Saturday, 30 May, Chapter Three, “Two Formative Years Teaching at Pinkston High” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

Dallas is a city with a virulently racist past;  it was a Ku Klan haven in the 1920s and through the 1970s maintained a city government dominated conventionally by a white male business establishment that had no interest in admitting women or people of nonwhite skin hue to the leadership club.  The city features a quirky residential scheme that historically directed African Americans and Hispanics to South, West, and Deep East Dallas;  and to areas in all directions radiating three miles from downtown.  Adjoining Deep East Dallas is the toney Lakewood area that also sends students to Woodrow Wilson High School;  but many Lakewood parents opt to send their children to private schools such as Hockaday (girls) and St. Mark’s (boys).   

 

Spanning a large area north and east from the junction of Abrams Road and Mockingbird Lane are mostly solid middle class homes.  The Lake Highland area north of Northwest Highway is one of those curiosities that one can also find in affluent Far North Dallas, whereby the residential area falls within the Dallas city limits but the schools are part of the Richardson public schools.  Richardson is a near suburb;  a bit farther northward, some fifteen miles from Dallas city center, is Plano, which features homes of outrageous square footage, sought-after schools, and high teen suicide rates.

 

Enveloping Southern Methodist University are the Park Cities, with University Park to the immediate north and west;  and Highland Park to the south and southwest.  These areas are oddities from a racist and elitist past;  they function much like suburbs but are residential islands surrounded by Dallas, with their own city government, nevertheless drawing upon Dallas police and fire services as necessary in times of unusual gravity.  Both areas send students to Highland Park High School, consistently rated near the top in public school ratings by the likes of U. S. News and World Report.

 

Preston Road runs north-south from Far North Dallas through Highland Park to just beyond Lemmon Avenue, beyond which about three miles is a bridge at the end of which Preston turns into Hampton Road and one enters another economic and racial universe:

 

West Dallas.  

Friday, 29 May, Chapter Two, “The Powerful Impact of Southern Methodist University,” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

Only recently have I come to grasp that not everyone is as enthralled by the collegiate experience as was I.  I loved every moment of my experience from the time I hit the SMU campus in August 1969 until graduation in May 1973.

 

Every moment?

 

Even by my Nanno’s-own-grandson-gotta-love-this-life-thing standards, “every moment” seems overwrought. 

 

But upon reflection, I truly cannot remember even upon occurrence of those inevitable challenging moments that arise even for us unusually relentless optimists any real down moment.

 

The challenges were just part of the wonder. 

 

A few obstacles to overcome. 

 

A few thoughts to find my way out of the temporary roadblock. 

 

Just another page on a Book of Life impelling me forward in love, mission, and a future full of purpose and joy.

 

I could see at the time that for some the experience at SMU was viewed through a very different prism:

 

Why else would healthy 20 year-olds, give or take a year or two, spend their Friday and Saturday nights filling their gut with material that came back up in unseemly ways?

 

Why else would so many people prove incapable of wrenching themselves from lives of material plenty but devoid of spirit, known at their upper middle class homes of nativity, perceived as the only life pathway open to them, though down deep so many knew that the path ended in despair?

 

Why so much angst when there were so many opportunities on the SMU campus:  famous and insightful speakers;  many an organization for capturing talent to be used for the social good;  many good campus presences modeling the well-lived life;  many friendships awaiting if made properly, in the spirit of good fun and healthful joy?

 

As one with ever firmer grasp on the tenets of behaviorist psychology, I knew intellectually that experience is determinative, that my own had been fortunate and fortuitous, while many others had widely varying experiences that were not so conducive to a life of commitment, purpose, and joy.

 

But so replete with wonder was my time at Southern Methodist University that I could not fully grasp the emotional pain that many must have been under, how trapped they felt by futures that seemed as inevitable as they were prospectively unrewarding, how for others the issue was not so much wrenching pain as the banality of the ordinary.

 

But I did know that I was one lucky person to have known Dennis Weltman, Alan Deright, Shari Wheeler, Jane Bockus, Bob Cooper, J. Claude Evans, Bradley Carter, Ron Davis, and, oh---  my oh my---  Barbara Reed.

