“You could sell an Eskimo a refrigerator, honey!”

Back in the days when I was in Grades 5-9 I dreamed of being a successful entrepreneur. I signed up to sell almost anything. Sure, there were the candy sales at school, but I combed through magazines looking for offers to sell seed packets for the American Seed Company, and various other products from sundry companies. But I hit the mother-lode hawking stationary, greetings cards and Christmas cards for the Olympic Sales Company. I made really good money for a young ‘un—you could win prizes for the number of boxes you sold, or plain cold cash. I worked neighborhoods around town, church groups, and my teachers at Westwood Elementary School. Miss McGhee, the legendary 5th and 6th grade math and science teacher who would have made a great stock character on the TV show, The Wonder Years, always bought four boxes of engraved cards (engraved cards meant more kick-back for the young salesman). Miss Wilson, my amazing and iconic humanities teacher in the 5th grade, always bought stationary. But she did not have her name and address imprinted on the floral stationery—she had the phrase “Bloom where you are planted” emblazoned on her stationery. One of the older women who lived behind Gram Leistler was a Mrs. Metz, a soft sell, and one of the people on my Go-To list whenever I started a new sales project. One day I was selling plants and Mrs. Metz cheerily put her name down for several plants and offered me this assesment, “You could sell an Eskimo a refrigerator, honey!”

Well, as we all know, sales and entrepreneurial chutzpah were not in the cards. Once I had an AP history class in high school with another legendary teacher, Jean Michaels, that was it. The route to igloo sales was changed. I was to become a historian.

I often think of Miss Wilson for many reasons. I have mentioned her before in the blog as on the very short list of best teachers I have known. I have mentioned how in 2004 I found her again after 25 years of not knowing where she had moved after she left Westwood. I have mentioned her because she stoked my love of both history and drama.

But in the last few months I have thought of her more often with that phrase she had printed every year on her stationery (I visited her after I had her in class, with the sample book in hand, to hear about new books she liked and to solicit her order for my annual Olympic sales)—Bloom where you are planted.

All summer long of 2009 I kept moving around where I was, visiting groups of friends (already blog-chronicled) and sad every time those few days were up with that particular group of friends, never too despondent since I kept seeing more people that make my world blessed. And each trip I would realize how happy I was there—be it Cincinnati, Nantucket, Westchester County, Manhattan, North Carolina, Dallas—how with these great friends I just bloomed!

In the last two weeks, as you know, I journeyed to North Carolina, spent a long weekend with magnificent friends, left sad, drove home to Cincinnati, bloomed in Cincinnati, and then set out, sad again, back to Jordan.

I landed back in Jordan, happy to be back at work here, again, doing what Miss Wilson mandated, blooming where I am planted.

I come from a long line of bloomers: my mother and father both have demonstrated an uncanny ability to make the most of any situation. Pity and petulance were too easy in extreme situations (if you have ever heard my father’s advice for enduring a bad patch of road in life, he shrugs, and reminds you, “You can stand on your head for six months.”) so why not make the most of something, and just bloom. My grandmothers were both incessant bloomers. The three sibling sisters in my mother’s family were bloomers, but such different flowers: Aunt Helen a delicate morning glory, my mother the showy and pleasant anemone, and my Aunt Dot the adjustable, long-lasting, beautiful iris flower. Anyway, I could do a whole blog entry on those women and their floral/blooming qualities.

As I said, school is back in session, and as we hunker down, get past the holy month of Ramadan (which does have a fair amount of interruptions and changes from a regular schedule) and really get the school year underway, I think again how wonderful and important those words are from Miss Wilson. No matter where we are, no matter what conditions, situations, surprises and expectations we encounter, we need to bloom. We need to put down some roots, weed around ourselves, and bloom. It is a little interesting how I think of that more here, in the desert, where for month after month there is very little blooming. Then again, maybe that isn’t so surprising after all.

