What You Think You See

Seeing is Believing.  Is it?  Is what we see always representative of reality?

In my day job, I sometimes stand at a desk where people are expected to scan their membership card as they enter the building. If you forgot your card, we can enter you another way; but everyone must be admitted through the system.  

One morning, I was at the desk when a woman was digging through her bag for her keychain (didn't she just get out of her car with her keys in her hand?) while someone else walked by me on her way to her yoga class.  While the first woman didn't say anything out loud, I could see her facial expression, wondering why she had to dig for her card while this woman walked on by.  What she didn't know was that this woman had, in fact, scanned in a few minutes earlier. She had gone down the stairs and realized she had left her water bottle in the car. Since we both knew she had already scanned, it wasn't necessary for her to do it again.  But without that piece of knowledge, the card searcher had only what she saw to inform her attitude and incorrectly interpreted what she saw using incomplete data.

This is more common in your life than breathing.  I'm not being hyperbolic.  You only breathe about 20 times per minute, but you interpret incoming sensory data hundreds of times per second. Literally everything that happens in your mind is an interpretation made by your brain.  As I used to tell my science students, eyes and ears are data collectors, but seeing and hearing only happen when your brains interpret that data. 

• This is why you can perceive the room spinning when you are dizzy even though that is obviously not the input your eyes are receiving. It comes from the brain trying to put together inconsistent data from two different sources - the still spinning fluid in your ear's semicircular canals and the input from the eyes.  The brain trusts the ear more and tells the brain to see something that the eyes are not seeing.
• This is why people can hallucinate voices that are not actually present. Their brain is making an interpretation of something that is not consistent with reality. Their ears are not actually hearing anything, but their brain is.

Yet, we all put great faith in our own interpretation of things. That's a feature, not a bug.  We have to do it. If we doubted everything we were seeing and hearing every minute of the day, we would crack up.  For the brain to perfectly process everything would take more time and energy than makes sense for it to use.  So, it takes short cuts.  It fills in gaps in data through interpolation and extends interpretation beyond the data through extrapolation.  

So, we can't stop to question ALL interpretations.  But we should question some of them.

This is an education blog, so let's take it to the classroom.  Is it possible that we sometimes misinterpret student behavior?  When that student who is always out of his seat without permission, do we take the mental shortcut of assuming that EVERY shift he makes in his chair is about to be a rule violation? Do we hear the first half a question and assume we know what the student is asking?  Do we see a kid in the hallway and assume she is skipping class because she has done so in the past? Kids who have been trouble makers in the past have often complained that they don't feel like teachers will let them grow and change because of their past behavior.  Do they have a point?  Do we over-interpret their actions because our brains are taking a totally normal mental shortcut?

How about your colleagues.  Do you make assumptions, not just about the action you see them doing but about their internal life?  Do you assign motive based on your past history with them?  Do you assume they are short tempered because you see them snap at a student without knowing the week long history that led up to that moment?  Do you know the whole story, or do you tell yourself a story?

I had this conversation recently about a man who was very irritated with his boss.  He was using some strong terms, like "bait and switch" during our conversation.  I had to say, "Okay, slow down" and walked him through this way of thinking.  There are three things happening here.

1. Facts
2. Feelings about facts
3. The interpretation of the facts as they are processed through your feelings.

The facts were real. He was accurately relaying the story of WHAT had happened.  His feelings were real.  He was rightly irritated by WHAT his boss had done. It's that third part where things get fictional. His brain was going beyond what he knew to be true in order to construct a story. It was filling in the gaps of what happened with WHY they happened, leading him to assign motive that was almost certainly not accurate. His boss is not a manipulator or a liar, so the term bait and switch was unfair. If he were processing the facts through a different set of feelings, the story he was telling himself would be far different.

Part of what makes teaching difficult is how many pieces of data we have to interpret and how little time we have to reflect properly.  We often react quickly to our rapid interoperation simply because there isn't time to slow down.  My encouragement to you would be to slow down as much as you are able to, knowing it might not be much.  

• That extra second before responding to a child might make a difference in your relationship with them because it might give you just enough distance to assume the best rather than the worst.
• That extra minute it takes to remind yourself of what you know for sure about your colleague might prevent weeks of awkward interactions with them.
• Taking a few class periods before answering a parent email will allow you to answer in a more tactful way. It is much better for them to experience a delay in your response than for them to experience the response you would give while your blood pressure was still high.

I've strayed a bit from the point here, so let me close the circle.  What you think you see isn't always representative of reality.  It's worth asking if you know the whole story. If not, hold your own certainty in check, and be open to changing your story after you know more.

Student Accessible Language

In my preparation to lead a Livestrong group at the Y, I was required to take a few group fitness instructor certification courses.  In one of them, there was a well-meaning but insane piece of advice - "Use the medical names for bones and muscles. Don't say 'hips;' say 'pelvic girdle' instead. Don't say 'shin;' say 'tibia.' It will make you sound credible." Before I get into the education connection here, let me just say if you have to resort to a technique to sound credible, you aren't credible. 

Meanwhile, actual group fitness instructors rarely do this.  They use imagery to help their members know what to do. Greg, a cycle instructor, doesn't say, "align your tibia with the vertical post of pedal shaft" or "keep your transverse arch parallel to the floor" because he knows that would not only make him sound ridiculous, it also wouldn't be at all helpful to members trying to keep good cycle form.  Instead, he says, "It should feel like you are scraping gum off the bottom of your shoe." Everyone can imagine that and benefit from it.  Dana teaches Barre, where alignment from head to toe is important to prevent injury. She explains everything in detail once, but after that she says, "Zip up your body suit." And just like that, everyone is able to see if their alignment is correct in the mirror.  These are examples of language that is accessible to the learner rather than feeding the ego of the instructor.

Teachers, have you taken a look at your state objectives?  If you have, you know they can be more difficult to interpret than contract legalese. Here's one from the NC Chemistry curriculum.  "PS.Chm.4.3 Use mathematics and computational thinking to analyze quantitatively the composition of a substance (empirical formula, molecular formula, percent composition, and mole conversions)."  Y'all, I taught chemistry for ten years, and this is a crazy sentence. For one thing, computational thinking is mathematics, and you can't analyze something quantitatively without those, so there are few redundancies here whose purpose seems to be only to make the sentence longer.  Also the examples cover several chapters of material, so you can't possibly use this for one lesson.  Given that many school require the objective to be written on the board, you are going to have some confused and frightened students if you just throw this up at the beginning of your lesson.  If were teaching chemistry now, I would write, "Write chemical formulas for ionic compounds" because that is the level students can comprehend and explains what we will be doing TODAY.  

The same is true of unnecessarily complex vocabulary.  Do you need to use the word hydrodynamic? You might; it depends on what you are teaching and how old your students are.  But you might be better served by the words "fluid motion" (or with really young students, the world liquid will probably do).  I stopped reading a book once because the author was more interested in showing off her vocabulary than she was in readers learning from her work. 

Is there a time when it is appropriate to use more complex language.  Absolutely.  It is when doing so serves a purpose. Going back to the group fitness examples, it would absolutely make sense to teach class members the term pelvic girdle if the movement you want them to do involves 360º of motion.  Then, you are prompting the imagery of a girdle, something that surrounds the entire area, not just the left and right motion of the hips. When doing back focused exercises while weight lifting, we sometimes work a few different muscles during the same song, Matt will sometimes bring focus to whichever muscle we happen to be working with that exercise as an act of clarity.  When we are working the latissimus dorsi, he uses the name and says, "you know, like a shark's dorsal fin."  In that case, knowing the name is helpful for remembering its location.  That's a thoughtful use of the scientific name, not a pretentious act of "gaining credibility." 

As a physics teacher, the difference between velocity and speed matters.  In regular life, it doesn't.  When I taught 8th graders that there is no such thing as cold, only the movement of heat in our out of a substance, I told them, "This matters a lot in science, but please don't be the person who responds to someone saying it is cold with, 'Actually, it is less hot' because you will sound like a nutcase."  

