Thanksgiving Post 2 - Students and Gratitute

In case you haven't noticed, anxiety is on the rise.  The data shows that the upward swing for adolescents began after cell phones became ubiquitous.  While they had access to social media before that, it was mostly something they did on their home computer, and that was back when wise parents kept the computer in a public space in their home.  Carrying their computers in their pockets and the invention of infinite scroll meant constant access throughout the day.  The pandemic increased the slope of the upward trend, to be sure, but it did not start it.  

We know that the more time a person spends on social media, the more prone they are to anxiety.  That's just numbers.  But numbers only show you a trend; they don't explain why a trend is true.  Cards on the table; I am not a psychologist.  But in my 25 year teaching career, I've seen enough to know a few things.  One of those things is that envy steals joy in everyone, but especially in adolescents.  Kids who grew up in the Great Depression were less prone to anxiety than modern students who live in relevant affluence.  Why?  I've heard multiple elderly people say, "We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor because everyone was."  They weren't comparing their lives to those above them.  But social media means we see the peak moments in the lives of others, from our friends to celebrities to random strangers.  We see the expensive things people buy and how often they get their nails done; we see their vacation photos and their accomplishments.  And, if they have something we don't have, especially if it is something we might be prone to want, we develop envy.  Adults have minimal ability to place this in perspective and remember that we are comparing our low points to their high points: adolescents have even less ability to do that.

How do we help?  Do we take the action Australia has just taken, banning social media for kids under 16?  While I imagine it would help, I don't see that happening in America.  And, I don't know how they are going to enforce it anyway as it is not hard to lie about your age online.  (I am, however, for parents delaying their child having an internet enabled cell phone for as long as possible.)  

Let's take one step back and remember that social media is the tool, but that tool is delivering the problem rather than being the problem.  

The problem is envy.  There's a reason envy is listed among the seven deadly sins and that coveting anything is forbidden by the Ten Commandments.  The problem with using social media to compare ourselves to others is that it makes us want what other people have rather than being grateful for what we already have.  And, it is never enough.  Even the wealthiest person you know likely still wants to obtain more wealth because they see what someone else has.  

As always, CS Lewis says it well:  "Envy is insatiable. The more you concede to it, the more it will demand."

So, if envy is the problem, what is the solution?  What is the opposite of envy?

It is gratitude.  Teaching our kids to be grateful will do more to help with everyday anxiety than anything else.  (Note:  I am using the phrase "everyday anxiety" because I am not talking about diagnosable anxiety disorders. Those are complex medical issues with layered solutions, and while gratitude will certainly benefit them, I am not trivializing those disorders.)

We should work thankfulness into our lived curriculum.  They should hear us expressing gratitude for what we have and for the people in our lives.  We should thank them for things, and we should be specific about it.  We should remind them of the things they have to be thankful for.  We should ask them what they feel positive about, especially because our minds don't have a natural tendency to dwell on positives.  

This isn't optimism or "toxic positivity." Those tend to ignore real problems that need real solutions.  This is the recognition that, even when there are negatives, there are also blessings.  Philippians 4:8, which reminds us to dwell on things that are "right, pure, lovely, and admirable" was written by a man who regularly reprimanded the churches to whom he was writing; so he wasn't telling them to ignore important issues but to spend time thinking about the good and thanking God for them.  

Sometimes, it is an issue of perspective.  During the Occupy Wall Street protests, it was common to see signs that read, "We are the 99%."  They wanted to draw attention to the fact that most Americans aren't CEOs of major companies that make millions of dollars.  While true, it only applies inside this country.  If those people camping out in city parks had taken a broader view, a world wide view, they would have recognized that they were, in fact, the 1% globally.  Our students see celebrity Instagram accounts and TikTok influencers and believe that is a standard way of living.  We have to help them take the wider view and recognize that others would envy what they have.

Will this take care of all the anxiety issues in our culture.  No.  Will it dramatically help.  Absolutely.

Inconsistent Thoughts

Have you noticed how inconsistent people's beliefs are?  Maybe it is the result of people living pragmatically rather than out of religious conviction.  Perhaps it happened when we started treating political power as the ultimate end, so whatever means it took to get there became acceptable.  Maybe we just don't think enough about whether our opinions are consistent with our other opinions (most people don't reflect as much as they should).  I don't know if it was like this before since I didn't live before, but it bugs me.  Here are a few examples I have noticed in the past few years. 

