Author: Bekah McNeel

The McNeels Choose a School, part seven: My very favorite school.

February 11, 2019 No Comments

So, there’s a dark horse contender in our school search. It’s only a dark horse because it’s outside of our school district, and quite frankly, an SAISD family fleeing to Northside is about the oldest trope in the San Antonio conversation.

Though the school I’m about to write on is a Title I school, with a higher rate of economic disadvantage than the diverse by design schools to which we are currently applying. So it’s not classic white flight in that sense. But, after discussion with my very principled husband, I’m still 99 percent certain we’re going to invest our attendance where our tax dollars go (so the district can actually get those tax dollars).

However, indulge me for a moment while I share my love of Colonies North Elementary, the school that transcends districts, cities, and countries.

Anyone who has ever “picked my brain” about schools knows that I have loved Colonies North Elementary for a very long time. From the first time I read the press release for their yearly Parade of Nations. And immediately began reporting for this story.

Colonies North educates many, maybe most?, of the elementary-age refugee children resettled by the U.S. Government through Catholic Charities here in San Antonio. It varies year-to-year but the school usually has over 40 different countries represented, and over 30 different languages spoken across the student body of 700ish (give or take 50).

The newcomers, as they are called, are integrated into the “regular” classrooms as soon as they are able, beginning with one or two classes, until they are able to fully integrate.

For some, this is a quick process. They come with some English already, thanks to formal education or professional parents who are fleeing relatively recent outbreaks of violence or threats against the family. Some of the parents were U.S. contractors in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Others take more time to adjust to formal schooling. When students have grown up in refugee camps, such as the Rohingya students or those whose parents fled the Democratic Republic of Congo, they have a steeper learning curve. They spend longer in the newcomer classrooms, like the one where Sarah Aguirre taught for years. Aguirre is now at UTSA working in the Center for Inquiry of Transformative Literacies, another partner of the newcomer program.

She’s still, however, a Colonies North parent.

“I had no idea that one day I would work (at Colonies North),” Aguirre said, however, “We did purposely buy our home with the intention of going to that school.”

Like us, Aguirre’s family prioritizes diversity. Not only for the feel-goods, or even just the “raising good humans” aspect of it, though that is a huge part. She sees comfort with diversity as a huge advantage to her kids who will likely work in a globalized market.

While one of the goals of the newcomer program is to help the students learn to function in the U.S.—families are given six months to settle in, students are given two years of newcomer services in the schools—Colonies North is not about the business of erasing what came before.

DanCee Bowers supports the school’s celebration of students’ home cultures. If people took time to appreciate them, she believes, the anxiety around assimilation would ease.

“We’re only comfortable with people who come here if they’re going to do what we do,” Bowers said, and we’re missing out.

She would know. Colonies North had a profound impact on Bowers own worldview.

Bowers went to Colonies North as a child herself, when it was primarily white and suburban. As the daughter of a single mom in the 1970s she found camaraderie with the school’s one black student. They were unlike the others. That was what diversity meant to her, and she went on thinking of herself as “open-minded,” she said.

Bowers served in the military, stationed in the Middle East. Again, she never thought of herself as racist, but when she came back to the neighborhood where she grew up, she encountered a woman in a full burqa. Her reaction, she admits, was not what she wished it had been.

“I hadn’t realized how much the neighborhood had changed,” Bowers said.

Her military experience had given her particular kinds of exposure to some aspects of some Muslim cultures, but she wasn’t prepared to have those same cultures in her neighborhood.

“It’s hard to say it,” Bowers said, “I have a lot of shame about that.”

Bowers inherited her mom’s old house, and enrolled her kids in Colonies North. There again she was confronted with this new, intensified diversity. Some parents balked. The attendance zone for Colonies North has been heavily harvested by private and charter schools.

Bowers didn’t see a better choice for her kids, so she dove in. She got to know the newcomers and their families, started volunteering and serving the school however she could. Once she educated herself, she said, her fear of the Other dissolved. She wishes other parents, those who leave the school over their discomfort, would do the same.

Of course, a school needs a few things in addition to social strengths. Colonies North PTA president Kathy Mochel wasn’t necessarily looking for the United Nations of elementary schools.

“I really did push for private school because I wanted that warm cozy small environment,” Mochel said. Her husband convinced her to try the neighborhood school, and she found exactly that. Small classes, tight knit community, and tons of support. For her, the cultural education is a bonus. Also, no homework.

Bowers, Mochel, and Aguirre all said their students benefitted from the differentiated instruction they get at Colonies North. They have kids who are driven to excel and kids who are looking to coast. Each, they said, has been well served. Teachers are trained to meeting each kid where they are academically, so the newcomers can be just another kid in class.

The moms I spoke to all heard rumors of the English language learners “diluting” the instruction in classes, but none have seen it.

While reporting on a different story, I’ve been keeping an eye on Facebook groups for parents at a variety of San Antonio area schools. Inclusion of English language learners and students requiring special education accommodations really irks parents.

Which, in turn, irks me. And brings us to today’s soapbox. You’ve been warned.

Nothing makes middle class parents throw off our thin veneer of tolerance like the vague suspicion that our children are being inconvenienced at any point during their school day. It interferes with the competitive grooming and sheltering from any struggle that might accidentally result in emotional growth. As though our children are show ponies getting ready to prance around the ring in front of Ivy league admissions officers when we all know they are just going to come home and use our professional networks to get a job anyway. Give me a break. You can keep your anxiety and neuroses, and the sense of abandonment children sense when they feel like their acceptance is tied to their performance.

I’m going to try to find a better option.

And that’s why I’m bullish about Colonies North. Because you can’t create a special curriculum that’s better than the peer effect, and Colonies North has the most unique peer effect in the city. Nothing will serve my children better than resilience, and that’s what they’ll learn from sitting in class with refugees. And if you want to talk about values…those are my secular values. Radical hospitality, patience, empathy, cultural and personal humility, and grace. I’m sort of gobsmacked that other parents would pass up this opportunity, but enough are willing to do so that Colonies North has become the overflow campus for Northside. Classes there are allowed to stay small so that they can receive overflow students throughout the year.

Which may open up the door for the McNeels. Again, I’m *pretty sure* we’re staying with SAISD on principle, but if this were an option in our district, it would be my first choice.

What Got Cut: Johanna’s and Stephanie’s stories

February 4, 2019 No Comments

Late last year I got the chance to report on working families trying to be involved in their children’s education. The story, published by the Center for Public Justice, can be read here.

Because of the length of the piece, the editors decided to cut two stories, which I have included below. They offer insight into just how difficult it can be to be a “working poor” parent, and how having primary parents in management positions could be a huge benefit to workers.

Sarah Hernandez (no relation to Johanna, her kids, and their friends.

Johanna Hernandez’s Story

When one parent feels like they are unable to ask for time off, it creates tension within the family, said Johanna Hernandez. That was one of the key factors that led to her divorce when her son, now 11, was three years old.