If you have ever been on an IT help call with someone who uses all the jargon and treats you like you are dumb for not understanding it, you might have some empathy with your students. When teaching students, use the technical language that matters (and explicitly teach them what it means), but use your speech to make your content more accessible, not less. It doesn't matter how great your lesson was if you used so much lofty language that they can't understand it.

What I Don't Know How to Do

On Monday, my physics students participated in the culmination of our study of rotary motion.  They were assigned the task of designing and building a spinning top with the goal of spinning for the longest period of time.  They were required to defend their choices of mass, radius, and shape using physics.  Then, we have a tournament to see whose design results in the longest spin.  

This is even a project that can work in hybrid situations. You may notice that in the bottom two pictures, there is a student who is spinning his top on a table at home because he was quarantined between the time it was printed and the competition; and you will see our media specialist is holding an iPad so those at home could witness their top spinning (they had a designated spinner).  I even had one top design sent from a student in China.

While students may build this top in any way they wish; and a few used recycled Beyblade or CD/marble combinations, most of them have taken advantage of our school's 3D printer.  Our media specialist comes to my classroom and walks them through the basics of the software and one example.  Some of my students had sent a design for her to print within the day and then modified their design based on the results (truly engaging in design thinking).  

Now, to the point of this post.  My physics students have been participating in this project for four years now.  I have, as of this date, still not 3D printed anything.  I haven't yet learned how.  I'm sure I will some day, but this project takes place at a time of year when I am writing exams and meeting a yearbook deadline, so I just never have.  My kids are developing a skill that I do not currently possess.

There was a time when a high school student was limited to the knowledge and skills of their teacher and the knowledge in library books.  This is no longer the case.  My students have the ability to explore any interest they want any time of the day or night.  They can learn skills that I do not possess.  In this case, I brought in a person with knowledge of 3D printing to help them learn, but with more time, they could have learned it on youtube.  They don't have to be limited by me.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am by no means advocating for the teacher as facilitator model of education.  I have fought too long and too hard to develop my professional judgment to abdicate it to the "guide on the side" fad of education.  I want students to know that there is an expert in the room because it makes them feel safe and protected in their education (and when you teach chemistry, letting them learn whatever they want through inquiry is physically dangerous).  I also have no fear of letting them see me looking things up when I don't have an answer to their question.  I have more ability to quickly interpret the answers I find than they do and to judge the credibility of the source, but I want them to see me model that process.  

As with most things in life, this is an issue of balance.  Teachers should carefully plan their lessons based on standards in the curriculum and their own professional judgment about what matters most when time is limited.  We should constantly read in our content area to stay current and study brain research and best practices in education.  We also shouldn't be afraid to assign something to our students that we don't know how to do.  We can provide resources for them to learn from without it coming from our own brains without it undermining our expertise in other areas.  Sometimes, it will be messy and time-consuming, but don't fear the mess because students also learn from watching us clean up the mess.  

Embracing the Average

The Dove company, makers of soap and other personal care products has established it's marketing as embracing the beauty of all.  They started with the Dove Evolution videos, in which they showed the transformation of a model from her everyday girl on the street look to her magazine ready look to show people that this ideal to which we all aspire is an illusion created by artists.

They followed up with the Dove Beauty Sketches: You're More Beautiful Than You Think videos.  These encouraged us to realize that while we focus on our flaws others do not.  I'm on board with this, and it has gotten Dove a lot of attention as these have gone viral.  There are others, but these are the two that became the most well known.

I applaud Dove for these efforts and hope they will continue to make women of all races, sizes, and looks learn to appreciate themselves.  They have one experiment that I take issue with, however, because it seems to be asking us to deny a basic fact.  It is the Choose Beautiful experiment.  They replaced the signs above the entrance doors to a store with the words "Average" and "Beautiful."  They then recorded women as they entered.  Any woman who is like me probably didn't notice the signs, to begin with, and just entered whichever door they habitually entered, but you can see in the video that some women saw and paused to consider their choice.  Here's where I am bothered rather than inspired.  Any woman who entered the door marked Average was stopped and told that she should embrace the idea that she is beautiful.

Let's recognize a couple of basic facts.  First, by definition, most people are average.  If everyone is beautiful, no one is beautiful.  I'm not saying that everyone doesn't have some uniquely beautiful thing about them or that everyone doesn't have some special gift.  I absolutely believe that God has given everyone what they need to do what he has given them to do.  However, the idea that no one should see themselves as average is just a silly idea.

Second, the most beautiful women don't look the same every day.  Perhaps she is sick or hasn't slept well.  She may know that she is less beautiful today than she normally is.

Third, and most importantly, let's stop thinking of average as a bad thing.  Average isn't bad.  It isn't ugly.  It isn't something to shun or deny.  It is exactly what it is.  It is average.  Our culture has become so obsessed with the superlative that we can't be satisfied anymore.  A meal isn't worth eating if it isn't the best meal I have ever eaten, worthy of posting on Instagram.  A Disney cruise is somehow deficient if I don't have the luxury passes for everything.  Prom isn't just supposed to be fun; it has to be magical.  We don't post pictures with a friend that says we are friends.  We say, "my whole heart."  Setting aside the idolatry of that, let's just address that it isn't true.  That person is not your whole heart.  No matter how good a friend they are to you, they are one person in your life that you love.

With the best of intentions, Dove took something away from the women who went through the average door.  They took away their sense of self-assessment.  The attempt to make everyone think they are beautiful seems loving, but it still means I have to believe you and not myself.  In the same way that kids who got trophies they hadn't earned actually felt worse when they looked at it, telling everyone to view themselves as beautiful is making them feel worse when they evaluate the image in the mirror.  Getting a compliment on something you don't personally believe to be commendable leads to insecurity and a sense of imposter's syndrome.  "If only they knew," you will think.

My blog is supposed to be about education, so let's look at this academically.  Telling every kid that they are the best student ever seems loving, but they know their weaknesses better than you do.  When you compliment something they feel bad about, it just makes them feel worse.  Instead, have them engage in some reflection.  If they don't like what they've done, don't tell them they are wrong.  Ask them why.  Ask them what they would do differently if they could do it again.  Teach them the humility to embrace the fact that they aren't the best at everything, but they can get better at anything.

Statistically, unless you are in a school for the academically gifted, you teach mostly average kids.  That means they will be very good at something and mediocre at others.  Embrace that, and teach them to embrace it.  They should want to grow in everything, which they can't do if they are already being told they are amazing at it.  Help them develop their strengths, and help them see how they can grow in their weaknesses.  Do not try to make them think they will be the best in the world at their weaknesses in the belief that it will be motivating.

Which door would you walk through?  Some of you may rightly walk through the "Beautiful" door.  I would walk through the "Average" door and then be proud of my self-awareness, but I have a long history of not caring what other people think.

Pride vs. Acknowledgement of Gifts

Modern American Christians have a complicated relationship with the concept of pride.  

The Bible is clear.  It says nothing good about pride.  The book of Proverbs alone has seven verses about the danger of pride, and the remainder of the Bible has about sixty other warnings that include the word pride.  There are even more warnings that don't include the word, like Romans 12:3, which tells us, "For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."  

American society drives the opposite message into us from the day we are born, actually even before we are born.  We are told by parents, grandparents, and society that we are perfect and beautiful.  We are told that we should always be proud of ourselves and that the worst thing we can feel is guilt or shame.  These t-shirts send an interesting message.

These shirts are made for little kids to wear.  Can we be surprised when these kids turn out to be demanding, entitled, self-centered, and stubborn?  There was even a shirt that I didn't put in this collection because it had a curse word on it (which is bad enough) that said the wearer taught Christian Grey everything he knows.  Seriously, what parent is putting a shirt on their toddler that says he taught skills to a sexual deviant?  

