Reflections on the Year

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that I think most people's reaction to New Year's is stupid.  I do not believe January 1 is different from any other day just because we change the number on the year.  I do not believe that New Year's Eve has magical powers to change things.  The dropping of a ball made of crystal in Time Square doesn't make tomorrow different from today, and nothing changes if we don't make it change.  I do, however, believe very strongly in self-reflection, and while I do that frequently, this seems like as good a time as any to reflect on what I have learned from the past twelve months.

Never Say "Can't" - A year ago, we did not know school buildings would be closed in March.  If someone had suggested it, I would have said, "That's crazy.  Schools can't be shut down.  They're schools."  Well, it turns out they can be.  For nine weeks, I stood behind a table, talking to my laptop from a little-used room in my house.  When summer was drawing to a close and school districts were deciding how to reopen, I saw a lot of hand-clap-emoji-filled tweets with the word "can't" in them.  They asserted that it wasn't possible to teach kids in a classroom and at home simultaneously.  It turns out that, while it is not ideal in any way, we can.  I would imagine this didn't just apply to teaching.  I bet most news organizations, late-night talk show hosts, and athletic organizations would have said they couldn't do things the way we are regularly doing them right now.  I'll be enormously grateful when we don't have to do things in these strange ways, but it is interesting to know that we can.

Brain Health is Delicate - I have been interested in the brain's role in learning for my entire career, but I can't say I've ever thought about how important it is to keep it healthy.  That's because before now, my normal life was, in fact, without my even knowing it, perfect for its health.  I had had a daily schedule, lots of interaction with people, decent nutrition, and mentally challenging tasks.  When my interactions with people became virtual and I went without physical touch for almost three months, the neurotransmitter balance in my brain was thrown completely out of whack.  While I did everything I could to maintain its health in other ways (see this post), I could definitely feel the effects of that imbalance.  The return to school has helped, but I still notice that my brain is not at its optimum level of function.  

Schedules Equal Productivity - I have long been a planner.  I lived my life by "to do" lists and deadlines and goals.  What I didn't realize was that, without those things, I would do nothing.  Because the spring was so difficult, I thought I would give myself some time in the summer to sleep in and do whatever came my way that day.  It led to my doing absolutely nothing.  I mean it, knot-on-a-log levels of nothing.  After two days of that, I realized that if I kept it up, I was going to get to the end of the summer fat and shameful, so I made a summer schedule.  Making the bed, eating at set times of day, and knowing what you want to accomplish is the only way to getting anything meaningful done.

Unconscious Bias is Real - As a science teacher, I teach my students about the influence of bias on science.  I do not teach them that scientists have no bias;  I teach them that we all have bias and that is the job of a scientist to design experiments that mitigate their impact.  The most dangerous scientists are those who believe themselves to be unbiased because being blind to them means they won't take steps to reduce their effects.  By definition, unconscious bias is something you are unaware is part of you.  It's likely deeply ingrained from childhood experiences and, therefore, difficult for you to see in yourself.  If you want to become aware of it, you have to do something really scary.  You have to ask others.  Don't just ask around to everyone, but find someone you trust to tell you the truth rather than just agree with you.  Ask them specific questions about what they see in you.  You can't address it if you don't know about it, so dig deep as the Psalmist did when he asked God "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts!  And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!" (Psalm 139-23-24 ESV)

Know How to Disagree Well - When I was in middle and high school, there was nothing I enjoyed more than a good theological debate with my friend, Rebecca.  We had opposite views on most theological issues, but we knew each other's hearts and minds so well that we could debate for an hour without either of us thinking the other was stupid or immoral for holding to those opinions.  We respected that the other friend loved Jesus as much as we did and was at least as smart as we were (although Rebecca was objectively smarter than I was).  I love a lot of people that I disagree with, but I've never lost respect for more people than I have this year.  What's different from those debates I had with Rebecca?  Because of our mutual respect for each other, we truly listened to each other.  That's not what has happened this year.  People that I love have shown that they do not want to hear what anyone else thinks.  From willing ignorance of science to outright worship of political figures to unwillingness to address injustice, I have been disillusioned by those whose hearts I did not know before.  To disagree well, you must have trust and you must listen.  That's not what is happening right now.

I Have Excessive Love for My Co-Workers - This one I knew already.  However, it fits here because of how incredible they have been this year.  In the previous paragraph, I talked about how people showed their hearts in a negative way.  My GRACE friends are the opposite.  I have seen their hearts to be bigger than I already knew they were.  Our leaders have worked themselves to exhaustion.  People took on projects that weren't part of their job.  Without the ability to touch others, they have found ways to reach out.  I cannot imagine enduring the past few years (our 2019 was no picnic) with anyone else.  

Thanking People is Good For You - One of the ways I kept connection in the spring was by writing to people.  I spent my office hours writing notes to students until I had sent a card to all of them.  I enjoyed it, and I like supporting the postal service, so when I had gotten through my roster, I wrote to former students and alumni and many of my co-workers.  In July, I wrote to all of the students I would teach this year.  When the school year started, I was out of people to write to; but I enjoyed it too much to stop.  I decided to write to people whose work brings me joy.  From Stephen Colbert to my favorite podcast hosts to actors in my favorite movies, I have written to dozens of people for no other reason than to say thank you.  I have heard back from only a few of them, but that's not why I did it.  I want to thank people for putting their gifts into the world in a way that brings me joy, and what has been good for me is that it makes me think of everyday things for which to be grateful.  Gratitude is good for your soul in a way positivity just is not.

While I don't believe there is any power in the idea of a new year, I do believe you should take time to reflect.  Perhaps for you, this is a good week to do that.  What have you learned this year?

A Weary World Rejoices

This blog is usually about education.  As far as I can tell going into this writing, this one won't be.  I'm just meandering in my thoughts.  You are reading a blog called "On the Rabbit Trail," so you have to expect it will sometimes stray.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday, in which a musician was being interviewed about Christmas music.  He referenced "Christmas Time is Here," the song from A Charlie Brown Christmas as one of his favorites.  The interviewer said, "That's a little melancholy, isn't it?"  The musician talked about why he loved melancholy Christmas songs, and it resonated with me.  I have always loved songs like, "Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel" and "Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming" and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus."  These hymn writers seemed to understand something that modern Western culture has forgotten.  What made Christmas matter was that the world was dark and broken.  When Jesus was born, it wasn't into a holly, jolly time with a triumphant trumpet blast.  He came into a poor town, was announced to shepherd, was born to a poor couple, and spent his first nights in a stable.  He came to redeem us, and we killed him for it.  I'm not a church calendar gal, but my understanding is that the purpose of the advent season is to recognize and mark the time of waiting and longsuffering before celebrating the birth of Christ.

Some of the great songs written in war times were "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas."  They recognized in a different way that the world is not as it should be.  People pined for their loved ones and the things they missed.  They understood that they couldn't manufacture cheer while there were empty chairs at their dinner table.  

Today, I went to the grocery store.  As I entered, the music system was playing, "Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas.  As I left, it played "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." I'm not saying these songs shouldn't have been played in the store or that they shouldn't be played in your home.  It felt strange today because, on the way to the store, I had been thinking about what a large number 300000 is when it comes to deaths from a single source and how it was like having 100 September 11th events in one year and how we really need to have some kind of national expression of grief like we did after the Oklahoma City Bombing and how I felt as a child when Ronald Reagan spoke after the explosion of the Challenger and what might be an appropriate time and method of doing that for this time (perhaps on the anniversary of the first documented American death, which I believe is in early February).  All of this was running around in my mind when I was told by the music system that this was the best time of the year and that I should have a cup of cheer, greet people on the street, and kiss someone under the mistletoe.  It just felt strange.