Before the divorce, she often volunteered at her son’s daycare in San Antonio. After the divorce they hired her, but because she was not credentialed, she could only work as an aid. She knew that to support herself and her son she needed a college degree, and so began taking classes to get her early childhood credentials, and working other jobs as well. Her life as a single mom was a difficult, but stable balance, but then in kindergarten her son began to be bullied. She had to devote more time to working with the school.

“As a parent, you are your child’s first advocate,” she said.

As she addressed his emotional distress, she kept him close by, sometimes taking him with her to school or work.

“The jobs I’ve had, I’ve been lucky, they’ve always worked with me,” Johanna Hernandez said. But she’s clear about the fact that it’s on the employee to speak up. “The parent has to be real.”

Even with employers who were willing to work with her, she had to take significant time off. Money became tighter, and they had to rely on the food bank and other community resource centers.

“Through the rough times, it was like, how’re we going to eat?” she remembers, “It was tough, believe me it was tough.”

While her time with her son increased during that season of his additional need, she wasn’t doing all the things the school suggested as “parent engagement.”

“Sometimes we think parents are lazy…but they’re not,” she said, “It’s work.”

Employers Can Help: Stephanie Ilderton

With each new job, workers have to learn a new set of policies about leave, paid-time-off, and flexible scheduling. For contract, shift, part-time, and hourly workers, as well as those in support roles with multiple layers of management above them, those policies are not always easy to find—sometimes they are informal. Sometimes they are subject to interpretation by a manager or supervisor, and then re-interpreted by that person’s superior.

Sarah Hernandez’s (no relation to Johanna) law firm recently announced a new flexible leave policy that allows workers to accumulate additional time off. The firm’s website, like the website for the public utility where America Espinoza works, lists the many work-life balance benefits. However, researchers have found that most companies with such benefits typically only extend them to executives, or certain tiers of management

Even if the benefits are available to lower-wage workers, says Stephanie Ilderton, an executive with Marsh, a global risk management firm, executives set the expectation on how those benefits should be used. She has two small children herself, and is open about her needs to work from home and take time off when her kids get sick or otherwise need her attention.

She’s been in jobs where using time off benefits was frowned upon, if technically allowed. She remembers fearing that using personal time would be secretly counted against her when it came time for a promotion.

With that in mind, Ilderton takes her responsibility as a manager seriously. She isn’t just responsible for the work her team produces, she said, but for making sure that they have a humane work environment. That depends more on her attitude than on the fine print of company policies, she said.

“I try to be human,” she said, and to pass that freedom on to those she manages. Knowing the tension working parents face, Ilderton believes that it’s in the best interest of any company to help parents balance their time–to be up front about available benefits, FMLA rights, and other resources. If it’s not codified, she said, it’s less likely to permeate company culture. That puts workers in a constant push-and-pull between their family needs and their work life.

She can’t change the standards of human resources policy in America’s workplaces, but adopting two children gave Ilderton the opportunity to demonstrate how she thinks the family-work balance should tip, if companies want to keep talent.

“Personal always has to win or they’re not going to work for us much longer,” Ilderton said.

Of course, Ilderton acknowledged, keeping talent is less imperative in some industries. With the rise of the gig economy and increases in part time jobs within the national workforce, fewer employers have to worry about the long-term health of their workforce.

More metal detectors and less STAAR seemed like a good idea at the time

January 31, 2019 No Comments

The 2019 legislative session is off and running, with new leadership cut from old cloth at the helm in the House of Representatives and no bathroom bill on the agenda.

Promising signs range from stryofoam cups embossed with the message “School Finance Reform: The time is now” to a speaker pro tem wearing a Notorious B.I.G. tie at his swearing-in.

Not that all signs are good. We’ve already seen a strong effort to disassociate poverty and standardized test scores, and age-old trick to try to prove that funding makes no difference in education.

In addition to the serious buzz around school finance reform, we’ve also seen a wave other education-related bills filed. Two so far address major concerns of ordinary parents—those who mainly experience the school system via their children, rather than think tanks, policy analysts, and budget reviews.

HB 797 filed by Shawn Thiery (D-Aleif) would put metal detectors in every single public school facility.

HB 736 filed by Brooks Landgraf (R- Odessa) would lower the stakes of the STAAR test.

On the surface, both of these simple, seemingly common sense bills draw a near-universal, “yay.” Safe kids who are less stressed out about a single test that determines whether or not they advance to the next grade.

However, sweeping bills like these should be thoughtfully considered. They often come with unintended consequences.

Metal detectors won renewed attention in the wake of the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, but they’ve been a fixture in some schools for decades. Those schools, as you can predict, are not suburban, wealthy schools. They are schools in urban areas, where many kids live in poverty and where gangs are highly visible. These schools are disproportionately attended by children of color.

Thiery’s district includes Alief ISD which fits that description pretty well. Gang activity and incidents of violence are high. The white population is small. It isn’t in the heart of urban Houston by any means, but represents the sprawl-meets-gentrification phenomenon of increasing poverty in what were once suburbs.

In 2017-2018 the district reported more incidents of gang activity in school than did neighboring Houston ISD, despite the latter being 4.5 times the size of Alief.

Mass school shootings, however, seem to be a uniquely non-urban phenomenon, hence, I suppose, the metal detector bill being extended to all schools and stadiums. All. Charters too.

The question to be asked, however, is whether metal detectors have been effective at preventing either kind of violence—mass shootings or person-to-person violence.

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that we don’t know.

So far all school shootings have begun outside the school building, so there’s no indication that metal detectors would have prevented anything.

The American School Health Association conducted 15 years of research on whether metal detectors decreased school violence in any way. They could not show that violence decreased. Their report suggested that it did make students feel like their school was a dangerous place to be.

Which reminds me of Maddisyn, the junior at South San High School who told me that gang members were the most stressed out people she knows. She also told me that the increased police presence in South San ISD—a response to the Newtown mass shooting—made students feel as though their fellow students were a constant threat, and even that they themselves were somehow in need of policing.

Basically, when you fill a person’s world with danger cues, they respond to danger cues. If those danger cues—like seatbelts, Caution tape, and bicycle helmets—are making them more safe, then we consider that appropriate safety education. There’s a danger, and our precautions remind us to be careful. They should have the appropriate adrenal response to the situation—increased alertness, circumspection, etc.

However, if the danger cues are not actually keeping them safer…what’s the point? To have them living in a state of constant adrenal stimulation?

And how much would we pay to make schools, stadiums, and other public school facilities feel less safe?

At $4,000-$5,000 per metal detector, we’re looking at at least $40 million to put one machine in each school. But to make that math work, you also have to subscribe to the Dan Patrick one-entry-one-exit solution to school shootings. It would take about an hour to get into the school building. Even airports have more than one detector, and not all planes take off at once.

