I grew up watching Get Smart. One of the props in the show was the cone of silence, which would come down from the heavens (or ceiling), covering Maxwell Smart and the Chief with this clear, plexi-glass disaster that was supposed to let them communicate while preventing the rest of the world from hearing anything. It never ended well.
Torrance does not have a physical cone of silence, but no one ever seems to hear anything or know anything. Especially our students. It’s as if the Internet is a place where the whole world is at their fingertips, except what happens in the South Bay. I don’t teach little babies, and headline news is headline news, front page and all. So I talk to them, with them, and ask them what they think about things.
Today I talked about the Torrance High wrestling case–it’s the front page of the local papers, though I don’t know if it made the TV news. Students didn’t know. When I told them about the ruling, they asked how long ago the case took place. I had to tell them that the verdict came down yesterday. All the information out in the world, they have to have friends that attend other schools, they might hear things at our school, maybe something in their own homes, and it was like I was referring to something that occurred on another planet. Strange.
It’s similarly strange with the adults in our district. If you didn’t know about the court case and the decision handed down yesterday, I’m not sure how you would find out. Teachers generally eat in their own rooms, sometimes joined by another teacher. We don’t really have teachers’ lounges, and since we only have a 31-minute lunch period to get food in us, run errands, check email, go to the bathroom . . . I don’t think many large groups of adults eat together. We talk in passing, in stopping into other teacher’s rooms, by email, and sometimes a phone call. We have no water coolers to gather around either.
So how is anyone to know? When the refinery had a flare-up the other day, we got an email from the district, telling us the story. But in the same week, nothing is emailed about Torrance High. It is something that will affect everyone in the district. What should we tell people? What do we tell our students about what is in the papers? What do we tell TV news if they shove a camera/mic in our face? “Uh, I dunno. We haven’t really been told about it.”
I doubt it will blow over anytime soon, but, for now, enjoy the silence.