I'm sorry I digressed, but that shirt was astounding, and you can't be surprised by tangents when the name of the blog is On the Rabbit Trail.  The point of this was to examine the fact that we are steeped in a culture that tells us only to feel proud of ourselves all the time.  Meanwhile, we know our own hearts and the darkness within them.  If we talk about sin, we are encouraged not to be judgemental or shame anyone, including ourselves.  Am I the only one who finds this confusing?  

I'm 41 years old and have been in Bible preaching churches my entire life.  If I'm confused by conflicting messages about pride, it isn't surprising that my middle school students are too.  

A few years ago, I taught a young lady who had particular difficulty with the concept of pride.  She was highly intelligent and made excellent grades, but her parents made her feel stupid.  If she made anything less than a 98% on a test, she cried and screamed so loudly that she could be heard from several rooms away, yelling about stupid and worthless she was.  Imagine what it must have been like to believe that the range between perfection and worthless was only two percent.  One day she asked me if I thought I was smart.  I told her that, while I am by no means a genius, I do believe have above average intelligence.  I am able to absorb information and remember things I hear and read; I am pretty good at making connections between material.  I would never have been qualified for rocket science or brain surgery, but I do qualify as above average.  She was horrified.  She said, "Do you feel bad saying that?"  Before I could answer, she said, "I mean, isn't that pride?"  A question like that should make you examine yourself, so I gave it some thought before answering.  I don't think I have pride when it comes to my scholastic abilities, but I don't believe that I should pretend not to have the gifts that God gave me.  That would be like an artist refusing to sell paintings or a musician refusing to play in front of people.  

If God has given you something, it cannot be honoring to Him to pretend that he didn't.  I think it is important to acknowledge that it was, in fact, a gift.  That means having the humility to know that you did not earn it.  God gave you raw abilities as well as the privileges with which you developed those abilities.  Privilege is another word we have a tricky relationship with.  In fact, some of you probably reacted with reflexive defensiveness when you read it, thinking "I worked hard for everything I have."  That's partially true, but your work ethic was probably a result of the environment in which God placed you.  I worked very hard for my grades and my degree, but I know that this was at least partially because God gave me parents who valued hard work, even made me repeat a job that wasn't done well.  I was raised with a library card and access to the Wake County Public Library system.  I recently finished reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, in which a boy makes a windmill to provide electricity to his home after being forced to drop out of school during a famine and using a book he checked out over and over again from his library, which had a total of three shelves of books.  In discussions with 9th-grade students about this book, we all agreed that he made us feel guilty for taking our private school educations for granted.  

Acknowledging that God placed you in the right place at the right time with the right people around you to help you develop the gifts he gave you will keep you "thinking of yourself more highly" than you ought.  It means that you can acknowledge your gifts without falling into pride.  Teaching students to do that in our culture is tricky, but modeling it shouldn't be.

The Gift of Imposter's Syndrome

Every adult has been there.  You walk into your job on the first day or third month or seventh year and start to wonder if you really know what you are doing.  Have I actually been getting away with this?  Do people actually think I know what I am doing?  This phenomenon is known as Imposter's Syndrome when it interferes with the ability to live normally. 

I have heard people from a variety of fields talk about this feeling.  Hank and John Green, the renowned YouTube content creators and authors, discuss their battles with it in their online videos.  I have heard a lot of tech professionals talk about their feelings of inferiority as the field changes so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up.  People early in a medical career often feel this way as the comparison with their peers is ingrained in their education.  Emma Watson told Rookie Magazine, “It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved."  See this list that shows even Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks feel this way.  If after all their awards and attention, these amazing actors feel like frauds, what hope is there for the rest of us?

As a teacher, I have a mild panic attack every August.  I wonder if it is possible I forgot how to teach during the summer.  It's been ten weeks since I have been in the classroom, after all.  Maybe I will walk in on the first day and forget how to keep all the science I know.  For years, I had some pretty frightening dreams about this, with scenes right out of Dangerous Minds (why don't I ever dream of Dead Poets' Society?) because I no longer have the ability to manage behavior.  A couple of years ago, I almost called another yearbook teacher to ask if she ever forgot how to do it because I was relatively certain that I didn't know how to make a yearbook after ten years of making yearbooks.  

There are times when this is a toxic experience, especially if it comes from a place of insecurity or fear or what other people think of you.  Sometimes, it is misplaced pride.  Other times, it is legitimate humility, a much-needed quality in the world in which we live.  While it is unpleasant for the person experiencing it, I submit to you that it is a good thing in small and temporary doses.  

Imposter's Syndrome can drive us to improve if we handle it correctly.  It can cause us to focus on providing value in our jobs and relationships.  It can make us actually become better in an attempt to feel better.  With the understanding that I am in no way an expert, I offer the following advice that has helped me.

1.  Own your mistakes.  If you feel like a fraud, it could be because you have been trying to make everyone think you are perfect, which of course no one is.  While I don't recommend running around advertising all of your weaknesses to everyone, admitting them out loud to trusted friends can be helpful.  They may encourage you, laugh at how seriously you are taking it, or give you advice on how to improve.

2.  Engage in professional development.  Nothing makes you feel better about your job than getting better at your job.  Take a class.  Attend a seminar.  Read a book to improve some specific skill.  You will know that you are making the effort to improve, which helps reduce the feeling of being a fraud.

3.  Make a list.  Okay, this is the kind of nerd I am.  I am a list person - to do lists, grocery lists, pro and con lists.  I like seeing things clearly laid out.  Make a list of things you are certain you are good at.  Make another list of skills you would like to improve.  It helps to visually see that there actually are good reasons for your success as well as recognizing that you can always improve.  Then, do what you need to do to move something from the second list to the first.

4.  Recognize others.  Recognize what is good in your peers.  If you talk to them, you might find that they are also not sure of their value.  If you see good in them while they don't, you might realize that the same is happening in the other direction.

5.  Keep faking it.  Faking it doesn't make you a fraud.  It makes you a person who is trying.  If you ever learned to play an instrument, you know that it took thousands of hours of really bad practice to become even moderately good.  You may have felt like it would never happen, but as a person continues to fake it (also called practice), the brain adapts and improves at the skill.  When you learned to walk, you fell a lot.  That didn't make you a fraudulent walker; it made you a baby learning a new skill.  This is also true in your adult life.  Faking it leads to growth, so keep doing it.

This blog sometimes causes or alleviates my own experience with Imposter's Syndrome.  Whether I am happy that I have something to offer or confused by the idea of anyone reading, I keep writing.  Some posts may help a new teacher or encourage a veteran teacher, and that makes me happy.  Some posts may only help me, and I can be okay with that too.  Don't put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect, and you might no feel like you are pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone around you.

Reading for the Joy of Reading

When I was a child, I was a voracious reader.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  If there wasn't a book around, I'd read a cereal box.  I didn't care; I just loved reading.  I stopped reading Sweet Valley High books somewhere around #118.  Books that were assigned at school were great.  Books I chose myself were better.  I recognized the value of books I ended up hating, like Great Expectations and Lord of the Flies, because there is a difference between appreciating and enjoying.

What makes a child love to read?  As with all things, there are multitudes of nature and nurture theories.  Most of those can be debunked as sole explanations when looking at siblings.  I think it is probably, like most things, a combination of multiple things in a child's life - parents, home, siblings, school, friends, and personality. 

