Proposed Maine Laws Might Have Changed My Life

King Solomon, two mothers and a baby

Then two women called upon Solomon, asking him to determine which of the two of them should be awarded a disputed infant. Both mothers claimed to have given birth to the baby. Since they couldn't decide, Solomon came up with what sounded like a logical idea. He suggested the baby be cut and split between the two women. When one of the women immediately understood that the beloved child would be killed, she no longer cared whether she got to raise him. All she wanted was that he be safe. The other potential mother didn't care: she wanted her piece. Solomon decided the real mother -- or at least the one who should be the real mother -- was the one who would rather give up her child than see it be destroyed. (About.com)

The failure of two Maine Guardians ad Litem to act ethically or professionally deprived my son of equal access to his mother and father, deprived me of countless opportunities to mother my son, and deprived our family of a quarter million dollars--my mother's legacy to her only grandchild. The combined effect of these so-called professionals on my son's life, and mine, has made me wonder whether I should have acted at the first sign of trouble as the "real mother" in the story of Solomon's Judgment. Newly proposed Maine laws LD 872  and LD 975 could help; LD 522 will ensure more families share my bitter experience, maybe worse. Our State Judiciary Committee votes on them soon, maybe this week.

In 2004, when Felicity Myers, a counselor and GaL, could see that a Knox County Family Court Magistrate Joan Kidman was about to remove Meyers from our case because of clear demonstrations of bias, she resigned from the case, preventing any sign of her unprofessionalism to show up on her record. This also meant she kept access to all her notes--which I have never been able to see--and passed her bias, along with her paperwork, directly to the next GaL, Rosemary Fowles, a chemistry teacher who had passed the bar about seven minutes previously.

In his bid for full custody of our then two year-old son, my lobsterman husband accused me of criminal insanity. Maybe a sometime reporter, long time high school teacher of English and dance, who came to Maine as a child with parents escaping the Southern California smog, is a little crazy, but criminally insane? Myers had a friend administer psychological tests--to the tune of more than a thousand dollars each--to both my husband and me. Mine came out just as my friends and family could have predicted--extroverted, wishing to be liked, on the histrionic side, with nothing rising to the level of concern. A month after my test, Myers called to say my report had been scored and interpreted, then told me I could not see it. When Michaela Murphy, my attorney, now a judge, objected on the grounds of it being a health record, Myers said, because she was an "officer of the court," she could do what she wanted with the document. Murphy said there had to be a reason for her hoarding of my medical records, and she was right.

Nearly $10,000 later in court and attorney fees, above and beyond the regular ol' divorce bills, we discovered her reason. My husband had essentially failed his first psych eval, so Myers had allowed him a do-over. Had she allowed me to see my test results, under the rules of discovery, she would have had to allow my attorney access to both my husband's, and she clearly did not want to do that before her report was finished.

It appeared to my attorney, and to the magistrate, that Myers needed to manage the tests seen by the attorneys because my husband's psychological evaluation had been scored "invalid." In psychological testing parlance, this does not actually mean it was invalid. In fact, this score can show everything from criminality to sociopathy to personality disorder to extreme fear about the testing process. This score demonstrates my husband's tendency toward "faking good," and it contained several unflattering at best, dangerous at worst, psychological indicators, all of which pointed to my initial complaint, that while he appeared polite and aw-shucks-Ma'am humble, he was in truth, threatening and violent, and I wanted any protection the court could offer for myself and our not yet two year-old child. One section of the test is designed to enumerate a person's chances of abusing children. Possibly because my husband failed to earn a passing score on this section, Myers instructed her friend to give him another whack at the test, presumably after some helpful coaching.

Psychological evaluations are not the SAT; they are not designed to be taken until the subject likes his or her score. Scores like my husband's first test are meant to be considered as part of a constellation of other information like violence in the family of origin. The second test, where my husband scored super-normal on everything, complicated the whole picture and led Knox County District Court Judge William Anderson, despite my testimony that my husband had told me before we were married that his father had "pounded" my husband and his eight siblings and broken his mother's collarbone in the kitchen in front of the children, to take a pox-on-both-their-houses stance regarding all testimony about violence. My ex's history of violence towards me and testimony from a local business woman about his threats and intimidation held no weight, as the GaL report said there had been no violence.

The second GaL, Fowles, lied to me and my attorney when she said all her paperwork, including her final report would be available to us before she sent it to the judge. She failed to make anything available, turned in the report on the sly, and when we finally saw the fantastic claims my in-laws had invented for the benefit of Myers and Fowles, we had no recourse. Murphy and I did not know that the computer my husband had taken out of the house--along with a small arsenal of rifles and shotguns--would provide fodder for a new and improved, at least from my husband's standpoint, version of my personal journal. One of my sisters-in-law rewrote it with her as narrator, re-casting me as the perpetrator of violence and threats, and my six-foot, two-inch, 250-pound husband as the victim.

