(Today's post inspired in part by: http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210)
Press play on the Ukelele Song, friends, and sit down. Let me tell you a story.
I got an email on Monday asking me to turn in some paperwork. I’d be happy to, except to do that, I’d need to be in Chapel Hill and I’m two and a half hours away from that fine burg. However, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I don’t have to physically turn anything in as long as I send an electronic copy now and turn the hard copies in later. So I set about on the grand Quest For A Scanner. This is the tale I’d like to relate to you now.
Normally if I needed a scanner, I’d just use the one in the office at work, but since I’m far from that as well, I had to look for a second option. Luckily, my family has a printer/scanner/copier that hasn’t been touched in a couple of years, but still looks functional. I pulled it out and hooked it up to my computer, only to struggle with an unending slew of error messages and requests for me to clear a paper jam or a cartridge jam or reinstall a cartridge. By the end of twenty minutes with that, I threw in the towel and told the printer exactly where it could reinstall that jammed cartridge.
I remembered that I had bought a printer/scanner/copier when I was a freshman in college, dewey-eyed and unaware of the fact that there are printers literally everywhere on campus and I was pretty sure it was in my closet somewhere. I started pulling things out and digging and I successfully found the printer. No cords attached to it, though, so I dig some more. And some more. And then, just when I thought I was done digging, I found some more places to dig. Never found the power cord (and the cords for the house printer/scanner/copier were incompatible with the cords for my college printer/scanner/copier, just in case you thought I hadn’t tried), but I did find two umbrellas, a Batman mask, a 24-count box of Play-Doh, a Nalgene, a basketball, one prom shoe, and a tiny railroad conductor baby doll that definitely never belonged to me.
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| (If I stole your tiny railroad conductor baby doll, I am sorry.) |
At this point in time, it was after business hours, so I decided to put it off until the morning when I’d in theory be able to use the scanner at the elementary school I’d be working at that day. Come to find out all the teachers and administrators and office workers were all in a mandatory training and the scanner wasn’t “readily available”. This crushed my dreams, but I had a backup plan- the public library!
Ah, the public library. Though vilified in the admittedly odd town of Night Vale, public libraries are the last solace of the weary, the quiet space in the mad rush of the day, the familiar sounds and smells of a nerdy childhood brought to life in this educational space. The library had moved since I was a kid, but I’d driven past the building this summer (it’s right down the road from one of the buildings that were tagged with fruit-themed graffiti). I looked up the hours on the website and headed over to find out that the Granite Falls public library had a printer and a copier, but no scanner. The Lenoir public library has a scanner, but it’s at least a half hour trip. To illustrate, let me show you a map of my current location.
You see that whole lot of nothing? The nearest FedEx or Staples is in Hickory or Lenoir, both somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes away. The Lenoir public library is about the same distance away and while you can’t scan things for free, you can scan them for cheap (if you have quarters). Given these options, I sighed, thanked the kind people at the library, and got in my car to drive up to Lenoir.
I ended up stopping halfway up to Lenoir because I saw the Ed Center and decided to see if one of the people I’d been working with this summer could let me use their equipment, which they could, and the day was saved by shining knights in cardigans. But, to prove a point, let’s pretend I hadn’t and that I had ended up going to Lenoir to scan this paper. I would have spent:
4 minutes driving to the Granite Falls library from my house
3 minutes discovering there wasn’t a scanner
16 minutes driving from the Granite Falls library to the Lenoir library
8 minutes scanning and emailing my document
15 minutes driving from the Lenoir library to my house
That’s 46 minutes and that’s a minimum estimate. What if there was traffic? What if a machine wasn’t available? What if there was a line? What if the machine wasn’t working properly? What if I had never worked a scanner before and needed assistance? More to the point, what if I didn’t know that libraries had scanners? What if I didn’t have internet at home or on my phone to figure all this information out? What if the public library workers or computers didn’t know the same language as me? How much longer do we think I would have worked at this then? And could I have done all this if I didn’t have a job that allowed me to flex my hours to head out into the world during business hours? What if I didn’t have a car?
When we talk about education, we talk about a lot about teachers and funding for schools and standardized tests and we should do those things. We should think about the systems we have. But we should also be thinking about the other opportunities students could have.
The song of the day today was used as part of the soundtrack in a web series produced by Team StarKid while they were in college. They’ve made other things like A Very Potter Musical (and Sequel and Senior Year) and Starship and Holy Musical B@man and Twisted and you might recognize Darren Criss from Glee. They’ve been able to keep on making wonderful and funny things and they make them well.
But you know that they had opportunities in elementary school, middle school, high school, that they got help applying to college, that they’ve had support and love. You know there were dozens of registrations and trips to lessons and performances. And for kids who want to do sports, there are endless rec leagues and school events. In high school, there are clubs and organizations to show that you have leadership skills and puff up your resumes and applications.
There’s plenty of potential in our kids. And those with drive and desire are going to throw their time and effort at opportunities. But we need to think about who we’re excluding by default and the grace we can extend to those who try.
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