Botox v. Vaccine - During the pandemic, all the armchair epidemiologists came out of the woodwork.  People looked at graphs they were not qualified to interpret and called it "doing their own research."  They insisted that people who followed recommendations were ignorant while they were informed.  When the vaccine came out, they insisted that it was putting "poison" in their bodies.  Meanwhile, many of those same people had been injecting actual poison in the form of botulinum toxin into their facial muscles for years.  Botox for the sake of vanity was fine; vaccines for the sake of protecting immunocompromised people were not.  They'll try to tell you these situations are different; but, in reality, it is just inconsistent thinking.

Pro-Life, Baby on Board v. Death Penalty - I've been pro-life for as long as I can remember, but I have to confess I was always weirded out by "Baby on Board" signs in cars when they were ubiquitous in the 80s and 90s.  I always wondered if there was an age at which I could drive recklessly without the worry of endangering the 14-year-old on board or the middle-aged adult in the car.  The new version of this is a yard sign that says, "Drive like your children live here."  I don't have children, so I guess it is fine if I just plow through the neighborhood at 90mph.  What really confuses me, though, is that the same people who protest abortion and caution you about driving are the quickest to advocate the execution of criminals or "turning Aghganistan into a parking lot."  Again, I don't know what age you have to be before the "human life is sacred" people (of which I am one) start thinking it is okay for the government to take lives.  I'm conflicted about the death penalty because of people like Timothy McVeigh, but I'm about an inch away from believing it should be abolished completely.  It should, at the very least, be used as little as possible.  But I don't understand the inconsistency of pro-life people celebrating the destruction of a human who bears the Imago Dei.

Gender Isn't Real v. Gender Reveal - If there is anything more annoying than gender reveals, I don't know what it is.  For no reason other than social media posts, we decided we couldn't just answer the question, "Do you know what you're having?" anymore.  Instead, we had to come up with a dramatic way to announce it to hundreds of people at once.  Yet, we live in a time when some are trying to convince us that gender doesn't exist.  Even weirder, these are often the same people.  People who believe gender is literally not a thing will still make their first question, "So, is it a boy or a girl?"  I always wonder if any parent says, "I don't know.  I guess we'll find out in a few years."  These are weirdly inconsistent positions.

Eliminating Grades v. What's In It For Me? If you aren't in education, you may not know how many weirdos on Twitter want to eliminate grades.  I'm sure they mean well; they want students to learn for the sake of learning without extrinsic motivation being necessary.  Yet, they teach students who regularly compete for prizes.  These same teachers tweet a lot about their own pay, so apparently they need some extrinsic motivation in their lives.  The other day, I saw an ad for an app called Healthy Wager.  Apparently, weight loss, feeling better, and living longer are not enough internal motivations to eat well and exercise, so this app incentivizes users with money.  We can have a real discussion about the over-emphasis on grades, but if you are going to talk about eliminating them completely, I'm going to ask you to be honest about your own motivations.

Teachers Have an Agenda v. Arming them - At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of love for teachers.  Parents were having to deal with their kids during the day for the first time since they were toddlers, and they didn't like it.  When they imagined multiplying it by 30, they decided teachers were saints.  It didn't last long, though, and the whiplash was strong.  As teachers and students returned to school buildings, it became popular to accuse us of having an agenda.  Teachers have been accused of everything from teaching white supremacy through math to recruiting kids to be trans.  Laws have been passed to prevent teachers from having normal conversations with students, choosing books, and deciding our own grading policies.  Parents' organizations have demanded to see lesson plans in July (not curriculum mind you - lesson plans).  We are no longer the angels we were in the spring of 2020; we are untrustworthy agents of the state.  But pay attention next time there is a mass shooting in a school.  The same people who don't trust me to do the job for which I am trained, certified, and experienced will immediately advocate that I be armed, something for which I am not remotely prepared or inclined to do.