Since our 2005 divorce, my ex-husband's multiple incidents of contempt of court and his attorney's ninja ability--or back room connections--that enables him to evade any consequence, means I have never regained equal parental footing with my ex-husband, and I am now tens of thousands dollars in debt. Eight years after our initial divorce judgment, my ex-husband continues to manipulate and threaten me while flouting whatever court order is currently in place. Currently, I have not seen our boy, a funny, smart, adventurous, soon to be 12 year-old in over a month, when our agreement says he and I are to spend three of every four weekends together.

There is much more to this sad story, saddest for our son who has been prevented from developing a complete attachment to me. Practically from the first weeks of our son's life, his father was threatened by any sign of maternal connection. Once our son was past early infancy, his dad would  do anything he could to distract our nursing baby, or frighten me, in an attempt to curtail a tender moment. This Viking-esque man buried in the trash a hand-me-down bib decorated with faded blue cartoonish lettering that said, "My Mommy is the Best." Lately, he has rewarded our son with gun and NRA paraphernalia, and the promise of pistols on his upcoming 12th birthday for refusing to come see me. If our son, who has--despite the challenges of a social life limited to weekends--developed friends and hobbies, including riding horses, here at my Alna farm, ever demonstrates any desire to spend time with me he is ridiculed or punished or both. Used as coin of the realm in his father's family, humiliation and shunning can make for a brutal abandonment. I know from hard experience. Beginning late in my pregnancy, any time I displeased my husband, his litany of threats always included some reference to his making sure I would be, "on the outside looking in." I understand completely how desperate our boy is to avoid ending up like his mother, driven from the muscular arms of a powerful clan, where all hands seem forever closed in fists.

I have had no recourse regarding the mega-wrongness of our family's initial judgment. Fraudulent trial testimony served only to galvanize the lies contained in the GaL report. Only now, nearly 10 years later, can I say I am recovering from what Michaela Murphy called  the "savaging" of my personal and professional reputation engendered by the Guardian ad Litem's lack of accountability. My husband and his family made perfectly clear their complete inability to cooperate as adults responsible for our son's life, yet they gained influence and most importantly time, time that my son and I may never regain. Only major changes to Maine's family court, specifically oversight of the Guardian ad Litem program and solid recourse when GaLs cross ethical, professional lines will make it possible for others to avoid familial train-wrecks like mine. LD 872 and LD 975 help make GaLs accountable to the families who pay them, not the lawyers, the so-called divorce industry, or their own wallets.

Testing I Can Get Behind

Cambridge brings back its entrance exam. This is a test, besides my own, I'd be happy to teach to.

Genius

You’ll never eat crabs again: Barry Levinson’s eco-freakout ‘The Bay’ | Grist

Frontline did the documentary so well, Levinson had to tell the story. Though I loathe scary movies, I love Levinson well enough that I might see this one.

Honing an Argument for Jenn-yoo-wine School Reform

Spurred by a recent "public notice" in the Kennebec Journal seeking bids to evaluate Maine teachers and administrators with an eye toward merit schemes, I started to scratch the surface of the ubiquitous "edreform" movement. As I look to accomplish this possibly Sisyphean task, Dear Reader, I recommend anyone interested in sorting out the vested interests read the recent NYer article on Diane Ravitch, her own blog, and a confirmed corporate ed skeptic, the edushyster.

 For the overachievers, here are the New York Review of Books Diane Ravitch pages.

Going to Bat for Poetry and Real Education Earns Me My First Twitter Block: I'm so proud

Dear Internet,

I love you.

Up until this morning I was a social media block virgin.

Well, at least this was the first time I cared whether I had access to a fellow Tweeter's timeline. I follow plenty of people, and am followed back, by many people and organizations whose politics and positions differ from mine, from Karl Rove to Dick Armey's Freedom Works.

A few days ago I fell over an astro-turf, supposedly pro-teacher association that says its primary goal is to increase pay for the superstars of teaching. The hedge fund manager founder of this group chose a sports allusion, thedraft.org as its URL and has minions posting emo education palliatives about the importance of great teachers.

Several things about the group's website, patter, and facebook page raised red flags. First, the logo bears a striking resemblance to the NBA and MLB.

