (209). 

i am often guilty of shying away from “setting the national agenda” in favor of setting our family agenda. but today’s post is a venture into a space where the personal and political are intertwined: the issue of educating the children of memphis and shelby county. below is an interview with gretchen stroud, a representative of friends united for school equality (FUSE). FUSE is a group of parents and grassroots activists in favor of the proposed merger of local city and county school systems. read below for a beautiful example of how the collective forces of parental anxiety and creativity are moving beyond the home and into the broken world.  

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mary allison: please introduce yourself and let readers know why are you in favor of the consolidation of shelby county and memphis city schools.

gretchen: I am the parent of an Memphis City Schools (MCS) student in first grade. We have had a wonderful experience with MCS so far and are very happy with his school. However, I support consolidation for a few key reasons:

1. If Shelby County Schools (SCS) were to obtain the special school district status (with taxing authority) pursued by its school board president David Pickler, this would cut funding for MCS and do away with the equitable per student funding that currently comes from Shelby County. In this scenario, Memphis would be responsible for educating approximately 70% of the county’s children with only 40% of the tax revenues. Taxes in Memphis would have to rise substantially to make up the difference.
2. Although the money issue is concerning, the major reason I support the consolidation is that you cannot have “separate but equal” school systems, by law. We are creating a widening division between those students who come from middle and upper class families and those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum. This is immoral, unethical and will ultimately create great harm to Memphis and all the surrounding towns and cities who depend on Memphis as the anchor for our mid-south cultural and economic sustainability. Every single child has the potential to learn, and I can tell you from watching the children in my son’s school that every one of them wants to learn. It is up to the adults to figure out how to do that fairly and equally for all.

mary allison: what is FUSE?

gretchen: FUSE stands for Friends United for School Equality. We are a group of Shelby County residents (which means, of course, those living in Memphis and in the suburbs – we are ALL Shelby County) who believe that for our county to remain viable and competitive in the 21st century we must work together as one to provide quality education to ALL of the children in Shelby County.

mary allison: how did FUSE start? please describe how the idea emerged and how so many mid-south parents became organized and mobilized so quickly under the umbrella of FUSE:

gretchen: Well, it started as a group of MCS Optional School parents who came together on Facebook after Mr. Pickler started trying to scare people by threatening the Optional program. I think that he was hoping that our fear of losing this program would drive us to vote against the merger. However, he definitely underestimated us. We came together to start talking about consolidation and quickly realized that this isn’t just about our kids, it is about ALL of the kids in Shelby County. Every single one of them deserves a great education – not just the ones we are raising. And we talked about how we wanted to reach out to other parents from the county schools because we felt that there were more people like us out there who are committed to the concept that you cannot raise your children in a bubble of privilege. What is good for my child should be good for ALL children, and if it isn’t good for all children then it really isn’t good for my own child in the long run either. I think we have grown so quickly because our group is devoted to fostering kind, honest, and real conversation among parents and other “regular people.”

mary allison: what are some of the reasons that fuel opposition to school consolidation, and what do you to say to parents who are not in favor of merging?

gretchen: Fear and lack of truth. Honestly, people think that MCS are pits of danger and despair. I partly blame the media because they will run a hundred stories about teen pregnancy, a fight at a school, and an underperforming principal. But, I didn’t see a single mid-south news organization cover the news this summer when Memphis was named one of the 21 “overachieving” urban school districts based on a large study of urban school districts in the US. Not just one of the 21, but one of the top five! That is great news for Memphis, and NO ONE reported it. The report can be found in this Education Week article. 

We had a group of Germantown moms send us a list of questions that they honestly wanted to ask (but were a little embarrassed and afraid to, I think). They wanted to know if our elementary kids in MCS have art or music or libraries. I was blown away! But, the sad fact is that the myths and stereotypes people have been hearing about MCS for years are in many cases their only exposure to the city school system. We were able to answer those questions in a non-threatening manner that encouraged further dialog. And, in case your readers are wondering, yes, MCS elementary students have art, Orff music, P.E., and library every week. And most elementary schools also offer foreign languages starting in first grade. In addition, the gifted program in MCS begins in kindergarten. They start instruments in fourth grade too.