My favorite Christmas song of all time is "Oh, Holy Night."  There are a lot of reasons for this.  I have vivid childhood memories of it being sung in my church by a man whose voice could raise you so high you had to look down to see the Star of Bethlehem.  The origin story of the song is also kind of interesting, if a little controversial and its adoption by the abolitionist movement due to the line "Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother" just make it even more compelling.  Also, it is just a beautiful song with so much meaning and well orchestrated to bring your emotions to an apex just before "fall on your knees."  There's so much to love about this song.  

This year, what has struck me more than ever is the line, "A thrill of hope.  A weary world rejoices."  Perhaps that is because the world is so markedly weary this year, I love that this line notes that the world rejoiced and yet was still weary.  Hope is needed as much now as it was over 2000 years ago.  People without faith are counting on their hope coming from a political candidate or the vaccine or a stimulus check.  As Christians, we should recognize that our hope is from the same place it always has been, that child born in Bethlehem whose life and work and death and resurrection redeems us from our sins.  

I know my thoughts are not terribly well organized here, but I think the point I am making is this.  Take some time to listen to a slow, sad Christmas song this week and remember that Christmas is important because we had a need.  We didn't need to feel good.  We needed hope.  We didn't need lights.  We needed a redeemer.  We didn't need sugar cookies.  We needed a savior.  I like all of those things and am glad we will have them, but let's take a break from them for a few minutes to recognize the brokenness of the world and the answer to that brokenness.  Then, weary as we are, we can rejoice "for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."

What I Don't Know How to Do

On Monday, my physics students participated in the culmination of our study of rotary motion.  They were assigned the task of designing and building a spinning top with the goal of spinning for the longest period of time.  They were required to defend their choices of mass, radius, and shape using physics.  Then, we have a tournament to see whose design results in the longest spin.  

This is even a project that can work in hybrid situations. You may notice that in the bottom two pictures, there is a student who is spinning his top on a table at home because he was quarantined between the time it was printed and the competition; and you will see our media specialist is holding an iPad so those at home could witness their top spinning (they had a designated spinner).  I even had one top design sent from a student in China.

While students may build this top in any way they wish; and a few used recycled Beyblade or CD/marble combinations, most of them have taken advantage of our school's 3D printer.  Our media specialist comes to my classroom and walks them through the basics of the software and one example.  Some of my students had sent a design for her to print within the day and then modified their design based on the results (truly engaging in design thinking).  

Now, to the point of this post.  My physics students have been participating in this project for four years now.  I have, as of this date, still not 3D printed anything.  I haven't yet learned how.  I'm sure I will some day, but this project takes place at a time of year when I am writing exams and meeting a yearbook deadline, so I just never have.  My kids are developing a skill that I do not currently possess.

There was a time when a high school student was limited to the knowledge and skills of their teacher and the knowledge in library books.  This is no longer the case.  My students have the ability to explore any interest they want any time of the day or night.  They can learn skills that I do not possess.  In this case, I brought in a person with knowledge of 3D printing to help them learn, but with more time, they could have learned it on youtube.  They don't have to be limited by me.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am by no means advocating for the teacher as facilitator model of education.  I have fought too long and too hard to develop my professional judgment to abdicate it to the "guide on the side" fad of education.  I want students to know that there is an expert in the room because it makes them feel safe and protected in their education (and when you teach chemistry, letting them learn whatever they want through inquiry is physically dangerous).  I also have no fear of letting them see me looking things up when I don't have an answer to their question.  I have more ability to quickly interpret the answers I find than they do and to judge the credibility of the source, but I want them to see me model that process.  

As with most things in life, this is an issue of balance.  Teachers should carefully plan their lessons based on standards in the curriculum and their own professional judgment about what matters most when time is limited.  We should constantly read in our content area to stay current and study brain research and best practices in education.  We also shouldn't be afraid to assign something to our students that we don't know how to do.  We can provide resources for them to learn from without it coming from our own brains without it undermining our expertise in other areas.  Sometimes, it will be messy and time-consuming, but don't fear the mess because students also learn from watching us clean up the mess.  

You Don't Know Yet

When I was in college, all I wanted out of life was to teach physics.  My degree plan involved a lot of biology, chemistry, and even earth science.  I didn't want to take these classes because I just wanted to teach physics.  Many professors and advisors told me that there were no jobs in which I would spend my entire day teaching physics and that I would need other qualifications to be marketable.  I was, of course, compliant, but I didn't truly believe them.  I really thought I did not need these other courses.  People who knew what they were talking about were sharing wisdom, but my 19-year-old self thought I knew better.  I was, of course, incorrect.  I didn't know what I needed to know yet.

A few years ago, a student came to me to complain about a teacher.  In the midst of the conversation, he said, "He asks questions on his tests that aren't important."  My response was, "I'm sorry, but you aren't qualified to know that."  He looked at me like I had stepped out of a UFO.  He couldn't imagine that he didn't have the perspective he needed to make that kind of judgment.  The man he was talking about had been teaching for over a decade and knew exactly what he needed to teach freshmen to prepare them for the next level of learning.  The freshman was incorrect, not because he wasn't smart, but because he didn't know what he needed to know yet.

Every day, people on social media express very strong and uninformed opinions on everything from virology to politics to nutrition.  People with actual knowledge make vain attempts to educate, but social media makes 7th-graders of us all; so those posts are met with the idea that one person's ignorance is equal to another person's knowledge.  They do not know what they need to know; and, apparently, they don't want to know.

We have all had experiences like the ones described above.  I now look back on my anatomy class as one of the most valuable classes I've ever taken.  The first job I had after college was teaching the very earth science class I had looked down on just two years earlier.  Yet, we walk around all day believing that we have a full view of things when we do not yet know what we need to know.  

Allow the experiences in which you have had clearer hindsight to give you humility - to recognize that you may need to reach out to an expert to find out the information you need - to be open to changing your mind when new information becomes available - to recognize that what seems useless now may turn out to valuable later.  

Teachers, share experiences with your students so they can see that limited perspective leads to poor judgment.  Teach them to seek expert advice, and show them how to judge the difference between credible information and the first result on Google.  Teach them to listen to those whose experience is different from their own.  Help them recognize that they don't know what they don't know and that doesn't mean they are stupid.  Rather it means they are uninformed and can become informed with a little humility.

Lessons in Ethical Leadership

 I just finished reading a book about ethics and leadership.  I am intentionally not naming the book or the author here because of our tendency to accept or reject a person's words, not based on their merit, but on whose side we are one.  (That said, it wouldn't be hard for you to Google quotes if you are really motivated to find out).  It is a well-told story of how a person's character is built from decisions made at a very young age and how that character then informs leadership decisions in adulthood.  There were a few things that stood out to me, and I wanted to mention them here and connect them to our role as teachers.

Ethical leaders are both tough and kind.  It is unethical to allow people to get away with whatever they want rather than hold them accountable for their actions.  It doesn't make you the nice boss or the easy teacher.  It means you have abdicated your moral authority, which is not okay.  What I have learned in 22 years of teaching, though, is that toughness doesn't exclude kindness.  In my younger days, I pulled kids into the hall and read them the riot act.  That hasn't happened in a long time.  In recent years, if I have had to pull a kid into the hall, I have started with, "What's going on?"  The conversation that follows can be kind and focused on problem-solving while still holding students to appropriate boundaries.  Often, in fact, that conversation ends with, "You know I have to write this up now, right?  You know I still love you, right?"  

Humility and confidence are not antonyms.   I knew that a person could be both confident and humble at the same time, but I don't think I had ever considered before reading this book that showing humility actually requires confidence.  Showing humility means putting yourself in a bit of a vulnerable position, and you cannot do that if you are insecure.  A good leader knows their strengths, but they know their weakness better and, as a result, they take steps to hear from people who are strong in those areas.  

