My Reticence Regarding "Distance" Learning

Don’t jump to conclusions. Yes, I’m a bit of a dinosaur, not quite comfortable with all the technology by which I now find myself surrounded. And yes, I remember the days when I asked my students to hand in “typed” final drafts of their papers.

In the past ten years or so, as I’ve heard the discussion of “distance” or “on-line” learning go from a murmur to a roar, from a seldom-chosen option, to one that is now expected to save the world (or at least a lot of money), I have to admit to always having felt a bit uneasy about the concept. At first I’m sure it was just a case of Fear of the Unknown. But even now that I know a bit more about the topic -- and granted, I need to learn even more -- I still find myself unsure of the idea.

I wasn’t sure where this was coming from, until this morning, when I found myself in a meeting with some local district people, talking about dropout recovery. Distance Learning entered the discussion at one point, and my Edu-sense started tingling once again.

And then I understood where my misgivings were coming from.

It goes back to my days as a teacher at Satellite Academy High School, where I worked with some of the most disaffected, disappointed and generally disengaged students in the New York City school system. We didn’t succeed with all of them; many of them were too far gone, thanks to previous experience, by the time they got to us. Try as we might, we could not reverse the tide for those students, sadly.

But we did turn the tables for many. Our task was to reintroduce them to school and to convince them that there was a better way for them than what had failed for them previously.

So much of this was about people and relationships that it’s hard for me to imagine doing that work via the Internet. We needed to be in a room with our students. I wrote my graduate thesis on advisory, and called it (rather pretentiously, I now believe), The Magic Circle.

But that’s what it was. That’s really what the whole school was. It was about young people and adults sitting in the same room and looking at each other, confronting each other about what they could and couldn’t do. Arguing. Reaching compromise and consensus. For those of us – adults and students alike – who let Satellite work for us, it was a transformative experience, one that changed us for the better.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t trade it for all the Internet access in the world.

There may be some situations in which isolation on the Internet can be a good thing. I’ve seen it work first-hand, for example, using the Hallway Project, a model that has truants and classroom disruptors taken out of their regular classes and placed in highly individualized project-based work, with ample face time with a teacher/coach.

But those kids still need interaction. They need to be able to meet with their peers and talk about what excites them, disappoints them, challenges them and invigorates them. They need the Magic Circle that a good school should always provide.

I do see Distance Learning as a potentially positive evolution in schooling. My fear is that people – particularly the number crunchers – will try to use it as a panacea, to cure all the ills of public education.

For at-risk students and dropouts, isolation is not the answer. Put them in front of a computer screen for part of their day. But don’t deny them the benefits of human interaction in the process.

Facebook and Mother’s Day

I’m pretty sure it was a new thing this year; I don’t recall seeing mom pictures last Mother's Day on Facebook. At first, when I saw Lisa Rivera’s post imploring me to help “get as many beautiful moms on there as we can,” I found the idea kind of corny. But then I thought about the possibilities of it. I wanted to know the answer to the question. I wanted to see how many profile pictures would have moms in it.

So I did something I almost never do. I cut and pasted Lisa’s post and waited to see what would come of it. Sure enough, many of my other friends responded with kind words – about my mother and their own – and their profile pictures changed, too.

Tonight, as Mother’s Day 2011 comes to a close, it warms my heart to see so much love going out to the mothers, whose job is, after all, so relentlessly hard.

It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens on Father’s Day next month. It’s on Sunday, June 19^th, by the way. In case anyone is wondering. And I need guitar strings.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, and to all the motherless children who miss their moms so much today, and every other. Remember to take all that love they gave you and give it to someone else. It’s the passing along of love, after all, that’s going to save us in the end.

Jackson Hanno Fuchs, Six Years Old Today

On her son’s third birthday, my friend Kami Lewis Levin wrote a touching letter to him, one that I would never think of trying to duplicate. Instead, let me do my best to describe for you the birth of the younger of my two sons, Jackson Hanno Fuchs, born on this date, May 7, six years ago, in 2005.

