Public Education

Leave a comment Posted on drivers education, Public Education, students, teaching

Make Drivers Education Classes Mandatory in High School

Knowing that the leading cause of death among teenagers is fatal car crashes, one would think that teaching adolescents how to safely drive would be a national priority—or at least a high school graduation requirement.

Not so.

California Department of Education Public Information Officer Giorgos Kazanis said that out of the 1,100 school districts in the state, only 171 still offer a driving education course

despite California Education Code Section 51220(j) stating that “grades 7-12 . . . shall offer courses in . . . automobile driver education.”

Schools nowadays have plenty of bullying and drug prevention programs, but nothing on car accident prevention.

 Drivers education classes fell victim to budget cuts a quarter of a century ago when money from the Victims Compensation Fund (an explanation that would consume another column) which paid for in-car training was redirected for other purposes, leading schools to stop offering the courses as well. That funding has never been replenished.

Maybe that explains why fewer 16-year-olds have a driver’s license these days.

If you are old enough you may recall taking a class in high school called Safety that focused on the state’s Vehicle Code.   In addition to learning about the rules of the road, films were shown depicting staged and real car accidents. For a nominal fee, students could sign up for in-car driving lessons after school, usually taught by coaches or counselors. Some schools actually had driving simulators.  

One of the enigmas of public education is the dearth of important life skills not taught in classrooms. Part of the state’s secondary curriculum should include knowledge on how to open a bank account, how to apply for a credit card and a loan, and how to drive a motor vehicle.   And all students should be taught how to properly use electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Oh sure, young people can quickly figure out how to text using abbreviations and emoticons, but how many know how to intelligently navigate the Internet or specify their Google searches, important lifelong abilities?

Some teachers on their own may give a lesson or two on life skills, but there is nothing that mandates it.

It’s too bad for what better way to make use of the regular school day than to have at least one hour devoted to things most people need to know when they grow up.  

Now that my son is 15 ½ I am going through the experience of paying hundreds of dollars for a driver’s ed course along with personal in-car training.   The 30 hours of classroom instruction is in addition to his normal school workload. It’s as if the driving class is an extracurricular like a sport.  

Of course Advanced Placement courses are important, but honor students get in accidents, too.

Sometimes those in education have tunnel vision when it comes to what students need to know.   It sounds good to require a student to take academic classes. However, beware: the word “academic” can mean something that is educational as well as something irrelevant. You would have a hard time convincing my son that geometry is more practical than driving.  

Instead of Common Core dominating the education conversation we need more of a Common Sense approach to what kids should know in order to survive in the real world.

 

 

1 Comment Posted on Public Education, students, teaching

Teachers Have Time Off?

“Teachers have so much time off” is an often repeated sentiment among non-educators.

True, teachers have vacation time that rivals workers in European nations.   For example, Portugal provides for 35 paid days off.   Never mind that the teacher summer leave is unpaid.

In Glendale, those who do teach in the summer end up with 4 weeks off compared to 9 for those who don’t.   I’m fortunate to be in the minority of teachers who don’t teach summer school, though that wasn’t the case for my first 20 years.

It was a nice coincidence that when I finally did settle down, get married, and have children (in that order, by the way), I had the extra time off to spend with my kids who were also at home.

“Time off” is something that is quite relative.   It reminds one of the saying “time off for good behavior” which of course refers to prisoners not teachers (though there may be a few similarities).

As a teacher, my mind remains “on,” receptive to ideas I absorb through reading material and watching content.   I’ll print out a well written op-ed piece to share with my journalism students or I’ll draft a new way to help kids edit their writing.

Hours are invested in organizing files, lessons, thoughts before the school engine revs up.

What I’ve discovered is that it takes a few weeks to decompress from the rush-rush-rush nature of teaching five classes a day.   Once my mind ebbs and flows at a more natural clip, then I can relax.

Even if a teacher is able to not think about work, days out of the classroom may help those who feel the dreaded teacher disease—teacher burnout.

When I was a rookie teacher, many a veteran colleague spoke of teacher burnout as a coal miner would of black lung disease, an ailment that inevitably gets to all educators.

Old, bitter people holding court in the faculty cafeteria sharing their war stories and exit strategies were not going to burst my enthusiastic bubble.

I learned quite early on to pace myself. Teaching requires a level of mental and physical vitality that is hard to sustain if school were in session year round. Teachers don’t have solar panels on their bodies that store energy from the summer ready for dispersion throughout the rest of the year.

