Published: May 1, 1995

Do Not Disturb!

It would be years before I would recognize those interruptions for what they really were--and two decades before I would figure out what to do about them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, schools are weird. Priorities are skewed. Teachers' telephone messages are shoved into their mailboxes, but students' are hand-delivered in the middle of class. Custodians mow lawns right under our windows during third period, rather than at 2:35 after classes are dismissed, and no one stops them. We constantly espouse the sanctity of the learning process, yet think nothing of interrupting the concentration of 2,000 people to tell just one that his or her...