 

Who is the audience for this look, who are they trying to sell on their ideas? What research are they using that says these images mean anything to teachers? I still have no idea, though I'm certain they mean nothing to this teacher. The perverse use of President Obama amongst the celebrities in the top post, a banal, meaningless bit of PR, on the group's website, raised my eyebrows. Is it designed to convince those of us who voted for President Obama that he somehow endorses this campaign? Though he may, there is no official sign that this group is aligned with any part of a White House plan for education.

 

 Then I watched a video of LPE founder Stephen Duneier.

 

Anyone who has followed the Crash of 2008 for more than 90 minutes can understand Duneier's coded language. It emanates from ALEC, Freedom Works, some branches of the Libertarian corner of the political labyrinth, and the Tea Party.

After a 10 minute google, I saw that Duneier is a hedge fund manager who worked for the London Diversified, then Peloton Partners, until the Crash, then jumped on the for-profit education wagon. His career path gives special meaning to LPE's subhead: Changing the Face of Education, One Million at a Time. Guessing that's his million, not teachers'.

So, then I decided to engage whomever was at the helm at LPE's Twitter page while asking other teachers for their takes.

Notice, the LPE tweep immediately suggests I am against "alternative" methods for improving education. I wrote that the profit motive fails the test of "alternative" method and this Twitter spox makes up a word in response, causing me and another teacher to engage in some mild ridicule.

Then last night, coincidentally, I see Chris Hayes on C-SPAN's BookTV discuss his new book, "Twilight of the Elites: America After the Meritocracy." Chris Hayes discussing his book on C-SPAN, where he discusses the etymology of the word "meritocracy" and the effect of our wrongheaded love affair with the concept and suggest the LPE Twitter spox read it.

Happy with the universe for providing me with such beautifully timed arguments, I headed over to Facebook, where I discovered the LPE geniuses had co-opted one of my favorite poets, Taylor Mali, and excerpted his famous poem "What Teachers Make" on their website. This clinched it.


That whomever is choosing material for this site failed to comprehend the profound irony of using Mali's poem supporting rigor in democratic education and the sacrifices teachers of all pay grade as reflecting LPE's "meritocratic" blather, demonstrated straight-up ignorance and avarice. I posted a comment under Mali's image and poem excerpt on LPE's FB page, and tweeted Mali about this use.

Mali thanked me within hours and the LPE minion scrubbed my thoroughly civil comment and blocked me from both FB and Twitter.

Guess I touched a nerve.

Postscript: Guess they need some people who know how Twitter works. I followed LPE with my teacher-y account, rather than my personal one and saw a Tweet go by addressed to me. I responded--thinking they had lifted my block.  Oy.

Disrupt

NEW Public Player With Switcher

This is not all. We public school teachers are not machines to be replaced by the next new thing.

If this is what the country wants, we deserve retraining. If we cannot embrace the creative economy, who can?

Open Letter to the Honorable Leigh Saufley

First of all, thank-you for your attention to this painful and unwieldy subject. Many, many Mainers have been chewed up and spit out by our state's Guardian ad Litem system and I am grateful for your devotion of time and intellect to improving Family Court so others can avoid this fate.

Please consider this e-mail my request to participate in any committee developed as part of efforts to transform and/or oversee the way Guardians ad Litem do their difficult work.

As a domestic violence survivor who made poor decisions that were exacerbated by the public safety and GAL system, I have nine long years of experience in and out of Knox County Family Court.

I would like to add both my human capital, as a high school teacher and journalist, and my human empathy, to the process of protecting families from the negative economic and emotional outcomes I have experienced. The money I have poured into maintaining a toehold in our son's life would buy a house and I have missed most of his childhood in large part due to fallout from decisions made by a single guardian ad litem.

Yesterday, I spoke with my State Representative Les Fossel, and suggested to him that for others to avoid the results I have experienced, rules of evidence must apply to all information brought into Family Court. Second and third-hand information, as evidenced in my own report, cannot determine the tenor of a professional court document, yet too often that is precisely what occurs when a Guardian ad Litem's work becomes official. One way to accomplish this would be to ensure that all Maine counties have at least one Drug Court and one Domestic Violence Court available as part of the Family Court system.

In this vein, I have researched domestic violence mitigation strategies worldwide, and our current GaL system is failing in a number of ways to protect families, especially women and children, from violence. As a single example, in 2003, despite the fact that his movements had been determined by a temporary Protection from Abuse order, my then-husband stalked me and entered our home. Our son's GaL xxx xxxxxx   showed no interest in my husband's receiving any consequences for his unlawful behavior. She advised me not to call the police and I took her advice. Though that particular behavior stopped after she told him I had planned to have him arrested, for nearly a decade my now ex-husband has demonstrated versions of this and other sorts of violence, threatening, brinksmanship, character assassination and intimidation, to our son's measurable detriment.