What is asked of and demanded of teachers nowadays is an impossible expectation.   How can you meet the Common Core standards, keep up with the ever changing pedagogy, accurately account for the whereabouts for 150 students, handle the emotional needs of dozens of diverse students from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and still connect to kids so that they will receive instruction that will improve their skills?

Each start of school I have to brace myself for the first month until things finally settle into a routine.

Those initial weeks more than pays for all the time off during the summer.

Well, I can confidently say that as I enter my 26th year of teaching I have yet to catch teacher burnout (maybe it’s the Omega-3 fish oil supplements).

Quite frankly, I’ve grown to enjoy teaching the more I do it. What I still relish about it is that no matter the increasing encroachment of federal and state mandates, I still control and create much of the work I do with children.

Perhaps when I retire I’ll grasp the meaning of “time off” means. Until then an idea just came to me on how to get kids jazzed about using subordinating conjunctions.

 

Leave a comment Posted on Maya Angelou, Public Education, students, teaching

Phenomenal Woman: Maya Angelou

This fall when my students study I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings it won’t be the same due to the passing of Maya Angelou last week.

Just as we all have to deal with the death of loved ones as we live our lives, an English teacher has to deal with the death of writers whose work inspires life lessons in the classroom.  When you teach literature for a quarter of a century, you’re bound to go through some grieving.

I had several former students come by my room to make sure that I knew of Maya Angelou’s death, almost to share in the common grief.  

What also eased my sense of loss was the framed note hanging on the wall behind my classroom desk.

A few years back during a unit I regularly teach on tolerance which includes Angelou’s first memoir Caged Bird, her poems, and a documentary with Bill Moyers, I suggested that my students write letters to the author to let her know how much her work has meant to them.   They were expressionless at first, the thought to contact a writer never crossing their minds.

So, the students wrote, the letters were sent, and soon a reply came.

“It is a wonderful feeling to know that my words have touched you and your students,” Dr. Maya Angelou wrote.  

The kids were ecstatic that such a renowned literary figure took the time to read their letters and write back.  I’m so glad my students did that while she was still living.  How reassuring it must have been for her to know how her writing about racism during the Great Depression affected 21st century teenagers.

When teaching a highly regarded literary work, there is something special knowing that the author is still alive, that a reader could make contact with the soul behind the words.

It’s rewarding to introduce students to Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir of his Holocaust experiences, and for them to discover YouTube videos of him speaking today at age 85.

To Kill a Mockingbird’s 88-year-old Harper Lee continues to live with her 102-year-old sister Alice in a nursing home in Alabama.

However, teaching Fahrenheit 451 hasn’t felt the same since Ray Bradbury passed away two years ago.

Also framed on my classroom wall is a signed letter from Robert Mulligan, director of the 1962 film “To Kill a Mockingbird” based on Lee’s classic novel.   I asked my students to write him after we spent a good deal of time analyzing the movie.  

Two weeks later an envelope arrived.

“I was truly touched by their letters and I ask you to tell them how grateful I am for their kind, thoughtful, and intelligent thoughts,” he wrote.   The students were thrilled.   Eighteen months later, Mr. Mulligan died.  

I use these examples to show my students why it is important to reach out and contact people that have made a difference in their lives, and not to let the moment pass without letting them know.   You never know who may respond. 

Writers have no idea how a reader responds to their words unless they receive feedback since writing and reading are both solitary activities.   Sending a note of thanks is a form of charity, “paying it forward” in today’s vernacular.  

True, an artist’s work lives on past his lifetime, but how much more meaningful it is having that artist living amongst us and being able to make a connection.

Leave a comment Posted on handwriting, Public Education, teaching

The Loss of Handwriting

Signature – a word that appears on legal forms and credit card transactions.  

Yet very soon that word may have to be redefined.

I’m noticing more and more of my high school students do not understand what a signature is, not knowing the difference between printing and signing one’s name.

This trend will continue as schools across the country plow headfirst into the Common Core standards which no longer require the instruction of cursive writing.   The new standardized tests will have students input their answers on computers.

Cursive writing in particular is on the way out.   Certain cultural references such as “the writing is on the wall” will have to evolve into “the tweet is on the screen.”

California is one of the states that has added wording to the standards—“write legibly in cursive or joined italics”—that guarantees some form of cursive instruction remain. I know, I thought the same thing. What is “joined italics”?

