Richard J. Alley

Law Talk profile for The Memphis Daily News

May 23, 2013

In 2008, the Tennessee Supreme Court laid out a strategic plan to get attorneys more involved in pro bono work.

Though it isn’t required of the state’s professionals, there is an inspirational goal of 50 hours per year of public service that is heavily encouraged by the justices.

At the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, however, students are required to complete 40 hours of pro bono during their school career.

Callie Caldwell, public interest law counselor for the school, said that approach will benefit students when they leave school to practice.

“We wanted our students to get in there, dig in while they’re in law school, learn those skills and be very comfortable doing pro bono work so that when they graduate they’ll be able to quickly transition and be used to doing the kind of work that comes along with what’s typically considered as pro bono,” she said.

In that capacity, Caldwell’s work is two-fold as the director of the pro bono program: monitoring students and creating placement within their interests in a field with working lawyers of the community. With career services, she counsels and guides students that want to work in the world of public interest.

Students can’t start working until they’ve had at least 15 hours of coursework completed, usually in their second semester. They work with attorneys on projects such as the law school’s monthly pro se divorce clinic or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, working to allow the children of immigrants to stay in the country for up to two years and obtain a driver’s license, work, go to college or join the military … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

May 9, 2013

Wanted: a second chance to be a band geek

The story was all over my social media feeds last week. The principal of a low-performing school in Roxbury, Mass., let his security staff go to help pay for more arts teachers. It was another of those stories I ignored at the time, knowing that if I found I was interested in reading it later, then it would be there; stories have a way of circling around and coming back to us. And this one did just that as I sat in the audience twice in the past week for my sons’ band concerts at White Station Middle and High Schools. It’s the type of setting where a story on the importance of funding arts programs in schools might be set to the music of Gershwin.

If you’ve never been to a concert at that level, it is nothing less than extraordinary. I wasn’t in the band in high school. Band geeks, that’s who was in the band. It turns out there is no shame in that. Just the opposite: It’s a moniker worn with pride. There may be no other instance of students working so closely together with their teachers than in a school auditorium as they give a performance everything they’ve got. They all have a stake in it. They’re all trying to make this thing — this arrangement — sound as whole and as perfect as possible. To do such a thing takes more than mere talent: It takes teamwork.

Many of the professional musicians I know all came to their instruments through their secondary schools’ band programs. How many adults today do you know who can show a direct line from middle school to their careers? The conductors on stage this past week — Mr. Wright, Mr. Guinn and Mr. Scott — are the Pied Pipers of our children, leading them into something that, even if they don’t make a job of it, they will use in some way or other their entire lives.

In a recent conversation, Dru Davison, performing arts coordinator with Memphis City Schools, hit on the ability of music to facilitate all learning when he spoke of the many jazz ensembles in the schools and the art of improvisation.

“You can recite someone else’s piece of music, or you can take everything you know about music and create your own, and that kind of creativity and innovation is really what employers are looking for,” Davison told me. “It’s about being college- and career-ready, and if you have kids in a jazz band, you know that they’re showing up on time for every rehearsal or else they can’t perform.”

That school in Roxbury, Orchard Gardens Elementary, has shown a vast improvement in its test scores, in its morale and in its security issues even without the aid of a police force. They’re working as a team now — students, teachers, administration — to make their arrangement the best that it can be.

If I had it all to do over again, would I be a band geek? You bet I would. I would be awful, mind you, but I would try my hand at the saxophone or the clarinet or maybe even the tuba. In lieu of talent, I sit in the audience as a music lover.

I’m a proud parent of public schoolchildren, and I’m with the band.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

April 26, 2013

Schoolkids are uniform enough in any old thing

The new unified school district has asked parents to imagine how next school year might look. Specifically, how our children might look, whether dressed in uniforms or just any old thing. Currently, Memphis City Schools students wear uniforms, and Shelby County students do not. An online survey has been circulated asking the input of parents.

