Blowing Off Steam

When the Instant Pot first came out, people acted like it was an amazing new piece of technology that no one had ever seen before (and that it was super scary).  Because I'm a middle-aged white woman,  my social media feeds were filled with women worried they were going to get hurt, proclaiming the glory of potatoes made in three minutes, and photos of both their disasters and their triumphs.  All I could think was, "It's just a pressure cooker, right?"  Those have been around for as long as I can remember.  It's how my mom and grandmother cooked collard greens back in the day.  It turns out that they go back even farther than I imagined.  According to Wikipedia, the first pressure cooker was invented in the 17th century.  It's just basic chemistry.  Raising the pressure raises the boiling point of water, allowing the food to cook faster as a result.  The old ones were pretty dangerous because the pressure got to really high levels, so the lid could be blown off with a pretty high amount of force.  It wasn't until the 1930s that the pressure valve was added.  That is my most vivid memory of the one in our house.  I remember that it would jiggle up and down and sometimes whistle as it let steam out.  The tech has changed slightly, but the concept remains the same.  Slightly elevated pressure is good, but if it gets too high, the result is potentially dangerous.

The start of this school year has been stressful, possibly even more than last year.  Last year, we expected it to be the most difficult year of our careers.  We knew it was going to be strange and masked and stressful, but we were all so grateful to be back on campus in person that none of that mattered at the beginning.  This year, we expected things to be back to normal, but, of course, it's not.  Kids who had been troopers about masks last year have to be reminded multiple times per day to wear them correctly this year.  No teacher wants to spend all their time regulating, but we know this matters, so we keep doing it.  Some of our students have been learning virtually since March 2020 while others were in person with us last year, so there is an even wider difference in skill and knowledge level than there has been in prior years.  I had to teach my 8th graders to use a scantron card on our first test, which is not something I've ever had to do before, but because they took all their tests online last year, they hadn't used them.  Cohorting students last year has caused some changes in their social development because they didn't learn the things you would from mixing with big kids in the hall.  Some of this was anticipated, but we couldn't really plan for how to handle it until we got to know our students.  While some things are back to normal (no plexiglass, thank the Lord), things are definitely not normal, not even "new normal" normal.  And everyone, it seems, is grieving someone.  Whether from Covid or cancer or something else, it seems like everyone is suffering a recent loss.  It's hard to think clearly when you are grieving.  (Oh, and that's just school stuff.  I haven't mentioned the state of the world and politics and the fact that we have lost all idea of how to treat each other as we live in a society.)

The pressure has been enormous.  And building.

Our school usually begins the school year with a high school retreat, called Ignite.  It's three days of relationship building and fun and bonding as well as spiritual development.  Of course, last year, we couldn't have it in any form.  This year, plans had been made during the summer for a normal version of it.  Then, the Delta variant happened, numbers rose, and we altered it to a day event.  Then, numbers rose again, making packing kids into busses a bad idea, so it was decided to postpone it to October.  Then, our deans realized that was far enough away to make it impossible to know what might happen between now and then, so they asked themselves, "What can we do for our kids now?"  On Friday, we had Ignite Fun Day.  The first half of the day was team building (with doughnuts), a chapel service, and an escape room activity.  The second half was an outdoor field day with inflatable obstacle courses, velcro walls, frisbee games, ice cream, giant kickball, jump ropes, spike ball, and more inflatables.  God dropped perfect weather on us, and we had a day of laughter and silliness (and I mentioned the ice cream, right).  When we returned to campus, I asked my class to tell me their high points of the day.  They enjoyed talking with teachers and catching up socially.  They liked doing something physical and being outside.  They also appreciated the chapel message.  Mostly, they liked spending a day without academic expectations.  While one day of fun doesn't solve the problems of the world or undo grief, Friday was the whistling steam release from what had been the pressure cooker of the start of the year.  

I am grateful to have an administration of people who recognize the needs of our kids and allow time, space, and budget for a day like Friday.  I also know that it can't happen often.  It has made me ask myself, though, how I can work smaller steam releases into each week or each class period (like the jiggling bobber I remember from my mom's collard cooking days).  It doesn't have to be big to be a valuable reduction of pressure.  Perhaps I can take one minute from a class period to say, "Everyone, stand up on your chair and jump off on the count of three."  That one weird moment might provide a needed mental break.  Perhaps, once a week, I can tell a story or play a song.  Perhaps, once a month, we can do something special at lunch.  It will probably be different in each class, but it is important to remember that while a little elevated pressure is beneficial, if we allow it to build too much, it could be dangerous and do something to prevent it from getting to that point.

Nobody Knows - Everybody Comments

Warning:  This is a long post because it took a lot of setup to get to the point.  If you just want the point, feel free to scroll down to the last couple of paragraphs.

Every four years, I am reminded of sports I forgot even existed, like Dressage and Water Polo (or Curling if it is winter).  When the Olympics are airing, I have my television tuned to it all day long, no matter what the event and even if I am doing other things.  There's something amazing about watching passionate people who are the best in the world at what they do.  This year has an extra layer of drama.  As though being an Olympic-level athlete isn't enough of a challenge, these men and women have the pandemic to deal with as well.  We see story after story of people who have overcome challenges to do something amazing, from the known name gold-medal favorites to the sole representative from a country to the one for whom just being there is already a victory, even if they come in last.