This blog is supposed to be about education, so here's the connection.  Cognitive dissonance causes anxiety.  We talk a lot about student anxiety, but this fact is never addressed.  Helping them resolve their thoughts can only be good for them.  When students say things that reveal inconsistent thoughts, call them on it.  When they say that everyone should accept themselves just the way they are while also talking about New Year's resolutions, ask them whether they think that is consistent.  When they insist on fairness for themselves and not others, ask them what fairness looks like and guide them to recognize fairness isn't fair if it doesn't include the people they don't like.  Model consistent thinking in front of them, and own it when you have been inconsistent.  They won't recognize it for themselves.  They need us to guide them.

Mental Recovery

I didn't blog this weekend.  I posted that I didn't have any wisdom to share.  And I didn't.  Between the kidney stone I was battling and the atrocious week I had had, there was nothing in my head that I would have wanted in a public space.  It was dark in there, y'all.  

Here's what a long career does for you, though.  It gives you perspective.  Bad days end.  Bad weeks come and go.  Bad years feel crippling, but they don't have to be if you take steps to recover.  Recovery is important for our students to see because they have to do it too.

I'm not for living your life out loud with students.  There are professional boundaries to be set.  I do believe in being genuine and authentic with students.  Finding the line is tricky, and I have sometimes found myself on the wrong side of it; but my ultimate feeling is this.  If they go home worried about me, I've crossed the professional line.  They might say at the dinner table. "It was weird how upset Miss Hawks was in class today."  That's fine.  That's noticing something human.  They should not be losing sleep over it.  They should not be coming in the next day worried that I'll be that upset again.  Then I've shared too much.  

Recovery probably looks different for different people.  For everyone, I assume it involves sleep.  There's some kind of magical power in sleep that I've never really understood.  The Bible says, "His mercies are new every morning."  That may be Jeremiah's poetic way of recognizing that sometimes things seem better after a night's sleep.  (I'm sure there are Biblical scholars who know what it really means, but I do know that I have often been really upset about something one afternoon and wake up with a different perspective.)  Sleep well after a rough day.  It helps.  

Gratitude is helpful as well.  Recognizing that there are many things for which you are thankful can put those few things that are upsetting you in perspective.  It doesn't make them okay; it doesn't make them go away.  It helps you recognize balance in your life.  (On Twitter, where people have a very unbalanced view of my thoughts, I have been accused of toxic positivity.  I'm not talking about pretending everything is fine when it isn't.  I'm talking about recognizing life is not one day/issue/problem.  Life is more interesting than that.)  

The last thing is this.  Keep going.  The easiest thing in the world is to give in to the dark stuff and hide, but it doesn't work.  Darkness reinforces darkness.  Feelings of worthlessness are only made deeper by shirking responsibilities and not accomplishing goals.  You might adjust the goals or give yourself more time, but accomplishing something gives us a sense of . . . well, accomplishment.  One of the lessons I've learned from unfortunate grief is that the rest of the world keeps moving.  Bills are still due, and some stuff has to get done.  Will you do it more slowly?  Yes, it may feel like you are walking through water.  Keep walking.  Move slowly, but keep moving.  One of the reasons I am writing this now is that doing the thing I didn't do on Sunday will be better than not doing it at all.

Our students have been raised to either numb their feelings (medication) or soak in them (self-care).  Neither extreme is healthy.  We must model feeling them and recovering from them.

Step Up to the Information Buffet

There are a lot of metaphors for learning and access to information.  When the internet first became a thing in the mid-90s, we called it the Information Superhighway.  When I first began teaching, someone told me that my students would be adrift on a sea of information and that I should be like a lighthouse.  While all the metaphors have some value, there is one I came across recently that rang eerily true.  In her book, None Like Him, Jen Wilkin talks about the world in which we live as having a buffet of information.  This seems the most applicable analogy to what I see in the 21st century.

Too Much.  Just like a buffet allows you to stuff yourself in ways you wouldn't at a normal meal, the plethora of news sources and their 24/7 availability allow us to overconsume under the justification of "staying informed."  I have seen advertisements for apps that allow you to stay "up to the minute."  Is that really a virtue?  I mean, unless you are in a situation like the people of Boston in the days after the marathon bombing, what is the value in being up to the minute?  Is there a correlation between the information being immediate and it being accurate?  I haven't done the research, but I would imagine there is a negative correlation between those things.  Perhaps, taking the time to check sources and verify information would result in better information rather than just more.

