In our hearts there are capillaries called collaterals that can continue blood flow when arteries become too clogged.
Blood flows through the collaterals around the blockage, supplying the muscle and finally finding its way back into the blocked artery. The blocked vessel is supplied with blood by the pathways emerging from all sides of the tissues; the blood fills the vessel from beyond the stenosis and ascends to the narrowing. This explains why the right coronary artery in Fig 3. is so splendidly full of blood beyond the severe stenosis, far into the finest branches. natural heart bypass
I’ve been thinking about collaterals for the heart of our education system where the arteries are clogged with bureaucracy, agendas for profits and misguided out of touch policy makers and funders.
Harper High School, featured in a two part program on This American Life in 2013. sits in a neighborhood where violence is part of everyone’s daily life.
The adults at Harper talk with their students about what is really going on, not skirting the difficult realities of gangs, drugs, deaths, survival strategies like never being out alone, never being out unless you have to, walking in the middle of the street. They are brave diving into trauma with their students to help them unravel tangled emotions before the pain unravels them.
This school is: teachers, social workers, administrators, side by side with their kids in survival, making incredibly hard decisions and judgement calls, trying to keep hope and life going. This is not about test scores or teacher quality according to someone’s rubric with hundreds of indicators. What they do with many of their kids is not on any of the several rubrics I’ve seen. They are trying to give the kids a high school experience in spite of the backdrop of their threatened lives. They are trying to find pathways for the kids to keep their life force alive, physically and emotionally.
I listened to Part 1 of the show this morning before the sun rose. I have watched other documentaries and read articles about Chicago. Just like I’d heard stories about police shootings. Seems like every now and then, something gets through in a new way, deeper and more real. The voices and pain of these students and adults in the dark before dawn, shifted my view without my realizing it. Somehow the usual frustrations didn’t get to me. They seemed unreal. They are unreal.
Inspired by the cut-to-the core actions at Harper, I found this new view provided me with more clarity. There were ways to be found to get around and through the obstacles. At least for today.