I do believe the research backs up one thing, however, that could break a child's love of reading.  If you want your child to remain a reader, don't tell them not to read the things they love.  You can give them additional worthy choices without taking other choices away.  As I said earlier, I read 118 Sweet Valley High books.  Am I little embarrassed by this as a 41-year-old woman?  Sure.  They are formulaic and silly, and it took me way too long to figure that out.  However, if somewhere along the way, someone had said to me, "Don't read that silly nonsense," it likely would not have been replaced by literature.  It likely would not have been replaced at all.  Instead, I had some wonderful teachers who said, "You like to read?  That's great.  Have you tried reading this?"  Then, they recommended some wonderful books.  While I was reading Sweet Valley High, I was also reading CS Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and a crazy long book called Nicholas and Alexandra, all in the 7th and 8th grades and all at the recommendation of teachers who inspired more reading rather than less.

If your child likes comic books and graphic novels, that is awesome.  Google which ones are the best.  You may not know that there are graphic versions of everything from The Metamorphosis to Sense and Sensibility (see this list from Goodreads).  If the story captures them, one day, your child may reach out and read the literary versions, but even if they don't, they now have absorbed a classic story they wouldn't have if someone had told them not to read it.  If you want to expand their reading to higher levels, look for a book on Amazon, and then see what recommendations it has.  Your local librarian, whether at school or in a public library, lives to recommend books.  Go in and say, "My child likes X-Men.  I'd like him to read something at a higher level.  Can you recommend?"  That librarian will be thrilled to give you a dozen recommendations of books with similar themes across a wide variety of levels.  As I tell my students, they have a Master's degree in recommending stuff.  The way to get them reading better things is to expand their options, not decrease them.  Please expand and raise your child's awareness of better books by providing them with more options.  Please do not tell a child that their tastes are wrong just because they are young.

I write this because I have spent the past three days sitting in a classroom with students who are finishing their midterms at different times.   In each class, about 75% of my students have a book under their chair.  As soon as they turn in their exam, they pick up where they left off in the books they chose to bring with them.  From Harry Potter to Wonder to the latest John Green novel, my kids are reading, not books they have been assigned, but books they have chosen.  I even saw someone reading the Collected Works of HP Lovecraft a few days ago.  Lovecraft, for heaven's sake.  I didn't even know he existed until I was an adult.  GRACE students are readers, and I believe it is because most of their teachers are readers.  I try to remember that much of my middle school reading was because a teacher I liked told me about a book they liked.  I tell them what I read over the summer.  When I see them reading a school book that I also read, I tell them my memories of reading it.  When they have a Shakespear play in hand, I tell them about my favorites, which are Julius Ceasar and Othello.  When we, as teachers, tell them about our favorite books, they see that reading isn't just something to do for assignments.  They see that we speak of reading with joy, not dread.  Hopefully, they see that we are never too old to read for the joy of it. 

Stop unrecommending books (I'm pretty certain that isn't a word, but Grammarly is letting me get away with it).  Recommend them.

More Complex Than a Tweet

I have refrained, until now, from commenting in any way on the #metoo fad, largely because it is just that, an internet fad.  Like any other internet fad, the desire to participate in a fad clouds the real purpose and dilutes any effect it could have.  People who didn't care before it became a fad are unlikely to care about it later.  Case and point: I know a lot of people who poured buckets of ice water over their head, and not one of them can tell you the current state of ALS research.  This issue requires a depth of thought, endurance, compassion, legal action, and honest reflection.  These are not qualities we find in a fad.

Sexual harassment is a thorny and complex issue that cannot be addressed in a tweet, and it deserves more than a two-word hashtag.  In my attempt to process it, I have had many thoughts.  What you see below is my attempt to deal with those thoughts.  Many of them are incomplete, some may be contradictory as I attempt to sort them out in my own mind, and they are listed in no particular order.

1.  This is clearly a widespread problem.  When you look at the diversity of people who have been accused and their accusers, the case cannot be made that this is a one-sided, agenda-driven issue.  Roy Moore and John Conyers fall into this bucket with Harvey Weinstein and Al Franken (and let's not forget, this list started with Bill Cosby a few years ago and now includes Charlie Rose).  Some people are excusing everyone on their side of the political spectrum while vilifying those on the other side.  This is the worst kind of moral relativism.  It's wrong no matter who is doing it.

2.  Everyone has a right to due process. The reflex to invoke innocent until proven guilty is tricky.  It is an important legal concept when we are talking about convicting someone of a crime, but it is being applied in a non-legal context.  The accused has a right to due process, but so does the accuser.  Those who are touting "innocent until proven guilty" on Twitter don't have a problem assuming the victims are guilty until proven innocent.  If you are going to be intellectually honest, you can't default to believing the accused or the accuser.  Credibility needs to be assessed.

3.  All accusations are not created equal.  I am not a fan of Al Franken (well, okay, I liked him on SNL), but it is concerning when his actions are put in the same category with child molestation.  They are not the same.  They are both wrong, but they would be treated quite differently in a court of law.  Part of the problem with the hashtag is that it made all stories equal.  Some women have suffered greatly while others have felt uncomfortable that someone they didn't like flirted with them.  In the hashtag world, these women have the same story and get the same number of hearts and comments.  The hashtag may show how widespread the problem is, but it only shows how wide. If women told the actual stories, we would see how deep this problem is for some. 

4.  All forms of sexual harassment are wrong - physical, visual, and verbal.  One of the reasons I am finally blogging about this was a conversation that happened at Thanksgiving.  A man at the table said he couldn't believe there was a man who was being accused of only gestures.  "I mean this is just too far," he said.  "He didn't even touch anyone."  I just sort of stared at him because I couldn't figure out how to respond.  Would he really be okay with it if his wife went to work, and a co-worker made lewd gestures at her?  I don't think so; I think he would want that man killed.  This applies to words as well.  I punish students for making "69" jokes, and I wouldn't want a co-worker making them either.  If we don't draw a line until there is physical contact, you are looking to create a very hostile work environment (and not just for women).

5.  Sexual harassment training is a stupid solution.  No one who is doing this would stop if they sat through a seminar.  They aren't ignorant; they are immoral.

6.  It's not all men.  It's not all women.  Not all men are guilty of harassment.  Some men are clumsy flirters; some are socially awkward.  Many men are professional and supportive of their female colleagues.  Most are just trying to live their lives.  It's not all men.  It's also not all women.  One of the problems I have had from the beginning of this discussion is the implication (and at times outright statement) that ALL women have experienced harassment.  It's simply not true.  There is no hashtag for #notme, and there won't be one, but maybe there should be.  Maybe some women should start sharing their stories of supportive men in their lives and show what right treatment looks like.  Too many women have experienced horrific treatment, but lumping all stories together is wrong.  Advancing the belief that all women have been victims of all men creates a predator v. prey environment.  I don't think anyone wants that. 

I don't know that I have put all of my thoughts into words very well, but I do think we can see that they won't fit into 280 characters.  If you are going to reflect well, yours won't either.

Humility - The Lost Virtue - Part 2

After last week's post, it occurred to me that I really only scratched the surface.  I stopped at the 80's, and that was only the beginning of the end when it comes to teaching humility.  I never thought I would look back on the "everybody gets a trophy days" as only the first step, but that is only because I didn't have enough imagination to know what smartphones would do to our view of the world and our view of how the world views us.

I'm not anti-technology.  As you know, I have a blog.  I work in a school that has a one-to-one program, and I am fully invested in the benefits of that.  I have often said that there is no way I could go back to teaching without every student having a computer in front of them.  I can do low or no tech days, but I could never go back to a year of teaching in which I am the only person in the room with a computer.

I am not anti-technology.  I am, however, anti-dependence.  It makes me crazy that everywhere I go, I see kids and adults alike staring at rectangles.  Kids are actually better at interacting with each other while using their rectangles than adults are, but I still have concerns that we have subjected them to a massive sociological experiment.  Ask a teenager if you can look at the pictures on their phone, and you will find a thousand selfies.  Go to their social media, and you will find out where all those selfies went.  An event hasn't actually happened, it seems, if we don't document that we were there for it and post it for all the world to see.  A picture of fireworks isn't enough.  We must be standing in front of the fireworks.  When we stand in front of the majesty that is the Grand Canyon, we are still thinking about ourselves.  I know that even back in the film days, people took photos of themselves in front of tourist attractions, but it was one or two photos, usually of the whole family, not a hundred photos of a duck-faced, good-side, downward-angled, Snapchat-filtered, posed, etc. . .  I'm pretty sure Narcissus would find us vain.  He only looked at his own reflection; he didn't insist that others look at him as well.