 

I knew that my experiences tutoring and counseling at Pinkston, Buckner Children’s Home, and schools for the mentally challenged;  coordinating these tutorial and youth programs for SMU Volunteer Services;  serving as Chapel Board president;  going to Religious Life meetings and retreats;  becoming a sophomore adviser and then residential adviser;  participating in a wide array of intramural sports;  hearing and seeing Hubert Humphrey, Ramsey Clark (LBJ’s attorney general), Jerry Rubin, George Carlin, and Dick Gregory;  and enthusiastically embracing SMU’s superb liberal arts curriculum;  were amazing gifts to be packed away in a metaphorical treasure chest as graduation present par excellence.

 

As I had been so primed for the SMU experience in August 1969, as of May 1973 I was ready for the workaday world.  I knew that eventually I would be back in academia for study at the highest level.  But for now, I was ready for the workaday, for teaching, for the world inhabited by putative adults.

 

Many of those adults would not be ready for me.

 

But the youth overwhelmingly were.

 

Thursday, 28 May, Chapter Two, “The Powerful Impact of Southern Methodist University,” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

By the time I graduated from SMU in May 1973, I had a treasure cove of experiences, friendships, a singularly important relationship, and a bevy of knowledge from which to go forth on a life mission. 

 

In the same way as I view my meeting Barbara as Destiny, as having been an ever present reality in my life that gained incarnation on the stair steps to the Student Union, so do I regard my life mission as teacher.  That mission began by age 10 in Ms. McMillan’s classroom and my friendship with the ill-treated Mike;  with the insights I gained during that same period by peering at the segregated pool off Central Expressway;   with my readings in the New Testament and focus on the exemplary life of Jesus by age 11;  and with my intensifying leftist and feminist inclinations during high school and as I hit the SMU campus at age 17,  just short of my 18^th birthday in late August 1969.

 

Never one to seek a single mentor, I nevertheless gained many a life influence among the professors and campus presences at Southern Methodist.  The Reverend Bob Cooper was hugely influential for his liberal Christian activism and dedication to projecting the live of Jesus active in the world.  Chaplain J. Claude Evans gave sermons that matched and elaborated upon convictions that were consistent with those of Bob.  I attended SMU Chapel services every Sunday, became involved as an usher and board member, and during my senior year served as president of the Chapel Board.

 

Southern Methodist had an extraordinarily well-conceived residential services system that in addition to maintaining Resident Advisers (R.A.s, juniors or seniors who lived on and supervised first-year student dorm floors) also had sophomore advisers (men) and sophomore sponsors (women). 


The R. A. position was paid via free room and board;  the sophomore advisory position offered no pay but did give an applicant an advantage for one seeking to be a Resident Adviser.  Dennis and I were roommates on second floor McGuinness as sophomore advisers during our 1970-1971 academic year;  Barbara and Shari were roommates in the same capacity during their 1971-1972 sophomore year.  On the strength of our experiences as sophomores advising first-year students, Barbara and I were selected as R.A.s for the 1972-1973 academic year.  I had to wait a year, seemingly not gaining appointment during the 1971-1972 year because my course overloads of 18 and 21 hours (15 or 16 was standard) were considered by the evaluating committee to be too burdensome, given the considerable responsibilities of the Resident Adviser.

 

This postponement, too, now seems so fortuitous as to signal the intervention of Fate.  My junior year was amazingly replete with excellent courses, volunteer commitments, hanging out with Dennis and Al (the latter as much a character as was Dennis;  Al would eventually go forth to the University of Missouri Law School and a run for homecoming queen), participation in Religious Activities with Bob, Jane, and the group of about 15 stalwarts, and finding out that I had this time been selected as R. A. and would be paired with Barbara in the Living and Learning program.

 

The year’s delay, per Fate, meant that Barbara and I had our first seamless opportunity to get to know each other.  Remarkably for an honors mathematics major and one of the smartest people to walk the earth, Barbara did not grasp that our vigorous correspondence during summer 1972 was in my conception much more than paired Resident Advisers getting to know each other better.

