In a life in which I was already feeling such gratitude, this has been one of those weeks of demarked accomplishment that I will long remember.
Yesterday (Thursday, 6 December 2018) at 11:43 AM I reached a goal that I had sensed was coming soon as I vigorously assembled myriad articles pertinent to the national Every Student Succeeds Act, the Minnesota North Star Accountability System, the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Comprehensive District Design, school profiles for all 73 MPS sites, descriptions for all departments and divisions at the Davis Center (MPS central offices, 1250 West Broadway), presentation of MPS organizational and leadership structure, with academic training and credentials of all department heads and other key figures, and many other updates to the bevy of information that I already had gathered into the three parts (Facts, Analysis, and Philosophy) of Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect. At the noted temporal juncture, I arose from my study to rustle up lunch and had, in my beloved kitchen, after three years of research and writing, an epiphany:
I’ve done it.
The material in the three parts now stands at 802 pages in single-spaced 11-point type for articles and various designs for data presentation.
I intend to cull the current abundancy of information and data, the analysis and the philosophic and historical observations, to 350-500 book-size pages, even as I continue to add a bit of material pertinent to charter schools, private schools, and post-secondary institutions to establish the education environmental context in which the district of the Minneapolis Public Schools functions.
But all of the core information now resides in the three parts, now merely awaiting meticulous and refined arrangement in the concluded work.
After having had that epiphany, and as I waited for some simmering on the stove to finish lunch preparations, I sat in the chair so favored by My Love and looked northward into one of the great backyards in all the world. I took a deep breath and felt a wave of relief and satisfaction that was all the more splendid for coming as something of a surprise. I love reading and research, and writing the book on the inner functioning of the Minneapolis Public Schools has been a Labor of Love, the development of a Legacy by which I intend to overhaul K-12 education for the delivery of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education to students of all demographic descriptors.
But of a sudden, that wave swept over body and metaphoric soul and I realized just how intensely I have been driven every moment of the day for three years to collect, reflect upon, and record the vast amount of information that I have gathered.
That phase is now complete.
And the completion occurred so organically as to produce as epiphany concerning something that might have been more explicitly recognized as coming precisely at 11:43 AM. But the magnitude of this accomplishment did not hit me until I roamed upstairs into the kitchen, then sat at that wondrous living room roost.
Wow.
A tome that will have many uses is now essential complete. At early afternoon I sent the three parts by attachment to FedEx to render in hard copy, so that a heightened sense of security further undergirds my feeling of task accomplished and a work of great significance to the world in essence ready to offer to the inhabitants therein.
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Tuesday (4 December) began with a delightful 7:30 AM meeting with a key MPS staff member, continued throughout the day with an elongated period of highly productive reading and academic session preparation, and then featuring a bevy of amazing interactions with students at an especially well-attended New Salem Tuesday Tutoring. I did more work in the office after conversing with My Love upon return home and went to bed at the end of what had turned out to be a 17-hour work day.
I then devoted Wednesday and Thursday, as partially noted above, to reading, research, writing, and assemblage. I make the “partially” reference because in addition to the culminating work that produced the epiphany, I did in the interstices of the pertinent activities also complete updated ACT Practice Mathematics Test written explanations for my advanced middle school and high school students and similar explanations for a test that students of mine must take as course prerequisites at Anoka-Ramsey Community and Technical College.
This then brought yet another epiphany in the form of a realization that I can use those preparatory guides as the core of my Mathematics chapter in Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, and that the answers that I have prepared cover such a complete breadth of mathematical knowledge and skill sets as to essentially conclude that section of the book.
Now that I have essentially completed Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools: Current Condition, Future Prospect, I can now concentrate on finishing just three (there had been four pending until I realized that the math chapter is complete) chapters of the fourteen encompassed in this other authorial and ideational legacy, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.
These books will then be powerful tools of activism for and impartation of knowledge-intensive, skill-replete education. I assert that these works in the scope of my life will form the denouement for a successful concluding segment in the dramatic overhaul of K-12 education.
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