Honesty matters more than loyalty.  The way we understand loyalty is deeply flawed.  We think a loyal friend will always tell us what we want to hear and take our side, no matter what.  That's wrong.  A loyal friend is one who tells you the truth.  They tell you what you need to hear.  If you are wrong, they love you enough to tell you, and they don't worry that you will stop being friends with them for doing so.  "Ethical leaders speak the truth and know that making wise decisions requires people to tell them the truth."

Ethical leaders care deeply about those they lead.  Because they care, a leader will be honest and share his heart with those he leads.  He will treat them with respect.  He will often sacrifice his time to listen, to care, and to help solve problems.  "They create an environment of high standards and deep consideration - love is not too strong a word - that builds lasting bonds and makes extraordinary achievement possible."  This cannot be done sitting behind a desk.  It is done by talking and listening to your people.

It is a weak leader who never laughs.  Laughter, real laughter, the kind that comes from enjoyment requires humility and vulnerability.  It requires listening to another person.  It requires enough of a bond to understand the intent of the speaker.  It requires acknowledgment of the other person's wit or cleverness.  You cannot laugh and be defensive at the same time.  Many leaders are serious, and they should obviously take their job seriously, but a joyless leader is hard to follow.  If a leader never laughs, you should be suspect of that person's character.

Small sins, left unaddressed, become your character.   The author of this book is very tall, and he got tired of answering the question about whether he played basketball (which I can relate to) and explaining why he did not.  So, he just starting saying, "Yes" because it was easier.  At some point, he realized that he was easily telling this lie and that the longer he did, the easier telling lies would become.  He wrote to the people he had told this lie (which most of us would consider a benign lie) and apologized to them.  He knew he did not want to continue moving the line of which lines were acceptable.  He also relates a story of a time when he acted as a bully in college and how haunted he was by that experience, even as a middle-aged man.  I think we have a tendency not to see individual actions as important, but these decisions are formative.  They make us who we are.  Your character is like a brick wall, and each action is like a brick in that wall.  One wonky brick might not impact the overall strength of a wall, but not addressing whatever caused that on the next level and the one after that will lead to a poorly built structure.  

As I read this book I was struck by how blessed I have been in those I have served.  With a small number of exceptions, I have worked for excellent leaders, who led well.  From the boss I had when I was an arena janitor to my current school administration, I have had the good fortune to be led well by men and women of character, who cared deeply about those under them and led with honesty, laughter, confidence, and humility.  For that, I am grateful.

Thanksgiving - The Small Things Matter

Most years, my Thanksgiving week post is about a teacher I had who was formative in my life as an educator.  One of the things I've noticed this year is that I have been more focused on gratitude for the smaller things.  Noticing what we can be thankful for every day has taken precedence during this time.  The thing I am thankful for in this post is this set of supply cabinets.

At least a few times a year, I open this cabinet and look at the blessings I have.  

If you are not a teacher, you may not know what a rare thing it is to have a fully stocked supply cabinet in your teacher work room.  If you are a public school teacher, you are likely jealous of what you see in this picture.  When I need post-it notes, I come to grab a pack.  When I need whiteboard markers, I come grab a red and a black one out of these bins.  (When I need a whiteboard eraser, I order some from Amazon because I am really picky about my erasers and don't want to ask the school to order special ones for me.)  Staples, tape, paperclips.  Here they are.  When I worked in public school, I counted the number of sheets of paper I used every month, but here I have this amazing cabinet.

If you want to be further jealous of what I have at GRACE, note what you see in this photo.

If, by chance, there is something we do not have in the magical supply cabinet (usually less consumable things like staplers), we can write it on this whiteboard, and our office will order it for us.  

One of my favorite silly memories comes from this board.  I don't know if it will translate in writing, but here goes.  Someone had written "small binder clips" on the board.  At that time we had a Jim Halpert-esque faculty member.  He wrote, "even smaller binder clips."  Wanting to keep up with him, I wrote, "even smaller binder clips than that."  A week later, the cabinet was full of three different sizes of tiny binder clips, and I would imagine we haven't had to buy any more since then.

As you look around this year and think of those things for which you are thankful, go past the obvious and think of the small things in your daily life, those things that just make life easier.  Be thankful for those as I am this cabinet. 

Classroom Mission Statement

If you were an education major, you wrote a philosophy of education.  It was likely a very long examination of your beliefs about the purpose of education; but if your was like mine, it was likely not very practical.  I found mine a few years ago and laughed a lot about how idealistic I was.  I don't disagree now with anything I said in it.  I am just aware of the reality of dealing with students now than I was in college.

Your school has a mission statement, and you should be on board with it, but how you execute your school's mission will look different in your classroom than it does in the room next door.  It will look different in my 7th-grade science class than it does in a senior calculus class.  Even with teachers who teach the same grade and subject, it will look different because teachers are individuals with different personalities and philosophies.  After reading Dave Stuart, Jr.'s book These Six Things, in which he advocates having a "Mt. Everest statement," I decided to write a classroom mission statement for myself.  I've had mine on the wall for a few years now, and I thought that perhaps telling you about mine would help you think about yours.

I began with the mission statement of my school.  It says, "GRACE Christian School is a loving community that academically and spiritually equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ."  Since there are three verbs there, I started with them.

Equip - Make you the informed thinker you need to be to make good decisions.  

We make decisions all day every day.  Some of them require little thought. (Do I prefer to use a purple pen?  Would I like chicken or tacos for lunch?)  Some require a lot of thought.  (How do I plan to cover the remaining material by the end of this semester?  Who do I vote for?  Which insurance plan do I choose?)  Some decisions require the input of an expert who is more informed in their thinking than you are.  (Should I social distance?  If I decide to become vegan, what are the issues I need to think about?)  Being educated does not mean you know everything, but it means you have been taught to think and who to listen to.

I was reminded of the importance of this yesterday.  I was scrolling through Twitter and found an argument between an American man and an Australian man about mask-wearing.  The American man said, "I've done my own research and . . ."  Now, I'm wise enough not to have jumped into this argument, but I what I wanted to say was, "Where did you get your epidemiology degree?"  It means nothing to "do your own research" if you have little to no knowledge of the thing you are researching.  That's why people get medical degrees rather than reading WebMD.  You can look at a graph and attempt to draw conclusions, but a person with knowledge can interpret it more accurately.  Statisticians can show you data and give you three different interpretations depending on how the data was collected and which tools you use to interpret it.  The sheer volume of information available to us has led some to believe that education is irrelevant.  I think it makes it more critical than ever because Google doesn't have wisdom or judgment.

Challenge - Ask you to perform better than you think you can at things you don’t think you are good at.

Students are capable of more than they think.  By middle school, many have decided that they are bad at math or that they don't like art or that they are "visual" learners.  To that, I say, "We'll see."  We are demonstrably terrible at judging our own abilities.  There's a move among educators right now to base all their decisions on feedback from students.  I want my students to have a voice, but the idea that I should do everything they want is silly because they don't know what they need.  As a student, I didn't know I loved physics; and I certainly didn't know what the best way for my teacher to teach it to me was.  Mr. Barbara knew physics, and what he did made me love and made me want to work hard at it.  The value of the teacher is undermined if we lead by survey.  In almost every survey of study strategies, students rate the highest those things that research shows to be the least effective (re-reading and highlighting).  One of the top strategies, retrieval practice, is low on those student lists.  They don't want to do it because it takes more effort, but I don't expect a middle schooler to know current brain research, which is why the professional development of the teacher matters so much.

My 8th-graders are shocked at what they can accomplish.  I'm not.  They need to be pushed and given strategies, but if they employ those strategies, they can improve at anything.  Growth mindset doesn't have to mean that we believe everyone is equally skilled naturally.  Talent does exist, so you are going to have some students who are naturally better at some things.  Growth mindset means believing that I can be better at anything than I currently am if I strengthen my brain the same way I would strengthen a muscle.

Inspire - Ask you to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to see what you can do with your education.