Smartphones have also distorted our sense of time.  It never takes longer than two seconds to get the answer to a question, watch a video we want to watch, or text a friend.  And when we do text, if it takes long than three seconds for the three dots to turn into an answer, we get angry that the person hasn't responded immediately.  We say things like, "Why does she even have a phone if she isn't going to answer?"  This infects other parts of our lives as we impatiently tap our foot next to the microwave, forgetting that it used to take hours to make a meal.  This impatience with time is about our pride, revealing our belief that we should get what we want instantly.

The day of my last post, I had an interaction that reinforced the weird relationship even our most humble students have with their social media.  Our art teacher is having our students participate in the global Kindness Rocks Project.  Because social media can be a place for good, people all over the world are decorating rocks with uplifting images or messages and hiding them with a hashtag so that you can let the world know you have found it and are either keeping it or hiding it again with a clue to where you have hidden it.  This should be a fun and low-stress school project.   As our art teacher was explaining it to a small group of students, one of them said, "This will ruin my Instagram, so I don't want to put it there."  To be fair, I am not on Instagram, so maybe the problem is with my ignorance, but I can't help wondering how a person's Instagram can be ruined by one picture.  Other students understood her concern about messing up the design and colors.  Another teacher, who is friends with this student on Instagram looked at her feed and said that it was all artsy selfies in front of sunsets.  She talked about making a separate account just for this project, but she decided to use her mom's twitter account instead.  I've never imagined this kind of conversation.  Basically, what she was saying was that this picture would be off-brand, and we can't have that.  The idea that her design would be ruined and that she would be embarrassed if she posted one photo that doesn't fit with her image is surely a sign of the pride social media has embedded in us.

Our overinflation of our online image also magnifies our sense of our own influence online.  The rise of "slactivism," from ice buckets to hashtags to the "me too" fad, reveals our belief that we are making a difference by doing nothing.  When a disaster happens, we change our profile picture to a certain color to show our solidarity.  That's it.  The people of Puerto Rico can eat or drink our red, white, and blue profile picture; but we feel good about ourselves because we "raised awareness," as though that is an end.  While our ancestors, only a generation ago, marched on Washington to show their support for Civil Rights, we plop down a hashtag and feel proud of how "woke" we are.  This is pride, and we should take a good hard look at how little we do that has actual value.

This can be fixed, but like everything else, we must do it intentionally.  We must stop and reflect on our actions.  We must model humility for our kids instead of complaining that they don't have any.  We must recognize our place before God, as bearers of the Imago Dei who have been damaged by sin, and place our sins, including our pride, at the Cross.

Humility - The Lost Virtue

Yes, you heard that correctly.  That was a man bragging about how humble he is - "More humble," in fact, "than you could understand."  If you needed further proof that our understanding of humility has been lost, this had to be it.

Humility is an important virtue.  Jesus had it, and he was the one person with the right not to have it.  Scripture advises humility from beginning to end.  Moses and Aaron admonished Pharaoh for his lack of humility before God in the book of Exodus, and I Peter 5:6 commands to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.  In early America, Ben Franklin listed humility among the thirteen most important virtues (We'll ignore, for now, the fact that he didn't practice it himself).  Humility was taught both in school and at home.  Children who were braggarts were admonished by teachers and parents alike.  

This is not to say that no one recognized their own value.  David Hume, who died in 1776 encouraged us to recognize those qualities that did indeed deserve recognition.  He said, "Though an overweening conceit of our own merit be vicious and disagreeable, nothing can be more laudable than to have a value for ourselves, where we really have qualities that are valuable.... it is certain that nothing is more useful to us, in the conduct of life, than a due degree of pride, which makes us sensible of our own merit, and gives us a confidence and assurance in all our projects and enterprises." While I disagree with him on the degree of importance he places on it, I do agree that a recognition of one's own skills is the first step to exercising them.  There is a reasonable ground to be found between thinking we are absolutely worthless and believing ourselves to be great simply for existing.  That ground comes in recognizing the gifts that were given to us by God for just that, gifts of God.  William James, a psychologist of the 1890's seems to have struck a secular version of balance by defining self-esteem as the ratio of success to pretension.  More on this later.

(But, for a hilarious look at how this goes wrong, click here.)

The 1960's caused the swing of many pendulums, and this was one of them.  Breaking away from parents and their rules comes with a necessary belief in the ruling of ourselves.  The "psychology for normals" movement meant even well-adjusted people were being marinated in the ideas of Maslow, Coopersmith, and Braden.  Then, those people became parents.  We truly saw the death of humility in the 1980's.  These people who had been soaked in the psychology of self-esteem were now told to instill that in their children.  California lawmakers decided that the cause of crime and most social ills would be solved if children were taught they were amazing.  There was even a taxpayer-funded self-esteem task force.  

Despite the fact that no research study (and there were many) ever showed self-esteem to be helpful in reducing social ills, and no research study ever showed low self-esteem to be a risk factor, we went on acting as though the opposite were true.  There is even one study that indicates those with high self-esteem are a greater risk to society than those with low self-esteem, but we carry on with telling our kids that they are perfect for no other reason than they were born.  

Here's a great breakdown on the history and the studies.  

Somewhere along this path, we deemed our kids worthy of worship.  If you think I am overstating this, go online and make a statement about your child that is anything short of pure, unadulterated praise; and watch what happens.  You will be vilified instantly because you aren't bowing down to the idol of parenthood.  There will be a religious fervor to the response of people for a reason; they don't worship God and therefore see themselves, their children, or you in the proper light.  Rather than seeing human beings who carry the Imago Dei (image of God) but who are fallen and in need of redemption, our culture views children as god themselves.  I have seen many mothers on facebook call their firstborn children "the one who made me a mother."  He isn't the one who made you a mother; God did that.  The child is the object of the action, not the actor.  

You may have a great kid, but he is a lousy god.  He isn't equipped to handle the pressure of your worship, which is one of the reasons we have so many kids with anxiety issues.  They know they can't be the god you want them to be, and it makes them crazy trying to live up to that.  This brings me back to William James.  In calling self-esteem a ratio of success to pretension, he gave us two ways to affect it, increase your success or decrease your view of your own potential.  This is going to seem to many like I am saying to lower your expectations to make yourself feel better.  I guess I am in a way, but not as a cop out.  Rather, recognizing our lack of diety will balance the ratio.  It will, perhaps, makes us recognize the need for a savior.  It will, perhaps, make us stop trying to save ourselves.  President Trump obviously needs this, but he isn't the only one who does.

Ask The Bigger Question

You may have noticed that life seems to be moving faster than it used to.  It's not really.  After all, we have the same 24 hours in every day that people always have.  It seems like it is moving faster because we are trying to fit more into those 24 hours and fueling them with caffeine.  Instead of Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, at 6 pm, we get news all day from multiple sources without regard to their credibility.  We want to get so much done that we are actually pursuing whether or not humans can live without sleep.

The relentless speed of input and activity means we rarely slow down long enough to reflect and ask the bigger questions, like how certain events fit into a larger context.  Our brains are processing so much data that we have no time to go through the steps of learning (via Architecture of Learning by Kevin Washburn).  We are constantly at the Experience level, but as our brains strive to reach Comprehension, a new piece of news comes our way.  It is hard for our brains to get to Elaboration and Application.  For that reason, we aren't fully integrating these experiences.  This cannot be good for the human brain, but we aren't even slowing down long enough to ask that question.