A gentleman in the California Department of Education communications department had no clue what it meant. In fact, he asked me to send him what I discovered about the phrase.   I thought about snail mailing him my cursive handwritten response, but thought it was too 20th century.

A spokesperson for Glendale Unified explained that “joined italics” is “the connection of two letters by a line so that the writing flows” but without the loops.  

While the majority of primary grade teachers still teach cursive, it’s at the discretion of the individual teacher.

Some kind of physical writing needs to be taught even if it’s printing. After all, students are still required to handwrite on Advanced Placement tests and the SATs. If a student can’t write legibly in some form, then chances are he will earn a lower score.

There are plenty of studies on why cursive writing is an important skill to teach.

Research shows that the act of continuously moving the pen to connect letters helps develop areas of the brain.

How about the skill of examining someone’s handwriting to ensure the signature is real and not fraudulent?

Sheila Lowe, president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, says that while a person’s printing can still be analyzed, it tends to cover things up that are present and easier to detect in a person’s cursive handwriting.

Lowe also says that cursive writing helps children with disabilities and is often used as a therapy technique.

She feels that public school students will at a disadvantage since their private school counterparts will continue learning cursive.

I’ll admit that my handwriting (which earned me A’s in the third grade) has denigrated so badly that it appears to be a foreign language. As a teacher, I only print on the board knowing my students would not be able to read my handwriting.

And yet, whenever I give someone a greeting card, I take care in slowly signing my name in cursive.   The “love” may be printed, but never the name.   It just feels more personal that way.  

“Thank you” and “get well” cards and notes work best when written in cursive.   An e-card offering sympathy for one’s loss doesn’t seem human.

Maybe cursive will become a relic from the past, but so is the painting of the Mona Lisa.   Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci lived today and took a cell phone photo of the woman instead of painting her. Just because he could do it doesn’t mean that it is the finest way to capture her essence.

Leave a comment Posted on Public Education, students, teaching

Eye on Alumni

One of the wonders of working with young people is to find out what happened to them years later, and to harken back on the work I did with them.   And when you have taught for nearly a quarter of a century, there is plenty of “years later.”

I recently found out what happened to the absolute best graphic artist the school newspaper ever had, Julian Callos. He is a professional illustrator whose work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times as well as art galleries.

Then there’s Evelyn Baghdasraian who I clearly remembered telling me way back when that she wanted to become a doctor.   Well, one day my wife calls me to say that she met a pediatrician at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills who inquired, upon looking at her employee badge, if she was married to me.

Soon we were reunited, with me bringing yellowed copies of her high school work (she was another student I had both in English class and journalism).

This past week Sev Ohanian paid me a surprise visit. Outside of the shaved head, he was the same old Sev—good natured, smart mind, engaging personality—that I remembered back in 2005.

What has he been up to in the past eight years?   After graduating from USC film school and working on some small projects, he ended up as a co-producer on this summer’s independent feature “Fruitvale Station,” the critically acclaimed film based on the 2008 shooting of an unarmed black man by a white transit officer up in the bay area.

When he asked me how things have been, I lamented the declining enrollment in the school’s journalism program, about 40 percent less than when he attended Hoover. He seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Being editor in chief of the newspaper taught me how to be a leader.”   How precious it is to hear former students realize what all the work was all about.   Teachers rarely get to hear those epiphanies.

Sev graciously invited my student television crew to interview him on the set of his new motion picture shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.   You should have seen how exuberant my kids were about the prospect of flying out there and doing such a piece for Tornado TV.

These are but a few of the students who have spent a short time of their academic lives in my classroom.   No doubt there are other success stories and even more from other teachers in other districts in other states.

If I worked in another profession, I may not have gotten to know these talented young people.   There is something special about seeing them establish themselves in their younger years.

It would be oversimplified for any teacher to claim he was responsible for the success of any former student.   Can Skyline High School drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth take credit for Tom Hanks’ career anymore than a loved one can?   Yes, each of us needs the support of family, friends and teachers, but ultimately it is the individual who must do the work and persevere.

Too often, all the federal mandates, district policies, bureaucracy and incompetence piles on top of a teacher, weighing down the drive and desire to do good with students. Seeing the results of one’s work with former students melts away those burdensome layers, and you come away thinking to yourself, “It’s good being a teacher.”

Leave a comment Posted on college ready, Public Education, students, teaching

Not Ready for College

The phrase “achievement gap” is often referred to the test score discrepancies between white students and non-white students in public schools.   However, the more alarming achievement gap is between high school work and college work.