So really we’d need a ton more. I’m not usually a budget hawk, but I don’t like paying for things that are counterproductive.

Speaking of that, we are paying for STAAR tests. The state pays $90 million to Educational Testing Services. I have never heard anyone say anything positive about STAAR tests. No teacher, administrator, parent, or student.

With that in mind, Landgraf’s declawing of the STAAR test makes a ton of sense. Pre-No Child Left Behind, we had standardized tests…we just didn’t worry about them. A note went home saying, “eat a big breakfast! The test is long.” And that was it. Far far cry from the madness we currently have.

So, as Texas House of Representatives Public Education chair Dan Huberty asked Commissioner Mike Morath…can’t we just get rid of STAAR altogether?

Only if we want to get rid of accountability and federal funds altogether, Morath replied (that’s a broad paraphrase.)

I think we all agree that a more well-rounded evaluation mechanism would be ideal. The Every Student Succeeds Act (which is tied to our federal funding) gave states the chance to consider other criteria than test scores…Texas has a number of outcome-based components to its ESSA plan, as well as a consideration of discipline data. But very little in the qualitative categories.

There’s not much of that high-touch, observation-based assessment in Texas’s ESSA plan at all. Probably because there are 5 million children, 9,000 schools, and 1,200 districts in the state.

But that’s really what people instinctively want. They want their kids to be evaluated by someone who knows them. So why not just leave it up to teachers?

And we all understand why teachers and even district administrators can’t be the only ones responsible for determining whether their kids progress to the next level…right?

Making a child’s mastery of a topic subjective to his teacher’s assessment is the recipe for inequity. Think discipline statistics and G/T referrals, both of which overwhelmingly favor highly verbal white girls from professional homes. There will always be borderline kids for whom their relationship with their teacher will be a determining factor to their success unless there’s an agnostic evaluation tool. Implicit bias is real, even with the best of intentions.

Districts can’t be the last word on assessment, because regional politics and economics also make it possible that kids in one region might not be held to the same standards as kids from another. But if kids from San Augustine and going to compete against kids from Highland Park for admission to UT-Austin, they’re going to need to be held to the same standards from day one.

Educators are awesome—anyone who chooses to spend all day trying to fill young minds and hearts is a hero— but they also need accountability to make sure that their skills match their good intentions. That’s nothing to run from. Every profession should embrace evaluation, whether it’s by an industry standards board or consumer feedback or sales conversion rates. The question is, are we using the right evaluation tool?

Probably not, but before we go scrapping it, we need to consider what could and should take its place to better accomplish its goals.

And that, dear reader, is the challenge before all of us watching bills pop up into the headlines as the Legislature progresses. Education, when done equitably, is complicated, and our gut reactions to things should always be balanced by the boring, wonky, details, and the question, “who might we hurt?”

For those who teach undocumented students, Julissa Arce has some advice.

January 27, 2019 No Comments

Teachers in high-poverty schools know that students don’t leave their hunger, sleepiness, and anxiety at the door. We’re *almost* to the point as a nation where we can all agree on that. But for some students, not just those living in poverty, but many working class and middle class students, another quiet anxiety nags at them, and it’s one that teachers are rarely trained to address.

Some students are afraid of being deported.

Or they are afraid that their parents will be deported during the school day.

And many of them are afraid to talk about it.

That’s what Relay Graduate School of Education students learned on Saturday when Julissa Arce spoke to around 100 members of the San Antonio cohort.

Arce’s story of her life as an undocumented immigrant is the subject of her two books, My Underground American Dream and Someone Like Me. After graduating high school in San Antonio and college at UT- Austin, Arce went on to work on Wall Street. She was making six figures with a fake Social Security Number (something she is quick to admit is not advisable. But before you cry “fraud” please not that this only allowed her to pay INTO Social Security, not to collect. Undocumented immigrants using fake SSN pay about $9 billion annually in payroll taxes, including SS.) and sweating every single day until she obtained her green card, and finally her citizenship in 2014. She has become an advocate for both DACA recipients and those who lack documentation entirely. Her talk at Relay helped the teachers gain insight into what their students without legal status— or those with family members lacking legal status— might be going through.

They don’t get to see themselves reflected in pop culture or national role models.

Arce moved to the U.S. when she was 11, and until then used pop culture to imagine what Americans would be like, or what life in the U.S. was like.

“Everybody looked the same. Everyone was beautiful. Everyone was rich. Everyone was white,” she said, recalling shows like “Beverly Hills 90210.”

While she was relieved to see that tons of people in San Antonio looked like her, she said, she still rarely saw Latinas celebrated in history books or news stories.

She explained this against a backdrop of photos of Latina trailblazers—Sonya Sotomayor, Ellen Ochoa, Dolores Huerta, and more. These were women who she never learned about in school, even in San Antonio where so many students would benefit from seeing Latinas in influential and aspirational positions.

Muslim, South East Asian, and immigrants from African countries are likely to experience a similar void.

Teachers can do a lot to make sure that curriculum includes relevant examples. For instance, Civil Rights lessons should include Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. When they learn about the space race, students should know which astronauts came from backgrounds similar to their own—literally an encouragement to “reach for the stars.” When a member of the student’s community is elected to public office, it’s worth mentioning. Classroom books and cultural artifacts can be curated to reflect the diversity of a classroom as well, if it is done humbly and accurately (i.e. get your African geography right.)

They do see themselves portrayed as criminals, or as less intelligent.

Arce was 14 when her visa expired, and her family was no longer in the financial position to be able to renew it. She learned she in the country illegally when her mom explained why she could not go back to Mexico for her quinceañera.

It wasn’t long after that, she recounted, that she heard the term “illegal alien” on Fox News. It took her a long time to reconcile with the part of her identity that was outside the law. She was not a criminal, because she had not entered the country illegally. But few people understand the nuances of visas, green cards, permits, and residency status. Overstaying a visa is a civil infraction, which is how roughly 40 percent of undocumented people become undocumented, not a crime.

However, the broad brush of political rhetoric makes no such distinctions. In the minds of many, she knew she was a criminal.

To make matters worse, the perception that she was somehow less intelligent as she learned to speak English made her feel doubly stigmatized.

Teachers can do a lot to help students understand the immigration system and increase respect for English Language Learners. When their peers admire their bilingual talents and know the right terminology to talk about immigration as a topic, students facing these hurdles feel that they are doing so in a friendly, non-hostile environment…even if their immigration status remains a secret.

They often feel out of place in both countries—their home and their country of origin.

One of the Relay GSE students asked Arce how she felt as an American citizen. Did she feel fully American? Did she identify with Mexico still in any way?

It brought up a tricky topic, Arce explained, “The lifetime struggle of an immigrant is wanting to be in two places at once and never being fully accepted in either.”

In one sense, having legal status isn’t what makes her American, she said, “I’ve been pledging allegiance to the American flag since my first day of school (here).”