Uniforms. No uniforms. Neutral. Those are our options.

I can’t pay attention to the minutiae of the goings-on within the battle for supremacy over the schools next year. There are budget concerns, building concerns and personnel concerns ad infinitum. But the debate over uniforms caught my eye. It’s a very real, very practical issue for parents who will need to gauge their mornings and budgets come August.

I attended private Catholic schools through the ninth grade and was made to wear a uniform that included dress shoes and a tie. Nothing amuses my kids more than picturing their scrawny 8-year-old father with a tie cinched up beneath his chin. When, in the 10th grade, I switched to a public county school and was allowed to wear anything — anything at all — it was as though a veil was lifted. It was a denim veil, and a freedom I had not known before.

As a parent, I see both sides of the issue. I know how much simpler mornings are when there are no questions as to what to wear to school. Arguments are limited to where shoes might have been left or who has overslept, while what to wear is a nonissue. I appreciate both the individuality and personality expressed by a wardrobe, and the one-size-fits-all ease of uniforms.

I don’t know whether this survey will be considered, or whether it will become just one more sheaf of paper in what must be a Jenga-like stack of paperwork the new unified board must consider. But just in case, I took the debate straight to those most affected: my own kids. No surprise that they were overwhelmingly in favor

of no uniforms. When I tried to explain to them how much easier it is when you just wear the same thing every day, my preteen son put it best, I think, when he shouted, “I’m going to wear the same thing every day, anyway!” Indeed, I’ve been that preteen when laundry day consisted of a favorite T-shirt being pried, and peeled, from my body.

Our kids are currently immersed in the one-size-fits-all week of TCAP tests. They’ll be tested to find out how they measure up with the students in the seats next to them, an adjoining classroom, a school across the city and one on the opposite side of the state. Sameness. If our children look the same, perhaps they’ll learn the same.

There will be time enough as adults to wear the uniform of the banker, the doctor and policeman, the Windsor knot and pantsuit of the lawyer. They’ll be uniformly kept within the gray fabric of cubicles and tagged with the ID badge of an employer. So in the end, I suppose I sway away from the idea of uniforms. Kids will find their own uniforms to go along with their own groups and their own personalities. They may not look exactly the same, but they are more alike than we realize. They, more than we, realize this as well. They’re kids. They’re the same as the kids in the next classroom over, the school across the city and the one across the state. We don’t need them to act just the same, or look just the same, to see that.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April, 5, 2013

John Bass earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Memphis.

Specifically, the degree is focused on 16th century music compared to modern jazz pedagogy and how musicians then might have been taught improvisation.

Where does one go with such a degree?

Bass has taken it across Midtown to Rhodes College where he is the director of the Mike Curb Institute for Music. The Curb Institute was established to preserve and promote the distinct music traditions of the South, as well as research its effect on history, economy and social systems.

What better place than Memphis, the genesis of so much in popular music? And what better place for a musician from Mobile, Ala.?

Bass’ father was a physician by trade and also an after-hours banjo player, so Bass grew up with music in his ears and, eventually, a guitar in his hands.

After a typical adolescence spent playing in garage bands around town, Bass took the not-so-typical turn of seriously studying jazz. His high school band director suggested the University of Southern Mississippi, where Bass majored in jazz guitar.

He and his wife, Johnnie, considered Memphis for their respective pursuits and programs. She is an audiologist now with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and he received his master’s in jazz guitar from Memphis before pursuing his doctorate.

While working on that advanced degree, Bass began teaching guitar as an adjunct professor at Rhodes College, which doesn’t offer a degree in music, per se, yet in the liberal arts tradition students can graduate with a Bachelor of Arts and a major, or emphasis, in music … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

March 28, 2013

Teach kids to enjoy city with family

The week before last, for about half a week, it was springtime in Memphis. Remember that? Temperatures in the 70s, sunshine, the saucer magnolia in my front yard even dared to show its colors. Luckily for my kids, that was during their spring break, and we took full advantage of it.