Plenty of students excel at the high school level, enrolling in advanced placement classes, and maintaining 4.0 GPAs.   Yet something happens when they go to a four-year university where nearly one-third of college freshmen end up taking remedial English and math classes.

Look at the condition of entering freshmen at all levels of colleges in California, as reported by the state’s Legislative Office of Higher Education.

Community Colleges. About 70% were not ready for college-level English in 2009; 85% were not ready for college-level math.

State Universities. In 2009, 58% were “unprepared for college-level writing or math,” with the unprepared rate at an astonishing 90% of those attending CSU Los Angeles and CSU Dominguez Hills.

University of California. Over 25% of freshmen were unprepared in 2010.

The cost of re-educating those college students is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The other problem with college students taking remedial classes is that the courses are not worth any credits meaning that it will take those struggling students longer to complete college.   Often the students who did poorly in the classes in high school continue to do poorly in those at college, even when the courses are offered online (where there is an even higher failure rate).

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s data shows that in California, almost 35% of college freshmen finish their degree in four years, 65% do so in six years.   No one is quite sure of what happens to the other one-third.

Clearly the concept of attending college and exiting with a bachelor’s degree in four years is no longer the norm.

There is plenty of finger pointing to go around. Professors accuse high school teachers of grade inflation, while high school teachers accuse professors of not making material comprehensible so more students can understand it.

Los Angeles Times reporter Kurt Streeter wrote an excellent article in August, “South L.A. student finds a different world at Cal,” about a young man from Los Angeles who struggled in his first year at Berkeley even though the student excelled in high school.   His 4.06 GPA, second highest in his high school class, sunk to a 1.7 GPA in his college freshman year.

These students are faced with assignments untried at the high school level.   For example, professors commonly assign 15-page research papers while high school teachers assign 2-3 page papers, often without any research required. No wonder there is often a disconnect between high school success and college readiness.

Back in the 1990s I was a part of a consortium of high school and community college instructors whose charge was to use career oriented curriculum as a way to reduce the “readiness gap.” Such an endeavor, usually nicknamed K-16 for grades kindergarten through bachelor’s degree, lasted as long as other well-meaning efforts—until the grant money ran out.

There needs to be a joint effort, a once a year “state of the schools” conference where leading teachers and professors meet to compare notes and strategize how best to help students so that crossing the stage at one’s high school graduation is not the only bridge they cross in furthering their education.

Leave a comment Posted on parents, Public Education, students, teacher appreciation, teaching

Teacher, er, Staff Appreciation Week

May is “thank your local teacher” month: Teacher Appreciation Week (May 5-9), National Teacher Day (May 6) and California’s Day of the Teacher (May 14).

While it is nice to have one’s vocation be singled out, it would be nicer if teaching did not have to be put on the calendar of Hallmark card celebrations. Even See’s Candies designs a Teacher Appreciation Box squeezed among the Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Flag Day assortments.

The unsaid message beneath such recognition is that since teachers are underpaid and underappreciated, scheduling a once a year time to make them feel special makes everyone feel better.

Well, here are some actual trinkets that I’ve received, each with an attached message. While well meaning, they often come across as demeaning:  

–                a penny: “we are the lucky ones”

–                a compact mirror: “you are looking at a VERY SPECIAL PERSON!”

–                a miniature fan: “you are fan-tastic!”

–                a marble: “we think you’re simply marble-lous”

–                a Cup O’Noodles “you are SOUP-er” (at least I could eat that one)

I sincerely do thank all the parents who as part of their local PTA or booster club invest countless hours into showing how much they appreciate their children’s educators. Think about the time it took for a mom or dad to print out all of the tiny pieces of papers, cut and tape each one to each trinket, and sort them in all of the teachers’ mailboxes.  

At least their efforts took more thought than when school districts send out a mass email thanking everybody as if it is just another task to be checked off on a to-do list.

The governor of Georgia once gave each teacher a $100 gift card for office supplies, quite a practical gift considering teachers spend an average of $485 out of their pockets based on a 2012-2013 survey conducted by the National School Supply and Equipment Association.

Recently, corporations have jumped onboard such as Target who sponsors an All-Star Teachers contest that coincides with this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game, spotlighting 30 teachers.   Such national recognition is long overdue.

One of the best gifts I ever got came from former principal Don Duncan who gave his faculty members a coupon good for one hour off of work any day of the year (Don would personally cover the classes).   While I didn’t redeem all of the coupons I received, the gesture of allowing a teacher a short breather from the day to day energy drain of teaching was generous.