Having lived with and without all the check boxes and language skills she now has, she doesn’t believe that she is any more American now than she was at age 14 when her documents lapsed.

On the other hand, those years of being undocumented showed her the ways in which she would never be totally or singularly American. She had a life in Mexico before she came here, and while she doesn’t feel like she totally belongs there either, she wants to feel connected to it. The first thing she did once she could travel freely in and out of the U.S. was to visit her home in Mexico.

Teachers need to know that their immigrant students are whole people. Pushing an assimilationist agenda without any cultural understanding is likely to traumatize students, because it devalues critical influences of their most formative years. A ten-year-old who immigrates will be 21 years old before the majority of her life has been on U.S. soil. Teachers can celebrate a student’s home culture by asking him or her to share customs and traditions…if the child wants to. They can welcome examples from a child’s home culture, and champion a bilingual child’s continued development of their native language. As the closest adult outside a student’s family, teachers often represent the entire U.S. to their immigrant students. They can make it a welcoming place where students do not need to diminish themselves to fit in.

They are living a life they did not choose and cannot change on their own.

It is understandably irritating when people ask Arce why she didn’t just “get in line” and fix her immigration status. (No one at Relay GSE asked her that. She just mentioned it as part of her story.) The line, she explained, doesn’t exist. Think of it less like jumping off the diving board and more like playing a game of Jeopardy! There are categories and criteria that applicants must satisfy. There are time limits. Once a person’s documentation has lapsed for a year, they become subject to penalties that make it even harder to get legal status. They loose access to public benefits. They become subject to deportation without their families.

“No one would choose to be undocumented if they had another possibility,” Arce said.

For children, or those whose documents expired while they were still minors, many come into adulthood without options. That’s why DACA was such a big deal. It wasn’t an option for people with other options. It was a lifeline for people who had none.

Teachers are a mixed political breed. It would be foolish to assume that all teachers have a sympathetic and informed view of immigrants whose documents have lapsed, or those who never had legal status. Some empathy-training may be necessary. (Though, to be fair, no one in the room at Relay GSE voiced anything less than support for their students.)

Poverty makes being undocumented more difficult.

Arce is very forthright about what she calls “privilege” and, frankly, luck, in her immigration story. The lucky moments are best read in the context of the book. But the privilege component is something teachers needed to hear.

After legally immigrating as business owners, Arce’s parents fell on hard times. Without money, renewing their visa was impossible. The immigration process heavily favors those with financial means, Arce said.

“Money and access to money makes a huge difference,” she explained.

She was working for Goldman Sachs when she realized the two sides of her own coin.

On the one hand she said, “ICE isn’t going to raid the trading floor at Goldman Sachs.”

She could also buy things easily. Without legal status people cannot receive government benefits. No SNAP, Medicaid, or even ACA subsidies. It helps to be able to pay cash.

On the other hand, however, she had to turn down numerous career opportunities, and suffered personal losses because of her immigration status. She kept checking with an immigration lawyer to see if any laws or loopholes had opened up that would make it possible for her to gain documentation. Nothing did.

Her parents had told her that, in the United States, if she worked hard and stayed out of trouble, that everything would work out in her favor.

“The truth is that for many of us that formula just doesn’t work,” she said.

She did work hard. She did stay out of trouble. But none of that changed her immigration status.

In many ways, she survived because people didn’t question her—an overachieving vice president on Wall Street. For those who are doing whatever work they can to provide for their family, or those in states that make it harder for undocumented students to get a college education—the situation is more precarious.

Teachers, Arce explained, will often have to push their immigrant or undocumented students extra hard to take the risk of applying for a dream school. They will need extra help, because they have to jump through extra hoops. Going away from home will seem a little scarier, a little less realistic, and financially untenable. But Arce still remembers the name of the teacher who championed her. She encouraged teachers to be that champion.

The McNeels Choose a School, part six: What’s going to happen at Hawthorne? And why?

January 25, 2019 No Comments

Applications are in for our three choice schools. It was super easy. Everyone should do it.

While we applied, we were automatically registered for our neighborhood school, Hawthorne Academy. It’s a valid option. It’s the kind of school where our kids would be fine. We’d be fine. Everyone at Hawthorne is giving it their all, from what I hear. They just have a vision problem.

Unrealized potential is really frustrating. And where there’s frustration, there’s fighting. It’s one thing when the fight comes to you, it’s another thing to choose to go to the fight. With your kids in tow.

Allow me to explain.

When I first started writing about education in 2013, Hawthorne was a school that folks were watching. Located along the San Antonio River, adjacent to the hottest real estate in San Antonio (the Pearl), it was one of those schools poised to naturally grow its enrollment as a formerly semi-industrial neighborhood filled with people.

It was one of SAISD’s first in-district charters, focused on Core Knowledge, fine arts, and leadership. Librarian Bonnye Cavazos was the spark that brought in partnerships with neighborhoods, academics, museums, and more.

Ironically, in the same article wherein I profiled Hawthorne, I wrote about Lamar Elementary, which was similarly located in gentrifying Mahncke Park, with lots of museum partnerships, community involvement, etc.

I say “ironically” because the two seem to have switched places, six years later.

At the time, Lamar was fighting low enrollment. The middle class parents moving into the neighborhood eyed it somewhat suspiciously, though a healthy handful were investing time and energy into getting more resources, forging partnerships, etc.

Under the leadership of Brian Sparks, Lamar is quickly becoming one of the more beloved success stories of SAISD. Parent engagement is up with a strong effort to reach all socioeconomic groups, enrollment is up, partnerships are thriving, and the school’s identity is strong. It has ridden the wave of investment in the cultural institutions with whom it partners.

Not that Lamar is without its challenges, but I’m not going to get into those here.

Hawthorne, with the same leadership it had in 2013, seems to be stuck. Enrollment is declining. Parents are frustrated. The Core Knowledge curriculum seems to have faded away, while the rest of the charter is in jeopardy as it comes up for renewal this spring. The “leadership” component, it has been suggested, could come from “Leader in Me” curriculum, the same basic Stephen Covey product used all over other school districts and the Alamo Colleges. It’s exactly the kind of pre-packaged, mass market stuff that in-district charters are supposed to be avoiding.

Some parents at Hawthorne have put forth another idea. They would like to see Hawthorne embrace its place along the San Antonio River more fully, and to partner with civic institutions like San Antonio River Authority (SARA), The Tobin Center, The Culinary Institute of America, The Missions, the University of the Incarnate Word, and others to create a place-based curriculum. As a River School, students could feel connected to the city and see real life applications of what they learn in school. They could see science in action at SARA and the CIA, arts at the Tobin Center, history at the Missions. And they could connect to all of it via the same familiar route: the river.

That idea comes straight from parents whose children are and have been enrolled at Hawthorne for a while. They have been digitally walking around with a Word document asking people to read it.