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art held a chalk art festival with folks creating their own works of art on the plaza in front of the museum. Kids got into the act as well and turned the concrete into a rainbow of butterflies, puppies, squiggly lines and shapes. It looked as if spring had fallen upon Midtown alone and blossomed in chalk dust.

From there, it’s only a hop and a skip to the Memphis Zoo. A short trip unless it’s 70, sunny and spring break. The line of cars waiting to get in snaked through the park and down Poplar. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to see the snakes. Or, more accurately, they wanted to touch a stingray. We never did make it into that exhibit; the lines there were too overwhelming for impatient children (and adults). We’ll make a special trip for the rays.

The highlight of the week for me was a visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. The museum is a treasure trove of soul, blues, styles and grooves. My kids laughed at Isaac Hayes’ hats and boots; they dug his car with its fuzzy floor and gold detail. They swayed and strutted on the dancefloor in front of a floor-to-ceiling episode of “Soul Train,” and they marveled at the display of black Frisbees. “Those are records,” I explained.

My favorite part is the short film shown at the beginning of every visit. I’ve seen it before, and it never fails to bring a lump to the throat. Stax, in its heyday, rode a wave of hits, fame, funk and, most inspirational, family. Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T. & the MG’s, says in the film that when you walked into Stax, you were family. Color did not matter. Until it did. When things turned after that tragic April 4 in 1968, a day we’ll commemorate next week, neither Stax nor the city of Memphis would ever be the same.

In the 10 years since the museum opened, though, that tide has turned again. I saw it two weeks ago in a museum where black and white, young and old, all studied the rise and fall of a great American sound. We laughed at the size of the collars, wiped a tear at the story of a plane crash and danced to the same beat. In a park across town on another day, my kids sidled up to others from throughout the city to revel in color. At our world-class zoo, where there was once a day of the week set aside for black-only visitors, multitudes of all ethnicities wandered.

Last week saw the official first day of spring, though the predicted snow the following day said otherwise. Either way, the long winter hibernation is over. It’s time to get out and visit your city, wherever you live; learn what it holds, its history good and bad, and enjoy time with family that you know, and that you have yet to meet.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal

Cover story for the Rhodes Magazine

Winter 2013

In the 1920s, the college published a code for athletes. Heading the list:

“As an athlete I am determined to play the game to the limit of my capacities, giving each detail the greatest care and attention.”It holds true today, as then, at play and in the classroom.

At the far north end of the Rhodes College campus stands a citadel of sweat, an acropolis of aches and a fortress of fortitude. The Bryan Campus Life Center (BCLC) is where the athletic administration offices can be found, past fitness rooms and down long hallways adorned with trophies and plaques and photos of athletes who won them for the college.

The tradition doesn’t stop with photos, though; it is also in the air, mixed within the mortar and stone and on polished woodwork. The William Neely Mallory Gymnasium, built in 1954 and dedicated to the 42 alumni who perished in World War II, is where the men’s and women’s basketball teams tip off, and the volleyball team rallies, atop the Lynx paw at mid-court. If nearby Paul Barret Jr. Library is the brain of the campus, then the BCLC is its muscle, flexed daily and stretched with dedication and passion by the student-athletes within. In its shadow, a bright light in its own right, is Crain Field, which was refurbished with state-of-the-art synthetic FieldTurf, a gift of Brenda and Lester Crain Jr. ’51 in honor of his father, J. Lester Crain Sr. ’29, at the start of the 2012 football season … (read more)

Annual “20 under 30″ issue highlighting 20-somethings making great strides in the city for The Memphis Flyer

Jan. 24, 2013

These young people have graduated from their teens with a sense of responsibility beyond their years, and it is driving them to do good, to leave Memphis a better place. Within their ranks, there are advanced college degrees and long hours spent learning and perfecting a craft. The members of this group can dribble a ball, carry a tune, cook a meal, tell a joke, take a picture, book a show, raise money, raise awareness, and raise us all up if we put ourselves in their capable, young hands.