 

She soon knew as academic year 1972-1973 commenced.

 

And she responded favorably.

 

……………………………………………………………………………..

 

“Barbara, hold up.”

 

We were walking along toward our dorms in the Cockrell (women)-McIntosh (men) complex on the same roadway that eventually led to the marvelous fountain at the center of the main quadrangle below iconic campus centerpiece Dallas Hall.  The month was October.  By then there was no doubt that my emotional radar on those Student Union steps was prophetically accurate.  The nights were still warm-cool in Dallas.  Breeze blowing.  Perfect.

 

I turned to Barbara at my right and touched her waist.  She turned toward me.  I put my arms around her.  Then came the words that had gone unvocalized by either of us until now:

 

“Barbara, I love you so much.”

 

We kissed and looked deeply into each other’s eyes.

 

“Oh, Gary, and you know I love you.”

 

I did.

 

But hearing those words were among the sweetest to ring in my ears.

 

Forty-eight years later, those words ring sweeter and truer than ever.

Wednesday, 27 May, Chapter Two, “The Powerful Impact of Southern Methodist University,” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

Southern Methodist University was as politically curious as it was an academically engaging place to be in the very late 1960s and very early 1970s.

 

Education professor ne’er-do-well Mel Fuller once drew a raucous guffaw from campus radical John Mallios when he made a plea to the students in his “Issues in Education” class to wear suitable clothes when visiting schools and in anticipating student teaching:

 

“You know, many people in Dallas consider SMU to be a hotbed of American radicalism.”

 

Mallios could scarcely contain himself, first with sardonic laughter, then in stunned and silent anger.  This was after all a university in which the student body had gone 60% for Richard Nixon and 40% for George McGovern in a mock election of November 1972.

 

While Mallios sat stunned, I commented without raising my hand,

 

“I find no reason why you would not explain the error of that preposterous characterization, which I wish were true, to school personnel---  and I have no patience with your request that male student visitors and teachers wear coats and ties or strive to meet any standard except high quality teaching.”

 

Fuller just wore his typically court-fool grin and tried to wait out one of those awkward moments that drew this comment from my roommate, Al Deright, of my junior year:

 

“You know, Gary, I admire your outspoken stances, and to be sure you’re usually right, but you know---  the things you say make people uncomfortable.”

 

Fuller felt mighty uncomfortable. 

 

I would continue to make him so many times. 

 

He really did not know what to do with me and my obvious contempt for the vacuity of his course and the facile nature of his thinking.  Dennis still laughs about a touchy-feely exercise he was putting us through instead of discussing a school system that produced even among those who managed to graduate hordes of students who could not read beyond a second grade level.  We were supposed to gather in circles of about eight or so, with two people left outside and faced with the dilemma of how to invite them inside without dropping hands securing the circle:

 

I was one of the two left out of the group forming the circle;  the other was a young woman of average height and weight.  I immediately resolved my group’s dilemma by lifting her over the group and dropping her gently inside the circle.

 

Dennis beamed.  The incident became a standard in our reminiscences of education classes, along with Buchanan’s “sign of the buffalo” and our once being asked in another touchy-feely exercise to get in touch with our surroundings with the exhortation to

 

“Feel the air---  shape it into little balls.”

 

As to that earlier class and the reference to the campus as a hotbed for radicalism, Mallios came up to me afterward and thanked me profusely for speaking up after Fuller’s comment had left his leftist tongue in radical knots.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………    

 

What made the era at SMU so fascinating is that there was, despite the dominant conservatism and the Greek system vibe, a liberal and even radical element in the student body.  Jerry Rubin made a well-received campus visit, urging students to

 

“Vote for McGovern.  He just tells two percent of the truth, but that 2% is that much more than Richard Nixon has ever told.”

 

George Carlin and Dick Gregory made a splash with leftwing comedic performances at the SMU Student Union. 

 

There were organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (the campus affiliate of that conservative’s anathema, SDS) and Students Against Racism.  Feminists were in the minority but there were those among us who relished the visits from members of the National Organization of Women (NOW) and publication of the first issue of Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine.  Students congregated with alacrity to hear celebrities such as Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul, and Mary) speak at the autumn 1969 Moratorium in protest of the War in Vietnam.