Consume What You Like.  Reject What You Don't.  No one eats everything on a buffet.  It just isn't possible.  When I got to Golden Corral, I first walk the entire length of the restaurant to see what they have before putting a fried chicken leg, a cheese biscuit, some scrambled eggs, and six strips of bacon on my plate.  Are there healthy options available to me?  Yes.  Do I eat them when I am at Golden Corral?  Of course not.  When Sweet Tomatoes existed in Raleigh, I ate delicious and healthy salads, but I'm not going to eat salad at a place where I man will make me an omelet while I put a marshmallow under a streaming chocolate fountain.  That's just crazy talk.  The internet has allowed us to do the same thing with information.  Are there good sources out there?  Yes.  Do I take the time to go beyond the first page on a Google search result to find them?  Rarely.  And I know how to recognize it when I see it.  Not everyone was as blessed in training as I was.

Illusion of Satisfaction.  I don't know how many times you have been to a buffet and stuffed yourself to the point where you know if you move, you will either vomit or burst the button right off your jeans.  Because of what you have chosen to eat, it burns pretty fast, and you are at home a couple of hours later, looking for some crackers or something.  I think there is an analogous experience with information consumption.  We listen to so many talks, watch so many videos, and read so many articles (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that you are reading this blog post) that we feel like we are overflowing with information.  However, because of what we have chosen to consume, we aren't actually informed.  If we get into an intelligent discussion, we are hard-pressed to bring out good information from a credible source and find ourselves referencing that well-respected publication called, "somewhere."  You know what I mean - "I saw somewhere.  I read it somewhere."  After consuming all this information, we are not informed.

Poisoning Others.  All analogies break down somewhere, and this may be where the buffet analogy falls apart.  I don't think I influence others too much at a church picnic when I eat strange combinations of foods, other than perhaps recommending those foods to other people.  With bad information, it is different.  When I pass along something false or non-credible on social media, my friends and followers will at least read the headline and draw some kind of conclusion whether they read the article or not, whether they check the source or not, whether they digest the information through a discerning filter or not.  I recently had the experience of a friend (one who use to teach proper research skills to her English students) posting something that was from an obviously sketchy source (It's not always super obvious, which is why you should be careful about just hitting share, but this one was from a conspiracy group, so it was clear).  When I questioned it, she said, "I don't agree with everything I share.  I just passed it on because I think it is interesting."  To beat the food analogy to death, she might as well have said, "I found this food on the ground and I gave it to you because I thought the dirt made a nice pattern."  We are all in positions of some influence, even if it is just on a few people, but teachers need to be extra careful.  There's no such thing as casually sharing an opinion with a student (a lesson I've learned many times when my words were quoted back to me later).  If you share things without checking the source, you teach others to do so as well.  If you pass along inflammatory opinions without regard to their impact, you teach students to do the opposite of what you try to teach them in class.  Do not poison students and hope they can discern the junk food information from the healthy when you haven't.  

When you step up to a food buffet, you experience the consequences of your choices, but because of the way your body is designed, it won't do you too much harm if you only occasionally consume poorly (Birthdays and Thanksgiving won't cause too many long term problems if you don't have them a hundred days a year).  Your brain, however, isn't made that way.  You will suffer the long term consequences of daily exposure to the data buffet, so consume responsibly.

The Internet is Not Always Right

This is going to be a short one.  

We teach kids not to believe everything they read on the internet.  Yet:

- Yesterday, I saw full-grown adults posting pictures of their brooms standing up and an "explanation" of gravity and the earth's tilt "from NASA."  
- Two weeks ago, the "Facebook only shows me 25 people.  Copying and pasting this message will change their algorithm." thing started going around again.  Again, these were full-grown adults, who were posting that it really works because they were told to paste it.
- Adults proudly post their results on a quiz, which they took because they saw a post that said most people can't pass it.
- There are a myriad of people passing on things whose numbers could be easily checked, like the next palindrome day won't happen for 900 years, how many full moons will fall on a Monday, etc.  