It was a Sunday morning, the day Jackson decided to make his first entrance. I say “decided,” because when he was ready, he was ready. Unlike his older brother, who made us wait all day, before deciding to come swimming out into this world, Jackson was very nearly born in the front seat of my car, which I ditched facing the wrong way on a one-way street, in a no parking zone, in front of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn.

The unsympathetic, condescending nurses who greet us insist that Jeanette is incorrect when she tells them, “I’m going to have this baby right now.”

“No you’re not, sweetheart. You’re fine. Come on in here to triage, so we can see what’s going on.”

They lay her down on the table in the triage room and upon a quick examination concur that she is, in fact, going to have this baby now.

“Right this way,” they say in urgent tones.

“No wait, this room’s taken.” (I catch a glimpse of an Asian woman, sweating, panting and screaming and once again am amazed at the biological imperative that has women put themselves through this more than once.)

The next room down is free, and the midwife we’ve met with during our pre-natal visits is there, waiting for us. Before we can greet each other, they are lifting J up onto the bed, and that’s when I hear the crying. Our second son, Jackson Hanno Fuchs, has landed safely in the midwife’s hands, at the exact moment his mother touches down on the delivery bed.

And thus, a baby boy -- and his personality -- was born.

I am thankful for his impatient, action-seeking nature. He brings excitement and humor into my life each and every day. He is a true original, and his is the kind of a smile that charms an entire room, like my father’s did. Many will clamor to become the beneficiary of that smile. The fact that I am able to see it on a daily basis leaves me feeling blessed, if sometimes “challenged,” to put it lightly by the sheer force of his one-of-a-kind personality.

A Day In The Life of My Boys

We wake up and find Daddy in Abuela’s sala, watching TV and scribbling something in that notebook he’s always writing in. He explains that Mommy is visiting with her goddaughter, Arlene, one of the many cousins who hugged and kissed us at the wedding reception last Saturday.

He lets us play games on his computer while he showers and gets dressed. He then says, “Raise your hand if you want to go to the Bronx Zoo.”

“Yay! Meeee!” we both say, raising our hands high.

Getting dressed is quick this time; we know the faster we do it the faster we go to the zoo!

We walk past the little playground, through the echoing tunnel with the animal paintings on the walls, to the zoo. We see monkeys, snakes, bison, baboons, peacocks, bears, giraffes and gorillas.

We never get to see the lions or tigers, because Daddy begins rushing us at a certain point. We have to get picked up by Mommy, who will drive us all to see someone named Judy.

All we know is that the promise of seeing our cousin Hannah is wrapped up somewhere in all of this.

When Mommy comes to pick us up we’re tired from all the walking we did at the zoo and fall fast asleep in the back of the rental car.

Daddy and Mommy wake us up and we’re at a house we’ve never seen before. Cool, because it’s high up and you can see boats out the big front windows. Uncle Mike shows us the marks where the seagulls drop the clams from high up to break and eat them. Daddy sits on one side of Judy and Mommy sits on the other, talking with her. She looks at us and smiles once in a while.

At the end, Mommy calls us to give Judy a hug good-bye, and we do.

Then it’s back in the car and dinner with Cousin Hannah at her house – pizza and spaghetti, and throwing balls and a Frisbee in the front yard, then back. We try to play with as many of Hannah’s toys as we can until it’s time to leave again.

One more set of cousins to see – Andrew and Matthew. “Is it far to Andrew’s house?” we ask.

“No,” says Daddy, “in fact it’s right on our way back to Abuela’s house.”

Pretty soon we’re going up the elevator and then we’re gunning through Andrew’s toys with him, while baby Matthew runs around, crazy.

And that’s how we spent our last day in New York.

Grateful

This afternoon I was able to have a quick visit with my stepmother, Judy Karnes-Fuchs, who is, essentially, in hospice at her son Matthew’s condo in Norwalk. I had no idea what to expect and was given the impression beforehand that she was in pretty bad shape. At first, I had ambivalent feelings about bringing the boys with us, because even though I knew seeing them might be a nice thing for her, I felt they didn’t know her well enough to be subjected to what I was sure would be a pretty unpleasant sight.