I believe in assessment and grades, but education isn't, at its core, about the grade.  I love my curriculum, but I care more that students build skills than that they remember every detail of my curriculum.  I want them to learn perseverance, following directions, communication, teamwork, individual responsibility, reading comprehension, social awareness, kindness to the person sitting next to them, and problem-solving.  

I have often written about conversations I had with my own teachers that still influence me today.  I am conscious of many of those moments, and I am certain that there are moments of which I am unaware that influence me today as well.  I know that each class I took changed me in some way, which is why I bristle at those who say nonsense like "I never use Algebra in life."  Setting aside that you do, what else did you learn in that class besides the math?  What you learned in that class does impact you today, whether you are aware of it or not.  I want my students to think about what education is building in them and how they will use it to "impact their world for Christ."

Teachers Just Keep Going

This has been a tough week.  For everyone.  

Voters on both sides have been refreshing the electoral map online over and over.  Vote counters have been doing their job round the clock with more scrutiny than ever before.  Reporters have spoken hundreds of thousands of words every night for four nights, knowing that if they misspeak even one of them, they will be raked over the coals by half of the public.  Stephen Colbert broke down for a few seconds during his monologue Thursday night because the President's assertions of fraud, which predictable, were unexpectedly heartbreaking. No matter which side you are on, this is exhausting.

You know what I did this week?  I taught 8th-grade students about the evidence for chemical reactions and how to interpret their equations.   I reviewed for and gave a physics test to juniors and seniors.  On Friday, my physics students gathered outside while my teacher friend and I threw egg drop projects from a 26-foot lift.  I reminded my yearbook staffers of the deadline we have coming and guided them through the things that needed to be done.  I took photos of elementary school students and electives.  I graded papers and helped students with homework questions and had exactly the week I would have had if it had not been election week.

This isn't the first difficult week I or any other teacher has had.  I have taught through a shooting threat.  I was teaching on 9/11.  I have taught through heartbreak.  I have taught through the illnesses and deaths of colleagues and students.  And, oh yeah, I have taught through a global pandemic.  Teachers keep going through hard weeks because the work must be done.  Education trainer Todd Whitaker says, "The best part of teaching is that it matters. The hardest part of teaching is that it matters everyday."  

Of course, teaching is not the only profession in which people must keep going no matter what.  Doctors and nurses have had a long year.  Police officers can't decide not to respond to a call when they've had a tough week.  The one thing that is different about teachers is that EVERY thing we do EVERY day is being observed by young eyes.  They look to us when there are tough weeks to see how we are dealing with it.  When they see us keep going, I hope that they become adults who persevere.  

Now, for my own sanity, I'm going to take a one week social media break.  I'll see you next Sunday.  

Communication is EVERYTHING

Everything my school issues, from coffee cups to tote bags and even our email signatures, has the tagline "Equipping Students For Life."  This is because we recognize that education is about more than academic material.  In some ways, the academic content I teach is a vehicle for the skills a student will one day need, including organization skills, teamwork, perseverance, stress management, and scheduling.  For me, the top life skill I could impart to my students is communication.  The rest of the list matters, but communication is everything because, without it, we do not know about what is happening with the rest of the list.

Sometimes, work is turned in late.  I get it.  Life happens.  Our policy involves some grace for that.  Here's the thing.  You can save your teacher a lot of stress and yourself a lot of emails.  All you have to do is communicate to your teacher that your work will be late with a reason why.  A quick email to your teacher that says, "I know the project is due on Friday.  I have been sick for the past three days, so I couldn't complete it.  I will work on it over the weekend and get it to you on Monday." communicates that you are aware that you aren't meeting a deadline, gives a reason, and offers a plan.  I'm not saying this will result in a teacher delightfully offering you full credit, but it will earn you far more respect from the teacher than waiting for the teacher to email you the day after the deadline, not responding to that email, and then offering your reason only after the teacher has put in the zero for work not turned in.   

Speaking of teachers sending emails, we don't do it because we love it.  We do it because we are attempting to communicate with and elicit communication from you.  For the love of everything good, reply!  You don't have to reply to a mass email that was simply meant to inform.  I don't need a hundred responses with the word "thanks."  But, if the teacher has asked you a question, it is incredibly rude to not reply.  Imagine having a conversation with a teacher in real life in which they ask you a question.  Would you turn around and face away from the teacher?  Of course not, so don't do it digitally.  The teacher asked the question because they needed the answer, and when you don't reply, they still need the answer.  

I know that it is sometimes difficult to deal with a problem, and that makes communication about that thing frightening.  But nothing good ever comes from lying low and hoping it will go away if you ignore it.

Parents, as you partner with your child's school in preparing your children for adult life, let me make this humble request, teach your children to communicate.  It will help them in school, in work, in their relationships, and in life more than any other skill.

What We CAN Do

 My school has been engaged in its annual fundraising campaign for the last week and a half.  Because we could not have some of our normal in-person events, we have had to ramp up social media efforts.  As a result, we have had a number of videos that describe our school.  The final one focused on our mission statement's opening line.  GRACE Christian School is a loving community.  One of our elementary school teachers describes her experience as a prospective parent coming into GRACE for the first time and, of course, our return to school.  

In the video, she reflects on what her concerns had been on returning to school.  She said, "I was so concerned about wearing masks and plexiglass.  My daughter doesn't talk about that when she gets home.  She talks about the things she did with her teacher.  She talks about Egyptian Day and being able to play soccer on the playground.  Her world is not centered around what she CAN'T do.  Her world is centered around what she CAN do."

We've spent a lot of time and energy in the last eight months talking about what we can't do.  What if our focus shifted?  What if, like this first-grade student, our world was centered on the good things we did during the day?  There are things I didn't know I was capable of before March of last year, so here are a few of the things I've learned that I CAN do during 2020.

1.  I CAN deliver instruction from home and from classroom to kids at home.  Prior to March 2020, I had used Google Hangout for a few meetings with our technology coach when she was living in a different state.  Each time I used it, I had to have someone explain how to set up the call.  During the final quarter of last year, I taught every class from it.  Now, I log in six times every day on both a laptop and an iPad, mute and unmute, share my screen, take the iPad outside, or into the lab, for demonstrations.  I'm not saying it is the same as teaching face to face because it is not, but I CAN still teach.

2.  I CAN teach with a mask on.  There was a lot of concern about masked teaching, especially with some of my students learning from home.  As it turns out, it's not the issue I thought it would be.  I'm already fairly loud, but I have learned to speak even louder (I'm a little hoarse at the end of each week) and with better diction.  In the 10 weeks we have been back at school and masked, I have only had students say, "I didn't understand what you said.  Can you repeat it?" two times.  Don't get me wrong, I am happily anticipating the day when I can teach with my whole face again, it is possible to teach with it covered.

3.  I CAN have some hands-on learning.  I'll admit that this is more difficult with kids at home, but it can be done with some pre-planning.  Our AP Chemistry teacher made kits of supplies and sent them to the kids who learn from home.  She obviously cannot safely send every chemical, but for the ones that she could, she did.  I send a weekly email to my students with a rundown of the coming week and, in it, inform them of any supplies they could use if they have them at home.  I've always taught most of my classes with everyday materials (salt, aluminum foil, 9-V batteries, pennies, balloons) because I've always wanted them to see science as part of their lives, not just things people with fancy equipment do.  This has been helpful because a lot of what I use in class are things that students have in their homes.  If they don't, it isn't a problem because they can be part of a group from the iPad and then use that group's data, but some of them are still getting hands-on experiences.  During last week's conferences, the mom of one of my physics students said, "I saw her going outside with an egg and asked her what she was doing.  She said, 'Physics is doing an egg toss.  I'm going outside and tossing it to myself.'"  Is it ideal?  No.  Is it still possible to have some experimental learning?  Yes.