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn't replace your brain.  

- There are no days in which gravity is different than other days. You can stand a broom up every day. NASA did not tell you otherwise.
- You cannot change an algorithm by copying and pasting. That's not how algorithms work.
- They completely make up the score that "most people" get on the quiz. You are not special for doing better than that.
- There will be a palindrome day on December 11 of next year.

If you don't want your kids to believe everything they read on the internet, you should stop believing everything you read on the internet.

It's not possible to get over 10/10.  They must be hoping 90's kids weren't taught math.

Don't Let Me Be in That Story

Friday, a colleague of mine was talking about how much he wished that he knew more about math.  He said, "I liked math until my geometry teacher . . . "  The rest of the story is fairly predictable.  Every teacher in the hallway had the same reaction, "Oooohhhh, please, don't let me be part of a story like that."

When you follow teachers online or attend back to school meetings or even just listen to a group of teachers talk, you will hear a lot of positive talk about our influence on students.  We are often encouraged to think back to "that one teacher" that made a difference for us.  We are told about how far reaching our impact can be.  We are encouraged to remember that what we do can put a kid on the right path.

All of that is true, and it is important for us to think about.  Every once in a while, we must force ourselves to recognize that the flip side is also true.  Our positive impact can carry far, but so can our negative impact.  Just as we can all point back to "that one teacher" who made a positive difference, most can also point to "that one teacher who made a negative difference.  We need to take active steps to not be "that one teacher."

We are human, and we will fail.  We will have bad days.  We will be snippier than we ought to be one day when we aren't feeling well.  We will make errors.  Those foibles will not make us "that one teacher" if we handle it correctly.  When we realize what we have done, we should own it, apologize to students, and make it right whenever that is possible.  Students will understand that we are human if we do not pretend that we aren't.  Letting them see you own and redeem a bad moment is more powerful than the bad moment itself, and it models an important life skill that they need to develop as well.

Unless you are remarkably mediocre, students will tell stories about you.  They will tell them today.  They will tell them tomorrow.  They will tell them to their children.  They will tell them decades from now.  What story do you want them to tell?  Live that story so they can.

Teaching Students Empathy

Lack of empathy may be the world's biggest problem right now.  You might not think this if you read a lot of Twitter arguments.  Someone always says, "How would you feel if . . ." and while that sounds empathetic, the motivation is to win the argument.  That's not empathy.  It the same old selfishness disguised as compassion.  A wolf in sheep's clothing is not a sheep, and the person who pretends compassion is not compassionate.   

We are so polarized that the very idea of what someone else thinks or feels is offensive to us, so we carefully cultivate our world (friending and unfriend, following and unfollowing) to hear as little as possible from those with whom we disagree.  Whether the issue is immigration, racial injustice, the waitress serving our table more slowly than we would like, or a rival athletic team, we don't want to imagine "the other side" as human beings with their own thoughts and feelings.

Anyone who has been in education longer than a day knows that we aren't just responsible for teaching content.  We also teach life skills, study skills, thinking abilities, and engage in character development.  If we are going to fulfill our mission with students, we must find ways to teach empathy.  Here are a few ways that I've seen in my own school.  Please share what you do in yours.

Project Construction:
When GRACE teachers construct projects, we often think of ways to broaden student thinking to take others into account.  One of our English teachers partnered her class with a class from another school.  They engaged in a Twitter chat about "the American dream."  Our students heard stories and viewpoints they otherwise would not have.  Fifth-grade students learning about the Holocaust were assigned roles as Jews and wore stars of David, had restrictions on which doors and water fountains they were allowed to use in order to experience what it feels like to be isolated and limited for no reason.  Physics students are assigned a region of the world to research and asked to propose the solution to a problem that engineering could help solve.  They are required to use the available resources of the area, not swoop in with a western solution.  Our AP Statistic students collect and analyze data for local non-profits.  These are only a few examples.  If you walk through the halls of either campus, you will see projects that encourage empathy development.