Thankfully, traffic, and other factors, made us run late, so the only option was to go directly up to see Judy in Norwalk. J. felt strongly that the boys should, in fact see Judy, and give her a hug, and ultimately I gave in and we brought them upstairs to see her.

I’m grateful for the traffic, and grateful for J.’s insistence.

Judy stood just behind Matt, pushing a portable oxygen tank along with her, the breathing apparatus in her nose. Although it was hard to see her in this condition, I realized that my mind had drawn much worse pictures for me than this. I gave her a warm but gentle hug, as did J., and the boys shyly came in and said hello. They then went out on the terrace with me, and we looked out over Norwalk Harbor, the sun glaring off the water in the late afternoon, before coming in and sitting politely on the sofa watching Scooby Doo as the grown-ups chatted.

I was grateful for the expanse of the harbor, and grateful for the quiet majesty of the clamming boat that made its way to the dock.

I sat next to Judy and we chatted. We talked about her health, sure, and the kind of care she was receiving from the nurse and social worker who come spend each day with her. But we also talked of other matters, as well.

Judy is an important figure in my life. She made me grow in the process of accepting her as my father’s wife. Everyone knew my mother and I had a special relationship, and I think because of that Judy and I were under the microscope when she and Dad got together.

She was nothing like my mother, and I was different from her three kids, but that was eventually fine for both of us. I stood with my father at his wedding in 1990, as his best man.

I am grateful to have stood at the altar with Hanno and Judy on their wedding day.

I grew to appreciate many things about Judy Karnes – her humor, her kindness, her warmth. She’s a singular individual; I haven’t met anyone else quite like her, and I don’t think I ever will.

By the end of our brief visit this afternoon, she was on a familiar topic – talking about how kind my father was, and how he rescued her.

I told her something then that I have been needing to say for all these years – for her sake and for mine. “Remember, Judy,” I said, “love is a two way street. Just the way you feel he rescued you, you rescued him as well.”

And it’s true. Judy Karnes and Hanno Fuchs rescued each other from loneliness, and became excellent partners to one another.

For that, I told her, I shall always be grateful.

Nostalgia Tripping With Dear Old Friends

As usual, I’m my nostalgic self, only more so, of course, on this trip to my home state and home city. J and I have seen family and friends. There’s no way for us to see everyone in the course of a week, and my sinus issues knocked out a couple of prime opportunities with some very special people in my life.

Today I got to have lunch with my old pal Jem. I met him at his office building, just north of Astor Place. It was a fitting spot; many of our youthful indiscretions occurred within a ten block radius of that location.

After the handshake/hug, Jem started listing lunch possibilities, but I had one place on the top of my list.

“Is the Yaffa Café still in business?” I asked.

His eyes curled up and he smiled that big smile of his. “I knew you were going to say that,” he said.

We made our way east on 8^th Street, all the while looking around to see what was still open from the days when we were kids. The Continental Club on 3^rd Avenue was still there, and Jem noted that it was surrounded by six ATM machines, something you couldn’t find except at one bank on the corner of First Avenue and Avenue A, back in the day.

As we reminisced, I was pleased to see the Holiday Bar was also still operating. It was – and still looks to be – a no-nonsense dive bar. My favorite kind.

Crossing First Avenue, we were both pleased to see that the Yaffa Café, a regular haunt of ours in the late 80’s and early 90’s, was, in fact, still there, still open 24 hours, and, as we entered, we saw that it was virtually unchanged. Jem had the same thing he used to have when we were young(er) – the Yaffa salad. I ordered us some hummus and pita to start with and then went for the turkey burger. This was the place where I first experienced a turkey burger, and it tasted exactly the same as I remember it tasting then.

