To be positive about Manhasset these days is a challenge ... especially if you attend school board meetings ... especially if you are a teacher. After all, what was there to be optimistic about after the board meeting on June 21, 2004? Clearly, the "pater familias," the eldest men of the Manhasset community (even those of some substance not in pursuit of petty vendetta) seem to be myopically engaged in some "war game" where the object is to "win" even at the cost of truth, even at the cost of integrity. Instead of leading the village as models of public service they seem intent on devouring their young, the children of the school district. Then, too, audience members were circulating a document casting even more of a pall over those in positions of school leadership. To be positive about Manhasset these days is a challenge ... especially if you attend school board meetings ... especially if you are a teacher.

There were few glimmers of hope at that meeting - Mrs. Vessa reminding us of the need for community; young Mr. Papain returning from college to remind us how well-prepared Manhasset graduates are - but they served to buoy me, to inspire me to remind myself why I had become a career teacher, why I had stayed at Manhasset for 27 years.

And I thought about Tim Miller. Tim, a member of the current graduating class, as a sophomore was taken from his Manhasset peers by an allergic reaction that proved deadly. I want to make clear to you that I never taught Tim, I wouldn't have known him from others I had not taught and who I daily passed in the halls. Yet I know him. Let me explain how.

I am very close to last year's graduating class - the class of 2003 - I had taught most of them for three years and some of them for five. Frankly, I had little hope that I would enjoy a similar relationship with the class of 2004, because relationships, like most things fine, develop only over time. But right from the start, the current seniors were different - mature beyond their years, unusually other-centered, kind and forgiving both to each other and me. "Why?" I wondered, "why are they so civil, so mannered, and so giving?" Finally, I came to fully understand at year's end when students complete a project called "Bringin' it all on home," a summary presentation akin to "packing up one's intellectual bags and carrying them into the future." Senior after senior spoke of the profound influence that Tim has on their lives, how he makes them better people, how they miss him, how they live their lives with him in mind. In a way I had never intended, the experience of each senior speaking, sharing, was a communion, and I, too came to know Tim Miller; he lives in our senior class.

To be positive about Manhasset these days is a challenge ... especially if you attend school board meetings ... especially if you are a teacher. But I am positive, for I understand that although the "pater familias" may have abandoned us, we can look to our young for hope and optimism and even for leadership, if we have the humility and good sense to follow their example.

Joseph A. D'Angelo, Ph.D.