 

There was even a very tenuous, brief takeover of the SMU president’s office.  I was in the crowd outside gathered to consider the action but was not among those who implemented the takeover.  I discerned that in all likelihood my radicalism would be more long-lived than the commitments of those engaged in the takeover.  With that decision-making gift bestowed upon me by Big Marv, I determined then and thenceforth that my radicalism would not take the form of transient takeovers but rather the dedication to transformation of as many student lives as possible via the power of knowledge-intensive education.

 

I have never been much of a mass-gathering protester or demonstrator.  My activism has to date been waged more singly, on the strength of research and facts that pertain to manifestly monstrous situations that go to the root rather than linger at the surface of social and political vexations.  This has led me to make those appearances at every Public Comment period of the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) Board of Education for six years running and to create my various platforms for what has up to now been a rather singularly waged exposure of intellectual and moral corruption.

 

But I admire fervently the highly directed, well-conceived, local orientation of Saul Alinsky-type radicalism.   

 

The education establishment of Minneapolis will be encountering such radicalism.

 

I will organize the movement.

 

And, ironically, much of the spirit that will animate that movement gathered force at a university that, if not a hotbed, might be considered my seedbed for radicalism. 

Tuesday, 26 May, Chapter Two, “The Powerful Impact of Southern Methodist University,” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

“Hey, Brainy-Beautiful,” I said to Shari Wheeler, the young woman I’d been dating for quite a few weeks during my junior year at Southern Methodist. 

 

Shari was both of those alliterative appellations, a lightning quick conversationalist who would entertain any subject, destined to be an English teacher like her mother and a principal like her father;  and a dark beauty for whom a slight gap in between her two front teeth accented the quirky quality that gave added appeal.

 

“Hey, yourself---  Gary, this is Barbara Reed---  you know, my roommate.”

 

I looked at the young woman standing at Shari’s side on the steps of SMU Student Union.  I think I kept my cool.  I remember smiling with fair nonchalance and having a few brief moments of conversation with these two sophomore sponsors in Snyder Hall, on the women’s quadrangle just across from the Student Union.

 

However much cool I kept and however I managed to maintain insouciant conversation, I may have set a Guinness world record for being mesmerized while smiling nonchalantly and talking casually.  The sight before my eyes was unlike any woman I’d ever had the good fortune to have loom into my visual scope:

 

Barbara was dark blond, fair, about the same 5 feet, six inches as Shari.  The month was February.  She was wearing a nice gray coat with outfit that matched.  She had a stunningly gorgeous face and widely spaced blue eyes that communicated the real difference, the quality that set her apart. 

 

Shari was a mighty great date, with a personality and intelligence that in the manner of a collegiate junior had me at least contemplating what a future with her might be like.  But that was not to be, and could not have been.  Within a couple of months, our semi-serious relationship was over in the romantic sense.  I would later learn from Barbara that as spring 1972 moved on, Shari would increasingly return to their room and answer Barbara’s “How’d it go?” query with,

 

“Oh, you, know---  We talked about the meaning of life again.”

 

And here I thought I was such a humorous lad.  But my philosophical speculations and searing criticism of humanity at SMU and beyond had apparently grown wearisome to Ms. Wheeler of Anahuac, Texas.     

 

I went through another semi-serious relationship that spring with a person who had many of the liberal Christian views on ethics and community commitment as did I.  Like myself, Jane Bockus participated in Religious Life, the liberal (distinct, therefore, from Campus Crusade for Christ and such) Christian group led by assistant chaplain Robert (Bob) O. Cooper.  Jane had more enthusiasm for the philosophical ruminations that eventually wore Shari out;  we had many a super conversation amidst fun and inspiring times on the weekend meetings, barbecues, and camp retreats led by Bob.

 

But when Barbara and I reconnected at late spring, having found out that we were to be paired as Residential Advisers (RA’s) supervising first year students in SMU’s Living and Learning program, I knew my life had taken on a dimension that I had not really thought possible.