By 2004, my attorney, now Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy had to ask the court to remove XXXXx because of other evidence of bias. Though Xxxxx had cut a deal with my husband's attorney, promising not to step down, in the end, as the weight of the evidence became obvious and it was clear the magistrate would strike sxxxxx from the case, she quit before the magistrate's decision. This served two purposes. One, she received no mark on her record and two, she could pass her bias, possibly now mixed with vitriol resulting from humiliation, along to the next GaL.

State Representative and Guardian ad Litem Terry Hayes and I have spoken at length on this topic. She and I have been friendly for a few years. Despite my respect and admiration for Terry, I believe she treats these matter too lightly. She is of the opinion that those of us who disagree with our child's GaL should put the experience behind us, that we should, "get on with our lives," a version of the Living Well is the Best Revenge adage, I suppose. However, taken to its obvious extreme this philosophy all but abdicates failures of the GaL, the Court, and the public safety system to protect those most vulnerable, and chalks our struggles to see our children, or avoid being abused by an ex-husband, up to a negative outlook or "being stuck in the past."

Like many others, I have ideas I would like to share and improve, as well as sharp experiences that will surprise some.

If my point of view and others' indeed result from a negative outlook, as Terry suggests, then perhaps our committee will decide that we need to get more exercise and to join a club. Please give us the opportunity to decide for ourselves, however. Until now, no one has asked for our perspective.

Thank-you again for your kind attention.

Sincerely,


Leola B. Roberts
Alna

Note: Thanks to Cathy Cooper and Paul Collins for their work on this subject. They and their grassroots organization Maine Guardian ad Litem Alert, MeGaLAlert, have galvanized the press, the judiciary and the survivors of Maine Family Court. Perhaps with this attention, Maine families will have a better chance at justice.

"Bullied" not "Bully" for Midcoast teens

Early in May, the high school visited the newly-renamed Oceanside East School in Rockland to watch a film called, “Bullied.” Though this documentary should not to be confused with “Bully”, a new independent film making its way to Maine in the next few weeks, “Bullied” addressed many of the same issues, including school policy and action, or lack thereof. The high school faculty agreed we and the students needed to see it, so we joined area schools and converged in the former Rockland District High School auditorium.

“Bullied” focuses on a gay man, Jamie Nabozny, who won a large settlement in a court case against his school system after its administration failed to protect him from the physical and emotional damage resulting from many years of anti-gay, homophobic bullying. Nabozny attended the Rockland screening, asked the students several questions and also took their questions. When he asked the Midcoast teenagers in the auditorium to raise their hands if they feel safe in school, not one Rockland, Thomaston, Vinalhaven or North Haven hand went up. This reality pointed squarely at Trekkers Executive Director Don Carpenter’s emotional introduction of Nabozny. Carpenter stood before several hundred teenagers and nearly a hundred faculty and staff members and admitted he had been on all sides of the bullying dynamic. “I have been bullied, I have been a bully, and I have stood by and done nothing when I witnessed bullying,” he said. This simple truth resonated with every person in the hall.

All the North Haven Community School faculty, not just high school teachers, administration and staff work every day to create and maintain a safe environment. As a teacher anywhere, let alone in a tiny school where we pride ourselves on personal, nearly one on one teaching, seeing evidence that your students find the climate threatening is uncomfortable at best, shaming at worst. We went to the screening of “Bullied” because we wanted to face reality, not because we wanted to be comforted.

In the film, Nabozny got abuse for being studious and emotional. To many bullies, kindness, nurturing, and concern for others equal weakness. We all have heard a version of this misogyny on the playground when a child gets criticized for playing a sport, “like a girl.” Because my NHCS classroom is adjacent to the high school locker rooms, outbursts from students who imagine they are out of earshot, too often contain epithets using the word “gay” as a euphemism for stupid, ugly, or confusing. Though consequences and conversation have helped, teachers around the country fight this stereotype, so we know we are not alone.

This fall we have an opportunity, with the coming high school grouping: eight girls, seven freshmen and one sophomore; and 11 boys, two seniors, four juniors, two sophomores, and three freshmen, to hear a wide variety of voices from the student body. With Principal-Elect Amy Marx’s leadership, faculty voices may discover new tunes while bringing Marx into the chorus that echoes in the halls of NHCS.

Cooperation, tolerance, sensitivity, empathy, and kindness build trust and personal relationships and give our work meaning. These traits are part and parcel of the NHCS mission exiting Principal Barney Hallowell has given his adult life to promote and embody. The finest appreciation of this legacy we could provide him would be to honor these precepts by living them.