Each is an ambassador for our city. They are giving their best to make themselves and their community a better place to live and to visit.

News of violence and scandal can make the future seem bleak, but we can rest easier knowing that these 20 men and women are a part of that future. Keep an eye on them and watch what they can do when they put their minds and hearts to it … (read more)

Flyer cover 2013

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 20, 2012

Helping out can allow us to reclaim holiday spirit

Because I Said So column for The Commercial Appeal

Dec. 6, 2012

The hardest thing about kids: Math homework

A word to the wise today for new parents out there: Take your eyes off your sleeping baby just long enough to read this column. She’ll be fine; they rarely up and roll out of a crib or burst into flames. And she’ll still be just as precious when you return.

What you should know is that there is a time coming that will make you forget who that sparkling newborn come forth to brighten your lives ever was. My fellow veteran parents know what it is and I apologize now for any post-traumatic stress you may suffer when I tell these new mothers about the mother of all headaches: a first-grader’s homework.

Is there anything more dispiriting, more threatening to our blood pressure, than sitting at the dining room table trying to induce a 6-year-old to focus — please focus! — on this next math problem? The induction of labor might be a more pleasant experience.

Walking? Piece of cake. Talking? It’s only natural (though be aware that once it starts, it will not stop). Learning to ride a bike? The worst you might end up with is a broken bone, and it won’t be yours. Even the teens and puberty, driver’s license and prom have nothing on that half-hour … hour? … You’ll lose all track of time trying to teach your child about time.

The table, normally the site of tranquil family dinners, becomes a battleground, the only weapons a stubby pencil, wrinkled worksheet and a fleeting grasp of the most basic in mathematic fundamentals. I point, again, at the problem at hand and read it aloud to my daughter. She’s there with me, physically, but her mind is across the house with her siblings, or in a pineapple under the sea.

When I finish reading, she looks up as though surprised to find me there, and then she answers: “Four?” No. “Eight?” No. “Three.” An exasperated look. “Two. Twelve. Four?” When it becomes too much, when the intensity over these integers becomes more than I can bear, the answer is, at long last, shouted: “Five! It’s five!”

And then we both just sit and stare at each other because, once again, it’s I who blurted it out.

Our homework session ends when I stand to leave the room as she writes an “S” in the wrong blank.

I love my daughter. Perhaps I don’t say that enough in this space. I love all of my children just as much as you new parents cherish that ball of drool and gas sleeping in its crib beside you (I know you haven’t even left the nursery), but this one might not be cut out for academics. She’s more Frankenstein than Einstein these days.

But we’re working on it together, and throughout first grade I expect her grades to rise as steadily and as high as my systolic pressure.

Permanent link to The Commercial Appeal

Daily news story for The Memphis Daily News

Oct. 26, 2012

DeNeuville Learning Center. KIPP Memphis Collegiate Schools. Shelby County Books from Birth. WriteMemphis.

These are some of the nine recipients of this year’s GiVE 365 grants. GiVE 365 is an initiative of the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis whose members pledge a dollar per day per year, and are encouraged to vote on what causes that money will go. This year’s theme was “Eyes on the Prize: Organizations helping students graduate from high school or college,” and 11 finalists were asked to give three-minute presentations in front of voting members.

“Each of these organizations defines what that looks like a little differently,” Melissa Wolowicz, vice president of grants and initiatives said of this year’s theme. “DeNeuville is working with women on their GEDs, Hatilloo (Theatre) wants to teach students a skill set related to the theater and the arts that will give them something to help earn money while they’re getting their education.”

The total grant amount was $50,394 with individual amounts ranging from $3,200 to $7,500.

These are amounts that can make a difference for the respective organizations and in the lives of those they seek to help … (read more)