 

By my last two years at SMU, I was set on moving to Harlem after graduation and ensconcing myself in an Up the Down Staircase situation, striving nobly to bring high quality education against obstacles of manifold sort.  The fundamental vision would remain but the locale would shift. 

 

Barbara changed the details of my plans.

 

……………………………………………………………………………

 

I have reflected many times how that first meeting with Barbara on the stair steps leading up to the Student Union was predictive of the wondrous reality that became my life.

 

Shari and Jane were both super young women who were may cuts above the smart but superficial, fashion and society conscious, sorority types that were replete at the university.  The Greek system, to which I had an ever so brief introduction, was a big thing at Southern Methodist.  I assessed the values and time expenditure descriptive of those in sororities and fraternities and made a quick exit from Lambda Chi Alpha after only two months of membership in the spring of my first year at the university.  I turned decidedly anti-Greek and mostly held aloof from the sorority types, considering the time given to associated activities and high-society values to be at odds with my experiences in Volunteer Services, at Pinkston, with Rex, on those Religious Life retreats, my burgeoning academic interests, and my commitment to political and social activism.  Aside from Shari and Jane, my dates tended to be one or two-timers, enjoyable but transitory.  I came to doubt that anyone would meet my exacting and highly particular standards or anyway induce a detour from Harlem.       

 

But Barbara induced a detour that sustained my presence in West Dallas longer than I had planned and then as matters developed turned by focus to at-risk student populations not very close to Harlem---  eventually to North Minneapolis.

 

……………………………………………………………………………….

 

Because behind those beautiful blues eyes on the stairs that led symbolically as well as tangibly to the Union was an intelligence and a soul that I read in the moment and with which I would unite eternally.

 

In that first instantaneous mesmerization I knew that I was peering into a unity of brain and body and  countenance and soul that was an exaltation of humanity never thrust so fortuitously into my personal sphere before.  Most likely, in the absence of that meeting my journey on this one earthly sojourn would have been singly lived.  My life would have been well-lived and directed much the same as has been the case, however different in geographical focus.

 

But Barbara was Destiny, she who incalculably magnified the magnificence of the Journey.

Monday, 25 May, Chapter Two, “The Powerful Impact of Southern Methodist University,” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

“Hey, Rex, how ya doin’ on this beautiful Saturday”?  I queried as Rex Bronson got into the Pontiac Firebird that Marvelous Marv had given me at age 16.

 

“Hey, fine---  always glad to be in this nice ride,” came Rex’s reply.

 

“Where you wanna go?” I asked.

 

“Up to you man, just glad to get outa the ‘hood her for awhile, you know?  Thanks for picking me up.”

 

“The pleasure is assuredly mine.  Gotta warn ya, though, I’m famous in my family for giving ‘Tours.’  Just let me know if you get bored.”

 

“Ain’t gonna get bored, man.  Got nothin’ but time today.”

 

So I just drove, following my whims.  Rex was a student in the class of Pat Rainey, the young (24 years or so) teacher in whose class I had been volunteering at L. G. Pinkston.  The class was American history.  I had done a couple of presentations on conditions on plantations in the old slaveholding South,  and on the Reconstruction period that followed.  But mostly I had helped students with their textbook readings.  Eighty-five percent of students in the class were below grade level proficiency.  Seventy percent were many grades below level of enrollment.  Five of the twenty-eight students in the class were not functionally literate.

 

Rex was functionally literate and more.  He was not at the time that I met him a voluminous reader, but he aspired to be.  I had connected him with James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Alex Haley’s “as told to” Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  He gobbled these up, and I kept feeding him more.

 

“Man, I have learned so much from you,” Rex said, as I drove northward down Hampton Avenue and over the bridge, where Hampton became Preston Road and led to the different universe of Highland Park.

 

“Not as much as I’ve learned from you,” I replied.  “How’d you get so wise and observant at only sixteen?”

 

“Who’s wise and observant?”

 

“You are, man.  You are.”