As a result of this constant bombardment without intellectual integration, we revert to our most basic of emotions, self-defense.  As an example, an announcement comes over the intercom at school, asking for men to come and help move some chairs.  The women in the building immediately react that this was sexist, even though, given a few moments of thought, we know that the people we work for don't view women as weak or less than men.  Because we don't take the time to reflect, we react out of surface level emotions.  We don't act; we react.  Because we live in 2017, we take our reaction to social media.  Because we live in a community, our reaction cause other people react as well; and we are soon in a Twitter war.  Other people jump on our side or the other side, and it gets out of hand quickly.  We say things we wouldn't if we just slowed down long enough to ask the bigger questions.

YIKES!  This can't be the way God meant for us to live our lives.

The good news is that we can make it better.  It won't be hard, but we will have to do it on purpose.  We have to slow down for a few seconds and ask ourselves a few questions.  This will keep us from reacting emotionally and, in some cases, keep us from reacting at all.

1.  What do I actually know about the situation?
Because of instant video footage, we think we know events.  The truth is, we may only know the 30 seconds shown in the video, which the person took after the inciting incident began.  We may not know what started the problem, but we are quick to judge that 30 seconds as though we were there.  Stop for another 30 seconds and ask yourself what you actually know before you respond.

2.  Do I know the character of the people involved?
My reaction to strangers should be different than my reaction to people I know well.  If I know that a person is not a sexist or a racist, I don't need to react to their tweet as though sexism or racism is clearly implied.  Take 30 seconds to say to yourself (out loud if you need to), "I know they didn't mean to come off that way."  Then, if you are still bothered, take a few minutes to go talk to them instead of about them.

3.  How will my reaction represent me?
This is big.  When we react out of self-defense or anger, we know everything that led up to that emotional moment.  Your Facebook friends do not.  They are not inside your mind, and to them, you may just look like an over-reacting, crazy person.  I assume you would not want to be viewed that way (unless it is the truth about you).  One over-reacting tweet may not ruin your reputation, but a series of them will.  Take 30 seconds to ask yourself, "Do I want this to be what people think of me?"

4.  Does my reaction fit with my worldview?
I am a Christian school teacher, so I spend a lot of my day thinking about worldview.  As we take in new information, it is filtered through our worldview.   That is why two people looking at the same data can interpret it as pro-creationism or pro-evolution.  Both people are reading the same thing different ways.  We think less about this, but our reactions should also be filtered through our worldview.  If I believe in the Biblical Jesus, my reaction should be Biblical.  That doesn't mean it will never be angry (Jesus did drive the money changers out of the Temple with a handmade whip), but I imagine it would be angry less often if I filtered it through a Christlike worldview.  I imagine the source of the anger would be less about me than most reactions we put online.  It's probably going to take more than 30 seconds to process this one, but it is worth the time.

We are all participating in a large scale, high stakes, sociological experiment.  That would be okay if it weren't rewiring our brains and making us reactive creatures.  You can step aside and change the parameters of the experiment.  Put the phone down for a minute.  React later.  There's no value in reacting first; there is only value in acting well.

The Season That Nearly Wasn't

I recently tweeted that if I knew how to get a movie made, I would make one about this season of our Varsity Girls Basketball team.  Sadly, I do not know how to get a movie made.  I do, however, have a blog; so I suppose it is the best I can do to bring attention to this incredible story.

When tryouts started, there were simply not enough girls.  It isn't because we don't have enough female athletes.  We have tons of soccer and volleyball players who are committed to year-round teams, and we have a number of ladies on our swim team, whose season is concurrent with basketball.  As preparations for the season were to begin, there were only five players.  Apparently, that is not enough, so our coaches sent this e-mail to our senior English teacher.

This teacher, well known for her ability to convince students, made an impassioned speech to the senior girls.  In the words of one senior, "Her speech had no commas.  She's an English teacher, so she should really use commas."  Eight senior girls went home that night to tell their parents they wanted to be on the basketball team.  In the end, five of those girls were able to follow through to the team, one as stat bookkeeper, some taking the time to Google "rules of basketball."  Each of these girls was very athletic in other sports, but none had ever been on a basketball team.  Two of the players on this team were 8th graders, playing up to the varsity level.  The coaches of this team choose a word every year for the players to rally around; this year, they chose FIGHT.

Under the mentorship of our incredible coaches, Tonya and David Taylor, and their alumni assistant, Lizz Wilson, these eight girls went on to fight for each and every game.  They grew as individuals and as a team, and their season record was 16-7.  They played in the conference championship, were invited to States, and won the first round there.  The team that nearly wasn't blew away all expectations (or lack thereof).

To a woman, they have each also talked about how much fun they had this season.  Senior Reece Goodman said, "If I'd know it was this much fun, I'd have done it years ago."  When asked what advice they would give to rising seniors, several of them said, "Try something you've never done before."  What a great lesson this is for them to take into their adult lives.  The 8th graders were inspired to fight harder than they would have if they hadn't been watching the hustle in these first-year players.  Apparently, the players weren't the only ones having fun.  Coach David Taylor, known school wide for his funny and often sarcastic tweeting, has put up more sincere love for this team than ever.  He has been effusive about the fun he has had coaching them and how much they inspire him.  Here's a sample from my quick stalk of his feed.  There are many more and many that express his pride in great detail.

As a spectator, I'm proud whenever we play hard, regardless of the outcome.  This team and its coaches, however, will hold a special place in my heart forever.  The courage it took for the coaches to reach out and beg for help showed vulnerability at its finest.  The courage it took for those seniors who had never played before to put themselves in a place of potential humiliation showed the best of school spirit.  The fact that teams they have beaten don't know the story of the team that beat them makes me happy in ways I don't know how to express.

As a teacher, I try to make as many memories as possible.  When you look back on your school life, the days can blur together because so many of them are so similar.  Anything I can do to give a student a positive memory on which to look back, I'll do.  This may be my favorite thing about the story of this team.  As adults, they will be able to look back and remember this amazing season and the lessons they taught each other.  They will be able to tell their own children to do something new and share their experience.  They will remember these coaches and the impact they had forever.  These are days that will NOT blur into each other for them or for me.

Standards AND Compassion

For some reason, I was thinking about college today.  I was thinking about an argument I had with a woman in my Educational Psychology class.  The professor had been talking about different types of learners  and the stuff that kids had on their minds while trying to learn.  She had been talking about modifications.  She had been talking about including multicultural stuff in lessons.  I was losing my mind until I just couldn't take it anymore without raising my hand.  "When are we supposed to teach them science and math and stuff?" I asked.  "How is physics different if a student is from another country?"

Now, before you unfriend me, listen.  I was 19.  I had always been a driven student.  I had chosen education because I loved physics and wanted to help other people love physics.  In my mind, all of this focus on the "other stuff" seemed to have nothing to do with the reasons I had majored in this.   It seemed like coddling students and lowering standards.  Another student in the class, a mom of about 50, started talking to me about her child and the problems she had learning.  At that point, I couldn't hear mitigating factors because my own mind was already locked in on the point I was making.  We were supposed to teach them a certain number of things, and all this stuff was going to interfere with it.  We left class that day with me thinking she cared nothing about learning and her thinking I cared nothing about children.

We were both wrong, but we were both locked into one argument at that point.  I was an idealist, and she was a mother, and neither of use was able to see ANYTHING from the other person's point of view.  We both went home (me to the dorm and her to her child) to people who affirmed only our own point of view.  My friends completely agreed with my assessment that I could teach you standards without caring how you feel about them, and her kids completely agreed that she should drop teaching material whenever a student felt a feeling.  We both seemed to think that a teacher can care about standards OR compassion, but not both.  We were both wrong.

I have now been teaching for eighteen years, and I am a bit more realistic than I used to be.  I am also more committed to high standards than I ever was in school.  Here are some reasons why.