My main gripe is not with the local parents who participate in making their kids’ teachers feel good, but with the concept of prefabbed, programmed national events, a convenient way out of confronting the long-standing issues in whatever the celebration is about. An artificial annual ritual is no substitute for changing the shortcomings of the teaching profession.   These include teachers getting paid based on how long they’ve been working and not on how well they work, and teachers overlooked for their expertise whenever politicians implement sweeping education changes.

Look, we all like getting recognized for a job well done—an encouraging note, a pat on the back, even a bonus (though not in education).

But let’s put our efforts in reshaping the teaching profession, and make Teacher Appreciation Day obsolete.

1 Comment Posted on Public Education, SAT, students, teaching

A newer, gentler SAT

The high school experience includes several rites of passage for students: getting a driver’s license, going out on a first date, and taking the SAT.   Now the SAT journey has just gotten a little smoother.

Last week, the College Board, the organization behind the SAT as well as the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, announced major changes to the most feared test a teenager has to take: no more mandatory essay, no more penalties for wrong answers, no more difficult vocabulary.   In other words, the kinder, gentler SAT coming in 2016 resembles more the ACT, the SAT’s closest testing competitor that has sold more tests in recent years.

The last major change to the high stakes SAT exam came in 2005 when an essay component was added to the math and verbal sections, each component worth a possible 800 points for a grand total of 2,400.   Now, a perfect score reverts back to the Holy Grail number of 1,600.

Mention the acronym SAT to any grown-up and it sends shivers down one’s spine. After all, an SAT score is a major part of one’s college application used by admission officers in determining acceptance.

I had to go to Glendale Community College to take the 3-hour SAT, so if I wasn’t nervous enough about a test I had only heard about and never seen, I had additional anxiety about navigating my way to the library on a campus I had never visited.   Since I was the first in my family going to college, I had no older sibling or parent lessening my fears of what to expect.

Back then, few kids took SAT prep classes, and fewer took the SAT multiple times. It was a one shot deal.   You scored high, and your future was set.   You scored low, and you might as well apply to GCC before exiting the campus.   And the wait for the scores to arrive in the mail was interminable.

In my case, the less than stellar results did not negatively impact me as I was accepted into UCLA. However, that was a time when a 3.6 grade point average was also decent enough to get into a good college.   Today, with weighted grades, a student would need a 4.6 GPA.

In addition to competing against the ACT, the College Board combats the private companies that charge hundreds of dollars for SAT test preparation courses.   Trying to minimize their impact, the College Board is partnering with Khan Academy, a free video tutoring website that many students access online, to provide test preparation materials so that a student (or parent) wouldn’t feel the need to spend money on private lessons.

Deborah Ellinger, CEO of The Princeton Review, one of the leading test preparation companies, offered this rebuke of the revamped SAT in a press release: “We’ve never seen a test that wasn’t coachable [and] the College Board has never designed a test that we couldn’t help students crack.”   So, that’s what all this is about—figuring a way to beat the test.

The best strategy for parents and teens is to keep in mind that many colleges use a variety of factors in assessing a freshman applicant including grade point average, rigor of coursework, and extracurricular involvement.  

However, give the College Board credit for realizing its diminishing role in the standardized test marketplace by retooling the SAT to more accurately reflect what a student should know.

The origins of the SAT centered on leveling the playing field, so that those gaining entrance to college were not just the rich and privileged but those of merit as well.   Over a century later, the folks running the SAT are still trying to reach that goal.

Leave a comment Posted on Public Education, student teacher, student teaching, students, teaching

The Student Teaching Sacrifice

Those who go into the teaching field are often viewed as giving individuals due to the lack of financial rewards and nowhere is that truer than with those who train to become teachers who sacrifice an entire year’s salary.

In California, most teacher candidates work in classrooms for no pay for a whole year before earning a teaching credential.   Due to the demands of teaching during the day and taking teacher coursework in the evening, holding down a job to make ends meet is nearly impossible.

Unpaid student teaching is a rite of passage that has rarely been challenged. Teachers have accepted less than stellar working conditions for so long that not being paid while learning the trade doesn’t seem to raise eyebrows.  

In the FAQ section of Purdue University’s website on teacher candidates, here is what the college says about students who wish to work while they teach:   “Student teaching is a full-time commitment that leaves very little time for other business. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you do not take on additional responsibilities, such as part-time employment, while you student teach.”