4.  I CAN laugh with my students.  My kids are funny.  Sometimes, they are even funny on purpose.  They make me laugh every day, in spite of the stress of living during a pandemic.  I have noticed that it is harder to make them laugh because it turns out that a lot of my classroom humor comes from facial expressions, but that just makes me work harder to earn the laugh.  We CAN still enjoy each other.

5.  I CAN model hope, growth, and perseverance.  I know that at least half of what I have learned in my life was not intentionally laid out in a lesson plan.  It was from the way the adults around me lived their lives.  I saw and heard adults talk about the economy, politics, job woes and joys, religious practices, community service, musical tastes, reading for pleasure, etc. from my parents and grandparents, from my friends' parents, from the adults in my church, and from teachers.  My students have seen their teachers keep teaching rather than curl up in a corner.  They have seen us cry, but they have seen us dry out tears and keep going.  They have seen us embrace our mistakes and learn from them.  They have heard us talk about the future.  

Tomorrow, I can teach in person and online and plan for the following week and grade tests and perform labs and attend virtual meetings and eat lunch with colleagues and work on the yearbook and laugh with friends in the hallway and . . . and . . . and.

Let's center our thoughts on what we CAN do, not what we CAN'T do.

It Gets Better (Because That's How The Brain Works)

 Last week, I had a strange conversation on Twitter.  A teacher had said that she was worried about starting back to school soon because they would be in a hybrid situation where half the kids would be at school and half at home.  While the numbers were different, her situation sounded similar to mine, so I said, "I've been doing this for 8 weeks.  It's really hard at first, but you find your rhythm, and it gets much easier as you go."  Anywhere but Twitter, this would be considered an encouraging statement from an empathetic person, but Twitter's weird, so I got replies telling me that they were sick of false positivity and tired of being expected to keep a smile while pulling rabbits out of hats.  One said I didn't understand how hard it was to be an elementary school teacher.  I held back from saying, "Sure, physics is super easy to teach online" and instead replied that each context had its own challenges, but that it would get easier with practice.  This led to the most disturbing reply.

"Respectfully disagree.  This will not get easier."

I don't know where this conversation is now because I have a personal rule to mute online conversations after having replied twice.  (Trust me when I tell that is a rule that will keep you sane.  You don't owe your time to strangers, and they are going to make massive assumptions about you when they don't know anything about you.)

First, let's address the idea of false positivity.  I've never been accused of being excessively positive at all.  I'm not a glass half empty person exactly, but I am for sure not a glass half full person.  In fact, I've often used science to say the glass is completely full because air is also matter or used calculus limits to say that it is half empty if you are drinking out of it but half full if you are putting water in it.  This person who has never met me not only thinks I am too positive, but that an obvious statement like, "this will get easier as you do it" is false positivity.

My real issue in this conversation, however, is the assertion that this will not get easier.  This person is an educator who doesn't seem to understand learning.  All new things are difficult and get easier with practice.  He should have seen this every day in his work.  He should be teaching this to his students when they are having difficulty with what they are learning.  I do not understand how anyone spends their life in a classroom could ever say, "this will not get easier."

In case you don't want to go back and read all of my Learning and the Brain posts from last November, here's a quick tutorial.

1.  You walk around the world in mental balance until you encounter a new skill.  
2.  You experience mental disequilibrium (we call it confusion) as the new skill isn't yet incoporated into your long term memory.
3.  As you start practicing the new skill, it occupies a lot of space in your working memory, requiring a lot of energy and your full attention.
4.  You continue practicing, see how to chunk parts of the skill, after which it takes up less space in your working memory.
5.  After enough practice, the skill is transferred to long term memory.  From then on, you know how to do it, and it takes less energy to do it than it did in the beginning.  You return to mental equilibrium with the new skill on board.  This means you have learned. 

When we returned to school in August, it did feel nearly impossible.  Every day was exhausting, and I slept hard every night.  Remembering how to share my screen with the kids at home in a way that the kids in front of me could also see required multiple steps in a specific sequence.  Now, I can do it in a second, but during the first days of school, I had to say the steps out loud each time I did them.  Remembering to end class a minute early to give kids a chance to wipe down their desks with wipes but not so early that they would congregate by the door was difficult, especially because for some reason, despite its being set by satellite, my computer clock is three minutes slow, but I bought a new watch and set it to the school bell, so it's easier now.  In the beginning, I was emailing each of my at-home students daily to see if they had questions, but I soon learned that they were better at communicating with me than I thought (better than those in the room, actually) and that this was not needed.  I now send them a week at a glance page at the beginning of the week to let them know if there are any supplies they will need besides regular school supplies.  That's easier for me and for them.  Lunch duty is easier than it was because my partner and I have our routine figured out.  Students are more familiar with routines, so I don't have to remind them quite as much.  This Friday was the end of first quarter, and it is much less draining than it was nine weeks ago.  

I left out one part of this teacher's reply.  He ended with, "Teachers and students deserve better."  To that, I say, "Well, duh."  Sadly, we are in the middle of a pandemic and not able to live in the ideal world this man wants.  So now, I'm going to do the Twitter thing and assume something about him even though I know nothing about him.  He's a man who believes there is only perfect or garbage with nothing in between.  That's not the world with or without a pandemic.  We teach our students in an imperfect world and prepare them for one as well, but there are things we can do to make it just a little better.  Sometimes, the breakdown of garbage is just the fertilizer a flower needs to grow.

This isn't negativity.  It's isn't positivity (genuine or false).  It's real, and it's our calling. 

Breakdowns and Fixes

 Every week, I try to think of something to write about that isn't about current events.  I'm tired of writing about the virus and am attempting to avoid political meddling.  However, if we are going to address education right now, it's unavoidable that I frequently find myself writing about teaching during the pandemic.  This particular topic has shown up in my social media timelines about five times this week, so here I am.

The tweets look like this:
"None of us are admitting it, but teachers are breaking down."  
"I wonder how many teachers are close to breaking down or have broken down privately."
"Teachers are reaching their breaking point."
"Educators are going to break down this year.  It's inevitable."  

For the moment, I'll set aside how unprofessional I think it is to take these statements to Twitter in the name of solidarity and openness.  I'll address what seems to be the idea - that breakdowns are bad.  Breakdowns are a God-given mechanism for releasing pent up energy.  Done correctly, they are good and even important.  There also seems to be an implication that breakdowns are unrecoverable.  That's just silly.  When my car breaks down, I don't like it; but I go about doing what it takes to repair it.  I don't just abandon the car on the side of the road.  I'm not a medical professional, but I believe, after 22 years of teaching and a lot of reading about the brain, I have a little insight that could prove useful.  This isn't scripture, so you can disagree, but take these thoughts for whatever benefit you think they have.

Engage in Healthy Brain Behaviors

One of the primary reasons for these breakdowns is that we have brain fog.  We are doing more than we have done before, but our brains do not have the capacity they had a year ago.  The isolation of lockdowns screwed up our brain chemistry, and it is going to take time to rebuild, but you can help your brain if you give it as much of what it needs as possible.

People used the lockdowns to justify forming every bad habit they have ever wanted to have.  From poor diet to day drinking, people not only indulged themselves, but they also went online to joke about it and get affirmation from others.  No one was accountable - because pandemic, right?  

You can't change the past, but you can get back to engaging your brain in proper ways.  Eat foods that are good for your brain as well as your body.  Reduce your alcohol consumption or stop drinking altogether.  Hydrate.  Take a walk outside (Vitamin D is super important, especially with winter on its way).  Stop ranting in all caps on Twitter, and stop reading the rants of others.  These things only feel good for a moment.  They are bad for your brain in the long run.  You are an adult.  You can make decisions that are good for you rather than those that feel good.  Isn't that what you have been teaching your students for years?