 

“Well anything I know is what the few decent teachers at Pinkston have taught me,  momma’s lessons from the world she’s known, and whatever I’ve learned not to do from watchin’ the cats in the ‘hood.”         

 

“Yeah, and all that’s plenty.  And how’d you decide that what those cats do is not for you?”

 

“Man, they’s stupid.  Can’t figure out why anyone would want to follow they lead.  Those niggas are the worst specimens of would-be humanity I know.”

 

“But you understand why they do what they do, right?”

 

“Yeah, don’t seem to be much else for them.  Lousy schools.  Momma either works all the time or not at all.  Gone most the time or layin’ ‘round all the time.  Both situations hurt in their own way.  Too few daddies around.  Ways to quick money but no way to a future worth havin’.”

 

“So how’d you figure out that wasn’t for you?  You’ve had a good many of the same struggles.”

 

“I know.  I ask myself that, too.  Best I can figure, Mom’s an inspiration.   She tries so hard to put those little jobs together and take care of me and the shorty.”

 

“You worry about that little brother?”

 

“Worry about Jason all the time, man.  All the time.  Gotta keep him straight.  He is so smart.  Can be anything he wants to be.  Gotta keep him away from the dudes on the corners.”

 

…………………………………………………………………………..

 

I drove first around the campus at SMU, then headed just past Mockingbird to the toney streets of Highland Park.

 

“Man, who lives in these mansions?” Rex asked.

 

 “Business executives.  Doctors.  Lawyers.”

 

“Then why you wanta be a teacher?” Rex asked.

 

“I just reckon it’s a better way to help you keep Jason straight,” I said.

 

…………………………………………………………………….

 

We drove on.  A “Tour” indeed.  I drove through the streets of University Park to the west of SMU, then headed over to Lover’s Lane and on to Abrams Road for a pass-through of Dan D. Rogers and the old family abode on Lange Circle.  We stopped for a full-belly if not elegant lunch at Pancho’s Mexican Buffet, then I took Rex back to his house in the projects.

 

“Wanna come in and meet Mom?” Rex asked.

 

“Sure.”

 

We entered to an immaculate living room where we immediately saw Ella Sampson putting a plate of wieners and baked beans at Jason’s place in the dinette.”

 

“Mom, this is Gary,”Rex said.

 

“So pleased to meet you,” came Ella’s reply.  “Thanks for takin’ my boy under your wing.”

 

“He’s taken me under his wing.  I’ve heard so many good things about you.  Ms. Sampson.”

 

“Ms. Sampson?  Do I look fifty-five to you?” she quipped.  “And Rex, why you nevva tell me any of those good things?”

 

“Ah, Mom,” Rex said, giving Ella a kiss on the cheek.  “You know I think you’re the greatest.”

 

Ella grinned ear to ear.  We talked like old friends.  After about twenty-five minutes had passed, I thanked Rex for another tutorial about life in West Dallas. 

 

Rex looked at me quizzically and said, “Man, you somethin’ else.”

 

“No, Rex.  You are something else.  See you Monday.”

 

………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Rex and I had had a number of such outings, even before Mamie McKnight assigned the students in the education course that she co-taught with Jim Buchanan a paper on our experiences visiting schools in Dallas.  McKnight was one of the few African American professors at SMU;  she was rather boring as a lecturer but a nice person and an improvement over Buchanan, who’s main contribution  to the class was to open each session with a mercurial raising of his hand to spout,

 

“Sign of the buffalo.” 

 

How his signal represented such a sign and why he thought this humorous or a way to begin a class at a first-rate university, Dennis and I never could fathom.  But we did get lots of laughs at Buchanan’s expense.

 

My work at Pinkston had begun for me as a tutor and coordinator of tutorial and youth programs for SMU Volunteer Services.  So both my school visitations and observations for the paper fit seamlessly into a routine that I had already established.

 

I loved writing the paper as much as I loved working in Pat Rainey’s class and hanging with Rex on Saturdays.

 

To the degree that these experiences informed my paper for an education course, they provided some compensation for having to endure the likes of Jim Buchanan and all the wasted time in teacher training, so programmatically unworthy but so typical of otherwise first-rate universities across the United States.