Using the Olympics to Teach

When there were only three TV channels, there was a pretty safe bet that if you mentioned something from last night's television line up, most people would have seen it.  Because of the number of choices for viewing on television and the internet, this is no longer the case.  Everyone once in a while, however, there is something that draws a large crowd.  The wise teacher should take advantage of that and plan for it.  The Olympics is one of those.

While no one event drew the majority of my students' eyes, the Winter Olympics as a whole certainly did.  Some students love figure skating.  Others are fascinated by snowboarding.  The biathlon, which most didn't know existed until last week, has captured the attention of many (because it is weird and different).  They may like to mock curling, but a lot of them watch it anyway.  

For a science teacher, the connection to the curriculum is pretty low hanging fruit.  My 8th grade had just finished the chapter on Motion, Forces, and Newton's Laws when the Olympics began.  The chapter that began two days into the games was on Momentum and Energy.  I would have to be crazy not to reference as many events as possible, especially since the Winter Olympics is basically 85 kinds of sliding.  For two weeks, there was primetime coverage of a momentum-based physics lab.  NBC even has a video series called NBC Learn, in which they have short documentaries on the science of each sport.  My kids liked the one on SlopeStyle.

Even if it hadn't been so perfectly timed to the chapter I was on, I would have used it in some way.  My physics students finished Mechanics last semester, and we had begun talking about waves and sound.  I still took the first five minutes each day to reference the physics of the games.  I put up photos of a couple of events each day, trying to choose ones that were as different as possible (luge and curling on the same day, for example).  Above the photo, I listed 3-5 physics concepts (momentum, Newton's 3rd law, rotational momentum, etc.) that were heavily represented by that event.  As I write this, I am watching the closing ceremonies, and I have seen several examples of concepts that I plan to use in the chapter on Light and Color as they use light as a kind of paint on the floor.

If you aren't a science teacher, the applications may not be as obvious, but they are certainly there.  

- Foreign language teachers can find coverage of the games in just about any language just be going to YouTube.  

- Latin teachers, you probably can't find Latin coverage, but you can obviously address the classical history of the games.  

- History teachers, this is a prime opportunity for teaching geography but also to address the culture of a country by discussing why some countries are always better at certain sports.  Do you teach about the Cold War?  I heard the Miracle on Ice mentioned at least half a dozen times this week even though it happened 38 years ago.  

- Math teachers, there are many opportunities to use real data.

- PE and Health teachers, duh.  Yours is as obvious as physics.

- English teachers, do you have your students write journals or blog?  The Olympics can provide a very enjoyable prompt.  My 8th graders' blogs were great this week because they were excited about getting to choose whichever Olympic sport they wanted.

You may not have time to construct entire lessons around the Olympics.  That's totally fine.  You will, however, reap the benefits of taking five minutes a day for two weeks to show how the subject you teach connects with something that has the attention of the world.  

No, You Don't Know How to Keep This From Happening Again

I didn't want to write this post.  I tried hard not to write this post.  After all, there have been several hundred thousand blog posts, articles, and social media rants since the shooting in Parkland this week.  What more can I add to this discussion than what has already been said?

Today, as I scrolled through my Twitter and Facebook feeds, however, I realized that this may be precisely the reason why I should write this post.  A lot of people are spouting off a lot of manufactured outrage and phony heartbreak.  Before you get mad at me for that statement, recognize that no heartbroken person is posting to facebook while they are heartbroken, and any person who is truly outraged puts their phone down and does something.  People are spouting off a lot of opinions from both sides of the political spectrum, and most of them are ill-informed.  Everyone seems to think they have a "solution," everything from arming teachers to hiring veterans as security to new laws that restrict access to guns.  Most of these "solutions" are coming from people who haven't set foot in a school in several decades.  WARNING:  This will be long, probably have some conflicting thoughts as I work out my own feelings, and will likely come off as a little rant-y.

I have been teaching for 19 years, starting the year after the Columbine shootings.  I was a substitute when Columbine happened; and, while it wasn't the first school shooting, it was the one that changed the way we looked at them.  As a sub, I walked into a different classroom every day.  After Columbine, the first thing I did every day was to look for the second exit and the place we might hide if there were a gunman in the building.  (I was 22 years old, by the way.)  Columbine tore my heart to pieces.  It happened on a Tuesday, and I remember sitting in church the next night, sobbing so loudly that I disrupted the service, and my congregation spent the rest of the time gathered around me as a representative of schools and praying.  During my second year as a  high school teacher, my school found a shooting threat letter with a hit list and a map one Friday afternoon.  I spent a lot of time in prayer that weekend, and when my students entered my classroom that Monday, after having their backpacks searched at the door, I told them, "They won't get to you without going through me."  I assured them that there was a plan (this was before we did drills, so they didn't know what the plan was) and that if we needed it, they should just do what I told them.  Then, I taught as though we weren't under threat, with the exception that my eyes darted from the window to the kids to the door about 150 thousand times per class period.  In the years since that day, some of my students told me that they felt safest in my room.  This never fails to amuse me, given that I was the youngest teacher in the building at the time.