We filled each other in on our lives – our children, our siblings, our jobs, and what we’ve been reading. The familiarity of this friend, with whom I connected so immediately on an autumn evening playing guitars in our Syracuse dormitory, came right back, with no awkwardness, no stumbling.

I grew not only nostalgic, but also a little self-pitying. In Austin, I have some budding friendships, but nothing so familiar as this. They say that you leave your family at a certain age, and that your friends become your family at that point. This is certainly true of my bond with Jem. He is like a brother to me. It’s not a fair comparison, I know. We’ve only been in Austin for three years, and that first musical (that’s being kind) meeting between me and Jem happened thirty years ago this coming September.

J and I met with more recent, but equally dear friends, for dinner tonight, when we visited the new home of our former next-door neighbors, the Savinskys. We created a strong connection during our time as new parents in the Park Vanderbilt apartments from 2002 to 2008. Our friendship was, and is, based on laughter, conversation, our children, and good meals.

Both Yan and Olga emigrated from the former Soviet Union, from Ukraine and Russia, respectively, and they always make a point to feed us a generous spread of delicacies from their homeland. Tonight, in their lovely seaside condominium, with the view of Manhattan and Brighton Beaches, was no exception. As with Jem, the chemistry of our friendship slipped right back into place. We ate, drank, and laughed, as our boys played loudly with their old friend, Misha upstairs. We were all sorry to say goodbye.

J and I believe in our Austin experiment, and we’re both willing to see it through. I think this visit is making both of us a little melancholy, though, as we are reminded of all these wonderful, beloved people we have left behind.

Life Underground: The NYC Subway Revisited

Over the past couple of days, J and I have made a couple of trips on the subway – one to meet up with my sister Jessica and my nephew Levi, who’s finishing up his first year at Julliard, and the other to have dinner with friends in Chelsea.

I’d forgotten a few little details that immediately came back into evidence. One is “track work.” Particularly up in the elevated sections of the number 2 train line in the Bronx, where we are staying, there seems perpetually to be track work going on. Track work as in, “Ladies and gentlemen, please plan ahead. Midday, late nights and weekends, please expect delays, due to regularly scheduled track work. We thank you for your patience.”

These words are spoken (and have been being spoken for the past ten years or so) by a recorded voice, in perfect diction. I guess the incomprehensible sound of actual human voices became too unbearable, so they replaced it with the nice man’s voice. He also says things like, “Ladies and gentlemen, please be careful of the gap between the train and the platform” and “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

The Giant Track Rats are something else I hadn’t thought of in quite some time. As we waited to transfer to the 2 train at 96^th Street, I proposed a game to J. “Let’s play, ‘Spot the Giant Track Rat.’ Whoever sees one first wins a prize." Sure enough, once the tracks were clear, J. won the game, spotting a GTR making off with what looked like a giant bag of popcorn someone had dropped on to the tracks. Despite being the "winner," J's face paled a bit. "That's disgusting," she said.

I couldn't disagree.

And that’s the other big thing I had forgotten: the gastronomy of the New York City Subway system. Almost every train car, at any time of the day or night has someone eating something. And I’m not just talking about someone sneaking a Snickers bar here and there. I am talking about full-on meals, washed down by giant cans of green tea or Budweiser tall boys poorly disguised in brown paper bags. Someone should do a cookbook based on a survey of favorite subway meals. I think it would be a pretty interesting international menu.

At first, I was a little mortified being back on the “iron horse,” as a friend used to call it. Once I was in my 30’s and moved out of Manhattan to Brooklyn, the subway lost its glamor. And once J. hooked her wagon to my star, and we started making offspring, we bought a car and said “Deuces” to the NYC Public Transit System.

But tonight I did sort of sit back at one point and look around at the dirty floors, and up at the ads for “Torn Earlobe” and Erectile Dysfunction treatments with a measure of nostalgia, and when I caught my reflection in the darkened glass of the window inside the tunnel, I saw that even though the man looking back at me was balder, fatter, and grayer than the one who used to look back, when this was my daily mode of getting from here to there, he was smiling, much as he did way back then.