Limit Your Commitments

Teachers are notorious for biting off more than we can chew.  In addition to teaching, a lot of educators volunteer at their churches or youth organizations.  They typically tutor.  There are just so many things they want to do.  This has always been taxing on the brain's energy, but this year, you have used your brain energy by the end of the instructional day.  Teaching online requires twice the energy to keep your kids engaged.  Teaching in a hybrid situation means keeping up with a lot of technology at once while maintaining normal classroom management.  I can't even imagine how those of you who go home at the end of the day to your own children do it.  Your brain simply does not have the energy for extracurricular things.

I just had to say to someone I almost never say no to (and to something I would really like to have done).  When I wrote her back, I told her that I was working at school every Saturday to get ready for the next week, so I feared I would be unavailable more often than I was available.  I didn't want to be constantly flaking out on her.  This isn't self-care.  It's just more responsible to allow the person to find someone now than it would be to have her constantly looking for someone to take my place when I couldn't engage.  If I had said yes, I would have felt guilty every time I had to back out, which would lead to far more breaking down.

Take Time for Tears and for Gratitude

Negativity and positivity are equally stupid approaches to life.  They both ignore half of life.  The human brain is capable of acknowledging both bad and good at the same time.  We can see that a glass is equally half empty and half full.  

If you need to cry, go ahead and cry.  Sit in your car or go to your bedroom.  Bury your face in a pillow and cry.  It's a good thing.  I read once that there have been chemicals identified in tears that are stress symptom inducing, so when you release tears, you are literally "crying it out."  It's also good for your blood pressure and heart rate to have a good cry.

After you have cried, take some time to think about your blessings.  It could be as small as the fact that you have a car to cry in.  Some people don't.  It could be a pet that looks at you with love.  I couldn't be more grateful for my school administration, but I see on Twitter that many of you are not.  Perhaps, you can be grateful for a supportive co-worker or family of a student.  When the Bible tells us to be thankful in all things, it didn't mean unless there was a pandemic that made teaching school difficult.  

Recover After a Breakdown

Let's all acknowledge something.  We've broken down before.  Breakdowns may have increased in frequency this year, but they are not new.  I fell apart in the teachers' lounge a few years ago because one senior had not yet turned in their yearbook photos, and I was pushing a deadline.  I sobbed in my hands for two minutes.  I got up, hugged a co-worker, sent an email to the student and taught my classes for the day.  Breakdowns are not permanent.  You've earned it, so go have it.  Then, pull yourself together and carry on with your day.

Think about what our kids are learning right now.  We have debated how to teach them grit and resiliency for years.  Here we are with the most unwelcome opportunity to do so.  One of the things I am most proud of from the spring (the last two springs, actually because early 2019 was a series of gut punches for GRACE) is how our teachers showed kids what coping looks like.  They saw us cry and pull ourselves back together and continue.  They saw us grieve, but they did not see us panic.  They saw us make mistakes, and they saw us fix them.  In some ways, I ended the school year in a broken state, but I also don't think we've ever been better teachers.

I'm not advocating having you breakdown in front of them if you can do it privately.  I am advocating for showing them adult life skills.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Have your breakdown, and carry on."

Three Dimensional Teachers

A few years ago, my friend Ben came to my room to ask a question about prime numbers.  We talked for a moment, and then the bell rang for my class to start.  The student nearest to me asked what had just happened.  I said, "Every year, he gets fascinated by one math thing.  Last year was Mobius strips; this year is prime numbers."  The student replied, "But he teaches Latin."  Since I have a good relationship with this student, I replied sarcastically, "Yeah, when we start teaching, they make us pick one thing.  We're not allowed to like anything else."  The student realized how silly that was and, I hope, came to view his teachers as actual human beings.

I am interested in . . . almost everything.  Seriously, I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of something I don't find at least a little interesting.  I don't like sports, but I appreciate their physics.  There are genres of books I don't read, but that doesn't mean I don't find my students' interest in them worth talking about.  I'm sure if I knew anything about it, I could find something in the Punic Wars to be fascinated by.  There's a way to find almost everything interesting.  I want my students to know that.  I want them to understand that choosing a career does not mean being that thing.  To that end, I try to communicate with them about many things.

My classroom is decorated with a variety of things.  Of course, much of it is science, but not all of it science that I teach.  One section of a wall is covered with materials about blood donation.  One day, a student said, "When do we learn about blood in this class."  I said, "We don't.  You'll learn about it in Biology next year."  He asked why I had so much stuff about blood on the wall, and I told him about blood donation and why it was important to me.  I have an entire wall of National Parks, not because I will ever teach earth science, but because I love National Parks.  I have bobbleheads, not only of Newton, Einstein, and Fauci but also of Michael and Dwight, Sheldon and Lenoard, and various other pop culture characters.  I have artwork of former students as well as some professional artists that I admire.  I want my room to tell my students that it is okay to love more than one thing.  Fortunately, my school has a high percentage of students who read for pleasure.  I love that and want to encourage it in all of them.  When one of them is reading something I loved, I make sure to comment on it.  

Why does it matter that students view their teachers as three dimensional people with a variety of interests?  For one thing, it would be difficult to form relationships with all students if the only thing I was capable of talking about was physics.  It shows them that being excited about learning, all learning, is an enjoyable part of life.  It shows them that they can be people with a variety of interests as well.  Part of education is becoming a fuller person, so they shouldn't see the educated people in their lives as less full.  

John and Hank Green of Crash Course are good examples of passionate learners in many areas.  Hank is known more for science and John for history, but if you follow them at all, you know they are also just generally nerds for knowledge.  In one of their Vlogbrothers videos, John describes how much he loved sitting in the theater during the lead up to one of the Harry Potter movies and watching excited people enter the theater.  He said, "Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can't-control-yourself-love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they are saying is, 'You like stuff', which is just not a good insult at all, like 'You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness'."  

Let's teach our students to be nerds, not because we think academia is the only thing there is, but because we want them to be enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.

Humans - Capable of More Than We Think

 My 8th-grade students have academic blogs.  This week, I asked them to look at the inventions of the time period since 1899 and explain which one they thought was the most important.  Of course, most students wrote about the internet and the smartphone.  A few got clever with things like chicken nuggets and chocolate chip cookies.  Several wrote about air conditioning.  One of the boys who wrote about air conditioning made this statement.   "If we didn't have air conditioning then I don't think that mankind would still be alive."  Now, he's in the 8th grade, and they are prone to exaggeration, but it got me wondering if he realized how recently the invention of the air conditioner is in relation to human history.  It was invented less than 120 years ago and wasn't used in the majority of homes until the late 1960s.  The human race had survived since Adam and Eve without it until about 55 years ago.  

Don't misunderstand, I am also very grateful for Willis Carrier's invention, but this middle school blog post got me thinking about how limited our perspective is on what we can endure.  It also reminded me of what I've been seeing on social media in the past six months from people who don't believe themselves capable of doing the things we need to do to get through the current pandemic.  I've seen so many words like "unsustainable" and "incapable" and "cannot possibly endure until May."  Repeating these words to ourselves and reading them over and over has a deleterious impact on our brains because they fail to put human capabilities in perspective.  Let's do that.

My grandparents grew up in the Great Depression and fought World War II.  Depending on the criteria used, the Great Depression is calculated to have lasted between nine and eleven years.  The average deployment length for an army soldier in World War II was around ten months, but many served more than one deployment.  They endured 24 hours per day without a break (and, I might remind you, no air conditioning) away from family under the constant threat of death.  We are being asked to work longer hours with more duties, but we go home at the end of the day in our cars to climate-controlled homes.  

Their grandparents, by the way, fought World War I and endured the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed from 2.7% to 5% of the world's population.  Those fighting in the trenches experienced or observed multiple diseases, from cholera to typhoid.  They slept in dirt, sometimes surrounded by their fallen brothers.  When supply lines were blocked, they survived on food rations that we wouldn't think enough food to survive, much less do an important job with. We were asked to sit on our sofas, watching Netflix and eating food that was delivered to our house two hours after we ordered it.