Now, a few things I’ve learned about parent-led initiatives: Many are enrichment-focused, with little impact on academic subjects. Many are also niche interest projects that will live and die with the parents who champion them. Also, most, like the River School idea, are spearheaded by white, professional class parents. When that happens you have to look at who the idea actually benefits, and who actually wants to see it happen.

However, the River School idea may actually be different, because it’s built off of the existing charter, and has a wall-to-wall vision for the whole school. Not an after-school club, school within a school, or an elective. It would be a marshaling of resources for every child in the school, and bring many low-income kids into contact with powerful institutions, giving them a sense of ownership and belonging in their city.

From an equity standpoint, I like the River School idea.

SAISD has two in-house resources that could further develop this initial idea if parents and teachers wanted to do so.

First, they have access to the funding they would need to realize the more ambitious parts of the plan. Senate Bill 1882 would allow a partnership with any of those nonprofit entities (or an umbrella nonprofit formed by the City of San Antonio), to bring in extra per student funding. Unless something changes drastically in the Legislature this year, that will likely be around $1,400 per student more, which could fund supplemental activities and supplies and personnel needed to facilitate all the off-campus learning and on-campus professional development, hosting of partner organizations, etc.

Next, they can look to a similar model in Dallas ISD. While City Lab High School opened after Mohammed Choudhury left Dallas to become SAISD’s chief innovation officer, he was part of the design process. He knows what needs to happen to make sure students were academically on track while using the city as their classroom.

Of course, mention Choudhury’s name (or any member of Superintendent Pedro Martinez’s cabinet), and conspiracy theories start flying. Something about wanting to turn all SAISD schools into charter schools (because of Democracy Prep at Stewart), or funnel resources to the middle class (because of Diverse by Design schools)…I honestly can’t tell if the theories are misunderstandings, misinformation, or just a bad game of telephone.

But I’m not here to defend or skewer the guy. He knows how to design a school like this, it’s a design parents seem to want, and a design that’s having success somewhere comparable. CAST Tech does similar stuff, ALA does similar stuff. Hawthorne could take that “stuff” and make it something really distinctive and empowering for the kids, and I just hope that it wouldn’t be tripped up by people’s suspicions about how a bureaucrat feels about charter schools—which has nothing to do with the parents’ River School proposal. That would be a shame.

Hopefully, they won’t. The school has been given an extension on its charter revision, and hopefully they will use that time to summon their creative juices and come up with something that inspires the teachers, students, and parents. Hawthorne could very easily recapture its moxie. They’ve got all the ingredients, they just need the right recipe.

The McNeels Choose a School, Part Five: What’s in a neighborhood?

January 16, 2019 No Comments

When applying for SAISD’s choice programs, parents may choose three programs per child. While we started out with the ambitious goal of visiting about five schools before applying, by the time we visited our top three choices, we were pretty much set. Both kids are in the lottery for Steele Montessori. Moira went on the Kinder waitlist at the Advanced Learning Academy, and both kids are in the lottery for Mark Twain Dual Language Academy.

While Moira is an obvious candidate for dual language—she watched Frozen in Spanish the other day, and still quotes the few phrases she could understand—we don’t know yet how well Asa take to it. Moira was bilingual in French and English until she was two and a half, thanks to her caregiver (not her monolingual parents). She later picked up Portuguese from our Brazilian au pair, Jessica. Asa, who was home with Jessica all day, did not pick up as much. Moira loves all things verbal, including, I suppose, the Romance languages.

Of course, interest aside, there are tons of reasons to seek out bilingualism for children, especially in San Antonio, where speaking Spanish is a huge advantage socially and professionally.

Learning two languages is good for children’s brains as well, as evidenced by Moira’s early exposure and continuing ease picking up vocabulary.

At the Twain prospective parent night, the principal recalled funny examples of how students who learn Spanish from an adult speak Spanish with adult formality, whereas students who speak to other students in Spanish sound much more natural.

Of course, “sounding natural” is a happy outcome for families whose main goal is bilingual biculturalism. However, the academic value of their language skills will be determined by a standard assessment. How we assess students ultimately determines the value placed on each skill, and English is still the lingua academia of the American public school system. To be considered bilingual, an English speaking child has to know less Spanish than a Spanish speaking child has to know English. The stakes are higher for Spanish speakers picking up English.

Dual language, SAISD says, is the most effective way to achieve those ends for Spanish speakers, while allowing them to maintain and build on their native language—which is not a goal in traditional ESL. Dual language programs are supposed to be made up of a 50/50 mix of English and Spanish speakers. The children learn from each other, socialize in both languages, and learn their other subjects in both languages.

Twain is in high demand, as are all programs that promise bilingualism and biliteracy. Spanish in particular is super “hot right now.” In many places the demand for Spanish immersion programs comes a predictable pushing out of lower income students, some of whom are the very ones who would benefit most from learning in their native language, and celebrating a language they hear spoken by family members. SAISD’s rapid expansion of dual language programs—this year 45 campuses, nearly half of all SAISD schools, offer dual language services— and the Diverse by Design socioeconomic protections at Twain make it unlikely that middle class families will take up a majority of the district’s dual language seats in the immediate future.

For us, the main appeal of Twain is its location, which brings up a far more interesting point.

We live less than one mile from Twain, which puts it at the top of Lewis’s list. We could, in theory, walk our kids to school. Forgotten lunchboxes…emergency vomit calls…all significantly more convenient to remedy.

Twain is snuggled between Monte Vista, where the median home value is $499,000, and quickly re-gentrifying Alta Vista where median sale prices have gone up 33 percent in the past year.

If this whole choice process were only about curriculum, Irving Dual Language Academy should be in similar demand. Both are Diverse by Design schools. Both wall-to-wall dual language. Both are building the student body from the ground up with families who have specifically chosen that school.

However, Irving does not have the same student profile that Twain does. It’s student body skews poorer than the target 50/50, while Twain’s skews a bit wealthier. Twain has a waitlist a mile long—we’ve been told multiple times that despite living less than a mile away and applying with a three year old, that we have little chance of getting in. Our chances at Irving, given our socioeconomic status, would be better.

Irving is located in the heart of the West Side. The homes in Irving’s zip code, 78207, have a median value around $78,000. It is, in a way, a test case for the district to see if appealing instructional models can overcome class anxiety.

I recently drove the route between Twain and Irving, watching the neighborhood change around me. Sidewalks became spottier. Tree canopies thinned. All the signals of middle class economics changed to working class as I turned south on Zarzamora and west on Culebra. Thanks to years of reporting, I’m familiar and comfortable on the West Side, but I tried to take myself back to the first time I parked my car at the Lincoln Heights apartments. Would I have, in that frame of mind, been willing to leave my child in a place that I had been so conditioned to fear?

I don’t know.

It looks like SAISD administrations-past never anticipated such a question.