Now that you know I am not someone who only thinks about this when it is on the news, let me say a few things.

1.  There is NOT a simple solution.
Given how many shooters there have been in schools, movie theaters, nightclubs, military bases, etc. in the past two decades, if the solution were as simple as something you could post to Facebook, it would have been done by now.  Here's the thing; there isn't a simple solution because this isn't a simple problem.  Anytime something goes wrong, whether it is a disease or the explosion of a space shuttle, people want there to be ONE cause that they can blame because that makes fixing it easy.  Almost nothing has one cause.  When I teach my students about the Apollo 1 fire, we discuss the fact that, while the official cause was an electrical arc from a wire with worn insulation, that arc alone would not have caused three fatalities.  It was a combination of the arc with the high pressure, 100% oxygen environment, and manual opening hatch all interacting with each other that killed three astronauts that day.  The problem of mass shootings doesn't come from one source.  Each shooter has a different past, different levels of access to weapons, different mental states, and different motivations.  The combination of home, school, and work lives is unique to each individual as is their constitution for a response.  Don't go online and pretend you have the solution; you do not.

2.  This is NOT about Gun Control.
Most of the phony outrage I see online surrounds firearms, saying things like, "You cannot cause this many casualties without a gun."  These people were remarkably silent when a truck drove into a crowd of people in France, killing over 70 people.  None were advocating truck control.  When there are terror attacks that involve stabbing people, I don't see knife control advocates coming out of the woodwork.  Guns don't shoot themselves.  Criminals, by definition, don't follow laws.  Adding new laws will not solve this problem.  Apparently, our founding fathers felt pretty strongly about the right to keep and bear arms because they made it the second amendment, right after the one about free speech, press, and religion.  That said, most people who lay claim to the second amendment haven't read it.  It does not say that you have a right to own any weapon you want.  It specifically references "a well-regulated militia."  Thomas Jefferson had no concept of bump stocks, high round magazines, or anything that could cause more than a few casualties in a few minutes, and I don't believe he would be happy for us to use his name to claim a right to own whatever weapon gets invented, no matter what.  I'm not going to claim to know where the line is, but can we agree that there is one?  

3.  Arming Teachers is NOT the Answer.
Possibly the most infuriating posts I read online surround arming school personnel.  If you look at these posts, you will find that they are rarely posted by educators.  I find it interesting that the same people who advocate for this in the days following a shooting are the same people that criticize teachers online on other days.  They don't trust their child's teacher to teach them math or reading properly; they question every disciplinary tactic the teacher tries; they talk about teachers as though they are too stupid to have chosen a better paying career.  Then, in the days following a shooting, they want that same teacher to be in command of a weapon.  

I'm not saying I would mind having someone in the school armed; when I taught in public school, there was an armed police officer, and I was fine with that.  Please don't arm me.  I do not wish to have a weapon strapped to my body while I am leaning over a desk to help a student with a math problem.  If you think about it, you don't want that either.

4.  Take Mental Illness Seriously (or Don't) - Stop Just Pretending You Care.
In order to divert the conversation away from guns, some have decided that the real problem is mental illness.  It is easy to assume all mass shooters are mentally ill.  After all, if you don't believe in sin, what other reason could you give for a person's decision to kill others?  That seems logical, but the research doesn't support it.  According to the American Psychiatric Association, "the overall contribution of people with serious mental illness to violent crimes is only about 3%." (See full study here.) 

Mental illness is a serious problem in our society, and we have not taken it seriously.  We have used the mentally ill for our amusement since the freak shows of the 19th century, and probably before that.  Reality TV has normalized the public's use of mental illness for entertainment.  We cannot spend nine seasons watching Hoarders and six watching My Strange Addiction, entertaining ourselves with their struggle, and then pretend to have compassion for those who suffer from mental illness.  

5.  These Events Reflect Our Culture's Worldview
I was at dinner Friday night with some older people, all of whom had thoughts about the shooting.  They talked about guns, mental illness, and school and parental discipline (which I am not even going to address here).  I said, "Well, we taught this generation that human life doesn't have value.  Are we surprised they act like it doesn't?"  