What I say to parents who oppose the merger is, come and see what MCS is really about. Our kids are great kids who want to learn, just like yours do. We have wonderful, hard-working teachers, just like you do. Great things happen in Memphis City Schools every single day. Beyond that, I would say consolidation is the RIGHT thing to do. Shelby County cannot survive with this crazy  us vs. them mentality. And, you aren’t creating the kind of place where your children will want to live when they grow up if the city that is the keystone of this entire mid-south area is left to decay and decline because we cannot come together as one community.

mary allison: what actions do members of FUSE take to affect change?

gretchen: We have some really great members! We write letters to the newspapers, and we are working with Stand for Children to host educational events for the community about the pros and cons of consolidation (although I should note that FUSE supports the consolidation and Stand is non-partisan on this issue). We had a very active email campaign to city council last week ahead of their vote. We contact our state legislature and the governor to try to give Memphis a voice in this process. We educate others about what consolidation could look like. We reach out to parents across the county to start the conversation now about what we parents want a unified school district to offer. Do we want smaller sub-districts? Do we want magnet schools? Do we want smaller class sizes? Do we want every child to get foreign language instruction starting in first grade? What do we think our children need to be competitive in the 21st century? I’m not saying that I have a position on all of these issues, but so far no one is asking parents what WE want in a new, unified district. And they should be asking.

mary allison: could you describe in layman’s terms the timeline and political process that is currently structuring the consolidation decision?

gretchen: Ha, ha, ha!  If I could do that, I’d be rich!  As of this moment, the city council has accepted the charter surrender, but Memphians STILL need to vote in the referendum (early voting begins Feb. 16). Shelby County Schools has filed a federal lawsuit against a whole lot of people, including (but not limited to) MCS, Memphis City Council, US Dept of Education, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, US Dept of Justice, Attorney General Eric Holder, Tennessee Department of Education, Education Commissioner Patrick Smith (and others). And, that is just the beginning.

But, and this is important, it is time NOW for all of us in Shelby County to seriously contemplate whether we want this issue tied up in federal courts for the next five to ten years. Who does that serve? Certainly not the children. It really just serves our fear and our prejudices. And, if we want to come together and try to figure out the best way to educate all of the children in this community in the best way possible, then we need to tell our elected officials that we want to come together and fix this now.

mary allison: how might others who are interested in FUSE become involved in your work?

gretchen: First, let me say that we would love to have anyone join us who is interested.  You can find us at www.fuseshelby.org or on Facebook.

[source info for perfect madness is located on the bibliography page, which is listed on the sidebar to your right.]

until six weeks ago, the monkey was a strict observer of naptime. to say that he was an “observer” of nap time is to say that he spent two hours per day holed up in his room. sometimes he slept, but most of the time he invented games for himself to play within his four walls.

for example, it was not uncommon for me to open his door after naptime to find a “puzzle piece room,” a carefully created state of affairs wherein the entire floor was covered in adjacent blankets, er, i mean “puzzle pieces.” other days were “sorting days,” and the monkey would spend the two hours organizing and cataloging his stuffed animals, game pieces, markers, and books. still other afternoons were spent “reading.” once, i walked in on this scene:

but times are different now. i gave in to the monkey’s complaints that he was bored in his room, and now, while his brother sleeps, he does things that require much less imagination (many of which involve the television and/or the wii). perhaps this is because i have not made the shift away from cooking dinner, folding laundry, and catching up on work between the hours of two o’clock and four o’clock. or perhaps it is because the monkey and i are both drawn to what is easier. for him, making a puzzle piece room takes more effort than wii bowling. and for me, extracting him from the tv takes more effort than cooking dinner in peace.

the problem with this scenario is that i don’t want to deprive the monkey of the gift of boredom. catherine newman, author of an essay entitled bored again, which appeared in the fall 2010 issue of brainchild magazine, defines boredom as “that agitated space between relaxation and action: dialed down, it can become a pleasant kind of inertia or a meditative stillness, where it feels good to sit quietly with your own thoughts; cranked up a notch, it can produce creative release.” newman goes on to write,

“i’m not trying to sound like one of those crafty-mama blogs that makes you want to kill yourself, the kind you bookmark one day because you think that putting out a wooden bowl of felt gnomes sounds like a good idea… and yet. you do have to learn boredom, learn to live with it, to manage it with the power of your own mind, without recourse to video games or bungee jumping or sniffing glue or starting a nuclear war or date raping your roommate’s girlfriend. the most dangerous people we know are the least able to sit still, to be inside an absence of motion.”

i definitely don’t want the monkey to become “a dangerous person,” but that’s not my main attraction to boredom. i simply think that boredom facilitates creativity and imagination, and these things are what ultimately make life beautiful.

our family spends significant periods of time away from our memphis routines and addictions to technology. our family camp weekends and julys in the north carolina mountains are hopefully deterrents from future glue-sniffing tendencies. but building boredom into our daily memphis routine, one that must also include my own significant accomplishments on the home and work fronts, is becoming increasingly difficult.

is there any way to give the monkey the gift of boredom (and creativity and imagination and beauty) without forcing him to play with a wooden bowl of felt gnomes?

name: Ashley

age: 33

current city: Memphis, TN

i love me some note cards.

i never leave home with out them. they are the perfect place to record a genius idea, deposit toddler scribbles, and spit out used gum. i wrote all of my school papers, from tenth grade through graduate school, by putting one fact one each note card, arranging them into themed stacks, putting the stacks in order, and settling down in front of my computer in the midst of a veritable note card village. i even wrote my most recent homily this way.

