Take Your Kids Outside

The biology teacher next door to me has a fantastic project in which students are assigned to groups and are asked to grow food plants that will provide 1500 calories.  The learning that happens in this project goes so far beyond the biology that it's hard to describe how great it is.  To see plants go from seeds in the bare dirt to bean poles over five feet tall gives a feeling of accomplishment, and those whose plants are less vigorous learn an appreciation for how difficult farming is.

What happens on the first day of this project each year is interesting.  Students come down the hall and say, "Aggh, what is that smell?"  They come to me and say, "How are you standing next to this room?  It smells terrible."  The first time it happened, I didn't understand what they were talking about.  Nothing smelled bad to me.  After I finally figured out that the smell was dirt, I realized the problem.

Our kids don't know what outside smells like.

They didn't grow up rolling down a grassy hill.  They didn't make mudpies on the playground.  They didn't get buried in the sand.  Their brother didn't shove a handful of grass in their mouths.  They didn't sit on a rock in the middle of a stream and poke at the dirt with a stick.  They didn't rake leaves and then dive in them, throwing them over their heads.  Someone told them these things were too dangerous or dirty for them to do.  They are rarely truly outside.

Before you tell me how your child is outside a lot because they play soccer, ask yourself if that is truly outside.  I mean, I know it is under the sun, but it is still a very human-planned place that is usually well graded, perfectly mowed, and surrounded by a fence in order to protect them from nature.  I know a lot of kids are at the pool all summer.  Again, I say, this isn't really outside.  Perfectly constructed concrete surfaces with deck chairs surrounding chlorinated or salt water pools are hardly nature.  Every time a kid goes outside, we slather them in sunscreen and/or bug spray to protect them from outside.

It's no wonder our students think that dirt smells horrible while the adults in the building don't understand the problem.  To us (I'm speaking as a 41-year-old), outside smelled like dirt and grass and water from the hose.  To them, outside smells like bug spray, sunscreen, and chlorine (and of course, hand sanitizer if, God forbid, they actually do touch some nature).  They have no idea what outside actually smells like.

Human beings were designed to live outside.  There wasn't a house in the Garden of Eden (or for a pretty long time afterward).  Even when people lived in caves, they spent most of their days outdoors.  Now, according to the National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS), conducted by the EPA, humans spend 90% of their time inside. 

In honor of National Parks Week, I implore you to take your kids outside for real this spring or summer.  If you can make it to an actual national park, here are my best recommendations.  If you don't want to go to the places on my list, the Parks Service website is quite helpful for a government site.

If you can't get to one of these wonderfully preserved places, you can probably find a state park in your area or a local greenway.  If none of that is available, just go outside your house, choose a direction, and walk in it.  Look at trees and plants and squirrels along the way.  Watch some birds.  Dig a hole in the dirt (and don't wash your hands until you get back home).  Don't go back inside as soon as you get thirsty; drink from the garden hose (It actually tastes different).  Examine a caterpillar; blow bubbles; watch a bug; run in the sprinkler; see if you can find a lizard; catch a firefly; literally stop and smell the roses.

Just spend some time outside.

Geeking Out and Finding Your Tribe

Human beings have always lived in tribes.  Tribes have changed since the days when people who were related by either blood, geography, or both lived together for protection, but we still have them because God designed us to live in community with each other.  Now, thanks to the internet in general and social media in particular, our tribes can be spread out all around the globe, consisting of people who share our interests, hobbies, political philosophy, or religious affiliation.  While I think it is important to sometimes venture outside the tribe for the purpose of learning from others, I also believe it is good to have these groups as a way of knowing that we are not alone in our love of whatever "weird" thing we love.

Twice per year, I get to see this demonstrated on a very large scale.  My school has a Latin club, and because I am friends with the Latin teacher, I help to chaperone two trips to the North Carolina Junior Classical League.  These are events in which people who appreciate the study of ancient Rome and ancient Greece gather to enjoy each other, compete in athletic and artistic expressions of these cultures, volunteer to take tests (on history, grammar, and mythology), compete in a quiz bowl style competition called Certamen, and listen to lectures from college professors about topics related to the ancient world (everything from the Olympic games to blood sacrifices to papyrus).