Perhaps it isn't fair that I've focused on the conditions of war since they aren't representative of everyday life.  Let's continue this historical tour of human endurance.  Those born in the 1850s came of age during the time of the Civil War, but thanks to The Homestead Act, many took on the challenge of settling the West.  Traveling in covered wagons, they endured bitterly cold winters and risk of diseases in frequency we cannot imagine today (in spite of kids rediscovering the video game Oregon Trail).  When they finally arrived in the West, they had to clear land for farming and ranching, build their homes, and sew clothes.  Should I remind you that they didn't have air conditioning or running water for that matter?  Their version of self-care was . . . nope, I can't finish that sentence because self-care was a concept not yet invented.

We could keep going.  There's the generation that literally formed America by writing a constitution after fighting a revolution.  There are those who spent months on boats, traveling the oceans.  Before that, there were those who got on boats, not knowing their destination or even if there was a destination because they believed it was possible they would fall off the edge of the earth.  We can go all the way back to those who literally lived in caves.  People who did not know where their next meal was coming from established civilization for the generations that followed, and we have staged protests over the closing of restaurants while eating food that was put in our car at the curb.  

I'm not saying this year hasn't been difficult.  Of course, it has been.  But it is not unsustainable.  Our responsibilities have increased, but they are not beyond human capability.  People have endured conditions far worse than these for far longer than a school year.  Repeat after me.  WE CAN DO THIS!

Variety is the Spice of Education

When I was a student teacher, I was placed in two different schools during the semester.  Because both schools I was placed in were largely upper-middle-class, majority-white student schools, there were some in my university program who were concerned that I wouldn't get varied experience.  They needed not worry.  My experiences could not have been more different.  I know the differences they had in mind were cultural and socio-economic, and in those ways, the schools were similar; but the classrooms bore no resemblance.  

The first teacher I was placed with taught juniors and seniors physics, astronomy, and AP Chemistry.  He ruled that class like a judge rules a courtroom, and the students did exactly what he wanted them to do exactly when he wanted them to do it.  He could leave the room, and nothing would be different when he returned because they wouldn't dream of stepping out of line.  My second placement was in a basic skills level freshman science class with a very pregnant (our last days were the same day), very relational, very casual teacher who would come in some mornings and say, "Okay, what are we doing today?"  She would not ever leave the room because she might return to a pile of rubble if she did.

In the defense of my experience, a panel member asked me, "If he is on one end of the spectrum, and she is on the other, where do you see yourself?"  It was a good question.  I knew I absolutely could not have been either one of them.  She was so casual that her room was chaos most of the time, but her kids loved her and wanted to be with her.  I'm not sure how much science they learned, but they knew she loved them.  That level of daily chaos and uncertainty would make me insecure.  His room ran like a Swiss watch, but when the bell rang, the kids left like they were being fired from a cannon.  They learned a lot of science, but I doubt he knew their names outside the classroom.   

During my first couple of years, I found my own style.  I was fortunate enough to have a principal who recognized that talent came in different forms.  In case you are wondering, I am extremely planned but open to changing on the fly if the plan isn't working.  I enjoy bantering with students, but I don't let them just all shout out whatever comes to mind.  You won't walk by my room and find me playing hacky sack with a bunch of kids, but I have been known on occasion to lip-sync the entire run of Toto's "Africa" and cannot control myself when it comes to dancing along with Kahoot music.  I have planned exactly what I want to accomplish during the day, but some classes require a lot of focused examples while others take me down a few rabbit trails along the way.  I have expressed deadlines, but I also know that students have different challenges outside of class and that misbehavior is often an expression of unmet needs, so when a student communicates with me, I am open to extending said deadline for individual students.  I do not allow eating in my class (because bugs), but fidgets are fine unless they become distracting.  I find as many reasons to say yes as I can, so that when I have to say no, it is actually meaningful.

The one year I taught in the North Carolina Public School System, I was miserable (like gain 30 pounds in a school year miserable).  There were a lot of reasons for that, but one of the primary ones was that my supervising administrator seemed to feel that there was only one way to be a great teacher (which was, conveniently, the way she taught when she was in the classroom with no acknowledgment that she taught a high-level elective while I was teaching a course that was required for all freshmen (a third of whom were on IEPs).  We were supposed to accept all of the differences of our students, but teachers were expected to fit in a box.  I grant you that the teacher in the box was an excellent teacher, but it just wasn't me.  Thankfully, it was not my first experience, or it might have been my last.  

We, in education, have sometimes sacrificed common sense on the altar of consistency.  Yes, it can be challenging for kids to remember the policies of several teachers, but that is training for life.  Kids need different kinds of teachers.  For one thing, they are going to encounter different kinds of bosses.  In their adult lives, they will encounter all kinds of personalities and have to adapt.  If we don't teach them to adapt, we are not equipping them for life.  

More importantly, kids need different kinds of teachers because there are different kinds of kids.  Some kids need the teacher who shows them how to not take themselves so seriously (Thanks, Mr. Dorrin).  Some need the teacher that challenges their thinking and believes they are capable of meeting that challenge (You're the best, Mr. Sandberg).  Believe it or not, some respond well to a well-crafted lecture (I was mesmerized by yours, Mr. Freeman).  Some students respond to the passion of the teacher and find a love they didn't know they had (I cried in an art museum because of you, Mr. Watkins).  Students that connect well with some teachers don't connect at all with others.  If all teachers were the teacher in the box, we might only reach a small percentage of our students.  We need different teachers to connect with the nerds than the theater geeks.  We need the inspirational English teacher that inspires a love of poetic imagery AND the one that teaches them to craft a proper grammatical sentence (That might be the same teacher, but it might be different teachers over the course of several years).  

Experienced teachers, you probably have a good idea of who you are in your classroom.  Yet, you may sometimes feel guilty that you aren't like the teacher who gives each kid their own personalized greeting at the door.  Or, you may be the cool teacher and exhaust yourself with the effort to be more like the serious teacher down the hall.  Don't.  If your classroom environment is working and your kids are learning, you don't need to be like the teacher down the hall.  Young teachers, it may take you a while to figure out what works for you.  There's much to be learned from your colleagues and mentors, but don't try to be them.  Take from them what works for you, but adapt it for yourself.  You'll find your style, and it will be exactly what some student needs.

Poet William Cowper wrote that "variety is the spice of life."  It's also what keeps school interesting.  Don't fear it.  Embrace it.

Teachers - Stop Beating Each Other Up

This is going to be a short post because there is not much nuance to what I want to say.  It is sad and disheartening to see what teachers are doing to each other online during the return to school.

In March, when the shutdowns began, EduTwitter was kind of a lovely place to be.  They were sharing best practices, showing tech hacks, and encouraging each other that we could do this.  Of course, we were also getting a lot of love from the public as parents realized that teaching their child was kind of a hard job.  About two weeks in, I had to make conscious efforts to limit my time reading teacher posts because they had turned dark.  They were frustrated with their admins and district leaders, feeling that expectations were changing weekly or daily; and while I was sad for them (because my administrators were super supportive and helpful), I was disappointed at the lack of professionalism and often wondered how they were keeping their jobs.

August is very much NOT March.  The whiplash caused by the change in public support is unnerving.  We went from heroes to villains during the summer.  The very same people who were praising teachers in March for their adaptability now have expectations of their kids' teachers that simply cannot be met by human beings as though June and July was enough time to reinvent their practice even while not knowing if they would need to.  Even my beloved Ken Jennings took a soft jab in a joke where he said it was called remote learning because of the remote chance his kids would learn anything.  I wasn't offended by Ken's joke, but it is illustrative of the changing attitude about what teachers are doing.

But, this post is not about the public.  It's not about parents.  It's not even about the teachers who criticize their administrations.  It's about those teachers who insist on beating up other teachers on Twitter.  