While the communities and instruction at Twain and Irving are similar, and similarly enthusiastic, their buildings bear signs of a different attitude, one that would have said a lot about what administration expected from these schools. One has windows, and a charming Hollywoodville school facade. The other, like Lanier High School and Bowden Elementary School, was built windowless, ostensibly for safety— a signal to parents that the neighborhood is something from which children must be protected. For now, one building signals “classic neighborhood school” the other signals “it’s 1973, and things have gotten out of control.”

I didn’t apply to Irving, and I don’t think it would have been somehow more virtuous for me to do so. I also do believe that many wealthier parents will embrace the school, as long as it serves students well. I just can’t help but notice the many ways in which our segregated city has left its imprints on our psyches–what we fear, what we want, and where we feel at home.

To my kids, on the seashore

August 14, 2018 No Comments

The beauty and energy of being four, and being certain of everything, and hungry for everything else.

The depth of being two, with emotions carving out subterranean chambers until they erupt, run down your face and cool into igneous beaches that will hollow into coves and gather soft sand over time.

This is our now. It is not easy, but it is pure life, and it is life-giving. It is humanity distilled to its essences – need, delight, energy, feeling, understanding.

These two small people- the four year old circus and her brother with moods like fog and lava- are exactly who I dreamed I would mother, and yet exposing every day how small my dreams were. How low was my bar for a full life. Fullness is not easy. Fullness is scary, like my daughter on a cliff, insisting she’ll needs to take just one more step toward the edge. Fullness is one more stop, even though it’s bedtime, because we may never be back.

Fullness comes with tears, of course. But I’ve learned that tears are not a sign of failure, not theirs and not mine. Tears mean we are growing, expanding our reach. Even though I know this, I still avoid them when I can, I’m incapable of drowning out the whining or the wails.

The ocean is a perfect mother. She drags her tides in and out, at regular intervals, morning, noon, evening, night. She never complains that the work continues, she only delivers a new smattering of simple treasures to be scavenged by insatiable collectors, like my own. She lulls them to sleep, and chases them from the beach when it’s time to go home.

I’m not the ocean.

I’m like the wind. All force and no regularity, leaving my family tousled and chasing their scattered paper goods. I’m always with a list or a task, always on to the next thing.

It’s nice to let the ocean be mother for a while, so that I can watch my children be nurtured by her. I am taskless here.

When we go away from our routine, I discover my children in their latest form. Not in the ways their newest angsts disrupt, derail, and splatter paint the day’s agenda. But in the ways they carve adventure across a landscape, and spread to fill the frame of every moment. The way each passing year adds to their capacity for rapture.

Review: One Movie, One Book, One Vacation, One Humanitarian Crisis

June 27, 2018 No Comments

Since it’s summer, it seems appropriate to recommend movies, books, and museums. Also, my name is Bekah, and if you think this is about the Incredibles, a mystery novel, or the McNay (ALL OF WHICH I LOVE!!!), you’re going to be super disappointed and probably mad. You’ve been warned.

Watching the events of the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering, what would Mister Rogers say about family separations? His concern was always with children—their wellbeing, their sense of self and security in a frightening world. Were he still with us, would PBS pull Fred Rogers out of retirement for a primetime PSA?

In the midst of all the chaos, we actually have a pretty good idea what Mister Rogers would say, because Morgan Neville has the direct quote, and a loads of other great documentary material packed into a 94 minute tearjerker, which is basically an instructional video on dealing with hostile politics and terrifying events.

In “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” journalist Susan Stamberg, recounts Rogers’s advice that children needed to feel protected by their parents. They need to believe that the adults in their life could and would protect them, he believed. For Stamberg, this was difficult advice to reconcile with her own sense of vulnerability and the limits of her personal power.

Every parent knows what she means. But now imagine the parents who could not give their child that security in their home country…and then found that, by crossing into the United States they traded physical danger for psychological damage. A clear and crappy choice if ever there was one.

The release of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” on June 8, meant that most of us were seeing the film as the family separations were beginning to explode in the media. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt devastated by Rogers’s more generous vision of the nation as a neighborhood, and who belongs in it.

Of course, Rogers, being a devout Christian, asked the question “won’t you be my neighbor?” as a response to another question, “who is my neighbor?” A question Jesus answered in the strongest of terms though the parable of the good Samaritan.

In case you missed that parable, it involves religious and political folks stepping over their bleeding countryman in order to avoid dirtying their hands, when a religious/ethnic enemy finally comes to his rescue. The Samaritan and Jew, he points out, are neighbors.

Rogers had something to say about good Samaritans. He famously called them “helpers.” In frightening situations, he said, “look for the helpers.”

While he credits his mother with this advice, it’s worth noting that in seminary, Rogers would have learned a deeply biblical definition of “helper”, translated from the word ezer, a powerful and effective aid or protector. It is a word used to refer to God.

The following Rogers quote is not in the movie, but taken from the Fred Rogers Center’s professional resources page:

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

Looking over the news coverage coming from the border (and steadfastly ignoring all punditry from elsewhere), I see a lot of helpers. I see a lot that Mister Rogers would celebrate. But a humanitarian crisis of this magnitude begs the question, the same question posed by journalist Tom Junod when he was interviewed for the documentary: Did Fred Rogers succeed in his mission to influence America?

The answer, of course, is mixed. The documentary suggests that America in 2018 would overwhelm Rogers, the champion of the neighborhood. The humanitarian crisis at the border is just the latest systemic assault on human dignity.

In The War on Neighborhoods Daniel Cooper and Ryan Lugalia-Hollon examine mass incarceration, over policing, and the high cost of being “tough on crime.” It reminds us that what is happening on the boarder has been happening daily in communities of color for decades.

Children in Austin, the Chicago neighborhood studied by Cooper and Lugalia-Hollon, often grow up without one or both of their parents, who have been taken out of the picture by one of two “methods of justice”—either the criminal justice system as we know it, or the “street justice” system that is, really, just the other side of the same coin, they say. A coin taken from the pockets of poor communities of color and placed into the pocket of politicians, the drug trade, and the prison system.

“To varying degrees, both systems remove key actors from family and community life, and as a result, both perpetuate cycles of trauma within communities.” (The War on Neighborhoods, pg 69)

Throughout the book, Cooper and Lugalia-Hollon beat a continuous call for collective responsibility, similar to what Rogers (and the Bible) advocate.

“Issues of unemployment, addiction, and mental health were increasingly reduced to questions of personal decision-making. The policy focus moved away from neighborhood-level need and toward problematic people, rarely drawing the connection that the former provides the environment needed for the latter to emerge,” (The War on Neighborhoods, pg 44)

They too look for the helpers, and extend that charge to local, state, and federal governments, who can choose whether to invest in services that strengthen communities—education, healthcare, economic development—or continue the cycle of incarceration, which, as the book points out, is not as easy to avoid as most white people like to think.

