Trying to Do it All

I have heard it time and again.  "How can teachers expect my child to do homework when he has (fill in the blank with un-criticizable extracurricular activity)?" Whether the child is on a traveling soccer team or the lead in a play in addition the part time job they just have to have because Johnny needs money to buy his own video games, the complaint is always about the school work.  When I point out that these are choices, I am the heartless teacher who can't possibly understand what it is like because I don't have children of my own.

While I don't know the pain of a crying child at the dinner table, I do have experience with over a thousand children.  I have seen the trends of almost two decades of educational philosophy and have watched as the culture of parenting has shifted.  Parents once believed that school was a student's job and that they shouldn't have jobs during the school year; now many parents believe their child should work as many hours as they can get in order to have their own money.  Parents once kept their student from going to a game if their grades weren't at an acceptable level; now many parents believe the teacher should be pressured to change the grade so that their child can play a game.  We have moved from extra curricular activities as secondary to school work to school work being secondary at best (it might fall a few more spots if the student is especially social).  This might be okay if the parents in question weren't also pressing their kids to take a high load of AP classes and spend time on SAT/ACT prep classes so that they can get into a top college.  Then, we are shocked when kids have anxiety.

In short, our culture has decided to push our kids to have it all.

This. Is. Not. Okay.
It's just not.
Stop it.

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.

Why Are You Reading? You Know.

According to Blogger's statistics, I topped fifteen thousand pageviews today.  The statistics show me what posts people have read and what countries readers are from.  I can even find out if you are Mac or Windows people.

What I can't find out from google is why you are reading.  When I started this blog three years ago, I did so for my own reflection.  It was like keeping a journal that anyone was allowed to read.  I wasn't really sure who would read my thoughts or why anyone would want to.  As I have scrolled through the 145 previous posts, I have seen a variety of topics - everything from what teachers do to prepare for the first day of school to thoughts on student community service, from blood donation to the role of curiosity in learning.  Why do you care what I think about these things?  Only you know.

Perhaps you are a new teacher seeking out the perspective of an experienced teacher.  If so, I hope I've been able to provide insight to help you with your year.  Perhaps you are a student who wonders why teachers make the decisions they do.  If so, I hope you see that we don't make decisions lightly, that we have intent behind our assignments, and that we have your best interests at heart.  Perhaps you are a parent who wonders what your child's teachers are thinking.  If so, I hope you have found that we are serious professionals that you can trust with your child's learning.

I will keep writing, and I hope you will be able to gain something from the time you spend reading.

What We Can Learn From This Election

It's been a long, long campaign season.  I'm pretty sure the first commercials I saw for the primaries were two years ago.  The primary was bloody on both sides.  Most of us are just glad it is over.  Now that North Carolina is a swing state, it's gotten even more difficult because we are far more inundated with campaign ads than we used to be.  Now that it is finally almost over, perhaps we can find some redeeming value in asking ourselves what we can learn from it.  I'm posting this before election day so that it won't be based on the outcome.

What have we learned?  Well,

Some people are easily manipulated.  I got to a point where I didn't want to answer my phone in the past few days because every time it rang, it was a robo-call from Invanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. (remember when we called him Donnie?), some surrogate of Richard Burr, or a myriad of others trying to get my vote.  I voted early, so these were extra annoying.  I kept wondering why these calls exist in the first place.  Who, exactly, is changing their vote because they get a recorded call?  Is there someone who was out there thinking, "Well, I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but now that I've gotten this call from one of the Trump kids, telling me their dad's a good guy, I've changed my mind"?  Do these people actually show up at the polls and vote?  If your vote can be changed by a robo-call, stay home.  The grown-ups are trying to choose a government.

Some people are incredibly stubborn.  As much I believe a person shouldn't be easily swayed, what we have also seen in this election is that some people CANNOT be swayed.  Once they decided on their candidate, that person was a deity.  You have that Facebook friend; you scroll past their posts because you already know what they say.  They defended everything their candidate did, no matter how awful.  I have these friends on both sides of the aisle, so it became really interesting to scroll through my Facebook and Twitter feeds after every news story.  Some of my friends think Hillary is the devil, so they actually defended the sexual assault admissions of Donald Trump.  Some hate him so much that they are fine with her breaking the law.  Apparently, once you have picked a side, logic, reason, intellectual honesty, and your own moral standards no longer matter.  I'd like to point out that this is no less childish than those who are easily changed.

The process only works when people participate.  I keep hearing the question, "How did we get these two candidates?"  The answer is that voter turnout in the primaries was low.  Only 60 million people voted in the primaries.  Those 60 million were divided, not only between the two parties, but between all of the candidates (there were 16 republican and 3 democratic candidates when we started).  Over half of the primary votes were for neither of these two candidates.  Only 9% of Americans chose these two people.  That's how we got here.  When only fanatics participate, we get some fanatical outcomes; and that's what we are seeing here.  If you don't care until you get to the general election, you can't complain with the choices you have in the general election.  If more people had voted in the primaries, we might be looking at a better outcome.

Our process, flawed as it is, still works.  Our founding fathers were not demigods, but they were intelligent and wise men.  The process they designed has ensured a peaceful transfer of power for two and a half centuries.  We have changed political parties multiple times, and guess what?  We have not had shed blood to make that happen.  In fact, we throw giant parties.  I remember being a young voter in 2000, waiting for weeks while they counted hanging chads in Florida and thinking, "How great is it that we are all just waiting for this to play out?  In many other countries, there would be rioting in the streets."  We worry and fret and wring our hands over popular vs. electoral college votes, but our constitution addresses all of that, even the possibility of an electoral college tie (congress decides).  Our system has problems, and those need to be addressed; but when people participate, it works.

Be The Decider

On October 31st, I wrote the following on my white board.
"The rules in my class are the same on October 31 as they are the rest of the year.  Please save your candy for snack time or lunch."

Yes, I am the Halloween Grinch.  Not only do I not want to teach teenagers that are too buzzed on candy to have a complete thought, I want them to know that the calendar does not decide the rules of my classroom.  I do.  (By the way, the same applies to Valentine's Day, which is another day that they believe they can openly violating the eating rules of my classroom.)

A few hours after writing this, I checked my facebook and found this post from a friend of mine who teaches in Oklahoma.  Obviously, we have very different approaches to this holiday.  Another teacher friend of mine gives an assignment to kids to bring in candy (He got 35 pounds this year!) or write an essay.

And, here's the thing.  I don't think any of us wrong.  What's important to me isn't what the teacher decides but that the teacher is the one making the decision.  My advice to new teachers (and veterans who may have forgotten this fact) is to remember that THIS IS YOUR CLASSROOM!  If you want to be casual and fun, then you should cultivate that atmosphere in your classroom.  When you do that, it is still your classroom management that determines what happens.  Do not just give up because the kids are out of control and then try to make yourself believe that you like it.  If you are more strict, that should be your option because this is YOUR classroom, but don't be mad at the teacher next door for making you look like the bad guy.  Embrace that you are the stricter presence in the lives of students, realizing that they will continue to have a range of teachers and bosses throughout their lives.

Whatever decision YOU make, be the decider.