For the past forty years or so, we have taught kids that humans are just another kind of animal.  In practice, we actually teach them that animals are more important (Think about how many more ads you have seen about rescuing abused animals than you have helping abused children).  We have taught them that there are good reasons to kill human beings, from the inconvenient unborn child to lack of life quality in the elderly or disabled to the right of the chronically ill to plan their own death.  We have two living generations who believe that there is some standard which, if a person's life falls below, their life is not worth living.  This has led to a slow but steady rise in the suicide rate.   We can't be too surprised when it also translates into killing others.

The secularized culture in which we live teaches us that humans aren't special or particularly valuable.  Noted atheist, Stephen J. Gould tells us, "We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during the ice age; because a small and tenacious species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and crook. We may yearn for a higher answer, but none exists."  Richard Dawkins tells us we come from living mud but without design.  He has gone so far as to say that there is no objective reason to believe murder is immoral, that it is only wrong by "my reason says it is wrong."  I guess as long as a mass shooter's reason tells him it is not wrong, Dawkins and the culture that listens to him will be okay with events like Parkland.  

Conclusion:
I know I have talked more about what won't work than what will.  See point 1.  There are no easy solutions to this problem.  I have no magic spell, practice, or policy that will ensure this never happens again.  When Jesus returns, this will never happen again.  Until then, we have to deal with the effects of the Fall.  Man's depravity is only going to be dealt with by the blood of Christ. 

Senioritis - a Term of Privilege

A few weeks ago, our school had a special winter spirit week.  One of the days was "Fake and Injury Day," which turned out to pretty fun.  One of my students came in with completely normal dress, so I asked what his injury was.  He said, "I'm a senior."  Seriously, that's your injury?  Being a senior somehow makes you pitiful?  Just stop it.  

From the first day of school, I have students claiming "senioritis" as an excuse for everything from not wanting to participate in an activity to not turning in their homework (in August).  A junior told me two weeks ago that he was not going to do anything his senior year, once he got accepted into college.  Setting aside for the moment that colleges can and do rescind acceptances, this is just a gross way to think.  I told him that would dishonor the God who gave him intelligence and the privilege of private schooling, and he looked at me like I was the crazy one.  A few months ago, a girl in the hall was bemoaning her "senioritis" because she had to do homework on the same weekend as another activity.  I said, "Senioritis isn't real.  It's a cute name for your sin." and walked away as she gasped in horror.

It's an excuse - a socially acceptable one - but an excuse, none the less.  Society has just accepted it to the point that it is almost expected.  Adults feed this crazy, which makes it grow.  We act like they have actually been infected by a virus and therefore have no control over their own actions.  Giving it a cute name doesn't change the fact that it is just an excuse for sin.  Whatever work God has put before you today is what you are supposed to do, and you honor Him by doing it well and dishonor Him when we choose to do less than our best.

I'm not saying the temptation isn't real.  Everyone who has ever left a job knows that when you near the end of something, you feel a strong temptation to do whatever you want and be lazy (because, what are they gonna do, fire me?).  I've known a lot of people who left jobs that way, and it ruins their memory at that company.  People remember the way you leave.  I don't use the term senioritis in my physics class because I don't want to even open that door.  If they signed up for physics, I expect them to learn all of physics.  A person can't honestly believe that it is okay to write off the highest quarter of their high school education.

So, yes, the temptation is real.  Like any other temptation to sin, however, giving into the temptation is the sin.  Here's the deal, senior.  God has given you gifts that he didn't give others.  How dare you waste them.  God has given you (my students) a lot of privilege; you live in an area of high education and social standing with parents or grandparents who have chosen private education for you.  How dare you waste their sacrifice.  They could have done a lot with that money, and it is wrong for you to do less than your best with it.  

Believe it or not, senioritis has a Wikipedia page.  Before you jump to the conclusion that it is real because of that, remember that Wikipedia also has pages on the tooth fairy, leprechauns, and unicorns.  If you visit the page on senioritis, something might stand out to you in the first sentence.  This term is used "in the United States and Canada."  It is not a term used in places where people would give everything they have to receive an education.  Remember Malala Yousafzai, the girl from Pakistan, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for trying to attend school.  She would not have used the term senioritis, I can assure you.  It is a term used by those for whom easy access to education has made it familiar, thereby causing them to view it as a hardship rather than a blessing.  In short, it is a term of privilege.