While all of that is astounding enough on its own, the most interesting part of these events is a competition they called "Spirit."  Each group has created a song or chant or dance (or all three).  Often, the chants are in Latin or themed to something related to the classics.  It is very exciting, very loud, and it goes on for about ten minutes.  I have a difficult time relaying it to be people who haven't experienced it, so here is a small sampling of this weekend's spirit competition.

I know you cannot see the facial expression of the man standing against the front wall with his arms crossed, but he is grinning from ear to ear.  He is a professor of Classics at UNC Chapel Hill.  In fact, he was the person who presented the seminar on animal sacrifice.  When he got up to speak, he said, "Anyone who calls Latin a dead language wasn't in this room a few minutes ago."  He was thrilled to see young people geeking out about Latin.  He knows that it bodes well for the future of classics education.  He was looking at the future of his tribe. 

In the same way that tribes of old lived and traveled together for physical protection, the modern tribe looks to each other for social protection.  This is especially important for students.  It doesn't matter how offbeat your quirky interest is if there are a few other people that share it.  I've seen kids band together over the love of a television show or video game, speaking a language to each other that no one else would understand.  I've watched friendships develop the moment one kid realizes that someone else read and enjoyed the same book they thought no one else liked.  As the great CS Lewis said in his amazing work The Four Loves, "Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another 'What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .'"   

In the age of cyber-bullying, these online tribes provide a safer place where people who have the same interest protect each other from the belief that no one else likes the thing I like.  It helps to prevent isolation and insecurity because there are others who understand.  Whatever your thing is, I promise there is a tribe for you if you look around just a little.  If you don't believe me, try typing a random combination of interests into Google.  I just did it with the words "star trek knitting club," because it was the strangest combination I could think of.  Not only were there over 7 million returns, I found some amazing work from Star Trek knitting enthusiasts.  I'm going to leave you with their work.  Enjoy.

Thoughts on the Oklahoma Teacher Walkout

Today is day 8 of the teacher walkout in Oklahoma.  I have avoided commenting on it much because people I dearly love and respect and don't want to even accidentally offend are involved.  See, I am on record as being against walkouts.  I blogged about it a few weeks before this one began, so it would be easy for my Oklahoma teacher friends to think I don't support them.  That's why I am finally writing about it here.  My feelings are too complex for a #oklaed tweet, and this blog gives me space to express how much admire and support these educators even while not believing in walkouts.

First a few disclaimers:
1.  I lived in Tulsa, OK for seven years, four in college and three as a professional educator.
2.  I student taught at Union High School.  I also student taught, subbed, and taught my first two full years in Jenks HS and the Freshman Academy.
3.  I never visited schools in other parts of the state.
4.  It has been 17 years since I lived in Oklahoma.

It is important that I mention those things because my experience in Oklahoma education is limited to seven years in two districts almost two decades ago.  I may romanticize my memories of my first few years because time does that.  All that said, here are my thoughts.

I love the way Oklahoma divides its districts.  After moving back to NC, I have held up the Oklahoma model as an ideal to others.  Wake County, the largest district in NC is huge and spread all over the map (I mean, snow days here are weird because it can be 65 degrees in one part of the Wake County district while there are still treacherous snow conditions on the other side.  If you have drastically different weather in different parts of the same district, it's probably a sign that your district is too big).  As a result of the size of districts here and the explosion of people moving here because they saw Wake County on some kind of "best places to. . . " list, we are in a constant mode of reassignment.  As a result, no student in Wake County has the security of putting down roots and developing spirit.  After teaching in Tulsa and seeing kids who, unless their family moved, were Jenks Trojans from kindergarten through graduation, I have loved this model.  At the time I lived there, most districts had 7-8 elementary schools which fed into 3-4 middle school, which all fed into one high school.  Now, that was one big high school (about 3000 students), but the school spirit of the community was amazing. 