First, I took a class in the Education of Exceptional Individuals, taught by a teacher with only one arm.  She gave me a perspective on physical disabilities that I had never had, but she also opened my eyes to the frustration and tension that a student with learning differences could feel.  She never encouraged us to lower our expectations, only to change our methods.  I would properly credit this professor if I could remember her name.  While I can't remember her name, I definitely remember what she taught me.

Second, I student taught.  All the arguments I had in classes were based in theory.  The luxury of theory is that it is always idealistic.  I learned that when I took applied thermodynamics.  Everything I had learned in the introductory class worked perfectly.  Then, I had to start dealing with real machines that had moving parts, subject to friction and entropy.  That changed things.  ORU places their education majors in two places of 7 weeks each with the hope that they will be exposed to two different environment.  I was in two very similar schools in the Tulsa area, both mostly white, mostly middle to high socioeconomic families, and both well known for being good schools.  My advisor was concerned that I wouldn't have varied exposure.  As it turned out, her concerns were not reality.  I could not have had two more different experiences.   I started in the class of Patrick Bell, a man who believed strongly in standards but had no compassion.  He played tricks on me, like hiding tests or making sure I was in the wrong place during a fire drill, in the name of teaching me about the real world.  He wouldn't allow students to touch his desk or use a different color pen than he wanted.  They learned physics and chemistry, but they also learned to be a little less human in the pursuit of knowledge.  My second placement was with Lisa Achterkirk, a very pregnant woman who taught basic skills physical science to students with IEP's.  She did not hold many academic standards as important, but she cared very deeply about her students and knew a lot about them.  Assessing what the kids had learned was the last thing on her priority list, but she made sure they enjoyed whatever science they learned.  This is really when I learned the dangers inherent in both extremes and discovered that my course would be plotted somewhere in the middle.

I have now taught for 18 years, and I have been with students during a lot of events.  I was in class during Columbine.  I was teaching on 9/11.  I have taught during a shooting threat.  I was in class the day after a student in our school died and the day they found out their favorite teacher had cancer.  I taught kids the day after their best friend was expelled.  I was teaching when we went to war in Iraq and during four presidential elections.  My students and I experienced the nearly fatal accident of a teacher at a pep rally together.  All of these things affect their learning.

Most importantly, I have now taught over a thousand kids.  They aren't theoretical like they were when I was 19.  They are flesh, mind, emotion, hormone, and spirit.  I have watched a student have a seizure in my class and had a student I couldn't wake up because of their medication.  I've taught freshman girls who had babies and boys who spent the weekend in jail.  I have been cussed at by students as many times as I have been hugged by them.  I have taught when my own heart was broken and when theirs were.

The reason my classmate and I were both wrong was the word OR.  We thought we could be either committed to standards OR filled with compassion.  We can live in the world of AND.  We can hold to standards AND have compassion.  The word compassion means "to suffer with."  When a student fails to live up to the standards of a test or project and they are upset about it, I can feel upset with them.  That doesn't mean that I turn around and give them an A they didn't earn.  It means that I tell them how upset I would be if I were them while I pat their back.  When a student is super-stressed because they have too many things on their plate, I can let them turn one assignment in tomorrow without lowering standards.  Keep your standards high AND feel the things your students are feeling.

Senior Dinner

I know I already wrote a little about senior dinner in my Reflecting on Students post, but tonight is the dinner, and I feel the need to talk a little more about how this fits into the culture of our school.

This year, GRACE will graduate its 13th senior class.  I have been at GRACE for 13 years, so I have been at every dinner we have ever had.  It has changed a bit over the years.  Its original purpose was to honor the parents.  Teachers did speak about every student, but that was a relatively small portion of the program.  The larger portion was students making a speech.  They wrote a letter ahead of time to thank their parents for everything they had done.  At the dinner, they stood and read the speech aloud.  This was a festival of tears from the student, their parents, the teachers, and the principals.

Our school has grown since then.  Our first graduating class had 7 students.  This year's class has 43.  The dinner has grown as well.  We now use it as an awards night for students, announcing valedictorian and salutatorian, bestowing graduation cords, and presenting ACSI awards.  Every student also receives a framed printout with three character traits the teachers have said they see in that student.  As the focus of the dinner shifted from parents to graduates, the program changed.  Students still write letters to their parents, but they read them privately at their table rather than out loud at the podium.  As a teacher/speaker, I no longer speak about every student.  I speak about the 2-3 that I have signed up for.  

While we only speak for about two minutes, it is the culmination of our mission and vision statements at GRACE.  It shows that every student is well known by at least one teacher, not just on an academic level, but at the character level.  These speeches rarely mention their classroom abilities; they are about character.  We bring the student to the front and share what we see in them and what we hope for their future.

A few years ago, I spoke about a student that isn't a super-positive person.  The next morning, during my first-period class, she interrupted me and asked if she could say something.  She told the sophomores in my chemistry class that they didn't know how lucky they were and how much they were loved.  She spoke to my class for over five minutes about how glad they should be that they have teachers who know and love them.  She didn't graduate as cynical as she might have, and that is what this dinner does for many students.

Next year, GRACE will have over 60 seniors, and there has been much discussion this week about how this dinner might change again.  It would, after all, take 2 hours to talk about each student for 2 minutes each.  Tuesday, we had a one and a half hour meeting to discuss it.  You might be surprised to find a group of teachers and principals weeping over possible changes in this tradition, basically begging to be allowed to stay longer on a Friday and do more work.  If a student walked past the library and saw us through the window, I'm sure he would have been confused by the scene.  We ultimately decided to limit ourselves to 200 words, written ahead of time to keep us accountable.  As I drove home from that meeting, I thought again about our mission and vision as a school and thanked God for the amazing group of people with whom I am blessed to work.  Their passion for this dinner isn't about the dinner; it is about making sure our students graduate knowing that God has gifted them for His purpose.  Our wonderful principal actually cares what we think and accepts our level of intensity.  She didn't just say, "This is the way it will be now, so get to it."  She wanted to help us keep the heart of what we do while making it logistically feasible.

This night is special.  It was special before, and now it is special in a different way.  As the next wave of changes come, it will continue to be special - possibly in a different way.  Whatever changes we make, we know that it will come from an administration who cares about our students and about us.  We know that it will still proclaim to our students, "You are loved by your teachers and by the God who gave you these gifts.  Go accomplish the mission He has given you."

Don't Make Big Decisions When You Are Angry

Disclaimer:  All posts on this blog are the opinions of the author.  They are not approved by anyone and should not be read as representing anyone other than herself.

Every teacher has done it.  We responded very quickly to an e-mail from a parent.  The e-mail made us angry, and we felt we had to respond right away.  Responding when angry is the fastest way to make a situation worse.  It is when you say the thing you wouldn't have aid if you had taken a moment to think about it.  It is when your inhibitions are the lowest.  Since inhibition is another word for wisdom, you make the foolish choices when you are angry.  In a couple of faculty meetings per year, we are reminded that we shouldn't hit send when we are angry.  We should talk it through with another teacher and have them read our response before sending.

This same concept should apply outside of teaching and e-mail.  It should apply to all of our lives.  We should not make big decisions when we are angry.

Now, I am going to stop blogging and start meddling.  This concept should also apply to your vote.  Given that it is really important to use wisdom in voting, it is a bad idea to decide based on anger.  My family is split right now when it comes to the Republican primary.  My dad defends Donald Trump every chance he gets, while my mother and I are frightened that this could actually happen.  Mom and I are for Rubio, but we will both accept any nominee that is NOT Donald Trump.  My dad, on the other hand, feels that people are tired of politicians and that it is time for someone who is not a politician.  Forget the fact that you wouldn't apply this logic to any other profession.  You would never hear someone say, "I am tired of surgeons thinking they are gods, so I think it is time for someone who is not a surgeon to perform my cardiac bypass."  My Granny recently posed the question as to why Trump was doing so unexpectedly well, and my dad proudly said, "It is because people are angry with the politicians."  My response was, "Yes, and people always make great decisions when they are angry."

