Mr. Kraft

(undated)

I saw my old boss at the museum today.  He’s long since retired from the cuckoo’s nest where we worked together for years.  Now he’s a docent leading enthusiastic groups of small children through the museum’s exhibits.  The last time we spoke he’d let his beard grow out into a salt and peppery mess.  He explained that the museum had a special exhibition on pirates and that he was able to dress up in full pirate regalia for tours.  What fun!

He asked me a simple question:  “So, have you built any volcanoes lately?”  I was almost embarrassed at the query.  Back when he was my boss I did ridiculous projects with my students. I’d have wading pools filled with slabs of ice and sand to demonstrate the impact of glaciers on our state; or three foot high replicas of volcanoes painted by my students erupting in my classroom and powered by my wife’s Halloween smoke machine (we nearly set off the school’s smoke alarms);  or models of Yellowstone complete with rapidly flowing rivers (fed by a pump from our fish tank ) and smoking geysers.  “No,” I said.  “Those things are verboten (forbidden).”

I am a teacher in an elementary school in Milwaukee.  There was a time when I knew with certainty that the work I did was respected, even revered, within the community I served.  I worked in a good school with a stable staff of dedicated professionals who cared deeply for the children in their charge.  Teaching hasn’t always been a job for pencil pushers and number crunchers.  There was a time when it felt more like a calling.  It doesn’t anymore . . .

  Now I feel like I might just as well work as an actuary or an accountant:  I don’t work with children, I work with numbers.