I have always been grateful that I started my career at Jenks.  I'm sure I have referenced Stephen Matthews on this blog before.  He was my first principal, and I couldn't have asked for a better trainer in my first few years.  He corrected my boneheaded rooking mistakes me without making me feel like a failure.  He encouraged me to try things I really didn't have time to do but didn't overwhelm me with expectations of perfection in all areas.  He was awesome, but he wasn't the only one.  Because of the district's size and layout, the superintendent, Kirby Lehmann was able to tour schools frequently.  He personally walked into my classroom four times in the two years I taught there.  He met with every new hire for a twenty-minute discussion of educational philosophy.  Just before I moved back here, I approached him at a book fair to ask him something.  When I introduced myself, he said, "I know who you are.  I know you are leaving, and I don't like it."  Let me assure you that this does not happen in Wake County.  The superintendent when I was there was named Bill McNeil.  Here's what I know about him.  1.  He was African American, which I only know because of the times I saw him on the news.  2.  He didn't like the responsibility of calling snow days.  He knew half the people would be mad at him no matter what.  That's it.  That's all I know.  With thirty thousand employees in the district, that's all I could have ever known.

Funding in Oklahoma has changed.  Eighteen years ago, I was in a well-funded district.  I never lacked for anything in the years I taught at the Jenks Freshman Academy.  If I needed a chemical or piece of equipment, we usually had it.  If we didn't, no one turned me down when I asked to order it.  My books were brand new because I came in at the beginning of a textbook cycle.  While teacher pay was something like 48th in the country, the cost of living in Tulsa was so low that I had plenty of expendable income as a young, single teacher.  Keep in mind disclaimer #3.  My experience in this one district may not have been representative of the entire state, even at the time. 

I understand that now, teachers are dealing with crumbling books, broken chairs (or just not enough of them), art supplies so scarce that teachers are soaking old markers in water to make watercolors, and that they have class sizes in the mid-thirties.  Some districts are so broke they are only holding class four days a week.  That might seem fun to you as a student if you didn't still have to learn all the same curriculum in twenty percent less time.  The photos below were posted on Twitter to show the extent of the problem (and I didn't cherry pick two, there were scores of similar shots).  I know that no legislator would want to sit in this chair every day or try to hold one of these books together in order to read them.

Oklahoma teachers haven't had a raise in a decade.  Most news stories I read mention that before the walkout, teachers in Oklahoma were given a raise but that it wasn't as big as they wanted.  Setting aside the oversimplification for a moment that pay raises and funding classrooms aren't the same thing, consider this.  Would you work the same job for ten years without so much as a cost of living increase?  In the past ten years, teaching got harder.  Teachers have had to implement Common Core, deal with testing, deal with kids on social media and parents who use the convenience of digital communication as a reason to complain way more than they would have if it weren't so easy.  They have more responsibilities, including the thought they might have to be responsible for the safety of children in an active shooter scenario.  All the while, the cost of everything from gasoline to food to housing has increased.  Oklahoma teachers have not gotten more money as costs have risen.  When I lived in Tulsa, my apartment was $300 per month (which was low even 19 years ago).  That same one bedroom apartment is now $600 per month.  If your housing cost doubled in twenty years, but your salary didn't change in ten of those years, would you be okay with getting some at the last moments before a walkout?

Oklahoma teachers (like all teachers) want what is best for their students.  I have not read one tweet, post, or blog from any teacher who wanted to walk out and looked forward to these days off.  I've seen a lot of discussion about how much they miss their students and can't wait to see them again.  Some are grading papers while sitting at the Capitol.  Others are holding class on the Capitol lawn.  Students have even come to OKC to protest alongside their teachers.  These teachers are not doing something because it is easy.  They are doing it because they honestly believe it is right.  They want to go back and say that these two weeks were worth the investment in your future.  Even if you disagree with walking out, you have to respect that.  Here are some of the people I love and respect most with their kids at the Capitol.

I don't know if these muddled thoughts clarified anything for you as a reader, but here's my conclusion:  I don't believe in walkouts, but I do believe in what they are walking for.