“Arrests, felony trials, and prison time all become the basis for society to further condemn these residents, to pile on stressors, removing them from existing supports, and further narrowing any redemptive opportunities,” (The War on Neighborhoods, pg 14)

Because I was reading this during the same weeks that I was watching the border events, and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” I took particular notice when the authors cite deterrence as one of four reasons given for incarceration. Of course the threat of punishment is not a deterrent, as everyone knows. Deterrence requires “making an example” of someone so that others will not follow. Interestingly enough, this deterrence argument, which at least some members of the Trump administration believed to be at the heart of Attorney General Jeff Session’s family separation policy, is also cited as a common reason for lynching.

If books and movies are one staple of summer vacation, family trips are certainly another. This summer my daughter and I, with two longtime friends, made the trip to Montgomery, Alabama to see the Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum, which commemorate the victims of lynching and tie the practice to the very practices of mass incarceration chronicled in The War on Neighborhoods.

I took my four-year-old to the memorial and to the museum, because I actually think she is old enough to learn about these injustices, as long as I am by her side, and we skipped the most graphic parts. I was by her side to assure her that she was safe, and that because she was safe, she could be a helper.

We ended our trip to Montgomery with a trip to the Freedom Riders museum so that we could embed the idea of being a helper right alongside the reality that injustice exists.

But now I have to figure out how to talk to her about family separation. I have yet to do it, because I don’t want her to be afraid that it will happen to her. But when I explain why it won’t happen to her, I have to explain a larger injustice. It will never happen to her…because she’s genetically white…she was born with legal status…because her parents make a lot of money…because she’s lucky. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.

I wish I had Mister Rogers for guidance.

We are left to imagine what Fred Rogers would have said to all of us in a primetime PSA, which would have gone viral on YouTube. I imagine that he would have reminded us that children need their parents, and they need helpers—adults supporting them and keeping them safe. He would have gently admonished us to be those helpers. Then I imagine that he would have pulled out the Daniel Striped Tiger puppet to talk about being afraid…and then maybe mad. And then, I think that there would have been a third element. I think he would have said something in Spanish, to remind us all that the migrant children are part of our neighborhood, and to try to give them some kindness to hold onto, if at all possible.

Ode to Tom Wolfe, a delayed tribute

June 13, 2018 No Comments

IMG_0108[1] — Another book assigned by Jack Simons.

I was 19 years old when I read “Radical Chic,” Tom Wolfe’s biting critique of New York socialites who try to capitalize on the cultural cache of the Black Panthers. The teeth of the essay have come back to bite me often. It’s incisors haunt me as I try to write about social justice in an age where “wokeness” is having a moment.

That’s not a bad thing, that haunting.

When he died in May, I thought about how Wolfe’s work in general, and “Radical Chic” in particular, brought me into journalism. Ultimately, it was less about what he wrote, and more about the fact that he wrote it.

I read “Radical Chic”…and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test…and The Painted Word…and Bonfire of the Vanities…and Hooking Up…while I was deeply mired in the corner of the Evangelical world that is skeptical of outsiders at best and anti-intellectual at worst.

Jack Simons— a singularly formative voice in my education— assigned “Radical Chic” to his intro to journalism class. Simons is a Fulbright Scholar, Baptist preacher, and Vietnam vet, and at the time he had been seemingly exiled to a tiny building on the far edge of the campus at The Masters College (now University). He also taught a class on Southern Women Writers, which he boiled down to an exploration of the fear of “sexual predation between the races.” He devoted one class per semester to the proper use of swear words in writing.

IMG_0111[1] — A book recommended but not assigned by Jack Simons.

In other words, he was a smart guy in a weird world. So when he assigned Tom Wolfe, he knew what he was doing.

He also assigned what came to be all of my other favorite books.

I read those mentioned above and other works from Wolfe, and fell in love with his style, which is super fun. It’s catchy yet human, casual yet precise. It’s readable. A perfect hook for the boy crazy and distracted reader (see photo below)

Wolfe often wrote about things far from the ordinary person’s experience, but he did it in a way that felt like it was happening in your back yard. More importantly, he wrote about a world of limited access in a way that didn’t act like he was happy to be there.

terlingua-horses — What I looked like the summer I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and clearly took it to heart.

He was one of “them” in almost every way, except for the collective self-righteousness.

For an Evangelical kid from semi-rural Texas, Tom Wolfe was my inside man. He made me see that those people who, in every other form of writing, tended to sneer and disregard people-like-me, were just as silly and insecure as I was. They were striving and shallow at times. They were guided by the same base instincts as I was, and just as afraid of them.

With a trustworthy guide who was not trying to sell me or shame me, I was able to take a few glimpses into worlds outside my own. Wall Street, free love, radical counter cultures, and hyper-intellectualism. While my people were adding more locks to the door, I was able to cautiously peek outside. I could let down my defenses, because Wolfe was already on the offensive.

Evangelical alarmists beware, though. Wolfe made me feel “safe,” but I clearly was not. He made it appealing to think for myself. And that led to a life that is far from where things were headed when I first read “Radical Chic.” For those who knew me before, I’m a cautionary tale. If you ask me, I’m a close call. What if I had ignored the “Radical Chic” assignment, never discovered Tom Wolfe and kept fearing the Left and running harder to the Right?

IMG_0116[1] — Another Simons assignment. (Also Plutarch’s Lives was on his recommendation.)

If we want more people to fall somewhere in the middle, instead of on the far ends of ideology, we’ll always need Tom Wolfe in some form. Someone inside the camps has to be willing to critique their campiness in the most searing tone. Someone inside the pastures has to be willing to tip the sacred cows.

Writers like Tom Wolfe are good for everyone. No one has to be on the back foot when our toughest critics belong to our tribe. It opens up dialogue inside and outside, because it doesn’t equate criticism with rejection.

In the church, we call these internal outsiders “prophets” and they have long since been exiled by the greed of kings and the anxiety of priests. They are had to find in our partisan media environs and increasingly polarized academic institutions. There’s pressure to choose a side and back their play as they drift to the fringes. There’s pressure to put Team over Truth, and it’s dangerous.

But it’s a world with lots of fodder for the next Tom Wolfe.

Bathhouses of Hot Springs: Buckstaff

March 17, 2018 No Comments

Recently Lewis and I took the family to Hot Springs National Park. This little gem of a park is tucked into the Ouachita National Forest, where very, very hot water flows like honey.

It’s also the only national park chockablock full of naked folks who have no idea what’s happening to them.

Beginning in the 19th century, a series of bathhouses appeared, ostensibly to harness the healing powers of the springs. They evolved over the decades until the 1910’s when they pretty much became what they are now. Today, two remain operational as bathhouses. The Arlington Hotel, once the fancy place to stay if you were a mobster, pro-ball player, or Tony Bennett (apparently), also has a bathhouse.