But while I did not continue with that zeal for sales in the normal way, I guess I have continued that earlier love for selling by trying to “sell” the study of history. I have that unflagging love that both Miss Wilson and Mrs. Michaels had about “selling” how to be a great student, crafting good sentences and reaching imaginative, purposeful conclusions about how understanding the past matters.

In this desert garden we are selling a way of life like crazy. The mission statement of the school has lofty goals about critical thinking, interdisciplinary work, and solving problems in our complicated world. We hope we do those things. But we are still selling our students on some basic things: get up on time in the morning, be in dress code with your shirts tucked in, ties confidently knotted and splendidly raised, show up for morning meeting, attend classes…

It is not exhausting in the same way it was two years ago—witness how strong and ready and willing most of my AP students are. But those basic things above, starting out the day dressed and punctual, those goals are still beyond some of our students. There is still training to be done, selling to be done about how this kind of education can impact their lives and transform them.

Yesterday, in the span of an hour, I had two encounters with two different students that made me laugh, and also remind me we need to keep on selling. It was my first lunch with my new group of students assigned to my lunch table. The students rotate every few weeks to new randomly chosen groups with faculty members. The students act as waiters at the table, the faculty serve the students, and we practice how to eat and discuss like professionals.

A senior raised the topic of “senior privileges” at the table, so we discussed why they might exist, and what kinds of things were reasonable to expect as senior “privileges.” One new student asked why chewing gum wasn’t a privilege for everyone. Most of us laughed at the table when I reminded her, “Most students chew gum against the rules every day anyway.” “Oh, yeah,” she said. Then her face darkened a bit, and she said, rather testily, “I just don’t see why we can’t text during class. I mean—seriously!” I turned to her and offered, “You know down the road here is a McDonald’s. You could stop in after school today and get an application.” That same girl said in her valley girl accent (Is it the Jordan Valley Girl here? Why does it sound just like the California Valley Girl???) “That was harsh.” I volleyed: “If you just want to sit in class and text your friends on your phone, you probably won’t be able to handle really any complex skills or knowledge. But I would stop at the McDonald’s and buy a McFlurry from you.” She never did see why she had to do anything in class, but the rest of the table seemed to get that thumbing your cell phone all day would probably not fully prepare you to be a leader of the world.

Then I went over to the Lecture Hall to show a DVD while a colleague made an emergency trip to Saudi Arabia to renew her residency. I settled them down, started the DVD, and sat by a guy named Omar. As I sat, and the movie about early civilizations started, Omar took out his IPhone and started to play a game. He was right beside me! Naturally I snatched the IPhone—quite intrigued by the gorgeous product, and hoped he might glean a little something out of watching that film.

Earlier that day I had a 1 JD bill in my hand during morning meeting. That bill is worth about $1.50 and I had it in my hand because I had promised it to a student if he only showed up for morning meeting (all 400 students are required to come to morning meeting at 7:55). He almost never comes to the meeting, and as the dean of the Senior class, I am supposed to find ways—deterrents, consequences, penalties, incentives—to get them there. I told him I would give him 1 JD if he showed up. I thought he would show up just for the novelty that I offered him money. He was a no-show again.

We are working on selling this more rigorous, intensive school life to our students. Some of them do everything and a whole bunch try and get out of nearly everything. It’s a part of adolescence too. I know it works because I look at 75% of the students in my AP class and they are the students who bought this ticket to student superstardom. These guys have bloomed at this place.

Yesterday (Thursday is our Friday) there was something new on campus. The sports teams tried having practice on the last day of the school week. When the Office of Student Life suggested this, oh my, the hue and cry against how this went counter to everything they knew in Jordan—no one would stay, everyone would quit teams. But Julianne, the Dean of SL, persisted.

Yesterday we heard the sounds of whistles and movements and cheering as the varsity teams practiced. They sold it, and most of those students bought it.

It may be a tiny flower, but it is blooming.