Postcard from the Principal’s Office: #5
It’s no day off, kids.
First, a personal note: If ever there was going to be a time where one couldn’t get a more polar opposite embodiment of opposing character and values, I give you Monday, January 20, 2025: the day our nation honor’s the legacy of one of its greatest Americans, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., juxtaposed with the nation’s first ever convicted felon being inaugurated into office. Is anyone else aware that MLK, Jr. would be designated an enemy of the state by this hate-filled felon? (Check out below who signed into law this federal holiday! Do you even know before you look? That’s called irony.)
I wish it were some twisted Hollywood script from a horror movie. But not even Hollywood makes up such horror as this. ‘Cuz this ain’t no movie.
I digress. Majorly.
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
From “I Have a Dream” speech, August 28, 1963
Today’s post I meant to serve as a follow up to the “last minute” post on Tuesday of this week regarding my support of “Small Stands Tall.” But then I remembered what Monday is, and who we honor on that day, and the fact it’s rightfully become a national holiday such that there is no school on that day. I wanted to send a Principal Postcard ahead of MLK Jr. Day for an important reason—schools and teachers have an important opportunity ahead of this holiday, but they often miss it.
It’s NOT a day off of school, kids!
Signed into law in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King Day was first recognized as a federal holiday in 1986. In 1994, Congress designated Martin Luther King Day as a national day of service, noting it was a “day on, not a day off.” In 2009, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama launched United We Serve. This initiative reaffirms the call to service to “create a sustained, collaborative, and focused effort to meet community needs.” Reminding citizens that “injustice remains in many corners of our country” and that “it is our mission to fulfill King’s vision of a Nation devoted to rejecting bigotry in all its forms,” the holiday inspired numerous projects nationwide. This National Day of Service has inspired numerous projects, as citizens volunteer at soup kitchens, Veterans Affairs offices, and local schools.
(Huffington Post)
When I was principal, I challenged my students to see MLK Jr. Day not as a day off, but a day on! And I directed my staff to insure to use time leading up to this important day as a means of doing some teaching that had the potential to have even more lasting impact than the normal routines of reading, writing, and math.
“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.”
From Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967
It always felt more than a little odd to hype or celebrate any time off from school, even the summer months. Because schools need to be seen as safe and nurturing sanctuaries of whole-child health, wellness, healing, learning, and development, I preferred the adults who worked in my schools to always portray a sense of sadness that we wouldn’t be together during our time off so that kids would come to believe the thing we wanted most was to be in school with them. Every child needs to believe that. I knew we as teachers were doing the work we were meant to do when students would get sad, even actually cry, when school came to an end or there was a long break. Students need to love school and the adults who dedicate their lives to serving in them. A day off from school isn’t necessarily something to ever celebrate.
I felt the same way about Veteran’s Day in November and Memorial Day in May. And even though I retired from school before the first honoring of Juneteenth (if school is still in session with summer break still ahead, June 19th is now also a “day off” from school given its recent designation as a federal holiday), I would have felt exactly the same.
To best honor the day, the reason for the holiday, I felt it was important to impress upon our students that having a day away from school meant that it should become a day of service to either learn more about the history of the day, or provide some service back to the community to make it better than it was. We gave students many ideas; we gave them time in classes to come up with their own ideas and commitments; and when school commenced after the break, we talked about what they did and how they felt about what they did to remember the reason for the day off. We also insured our students’ parents knew how we were prepping our kids for the day—and to try to support them with either more ideas of their own, or time and effort to help their child fulfill their ideas and commitments in service to either the family (do the dishes, the laundry, clean their rooms, vacuum, etc.), or the neighborhood (pick up litter, weed common spaces, sweep drives, rake leaves, wash cars, etc.).
I felt we had both a moral and civic duty, as government-funded public education institutions (but more as examples of moral and ethical leaders), to promote civic responsibility in such ways. I don’t believe most schools or districts stress this enough by championing such acts of selfless service. Now, I am fully aware our actualized influence stops at our doors as students leave; what happens at home, away from school, will always be what happens away from school. That being said, we teachers have more influence than we know, and we take that for granted at times. Still, I knew many students were simply going to sleep in, play video games, and watch movies most of day. That makes me sad for the opportunity lost—the opportunity to support the budding growth of what I fear is becoming a lost relic from the past, what once was a source of great pride for most Americans: civic duty in the guise of time spent in service to something greater than oneself.
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
From his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1964
We teachers could keep the embers of civic duty and responsibility alive. But it means we tell our students, in all sincerity, they don’t have the day off. “Sure, you’re not going to be at school (unless you come to pick up litter on campus or in the neighborhood), but you must still learn and give and serve. And we’ll be excited to learn how you spent your time when you had time away from school. And if you served it well, we know, too, you’ll be excited to share it with us!”
(Special kudos to the school leaders who champion, promote, and lead a community service project that actually brings students together to serve—think: neighborhood park cleanup; or school campus gardening.)
For the record, Monday Jan. 20 is a DAY ON for me still. I intend to serve my community by picking up litter that has been strewn about at various stretches along one of the paths I walk (it’s become unsightly and even ugly—so it’s time to step up and serve again. Having pride in place, to care for and nurture beauty, is a grand level of service for the entire community—so no one dare tells me they can’t think of any way to serve!). I will make a point of greeting, with kindness, and a smile and wave, every passerby I cross paths with. And at 12 noon EST, because there is nothing else of interest happening for me in which to be investing my valuable time, I will be re-reading one of this Nation’s most sacred documents: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
From “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963
If you happen to not have to “go into the office” on Monday, may you, too, enjoy your day on! And if you will be with kids, or can be with kids, invite them to do the same.
Together, we’ll come back together.
~ kert
🙏🏼
PS: Today’s Bag of Mittens shout out goes to a writer, a man, I find difficult to characterize but so profound in his street-wise wisdom and common sense. Substack is place where most writers can be easily characterized—though each unique, most are genuine and open-hearted individuals who are passionate about sharing experiences from their own unique journeys through life. This is especially true of the “SmallStack” group of writers who do not “enjoy”(?) a level of celebrity. Some defy characterization. And rare is the writer who has defined his/her own space that no one else could possible inhabit.
Enter
! From the very first thing I read of his, he had me. His is a true mixture of common sense; imagination; sageness; wisdom; laugh-at-the-absurdity-of-it-all practicality; creativity; and no bullshit, straight at ya, take-it-or-leave-it-but-you-can’t-deny-it, TRUTH!If you haven’t come across his muses, buckle up ‘cuz you are in for both a ride and a treat. I’ve linked a recent post below that is very indicative of Pimp’s style. Not just his writing style, but you get a bonus sighting of the man himself…in full style mode! I look forward to every post of his.
I've never read Letters from Birmingham Jail but I'm going to now, Thank you for writing extensively on this, you're a good man and i am sure, an even better teacher♥️
I especially love the "Bag of Mittens" part, it's so beautiful - what you're doing here♥️
It’s hard to reconcile the foil of worlds Monday presents. To add to it, it is said the incoming president will raise the flag to ‘full mast’ rather than honor Jimmy Carter with the traditional ‘half mast’ flag. I’m still mulling over how to spend my time on Monday…(It will certainly not be by tuning in to the inauguration.)