When School Buildings Are Empty
Cholla Express: December 2020
On my drive to work each day, I pass by an elementary school. In pre-Covid times, the scene would be bustling. There would be a line of cars dropping kids off for the day. The bus would be unloading the morning arrivals. Kids would be running around on the fields, getting in some play time before the teachers herd them into classrooms and start shushing them up.
But right now it’s a ghost town. The parking lot is empty except for the handful of teachers there to work digitally from their empty classrooms. The fields are quiet. The basketball courts are deserted.
All public schools in Arizona closed their doors last March per orders from Governor Ducey. This school year has been a mixed bag. Some of the largest districts in the state remain virtual, while some districts and charters have opened. Others have adopted hybrid models. Some schools that had opened up in the fall are now closed again because of the recent spike.
One of the effects of school closures has been student disengagement. As a high school teacher, I can attest to this personally.
Early on this year, there was a mild panic in education circles because schools were seeing steep declines in enrollment. The Arizona Republic’s Lily Altavena reported in late October that enrollment was down 5% from the prior year, meaning 50,000 fewer students enrolled. That percentage decline was more severe for the kindergarten cohort. Homeschooling rates were up, but not by enough to account for all the missing students.
In a meeting of the Arizona State Board of Education this past month, a data presentation indicated that, while enrollment numbers have stabilized from their steep declines to start the year, the numbers remain a couple percentage points lower than last year. Given our state’s increasing population, it’s safe to assume at least several thousand Arizona students have either dropped out or not reported to school this year.
And the students going to school are, for the most part, getting a diminished experience. Online learning might be fine for highly motivated students with stable internet connections and quiet study spaces. For others, it’s extremely challenging.
There’s no doubt that learning gaps are deepening. Students will struggle to catch up after the pandemic. Many never will. The consequences for society will be significant.
Some families are turning to old-school solutions such as homeschooling, or new innovations such as learning “pods” — small groups of students learning together in a non-traditional classroom. Jeremy Duda of the Arizona Mirror wrote a great piece about these microschools, including perspectives from proponents and detractors.
One of the biggest names in micro-schooling is Prenda, a company that packages up three things: digital curriculum, a paid adult guide, and small groups of mixed-age learners. Much like Uber, anyone can sign-up for the Prenda program and start their own micro-school. Prenda will provide access to the digital curriculum. In one sense, Prenda has re-invented the one room schoolhouse. Except the human in the room is not necessarily a professional teacher. The real teacher is the bundle of online content.
Prenda was created before the pandemic, but as you can imagine, their enrollment numbers are rising as traditional schools close their doors.
Obviously, it’s beneficial for students to socialize in person. Pods reduce the risk of contagion compared to normal school. If the Prenda quality of learning is deficient, it’s probably no worse than other forms of online learning taking place right now.
While a certain kind of student may thrive in the Prenda model, I think most students would need and prefer more structure, along with more direct guidance from a professional teacher.
In my own imagination, I can picture pods being directed through the public school system, managed by professional teachers. An opportunity to detach from the guardrails of the physical classroom, ditch the bell schedules, and unleash the creative minds of teachers.
I like to imagine a robust system of community learning. Here in Arizona we have so much potential for exciting learning experiences detached from densely crowded indoor classrooms. We’ve got museums, libraries, gardens, zoos, science centers, restaurants, art galleries, laboratories, factories, TV stations, law offices, court houses, farms …
Couldn’t we find enough of these places willing to partner with public education programs? Couldn’t we shape creative public policy to encourage it?
Certainly not on the fly during the chaos of a worldwide pandemic. There are too many logistical hurdles, and too few professional teachers.
We’re just trying to make it through each day. We’re crossing our fingers hoping for the vaccine to get everything back to normal.
I’ve got my fingers crossed, too, because I miss seeing students in person. I’m even starting to miss all the things that drove me nuts about teaching students in person.
Even so, there’s a part of me hoping we start to consider entirely new avenues for education moving forward.
Arizona’s Official State Historian: Marshall Trimble
I teach history for a living, but I was never much interested in history growing up. Because of this, I can relate to students who like to ask, who cares?
Sometimes people grow into an interest over time, but it helps to be introduced to subject matter by passionate, colorful individuals like Marshall Trimble.
Trimble describes his educational approach in this short biography video:
If I walk into a classroom of fourth graders — if I just walk in there saying ‘I’m your Arizona state historian’ and talk to them or something, I’m just another old geezer. But if walk in there with a cowboy hat and boots and a guitar strapped on, I can tell right then I’ve got those kids — and their teacher, too.
A bit different vibes than logging into a computer program.
Born in Mesa in 1937, Trimble grew up in a small town west of Flagstaff called Ash Fork. His love for history sprouted through a love of music. After a stint in the Marines, he started playing folk music and touring around the West. His inspiration was Johnny Cash. Travelling and storytelling through song inspired Trimble to study history.
He became a teacher, and taught for many years at the high school and community college level. He started to write books on Arizona history. His lively style, full of whimsical humor, made him a draw for speaking engagements and educational bookings. In 1996, Arizona Governor Fife Symington named Trimble as the state’s official state historian, this honor bestowed after a lobbying campaign by Trimble’s former students.
