COE at BOE

A number of us at PSS will gather today at Dandan Elementary School, and for eight days, review and refine once more the Standard-Based Assessment program of the public school system. Jacqui Quitugua, I was told, will lead the process and if past events are any indication, we will have an agenda, a clear picture of products, schedule, and roles, and the overarching rationale of why we would want to take our heaven-sent extra vacation time to hassle academic issues indoors when Mother Nature in all its splendor beckons outdoors.

(The cynical among us would see the eight days as nothing but charity offering of substitute teacher’s pay rate to pacify the troops, or more practically, to keep pace with the gas station and CUC.)

Some who followed my stream of consciousness musings this summer on this page will recall that I covered quite a geographical expanse since school was let out in June. I visited family and friends in Hawaii, the Midwest, the West Coast, China and the Philippines. This peripatetic pedagogue has enough material to do a doctoral thesis but that would be an overkill since my 6th grade social studies students only need master images of the 6,000 year journey of human civilization since Sargon of Mesopotamia started an empire-building tradition that has so far culminated with GWB and his preoccupation with Armageddon!

I did go off island shortly after I heard that BOE strongly encouraged the retirement of our gentle and genial COE, David Borja. I had an issue with HR about benefits accruing to my teaching certification arbitrarily denied by a BOE decision, and managed to catch Dr. Borja at the end of the day on the phone. Perhaps, in exasperation from the pressures of his office, he finally blurted out that his “hands were tied.” My knee-jerk response was tempered through the street-smart language of west-Southside Chicago that in effect would convey the image: If you don’t piss, get off the pot! Happily, I recovered my cool and the sentiment never quite found itself expressed in words.

That David chose to be quiet about the surrounding circumstances of his forced retirement speaks more about the refinement of his chosen style; unfortunately, it does not shed light much on the nature of the working relationship between the COE office and the process adhered to by BOE, other than the autocratic pronouncement that the COE functions at the pleasure of the Board!

While working as a trainer for Jeremy Harris’ WIA-funded WorkHawaii in Honolulu, I wanted to make sure that our curriculum was expansive of the wide spectrum between maintenance training and innovative learning. To train welfare recipients to be productive units in the workforce, they needed not only the skills and discipline of existing work stations, but also needed to learn how to access the native creativity and intuition to adopt and survive ever shifting situations. I use the same perspective in preparing my classroom curriculum. It might be helpful to use the same in viewing the whole PSS process in all its programs, particularly as the nature of labor and the requirements of the workforce have radically changed in the shift to information technology in our time. Professional development could very well use it as a checklist: which offerings are mostly maintenance training and which sessions target innovative learning.

Back to the COE. With all the acting roles performed at PSS in the last three years, it is very clear that a system is in place that will run regardless of who has his/her hands on the helm. We may just have a rickety tugboat rather than a nuclear-powered carrier, but something is afloat and it sails on its own inertia and momentum. Maybe we can begin imaging a new era of sophisticated sailboats gunning our curriculum designs and directions, appropriating the native navigational skills of our proa-driving ancestors with the refinement of the sateen sails of our Indo-Sino-Malay-Aryan additions to the Pacific cultural and genetic mix.

The rotating COE assignment post-David of school principals is an example of the resiliency of the system in place. Witness the stamina of the perpetually dying Guam School System and you get a picture of what I mean. Of course, if we could decide to move beyond the curriculum programming by grant opportunism and compliance that we currently practice, and the rituals of accreditation rigmarole and fiction writing that each local school go through per assessment cycle, then maybe the COE office may provide enough challenge to a creative soul who might just have the right balance of a visionary, a social prophet, and a competent politician to not only move the system along, but also occasion a leap of faith forward to relevant regions heretofore uncharted and unknown.

I posed that challenge to BOE member Galvin Deleon Guerrero early this summer at a greasy spoon luncheonette in San Francisco while our Mt. Carmel Principal completed the requirements of his master’s program in the city by the Bay. For those of us who fancy ourselves trading in the currency of miracles, I was hoping that Galvin would accelerate into warp speed and steer the PSS into warp zones of gain and glory. Suffice to say that we found the lunch a little bit too rich for our ta tutsi (protruding midsections in Putunghua), and we parted as colleagues and friends. Galvin’s name is not on Lucy Maratita-Blanco’s shortlist and will not be on it regardless of how many novenas and Gregorian chants I could muster before BOE’s August cutoff day for a decision.

On the shortlist are Ambrose Bennett and Rita Sablan. Ambrose may be a clown (even unintentionally, sometimes) but he is no fool. He is lucid enough to know that since BOE operates on its druthers, even Pope Benedict XVI could not sway the Marianas winds in his direction. I trust that he will, however, push for the objective measures used by the Board to arrive at its decision so that assessment standards would be in place to measure performance. (After all, we SBA our students, and PRAXIS our teachers! It is only fair that we have standard measures to assess our COEs.) If he sticks with the standards and assessment issue, I will read his letter to the editor and he may even be allowed to play the race card, Obama notwithstanding!

Patiently waiting on the wings is our litigious bride, Ms. Rita Sablan. Last Friday’s BOE meeting did not result in a nuptial schedule.

PSS can be on autopilot and it will float, aimlessly perhaps, but afloat nonetheless. Craig Harrison’s lyrical paean to the Heroes of Education, however, points to a movement toward audacious hope within the system waiting to be intentionalized. There is the reality of the power of concerted efforts, the synergy that results from group solidarity and consensus. The teachers remain a potential waiting to come to its own. The yin-yang of interest may just be harnessed for cooperation, collaboration and courage to care. Perhaps, this is the time, and we are the people!

My two eldest daughters made me a grandpa three times the last three years, and both asked me this last trip why I was returning to Saipan, and why I did not just move closer for the sake of the family. In Harry Blalock’s aired take on why people leave or stay on island, I may not have yet reached the “turning point.” All things being equal, CUC notwithstanding, the island’s allure and challenge resonate in my professional career.

I met a former student stacking canned tuna at Joeten yesterday, a part of WIA’s summer training program. This is maintenance training in my book. I trust that my student’s supervisors at Joeten have an eye on his innovative learning, as well.

And oh, welcome back Rita! SBA crowd, let’s get some work done!