Modeling Empathy in Our Interactions
For all the planned activities teachers and students engage in, the vast majority of our day involves unplanned conversation.  When a student asks a question, it means they are open to a change in thinking.  The way we answer them matters.  Do we treat the question like an interruption to our plan, or do we remember what it was like to not understand?  When a student complains about another teacher, do we let it go or do we ask them to think about why that teacher might have done that?  What might that teacher have been thinking?  When a student says something mean or insensitive, do we simply punish or does our discipline involve asking that student to put themselves in the other students' position?  All of these unplanned interactions reveal how we think, which students notice.

Community Service
My school requires students to complete a certain number of community service hours for graduation, but we want them to view service more deeply than that.  The hope is that the requirement will expose them to a variety of service organizations and opportunities ranging from local thrift stores to Habitat for Humanity to food service organizations.  In a time of slacktivism, when many believe they have made a difference by using a hashtag or putting a banner on their Instagram profile, we want our students to really engage in service by investing their time.   Many of our students find that one of those opportunities ignites a passion for service and become active because of the intrinsic motivation to help others. 

Writing Opportunities
I've often said that English teachers know their students better than anyone else because they read so much of their writing.  I know I said things in essays that I didn't talk about in other places.  It's just hard to write without putting something of yourself into it.  But English teachers don't need to be the only people who provide students with these opportunities.  It will look different in the different areas of discipline, but you can craft questions and writing prompts that both lead to mastery of content, use of Bloom's evaluation level thinking skill (yes, I know it's not on the new Bloom's but it still matters), and empathy.  History teachers can ask their students to write as a suffragette or a soldier in the Civil War.  Science teachers can ask their students to evaluate the application of scientific discoveries (nuclear power v. nuclear weapons) from the perspective of Neils Bohr and/or a citizen of Japan.  Foreign language teachers probably have more opportunities than anyone to introduce their students to the thinking of people different from themselves.  If you don't want it to be in the form of writing, that's fine.  They can accomplish the same in a skit, video, song, debate, or any other creative way you can think of.

The Arts 
Every study about arts education shows that whether it is theater, dance, visual art, or music, students who participate in the arts have an increased level of empathy.  While it is risky to assume reasons from statistical data, they do prompt us to ask why the numbers are what they are.  I'm not an arts educator (just an enthusiastic supporter), but as I've read about these studies, it seems most arts educators agree that the increase in empathy results from trying to portray the creative work of others (band music students are usually performing the work of another) and also trying to get others to understand their own message (visual arts and dance are often putting out original work).  Some curriculum includes both.  You can see how the development of empathy would happen even if it weren't a specific goal of the curriculum.  When it is a specific goal, the result is practically magical, as I got to see yesterday.

Yesterday, I attended our school's fall play.  While I have enjoyed and been entertained by every play we have done, I've never been more impressed by my students as much as I was with this one.  The play is called Women and War.  My students stepped into the shoes of Vietnam nurses, gold star mothers, war protestors, wives waiting for their husbands to return from Korea, WWII soldiers writing to their girl at home, and those who served in other capacities (like phone operators and USO girls).  They portrayed worry, sadness, anger, joy, and PTSD.   Their preparation involved more than memorizing lines and learning stage blocking.  They read dozens of articles, visiting the WWI immersive exhibit at our local museum, interviewed an air force reservist, and attempted to truly interpret the intent of the playwright.  The result was a theatre experience unlike any I've seen in a high school.  In the audience, you could have heard a pin drop.  There was none of the shifting around, moving to restrooms, and talking between scenes that have become relatively normal at plays (even though they shouldn't).  The only sounds were those of sniffles from people who had been moved to tears.  When the lights went it out, there was a beat before the applause began, and even then, it was quieter applause than normal.  The audience needed that moment as they moved from experiencing the characters and their stories to remembering that they were an audience.  There was empathy in the audience, but it was because there was empathy on that stage.  For the two dozen cast and crew of this play, Veteran's Day will not be the same.  Neither will their studies of history class or trips to DC.  Once empathy has been achieved, it marks their hearts.

Like anything else, there is no "one size fits all" method.  Writing will not successfully build empathy in all students; neither will community service.  Both methods will reach some.  Projects are not going to open all of their eyes, but participation in the arts might.  If each method reaches some, the cumulative effect will be powerful.  Do as many as you can wherever it fits in the context of your school.