I get why people are angry.  I really do.  Between Supreme Court rulings and the Bruce Jenner hoopla, last year was rough for social conservatives.  I know that; I am one.  That doesn't mean I am ready to hand over the most important job on the planet to any angry guy without thinking through whether or not he actually represents your values.  A few examples:
- If you are upset about gay marriage, it is probably because you are concerned about the fall of the Biblical definition of marriage.  Does it make sense, then, to vote for the guy who has been married three times just because he also opposes gay marriage?  Does he actually represent your values?  Do you care that he doesn't just because you are angry?
- If you are angry about the current administration's lack of willingness to use the words "radical Islam" when describing terrorism, it may initially appeal to you that this candidate wants to keep out the Muslims.  Can you still say he represents your values when he says they should be killed with bullets dipped in pig's blood?  Is this something you would say, or do you just cheer for the anger because you are angry?
- If you are angry about illegal immigrants, it sounds good to hear Donald Trump talk about building a wall; but in your anger, have you taken the time to recognize the number of jobs Mr. Trump has sent to Mexico and China?  Is that really what you have in mind, or are you just angry?

Trump gets a lot of unwarranted credit for "telling it like it is."  People who say that are not listening.  He says whatever the angry people in front of him want him to say.  When he is speaking to Christians, he "quotes" scripture, hoping we won't notice that he misquotes it.  I recently said this to someone, who said, "Well, everyone does that."  I agree, but he is getting credit for NOT doing it WHLE DOING IT.  I just don't understand.

If you are a Republican, I beg you to consider your primary vote carefully.  Don't let your anger rule your decisions.  If you think through things dispassionately and still believe Donald Trump represents what you want in an office with the authority to appoint Supreme Court justices, launch nuclear weapons, and act as "Comforter in Chief" when a disaster happens, then your vote is yours to do with what you will.  If, however, you are going to vote out of anger, I ask you not to "hit send" as teachers are reminded.  Your vote is too important to make it an outlet for your emotional state.

They Hate Me Right Now - and That's Good

Some of my 8th-grade students hate me right now, and I am okay with that.  Here's the story.

Every year, I assign my 8th-grade class a five paragraph persuasive essay on whether or not the countries of the world that have space programs should collaborate to put people on Mars.  We have finished the space unit, and most of them have been pretty psyched about the Apollo missions.  We have had a discussion in class about the ways in which a Mars mission would be different.  I bring in the media specialist to teach them about research using more than Google.  I give them a detailed rubric with all the requirements (see it below).  They should be fully prepared to form an intelligent opinion, based in research, and present it persuasively.

Every year, this is an incredibly stressful assignment because they are being asked to move from the thinking level of middle school students to that of "almost freshmen."  They are being asked to examine nuanced arguments from multiple sources and give a comprehensive view of their own opinion.  They are also being asked to discuss their own opinion in the third person, which either stresses them out or makes them angry.  They are being asked to include in-text citations as well as provide correct MLA format for their works cited page.  While I don't grade them at the senior or college level, I do recognize that they cannot improve as they progress toward those years if they don't get penalized for their errors.  

I actually hate grading this paper.  It isn't easy for a teacher to take off points when they know how hard their students worked on something.  I know how upset the overachieving student is going to be when they get back a score that is lower than what they are used to.  It takes forever to grade because I want to give them meaningful feedback that will help them improve, not just score the paper.  Every year, I say to myself, "Self, why do you giving this stinking paper?"

The answer to that question is that this is good and necessary, even if it is not fun.  Students at the 8th-grade level need to have a non-English teacher say, "This is what is wrong with your writing."  They are accustomed to thinking that proper writing only matters in their English classes.  The reality is, however, that they will have to write in every subject for the rest of their academic careers, and most of them will have to write in their adult life.  My father is an engineer.  He complains often about the English classes he was required to take in college, but he also spends most of his work time writing reports, patent applications, or proposals about his engineering work.  I was briefly his typist. While he cannot spell and has atrocious handwriting, he writes well.  No matter how much he may complain about those English classes, they served him well.

The process of improvement is never easy.  The primary reason that it is difficult is that the person must acknowledge they need improvement.  One of my students believes he is always the best at EVERYTHING he does.  He responded with dramatic whines and sighs when he received his graded paper.  He argued with me that it should be allowed to have first person because it is his opinion.  Admitting there is a problem is always the first step.  This isn't easy for anyone.



Because most of us are not self-aware in all areas of our lives, improvement will usually involve the input of others.  For improvement to occur in any of our lives, someone will likely have to point out our faults.  If we are not mature, we may be angry at that person.  Often, we will jump quickly to point out their flaws.  It is a self-defense mechanism, but it results in nothing.   As we mature, we may learn to take on that loving criticism in the spirit intended and react with humility.  It never becomes easy.

This paper, no matter how difficult it is for me and for them, is part of that maturing process.  They have someone who loves them and has demonstrated a desire for their success pointing out the ways in which they are not living up to the standard.  They will become better as a result, but that doesn't make it easy.  It does make it necessary.

Stop Blaming Millennials for Being What You Made Them

Baby Boomers and Generation X'ers have been bemoaning the current generation for a while now.  The common complaints are that Millennials are:
- Lazy
- Entitled and Ungrateful
- Narcissistic
- Disrespectful to Authority
- Never Paying Attention

Disclosure Statement:  I was born in 1976, which makes me a full member of Generation X.  Since I have taught high school for the past 17 years, I have taught the youngest of Generation X as well as all of the Millennial range.

Here's the deal.  Generation X was lazy when compared to Baby Boomers who were massively lazy compared to those who survived the Great Depression.  Generation X was far less grateful for our Sony Walkmen than we would have the Millennials believe we were, and I am betting that Baby Boomers weren't as grateful for their 8-tracks as their parents would have liked either.  Disrespect for authority has been getting progressively worse throughout American history.  There are some great things about the Millennial generation, but that is for next week's post.

The two labels I believe are uniquely accurate are the low attention span and the narcissism.

Before we jump on our kids for these attributes, let's take an honest look at the cause.  With the exception of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, every children's show since the beginning of Sesame Street has been fast moving, loud, and colorful.  No image stays on the screen for longer than twelve seconds.  The child's developing brain becomes neurologically wired to seek new stimulation every twelve seconds.  Who makes children's programming.  Hint: It's not children.  Who lets a Millennial sit with a screen for ten hours a day, making their attention span short.  Hint: The kid isn't tall enough to get at the screen for himself.

As for Narcissism, I think even Narcissus would think we have gone to far.  He only looked at himself; he didn't insist that others do so as well.  What has made the Millennials so self focused?  Could it be that they have been told since they were conceived (through headphones attached to the mother's abdomen) that they are the most wonderful, amazing, and unique snowflake God ever dropped on this earth?  Could it be that every time an authority figure has dared to point out a flaw, they were told that they were in the wrong for not understanding the child's uniqueness?  Could it be that we have been video taping, photographing, and posting about their every move and word since they came into the world?  Then we bought them selfie sticks.  Were we thinking it wouldn't make them believe they should take pictures of themselves all the time?



When you paint a picture, you can't blame the picture for having the colors you used.  When you cook a meal, it is useless to blame the taste on the ingredients you chose.  When you tell a child they are perfect every day for years, you can't be upset that they believe you.  If you are a Baby Boomer or a Generation X'er (like me), you will find yourself tempted to complain about the qualities you see in the current generation.  Before you make those complaints out loud, keep this in mind:  WE MADE THEM THIS WAY.

As Dr. Phil says, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge."  The brain can be changed, but it requires intense, focused work.  That can't happen until we acknowledge the source of the problem.  If we don't recognize that our words are part of the problem, we will continue to send mixed messages.  Nothing could ever prevent growth more than that.