Missed Deadline...gasp! Instead, let's talk about journalism.

So, no North Haven News. I let preparing for April vacation, getting to Florida for April vacation, doing my taxes during my April vacation, deflecting the compulsive overconsumption of my father's partner while on April vacation (does he have to buy everything in the county that is on sale, then talk about it for 10 minutes per item?),  enjoying a bit of April vacation and getting back from April vacation distract me from my appointed duties at the North Haven News.

For that I am sorry. Overwhelmed a bit, and sorry.

In lieu of anything intelligent from me, have a look at this Laurie Penney post on Warren Ellis's blog. Ask yourself, what is the traditional media and given what it is today, what good is it doing?

xx

L

p.s. Lest anyone think I would let traditional media evaporate, I have three words for you, This American Life.

North Haven HS News Column

Though I'm not blogging enough, I am writing this column for the North Haven News. It's (mostly) what's happening.

Mostly the days at North Haven Community School tick over like they do anywhere, at most jobs, in most industrialized countries. Like most people who work inside buildings, we have meetings, lots of meetings. This month, in addition to our usual meetings about policy, students, schedules, standards, and some other things I have certainly forgotten, we had meetings to meet the candidates for next year’s open principal position and meetings to discuss said principal candidates. Thankfully, the eventual news of our new principal, Amy Marx’s hiring came not in a meeting, but in a universally, at least as far as I could tell, well-received e-mail. Her warmth and intelligence swayed us all, and her wish to find the best place in the world to raise her children seems an excellent fit.

Like most teachers, we also spend most of our time with children. In the high school,  though they may be adult-sized, our 13 students remain children, even the seniors. Sure, we give tests,  grade papers, and monitor behavior, but we work hard to demonstrate the respect, even love, we have for the subjects we teach, on the off chance that these children will emulate our curiosity and desire to learn. The good news is, often they do, and their willingness to focus on Knowledge Fair, rolling toward us on the not too distant horizon, proves it.

Whether it is the relatively high adult to student ratio, the manners demonstrated at home, Fresh Pond’s water, or some ineffable quality I am too new to notice, our children grumble, yet they do their work. Though some do it easily, some struggle, some downright resist, I trust that come the Ides of March, every student will present an exploration of his or her topic in at least one tangible way. Here in the high school we have students studying a broad range of subjects, from a 1970s U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Amish education to American courts’ definitions of mental health; diesel engines to modern warfare; testing in schools to WikiLeaks; bass guitars to hydroponic systems.

Advised by high school teachers Courtney Naliboff, Louis Carrier, Janis Jones, Kristen McGovern , Terry Goodhue and me, as well as Librarian Kate McQuinn and Principal Barney Hallowell, students study, write, paint, glue, and draw in the pursuit of discovering what is worth learning about the subjects they are studying. Though long term projects have become de rigueur in many schools, this will be my first experience with one that encompasses the entire student body. The project’s common purpose seems a rich bonding force among both teachers and students and I look forward to seeing these projects fully fruited and on display for the town.

Closer on the horizon looms the Maine Principal Association’s One Act Play Festival, Saturday and Sunday, March 9 and 10 at Strom Auditorium in Rockport, home of Camden Hills Regional High School.  Led by English and theater arts teacher Courtney Naliboff, the NHCS cast members, Kennedy Cooper, Adam Murphy, Craig Waterman, Gina MacDonald, Samantha Sparhawk, Caleb Mao, Maddie Hallowell, Leta Hallowell, Megan Goodell, Natalie Carrier and Adrianna Ames,  have been rehearsing play called “Mostellaria” by the early Roman Plautus wherein the boys play the girls and vice versa. The plot turns on a sociable young “man” whose father leaves the youth in charge of the family home. Apparently young people have been throwing parties in their parents’ absence for more than 2,000 years, and young Tranio is no exception. The parties continue until the father returns and creates the central problem of the play. The house and, in particular, a friend are in such a state that the young people decide to convince his father that in his absence ghosts have come to haunt his house. This ruse proves problematic and a classic picaresque, replete with knaves, rogues, and adventure, ensues.

    Apparently, there has been a plot afoot for years to keep residents of North Haven from attending the One Act Festival, as it is, according to Principal Barney Hallowell and One Act Director Courtney Naliboff, always scheduled during North Haven’s town meeting. This year, the curtain rises on our play at 2:30 p.m., just enough time to make it to Rockport from the middle boat, and the town meeting starts at 9 a.m. Oy.