You can find a list of his many books here.
One of them might make for a perfect Christmas gift.
An Arizona Christmas Tale
Speaking of Christmas, have you heard this story?
I learned it from a Clay Thompson column, who was recalling it from a Don Dedera book. You can find versions of the story in a number of publications over the years, so I guess this can be considered Arizona holiday folklore.
The story begins with an ambitious stunt planned by a Mesa booster and publisher named John McPhee.
Here’s how the stunt was promoted in the paper:
Santa is coming to Mesa in an airplane!
The generous old gentleman isn't coming in the conventional style and he isn't going to wait until the airplane lands to get out.
He is going to drop right down in the center of Mesa on a parachute.
He'll be here at 4:15 o'clock next Friday afternoon, December 16, with a greeting and a present for every Mesa kiddie who is downtown to see him!
Beforehand, as the story goes, the parachuter hired to play Santa was found drunk … too drunk to jump out of an airplane.
So, rather than cancel the hyped event, John McPhee came up with a plan. He found a life-size dummy from a clothing store, dressed it up in red, and attached the parachute. Someone would pull the chute and throw the red-clad dummy out of the plane. Meanwhile, McPhee would dress himself up in the Santa suit, situate himself near the prepared landing area, and then run out to greet the unsuspecting crowd.
Here’s how Marshall Trimble describes what happened next:
All eyes gazed anxiously skyward as the drone of the airplane’s engine could be heard off in the distance. Then they saw the plane circling overhead. To build anticipation in the crowd the pilot circled the field near Apache Boulevard and Alma School Road several times. Then the door opened and a large figure in a red suit appeared in the doorway. The crowd began to cheer. Then it happened, Ol’ St. Nickolas seemed to leap out of the plane into the wild blue yonder. At first he appeared to be in a free fall and suddenly the crowd’s cheery mood changed to horror. Santa began to tumble end-over-end, down, down, down like a sack full of potatoes. There was a loud “splat” as Santa did a perfect belly flop on the field.
All accounts of the story describe a crowd stunned into silence. Many walked away, leaving the festivities altogether to go home.
The Mesa paper reported the scene like this:
Many hearts mentally removed the traditional stocking from the fireplace mantle Monday afternoon when the jolly old gentleman leaped from his plane high over Mesa, and his only apparent insurance against death failed, the parachute did not open.
Here’s how Trimble concludes his version of the story:
Mothers covered their horrified children’s eyes. Fathers stared in disbelief.
Through it all, McPhee remained undaunted. He jumped out of his hiding place as if nothing had happened and proceeded climb on the Christmas decorated wagon to lead the parade through town.
But the public wasn’t buying…..literally and figuratively. Would-be shoppers loaded their kids in the family car and headed back to their farms. Merchants muttered unprintable unpleasantries as they stood in the doorways of their empty stores.
McPhee quickly realized he was about as welcome as a coyote in a hen house and decided to leave town for a few days hoping the event would be forgotten. It wasn’t. Upon his death some 36 years later, the front page of the Mesa Tribune noted his passing with this banner, “John McPhee, The Man Who Killed Santa Claus, Died Today.”
Arts in Ajo
This segment is brought to you by a tweet from Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema:
The tweet sparked my attention as a natural follow-up to the October issue of Cholla Express, which pondered whether Covid may spark a migration of settlers and tourism towards the small towns of Arizona.
The tweet links to this PBS NewsHour story about a revival of arts in the small border town of Ajo, Arizona.
The story begins: “In the American Southwest, a once robust mining town is looking to a growing arts community as a new economic driver.”
Ajo became a boom town in the 1910s, when the Calumet and Arizona Mining company discovered rich Copper deposits in the area, dug a well, and then built out the infrastructure to process the ore and transport the final product via the Southern Pacific Railway line. The mines kept producing for decades, until a combination of labor disputes and deflated Copper prices caused the mine to shut down in 1985.
According to the PBS story, government grants helped to jumpstart the arts programs, spearheaded by a non-profit group called the International Sonoran Desert Alliance.
Once the program took root, the vision was brought to life by the individual artists who moved to Ajo to share their passions and help build the vibrant community. There’s an artist commune housed in an old abandoned high school. There's a coffee shop owned and operated by a local artist. There’s a farmers market that distributes food to locals in need. All the storefronts are open for business.
The segment concludes: “The hope is that Ajo not only becomes self-sustaining, but that it becomes a model for the reinvention of small rural towns across America.”
For more, check out the following piece in The Atlantic from 2015, which covers the beginning phases of this re-invention. The article provides additional insight and historical context: “Ajo, Arizona: A Small Town Pushed to the Brink, and Coming Back.
Final Thoughts
Are there any questions you’d like to see covered in Cholla Express? Do you know any interesting people I should interview? Are there any upcoming events I should visit?
This newsletter is just a hobby, so I can’t promise anything extensive, but I would be glad to entertain ideas from readers. If you reply to this email, it will show up in my personal email account.
Thanks for reading!
Until January 2021.