We visited all of these, thanks to our wonderful au pair Jessica, who kept our underage kids in the afternoons. Each steamy, naked experience was it’s own unique mixture of total relaxation, awkward mooning of strangers, and fear that you were more or less naked than you were supposed to be at any given time. If you ever plan to visit the baths, I recommend you stop reading here, because the element of surprise definitely adds to the fun.

Day One, Buckstaff.

Buckstaff, still outfitted in blue stripe awnings, like a mid-century resort on the French seaside, is the only bathhouse that does not take reservations. It allows entries twice per day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The line starts forming about an hour in advance, and will extend out the door and down the sidewalk by the time the the first-come-first-bathe service begins.

There is no other spa service in the world that begins this way, to my knowledge.

While you wait, you can study early 20th century photos of patrons, neatly arranged in rows, shrouded in white, smiling attendants behind them. It looks like an infirmary. Like they are being prepped for organ donation, or sweating out the plague. Behind them in these photos are a few metal boxes with heads sticking out through a hole in the top. The whole thing is as intriguing as it is unsettling.

The other thing I noticed in line was that the Buckstaff, like every other National Park experience, draws a really eclectic crowd. Like really eclectic. And we were about to get naked together.

The bathers are divided into men and women, women go upstairs in a cage elevator run by a wizened bathhouse attendant in a blue t-shirt rather than a man in a fancy suit and hat.

Your entire experience is guided by a tiny slip of paper with your name written on it. The elevator operator takes it first, and she hands it to the lady in the second floor lobby, who escorts you into the locker room. Advice: don’t tip every single one of your handlers or you’ll go broke.

Lest you be picturing rows of lockers and benches, remember that there is nothing modern about a bathhouse, including the locker room, which is a series of curtained stalls, each with two full size, public high school style metal lockers. You go in, take off your clothes, lock them in the locker and poke your head out to let the locker room attendant (your third handler by this point) know that you are naked. She then comes tells you to face the locker, opens the curtain, and wraps you, toga-style, in a sheet. It’s like prison, but instead of a cavity search, you’re dressed for a fraternity party.

Then, you sit with the rest of the Roman senate and wait, trying not to see through anyone’s sheet.

Seated next to me was one nervous NPS visitor whose pre-toga attire had screamed “hiker.” She sat bolt upright, and her eyes darted around the dated (though very clean) room. The whole facility is built on a 1912 activity using 1952 technology and 1972 interior materials.

The hiker, whose heels tapped compulsively, blurted out, “I hope this is worth the wait.”

I shrugged. They’ve been in business since 1912, I wanted to say. But I stuck with, “I’m sure it is…”

“I mean, the line is one thing, but now having us wait in here?” she went on about not having much time in Hot Springs. I shrugged again, trying to look sympathetic. There’s not a lot else to do in Hot Springs National Park, unless I’m missing something.

“Oh well, I just hope the floors are clean,” she said.

Sister, I wanted to say—but didn’t (remember we were wearing sheets. It seemed like civility was of utmost importance during this unfamiliar social situation)—sister, you may have picked the wrong way to relax this afternoon.

Eventually a bath attendant (your fourth handler) steps into the room and calls your name. This is the woman who will be administering all of your…treatments? Rituals?

My confusion over what to call the series of bath activities gets to the heart of the experience. In the United States, we prefer to be by ourselves while naked, and we prefer a total sensory immersion with the right smells, music, and lavender tea accompanying our spa ritual. However, in 1912, being fancy was more Old Worlde, and the baths were billed as a healing treatment, and, if the grainy black and white pictures all over hot springs are any indication, it was one of those highly clinical environments where the well-to-do subject themselves to a lot of undignified pseudoscience in the name of progressive wellness.

And sometime in between, someone invented fluorescent lightbulbs.

Walking into the giant bathing room with marble panels, hanging fluorescent office lighting, the first thing you notice is that there is steam all over the place, and nothing looks particularly luxurious. Piles of towels, the occasional bucket, and pipes everywhere make the place look a bit like an institutional laundry room. Then you remember that you’re wrapped in a sheet, and begin to wonder if you are in fact about to be laundered.

It’s also fair to note that none of the bath attendants are anyone you’d want to cross. My guess is that it takes a particular constitution to usher naked National Parks visitors around in a steamy laundry room all day.

First stop is the whirlpool. The attendant takes away the sheet, which is momentarily awkward, but then you are in the tub. This is a pedestal tub with what looks like a turbine motor dropped into it. I was afraid the entire time that I was going to lose my toe or be electrocuted. This jet/agitator device, however, is not dangerous at all, and, once you slide in, a very well-placed jet stream gives some clue as to why bathhouses may have been so popular in the pre-battery era.

That particular 15 minutes goes by quite quickly, and the water feels glorious. It’s about 102 degrees and has just the right sting as you get in.

The attendant pops back in, however, and then it’s time to get out and put your sheet back on. You shuffle through the Agora of other women in white (now damp) sheets, over to what is essentially a row of massage tables, each the kind one would find in a college athletic facility.

Aha! The row of mummies from the photo in the lounge!

Yes indeed, covered in heat packs (piping hot hand towels) and one ice-cold head towel, I basically took a sublime 15 minute nap.

My attendant managed to wake me without startling me, which tells me I’m not the first one to fall asleep in the mummy lineup.

Now into the Sitz bath. I had assumed sitz was some sort of mineral or something. Now I’m wondering if it’s called that because you sitz in it. It was like a little water throne. My husband compared it to a janitor’s mop sink, which may be because his (male) bath attendant wiped it down with Ajax just before he got in. I can’t say I’m crazy about the sitz. It was nice, and if I had lower back issues, it could have been helpful.

The sitz baths do offer a great view of the room though, so I could observe the system of human laundry, and man what a system.

After the sitz, it was time for steam. My attendent led me to a little closet with a split door. The top was frosted glass, and open. The bottom was stainless steel. She opened it to let me in, and invited me to sit on the little bench inside.

She took my sheet, which made getting adjusted rather unpleasant to watch, I’m sure. But she swung the door shut and then folded two stainless steel panels down over the top of me with just a cut out for my head. Final mystery solved. She wrapped my sheet around my neck, and I sat for five minutes like a disembodied head on a metal box. Inside the metal box, the rest of me was being delightfully sauna’d. Truly, one of the better sauna experiences I have had, as my head was nice and cool.

Because I had opted not to be massaged, I was taken to the needle shower, which is infinitely more pleasant than it sounds.

The needle shower is a web of pipes wrapping almost 360 degrees around you. Water comes out everywhere in pleasant “needles” which are more tickly than prickly. There was a shower curtain, but by this time my attendant had seen my bare ass and twice-post-nursing breasts enough times that she barely made a show of trying to give any privacy, and I made very little show of caring.

The needle shower was delightful and refreshing and I want one very much. In my house. Lewis didn’t even fully inhale before saying “they’re hugely wasteful of water and against code.”

Guess I’ll have to come back, then.