The merry month of May

The month of May comes to this school teacher as the month of either flat out burnout time, or an occasion for a pleasant discovery of heretofore unknown hidden spring of inspired motivation, sometimes surprisingly of sufficient supply to energize a subsonic Siberia-anchored Soviet submarine. Most days tend to fall into the former category.

In the CNMI, the month of May focuses on the islands natural ambience for tourism. The emerging longevity and health of Mes Man’amkos (older Americans) is highlighted. The need to be vigilant yet affirming of the known and unknown domains of our mental health calls for our attention. The safety habits of the road through buckle-up CNMI is a must. The traditions, productivity and livelihood of Mes Lancheros (farmers and ranchers) must not just be nostalgic but a viable economic option. The valiant and determined fight against cancer requires our pocketbooks and prayers.

I add a new focus this month: Lighten Up America, Lights Up on Gaia. It is perhaps the month to celebrate the incredible lightness of being in this planet. In the midst of our daily experience of ecological fragility and human finitude, the constant constant reminders to our mortality and our undeniable sense of vulnerability, our anxious longing for certitude and reliable authority, in the indecisive month of May, as in maybe, the imperative is perhaps, to lighten up!

It was in this mood that San Vicente Elementary School welcomed the community at its Family Fun Day last Saturday. It appears that three other schools on island also held events that are variations of the same theme. At SVS, kids popped balloons, and danced the steps of their cultural heritage. They squirted multicolored bottled foam on each other, and intentionally missed targets to get at an unsuspecting teacher, administrator and parent. Parents baked cake to raise funds, in the SVS case, aiming for enough yen/yuan/won to replace six aged air conditioners that are costly to maintain and nuisance to run. Sixth graders got a doze of home economics by cooking lumpia for the hungry crowd, earning them funds for the Student Council. The STUCO shoulders the cost of holding the Farewell and Recognition Ceremony at the end of the school year.

Officers of the Parents, Teachers and Students Associations, and PSS administrators met for their quarterly meeting at the Aqua Resort Club Saturday. While ARC excitedly put on the final touches to the day’s re-opening of the hotel resort after extensive renovations, the conferees delighted themselves with accountability reports on how each school was faring in implementing the requirements of the No Child Left Behind education thrust. With tongue-in-cheek aplomb, reporters walked each other through the accomplishments of each school, with not a few hints on bragging rights after claimed exemplary performances. One of the off-island administrator’s report made our day. He lifted a hand-scribbled indelible message on a rectangular piece of paper, and declared that it was his low-tech power point presentation. His message was made hilariously relevant when a presenter, whose school presentation allegedly prepared by a 12-yr. old from his school, could not get his laptop to work. Someone at the back gamely advised that he should bring the 12-year-old along next time.

Even Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet, which is not usually associated with the quality of lightness, got a delightful light touch from Mt. Carmel students over the weekend. The ambience set by the exhibits in the hallway leading to the second floor was well-crafted, as was the makeshift stage in the second floor hallway. The use of multimedia digitized technology engaged the audience in a way not commonly associated with the Bard’s theatre. The valiant attempt at Elizabethan elocution, in varied ESL accents, might have been a little too much for novices to comprehend, or those who require literal clarity at every diction to appropriate, but the experience was worth the price of entry. The production crew and performers are welcome to share my Gyoza any day.

While Hamlet may not have elicited the angst normally associated with northern European ice-heavy stories, the tragedy at the BOE precipitated by our illustrious teachers’ representative (and my occasional nemesis), Ambrose Bennett, was not too far off the periphery of teachers’ minds at my school and at the PTSA meeting. A colleague at his school describes AB has having “an underdeveloped sense of humor and an unfamiliarity to the art of satire”. A brave heart with what others describe as a counterproductive management style, AB has left a few teachers feeling like they are not being adequately and fairly represented on the school board.

Suggestions about asking the governor for an election recall, already aired previously, got revived. A petition for outright dismissal of AB by the governor was discussed. Rumor mongering comments alleged that the top executive is privately amused at the discomfort AB is causing the BOE, a board he allegedly would just as well bypass since its members are not readily pliant to his political agenda and persuasion. Not perhaps a quite-on-target rumor, considering that the governor as a senator helped draft the legislative bill that created the PSS board and made it semi-autonomous from the Executive Branch of government, the fact that it is being aired only makes it clear that the partisan side of our electoral process is rearing its ugly head once more. In any case, there is widespread opinion that the more common teachers’ focus on student learning is not being adequately represented, let alone supported and addressed by our teachers rep. Calmer minds suggested that instead of a petition for AB’s ouster, a letter to the BOE be sent, affirming their current stance and urging an immediate and concerted transcendence of focus from internal order to external mission, with or without AB’s consent.

Teachers who have also been privy to reports that PSS under Dr. Rita Inos’ leadership has excelled above the rest of the US-related Public School Systems in the Pacific in the implementation of the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Education Act insist that if we focus on the educational mission, the administrative support will of necessity follow. Compared to the other systems, the CNMI reportedly is at the top of the heap. The cynical wags, of course, readily points out that this is not a laurel that one’s back protrusion should contently sit on for it may simply be that the other systems are just so well worst than ours.

Whatever. The point remains that teachers do not cooperatively and concertedly discuss and act on their common interests. A Hopwood colleague, along with a Tinian letter-to-the-editor writer, used the watchdog as an analogy to explain AB’s necessity. “We want a barking watchdog to keep those who will do us harm at bay,” she said. Perhaps so. The last I heard from the teachers rep panel that AB set up was a request for AB to distance himself from them so that they can then pursue such matters as contracts and their non-renewal, certification and tenure, and the like. Some of us should possibly pick that up this summer.

For now, in the merry month of May, frolic in the sand and finding a way of making our touring visitors’ time as pleasant and memorable as possible is a very hospitable idea. For the month that precedes the advent of the dank and dense days of the monsoon season in June, it is time to dine with your man’amkos. We may even attempt, with noetic powers, to encourage the flame trees to bloom their flowers in time.

TH busy executive Jerry Tan was seen relaxing with his family while watching the cultural performances at the Taste of the Marianas grounds Saturday. With the economic roundtable discussions up this week, and a few heavies in town to paint for us a picture of the economic tableau of our Commonwealth, businessman Mr. Tan taking a family fun night out is what lightening up in the month of May is all about.