When I was a student teacher, I was quite fortunate that my boss at the time allowed me flexible work hours so that I could continue living on my own while doing my student teaching.   But nearly all teacher candidates must stay at home or live with a working spouse as they earn their credential.

While their school work hours are not as long as a full-time teacher’s, they still need to develop lesson plans in a precise, detailed format, have the lessons approved by the classroom teacher who is supervising them, deliver the lessons to the students, establish communication with parents, attend school meetings, and grade student work.  

I work with student teachers and see how much effort they expend.   If they have sleepless nights, it should be due to figuring out how best to unravel a Shakespearean sonnet for students, not because they can’t pay a utility bill.

Even the name “student teacher” sounds somewhat derogatory. Imagine a patient in a hospital being examined by someone called a student doctor instead of a medical intern.   Doesn’t sound as comforting, right?

That’s why if nothing else changes about the lot of the student teacher, let’s start referring to them as teaching interns.

And like medical interns who get paid a small salary, teaching interns should likewise receive a stipend. Have the school district and university jointly contribute which, if nothing else, recognizes the hard work it takes to learn the teaching trade.

The Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has begun doing just that by inaugurating an Aspiring Teacher position this school year that pays teachers-in-the-making almost $16,000 plus benefits (equivalent to half the regular beginning teacher’s salary). MNPS Director of Innovation Derek Richey says that they desire student teachers to work in a more “paraprofessional capacity.”

For those wishing to cut corners, accelerated teacher credentialing programs such as Teach For America offer full-time paying jobs after participants complete a mere five weeks of instruction; nice for the teacher, not so nice for the student.

What’s ironic is that the least trained people entering the profession don’t have to financially sacrifice as the most trained do, with the latter group ending up with more college debt.

If we desire the best people teaching to our children, then we need to stop the student teacher indentureships. We may never know how many college students who might have made wonderful instructors turned away from teaching due to the financial burden they would have had to endure.

Leave a comment Posted on Merry Christmas, Public Education, teaching

“Merry Christmas” With No Apologies

Each December there is an increasing amount of attention spent on the word “Christmas” and how its use has to be carefully monitored especially in schools.

A decorated tree is permissible if you call it a holiday tree, and students performing music in December is okay as long as the songs focus on sleigh rides and snowmen. And for goodness’ sake, school is closed for Winter Recess, not Christmas Vacation.

So we ignore the whole reason why we aren’t teaching kids at the end of the calendar year.

Like Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort, the word “Christmas” is the holiday that must not be named.

In June, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed the “Merry Christmas” law that allows teachers to say the greeting and to celebrate Christmas without the fear of repercussions. Such a concept is gaining traction in Louisiana and Oklahoma as well.

Regarding Christmas music, Glendale Unified has a brochure entitled “Religious Expression in the Schools” which prescribes “a balance between religious and secular music” whenever a concert includes religious music.   Still, when was the last time you attended your child’s school for a student performance in December and the word “Christmas” was used to describe the show?

What’s interesting is that many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers: “Winter Wonderland,” “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and the most famous Christmas song of all time, “White Christmas.”

If it weren’t for these immigrant songwriters, the American idea of Christmas wouldn’t exist.   These artists didn’t feel excluded from society because they weren’t the majority religion; instead, they desired to be included by imagining a broader definition of the Christmas season.

Imagine how the song titles would be altered in today’s times to “Rockin’ Around the Holiday Tree” and “White Winter.”  

The point is this: certain traditions in the United States are what makes all of us Americans.   If the trend continues where each ethnic group’s own individual customs are preserved museum-like, not to be influenced by anything “American,” this country will be further splintered and fragmented than it already is today.

School children are not sharing in the common culture that most of us over the age of 50 had–what it means to be American.   And part of that American education is the way we all celebrate Christmas, from putting light displays on houses, to visiting Santa, or attending school Christmas pageants.

What’s funny is that right here in Glendale on display is pure Christmas Americana at, of all places, the Americana, where you can watch water dancing to Christmas classics along with snow falling on the hour with a real Christmas tree that rivals Rockefeller Center’s.   It is a Christmas that maybe some of us never really had in our past, but it is an ideal we buy into no matter our ethnic or religious background.

Perhaps we should re-read the response New York Sun newsman Francis Church (an interesting last name, right?) wrote to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanion’s letter back in 1897 regarding the existence of Santa Claus:

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.”

And how dreary our schools would be if our children remain ignorant of what made Christmas such an American holiday. Merry Christmas, everyone.