when i started the re[frame] productivity system for creative people a few months ago, it wasn’t so much because i had friends who had successfully completed the program and were happy with the results. nor was the main draw its enticing low price of $42 for six weeks worth of daily emails explaining a detailed process in simple, attainable steps. it was the note cards, folks. i loved the idea of writing one “to do” on each note card and organizing them in a cute little box under headings for each day of the week. so excited was i about the power of this little box and its contents to transform my chaotic world that i diligently worked the note card system for months.

during this time, i returned emails and phone calls promptly, sent school picture money back on time, made headway on long overdue projects (the sewing room reorganization, for example), and developed a regular schedule for household tasks such as doing laundry and making dinner. i was the very picture of productivity. the problem was that i wasn’t feeling very creative anymore.

there was no time to whip up crazy pants for my boys in my newly organized sewing room. i began having visions of things i wanted to paint or cook, but there wasn’t time to bring them to life. i pictured myself (and still do) dropping by amro music of an afternoon, renting a fiddle, and spending “free time” indulging myself and horrifying others with the excruciating cacophony only a beginning fiddler could produce.

so for the last six weeks or so, i have abandoned my dear note cards. we are living in piles of laundry and dirty dishes but the laundry now contains several pairs of fabulous new crazy pants for the kids, and the dirty dishes are the result of creative cooking experiments. i have devoured a few great books (both the for-fun kind and the brain-stimulating kind) but there are an embarrassing number of unread emails in my inbox.

i generally prefer allowing my intuition to guide me from one task to the next. the only problem is that my intuition is not so good at taking care of business. and after a while, it becomes evident that i need things like friends, and clean underwear, and an unsoiled mug for my coffee. 

so today, i’m getting back on the re[frame] wagon. i’m returning to the world of note cards. however, instead of attacking every piece of unfinished business in my life the way  my dog attacks his breakfast (in an near-violent frenzy), i’m going to take a more measured approach. i have only one goal for the week, and that is cleaning out the bird’s closet. i know there must be clothes to fit this child in there somewhere!

is there any way to be both productive and creative at the same time? or is this particular brand of balance just another part of a mother’s quest for pie-in-the-sky equanimity? i think i’ll just write these questions on note cards and carry them around in my purse.

if i could imbue my children with one virtue, one tool to be used in the face of life’s wonder and challenge, it would be CREATIVITY. it takes creativity to do things like improve the economy, convey truth and meaning, patch an oil leak, develop a vaccine, negotiate a real estate transaction, keep a baby off the stairs, generate personal narratives of hope and healing, wire light fixtures, and the list goes on.

though i want my children to be creative, this does not mean that they are required to be artists, chefs, or musicians, though creativity might very well encompass such delightful propensities. i want the monkey and the bird to be capable of “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).” this is the language used by e. paul torrance  in his longitudinal creativity study that began in the fifties. according to a recent newsweek article entitled the creativity crisis by bronson and merryman, torrance’s assessment of children’s creative tendencies (CQ tests) proved to be accurate over time and are still the “gold standard” in measuring creativity today. however, while IQ test scores are on the rise, CQ test results show that the creativity of american children has been on the decline since the nineties.

torrance

the cause of this decline is unknown, though there is speculation that kids’ increased time in front of the television and video games could be a culprit, as could the school system’s rigid and standardized measures of success. but it’s also possible that common misperceptions about creativity have contributed to its decline. one such misperception is that creativity is something that pertains to the arts, not the sciences. another is that it should be separate from actual, factual learning. and finally, many folks falsely believe that creativity cannot be taught, a notion successfully disputed by three recent university studies conducted in georgia, oklahoma, and taiwan.

such  information is enlightening to this mother, whose home is filled with music, cooking projects, and art supply explosions at every turn. but fostering my boys’ creativity is about more than making pumpkin bread with my children (something we do often). it’s also about helping them to solve problems by engaging all the parts of their brains (something we do much less often). this means that the constant “why is the sky blue” questions are more than just annoying. they are gateways to more questions, brainstorming, further research, an atmosphere of continuous learning, and the celebration of curiosity. according to the above mentioned newsweek article,

“highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. they were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. this resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. in the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.”

 i’m not sure how to provide for my children “the space between anxiety and boredom.”  but i am going to try to introduce them to this thought sequence developed by creativity theorists: problem-finding, fact-finding, idea-finding, and solution-finding. and because i am making up these policies as i go along, there will still be pumpkin bread and art supply explosions. this is not about getting these boys into college. it’s about teaching them how to get themselves out of trouble. it’s about helping them to construct meaningful lives in the face of life’s wonder and challenge.

 for further reading on this subject, check out“more than cupcakes: supporting your child’s creative potential,” an interview with dr. don treffinger.