So, at the rate I'm going with this here blog, if I publish only around major holidays, I'll have about five or six posts a year. Yippee!! What I've decided to do in the interest of laziness and self-serving diatribes is look at some e-mails that I write over the course of the year, to unsuspecting suckers, er.. friends, and use them as posts. The piece below was an email that I wrote today to a recruiter from Texas who wanted to know what the hell I was thinking (my own emphasis) taking a job in Las Vegas when I had this "rising star" (or at least "streaking comet") career in Independent Schools. Responding with some afterthoughts, I wrote:
N-----,
As I tell people over and over, I now have the best job in America. Andre's Foundation is actively involved in creating excellence in education in areas that have been historically overlooked by local, state, and national education agencies (okay, this is where I get sort of Jesse Jackson on her. I'm surprised on my re-read here that I didn't break into rhyming couplets--"Up with dopes/down with smoke.") It's my job to build a school (minus hard cost--buildings, etc.) in Las Vegas, at or near the national average with regards to spending, and then replicate what we do all over the nation. We're definitely not there yet, but we have a few high profile individuals and Foundations looking closely at what we do--especially at testing and college placement. Our first college bound students won't be ready until 2009 so we have a little time to find the formula. However, I wake up every day with this sense of urgency like I'm trying to break some critical enemy's code that will save humanity. The sense of immediacy and urgency is what most educational institutions lose over time (I look at the last bit that I wrote and think about Robert Kennedy who's own mother, after his death, while listening to the allegations that he (RFK) had slept with Marilyn Monroe, claimed that she "found that hard to believe because he was too damned sanctimonious." So much for old Rose standing by her son. Yet, the preceeding sentence and the e-mail in general does smell of grandstanding, don't you think?) I just can't afford that luxury, which is why I made the switch out of Independent Schools. Don't get me wrong, the Independent School world has taught me much, like what great education looks like (mu-hoo-haha). Many of the folks I'm looking to hire are coming from that world or straight from the Ivy League ranks, like our partners at Teach for America.
So, couple tremendous resources that the Foundation provides (my high school and gymnasium project for which I was hired to build will cost around $18 1/2 million) and support from one of the most enduring athletes of his generation who has raised close to $100 miliion for charity, is why I say I have the best job in America (You know, the amount of money is pretty staggering, especially when you consider that the United States was only going to initially provide the countries devastated by the tsunamis last week $35 million, which is the cost of the entire school project at the end). In other words, I get to prove the premise that students of color can learn given appropriate support and resources (I mean, du-u-u-uh!).
In a nutshell that's why I'm here--at considerably less than what I would make as a Head of School in the Independent School world (I ask myself now, why is this important? Of course, feeding one's family is important, but I sound a little like Latrell Sprewell). I figure that there'll be time to make up the lost earnings on the backside of our endeavor (I'm not quite sure what the hell I mean here). At the very least, I can say that I gave it my all in the end.
Well, that's my story. I'm hoping that I'll have the opportunity to create more educational leaders who can put some of these ideas in place with a kind of Great Awakening zeal that would make Jonathan Edwards, John Dewey, and Dr. King proud.
Regards,
Brian
Alright, that did sound insincere in some parts, but I think the grandiosity chip tends to stick in spots, like leaving an IBM ThinkPad on all night and trying to reaccess the Internet again in the morning. My intention is to not sound like a Mel Torme Christmas song, but to write with some clarity and seriousness of purpose. Perhaps the acid reflux, er... afterthoughts, at the end of various sentences...help. "I need somebody./Help,/Not just anybody.../He-e-e-l-l-p." Well, you get the drift. Gotta go. A rerun of "Gigi" is playing and I can't miss it.
B