The word unprecedented has gotten a little cliché in the past year, but there are two things that have happened this year that I've never seen before.  The first is Simone Biles dropping out of the competition during the competition.  The second is female athletes changing their own uniforms from the accepted standards.   

Simon Bile is indisputably the best gymnast ever to step up to a mat.  I grew up in the age of Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, but I've never seen the like of Simone Biles.  While those women experienced the pressure of public attention, the 80s weren't a time when the entire world expressed their opinions of you directly to you from their phone 24 hours a day.  The internet has changed everything for these athletes.  In the social media world, everyone feels they have the right (and it seems, the obligation) to weigh in on any decision they have made, even if they are ignorant of the situation.  I can't even begin to imagine the pressure that would have put on me at the age of 24.  I was in my second year of teaching at 24, and I cannot fathom how badly I would have done my job if it were being broadcast on international television with people telling me my work was important to everyone in the country and commenting on every minor error I made.

We also live in a time where we expect perfection from those whom we have placed on a pedestal.  I remember having a conversation with a friend when Michael Phelps was caught smoking pot several years ago.  I told her that I wasn't condoning what he did, and it was disappointing, but I didn't think either she or I could imagine the pressure he had experienced.  "If he had returned from China with seven gold medals," I said, "he would have been considered a failure because we were so hyped of for eight.  This was his bad decision, but it's at least a little on us."  She thought I was crazy, but a few years later, when he started doing ads for Talkspace and revealed his mental health challenges, I wondered if she realized that he had been self-medicating.  (I'm not condoning his drug use, by the way.  I'm just saying we should understand the context.)

I keep reading comments from Twitter and Facebook people saying, "We all have pressure on our jobs, and we're still expected to do them."  First of all, unless you happen to be the world's leading brain surgeon, I don't think you get to compare your job pressures to hers.  I felt a lot of pressure teaching during the pandemic, but my mistakes weren't being dissected by billions of people who tagged me in their comments to make sure I got them.  Second, if you make a mistake on your job, it's unlikely to result in a potentially career-ending or even life-threatening injury.  I'd rather read the headline that Simone Biles dropped out of the competition for her mental health than read the headline that Simone Biles was permanently paralyzed because she broke her neck after losing her place while 18 feet in the air.  It's easy to make comments from a phone while sitting on a sofa eating Pringles, but let's all stop pretending we understand the situation.

At least two teams of women have decided that it is time to take a stand against women being forced to show their everything to the world.  The Norwegian Beach Handball team  (I didn't even know beach handball was a sport, I kept thinking they meant volleyball) was fined 1500 Euros for "improper attire" because they came out in spandex shorts rather than tiny bikini bottoms.  I put a picture here for reference because I keep reading that they aren't as aerodynamic in shorts (as though handball is a game that requires aerodynamics).  They simply don't want to flash the world while diving for a point.    

Apparently, no one expects the men to by aerodynamically sound because here's what the men's team from the same country is expected to wear for the same sport.  

The German women's gymnastics team has also decided enough is enough.  After decades of women performing in bikini-cut, wedgie-inducing leotards while men perform in shorts or stirrup pants, they performed in ankle-length unitards.  This, of course, sparked a lot of comments as well.  I saw a lot of "the Olympics is no place for politics" comments.  Anyone who believes that hasn't paid attention to the Olympics since the 1930s.  From boycotts to protests, it's always been used for political statements.  That aside, how is not wanting to show your butt cheeks to the world or wanting to avoid the potential of flashing your privates while on the balance beam a political statement?  

Let's stop pretending that this is about anything other than getting some ratings from some of the gross men who only watch to see half-naked women jumping around.  That's not me editorializing; it is direct quotes I have read comments from multiple men saying, "What's the problem?  That's the only reason I watch it." while not realizing that they answered their own question.

But none of this is the point.  The point is that those of us making comments have absolutely no idea what we are talking about.  Even the ones that start with, "I was a gymnast and . . ." like the two years of gymnastics they took in middle school qualify them to disagree with what elite athletes choose to wear.  Nobody knows the pressures that another person experiences in their life or on their job.  We all have different responsibilities and experiences and pasts and psychological constitution and support systems.  I have no idea what a nurse goes through, and a nurse has no idea what I go through.  I was a teenager at one point in my life, but that doesn't mean I know what it is like to be a teenager now.  Even within the same profession, elementary school teachers and upper school teachers don't want each other's jobs and don't understand what the other has to deal with from day to day.  I'm going to assume this is probably true of cardiologists vs. proctologists as well.  

I always try to connect things to education since that is the point of this blog, so here goes.  Teachers, our students are growing up in a time when they are expected to have an instantly formed opinion based on a headline (because we don't typically read the articles we forward) that we stick to and never change.  We MUST teach them a better way.  We have the opportunity when they ask what our opinion is about something to say, "I'm not sure.  I need more information."  We have the responsibility to base our opinions on valid data from good sources and not just say, "I read somewhere" like that's a credible reference.  We have the responsibility to model an openness to change our opinion when new data becomes available.  If we lead them to think before they post, we can change the toxic culture of social media in the future, but we can only do it if WE think before we post and if we say, "I'm not going to judge her decision because I don't know what her job is like."