- A teacher had posted her rules for her online students, and a swarm of teachers descended on her because she didn't want them to eat while she was teaching them.  This isn't a choice I would have made, but they don't know why she made it a rule.  Perhaps, she has, like others, developed misophonia during the pandemic and the sound of chewing will be distracting.  Perhaps seeing the kids eat will be distracting to her in-person students who cannot eat in the classroom.  
- Some teachers are assigning homework during this time, and they are being responded to with all caps, hand-clap-emoji-filled tweets, telling them that they don't care about their students.  

- While absolutely no one knows what the best way to do hybrid learning is, there are many who will attack the way you have decided to navigate it in your classroom.  Worse, when someone tries to explain their choice, they are accused of toxic positivity and told they are buck-passing cowards for not standing up to their admins and districts.  (I saw this happen yesterday to a poor woman who is just doing the best she can.)

What bothers me about all of this is that none of these attacking teachers seem to care about context.  What's right in an elementary school reading class is not even close to what is right in a high school math class.  What's wrong to expect of a special needs 5th-grader may be perfectly fine to expect of a junior in an AP class.  What is feasible for a private one to one school in the Research Triangle is not even possible for a rural public school in West Virginia.  Context has always mattered, but this situation makes it matter more than ever.  

Teachers are all doing the best we can right now.  Some may appear more confident than others, but we all know that we are not delivering the ideal that we would like to be.  While you are doing the best you can, it is fundamentally cruel to be mean to someone else who is also doing the best they can.  Would you allow your students to do that?  Twitter shouldn't turn us into Heathers.  We're teachers, and everything we publically do sends a message to our students.  Tearing other teachers apart because they carry out their practice differently than you do models intolerant, hateful, bullying behavior to your students.  

You have to stop.  You just have to.  

Strength for Today

I am a planner.  I've always been a planner, but when I took on the role of yearbook adviser, it was only enhanced and strengthened.  I have to-do lists for the day and the week, and those lists are sometimes cross-referenced.  I am not inflexible, but it is only by having a plan that I can adjust my plans.  Yet, here we are.  Planning during the pandemic requires a pencil with a strong eraser and a shorter view.

I realized a few days ago that I've been saying the same prayer in the car each day on my way to school.  It is, "Lord, give us enough strength for today."  I don't ask to get through to Friday or make the semester work.  I ask for enough energy to make it through what I need to do for that day.    

When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years after their liberation from Egypt, they were not able to plan for their needs either.  I'm pretty sure they were planners because their society was agrarian.  If you think I'm a planner, I've got nothing on farmers.  They had herded sheep and grown food for generations, and then they were in the desert.  God taught them to rely on Him for their daily needs by making it so their clothes would not wear out and by dropping food from Heaven each day.  Knowing they would doubt His provision could continue and that they would want to hoard the manna, He made it spoil at the end of each day with the exception of the night before the Sabbath.  I assume that this is also the source of the request in the Lord's prayer to "give us this day our daily bread."

As I contemplated my prayer and the Israelites, I realized that this is one way God using the pandemic. He wants to give us more faith in Him and less in ourselves.  Teachers, make your plans, but know that the strength you need to carry them out comes from the Lord, and He has given you the energy you need for today.  Trust that He will give it to you tomorrow as well.

(I grew up singing hymns in church, so they are sometimes in my head.  As soon as the words "strength for today" came to my mind, my mind began playing "Great is Thy Faithfulness" on a loop.  Enjoy this lovely performance of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwiBz1QA4o)

Unexpected Benefits - Connection at a Distance

This is a short post.  Teachers are tired right now.

I am currently in a hybrid teaching situation.  For those who think it isn't possible, it is.  I'm not saying it is easy, but with each passing day, the tech takes up less space in my working memory, and the ability to address those in my room as well as those on my screen gets a little more natural.

Because we are now two weeks in, it was time to give the first test.  Figuring out how to do this fairly has perhaps been the most difficult thing to wrap my mind around.  Giving a regular paper test makes cheating far too tempting for those at home.  Giving something different to those at home than those in the room was just going to create perception problems.  So, I decided to do what I did when everyone was at home, using a combination of Go Formative with monitoring (for multiple-choice questions) and Flip Grid (for short answer questions or skill-based questions).

While no method is perfect or without the potential for cheating, and the videos take a long time to grade, this combination is what works for me in this moment.  

Yesterday, I discovered a benefit I had not anticipated.  While watching the videos on Flip Grid, I got to know my students better.  From the hams who practically performed their answers to the introverts whose voices I rarely get to hear in the room to the creativity of a student who cut out a picture of a fire hydrant to use in her video as though it were real, I got to see the personalities of my students in a way that I would not have if they had written the answers to the questions on paper.  

The quarantine of the spring and the hybrid classes of the fall have forced us to examine our practices to figure out how to make them work in this situation.  Doing so has been difficult, and we are all tired.  It has, however, had the upside of finding benefits to methods we might not have otherwise used.  As you innovate, keep your eyes open for the unexpected benefits.

Good Problem Solving Takes Time

 This week, I went through the problem-solving steps required for credit with my physics class.  They're nothing special; I'm sure math and science teachers all over the world have similar requirements.  Identify your knowns (with units).  Identify unknown.  Write the equation you will use.  Apply the equation by substituting the variables.  Do the math and box your answer.  

While this method is not earth-shattering, is certainly not the only valid approach (just the one required in my class), and is meant only for having an organization system for solving math problems, I had a realization while teaching it to them.  It's a model for solving all kinds of problems.  If we zoom out from the specifics of math, what this method actually boils down to is this.

1.  Identify the information you have that is relevant to the problem at hand.

2.  Ask "What do I need to know to solve this problem?"

3.  Examine the tools you have available and choose the one that best fits.

4.  Apply the tool to the problem and analyze the results.  

We would arrive at better solutions to problems if we approached solving problems in this manner.  The problem is, we don't have the patience for it.  We want instant solutions.  Take a look at social media after a mass shooting, a weather disaster, or any tragedy.  Within minutes of the event, there are many posts with assertions of the solution.  Setting aside that the problem they are trying to address is large and complex and has no easy solution, these people have put five full seconds of thought into it before picking up their phone; so they clearly know what they are talking about.  

Smartphones have made us less patient than any other invention.  Answers to questions are instantaneous as long as Siri knows the answer.  We can get what we need from Amazon in two days (or, in some places, two hours) without having to bother with going to the store.  I find myself getting impatient with the microwave because it is taking 3 minutes and 33 seconds (It's a quirk of mine to put in all the same numbers, don't worry about it) to cook something that would have taken an hour to cook in the oven fifty years ago or hours to cook over a fire one hundred years ago.  We don't want to wait for anything.  How much less patience do we have when we have an actual problem?  

Here's the deal, though.  The solution that immediately springs to mind is rarely the right one.  It usually leaves out some of the information we need to properly deal with the issue at hand.  It may neglect a good tool simply because we didn't take the time to think about the tools we have.  Using the wrong tool or neglecting relevant details can not only be ineffective but dangerous.  If I had a flat tire, I couldn't just grab the nearest tool, which would likely be a hammer or a screwdriver.

This tendency we have to impatiently jump to conclusions is precisely why we have grown impatient with science during the COVID-19 crisis.  We want to just grab the nearest bottle of pills and hope it works, but that's not science.  If it did work, it would be because we got lucky, not because we found a real solution.  This morning, the President tweeted that the CDC was making participating in a trial too difficult (and, as is his practice, made it about himself).  I don't expect him to understand the nuances of clinical trials and the details of how people qualify for them because non-scientists don't spend time thinking about these things, but I do expect him to know why scientific protocols exist.  Not following those protocols could lead to an ineffective vaccine, or worse, a treatment that causes more problems than it solves.  Individual human bodies are complex, and groups of humans are even more so.  This is why science takes time.  During the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, activists widely criticized Dr. Fauci for moving too slowly while their people were dying.  He knew that doing it right had to be more important than doing it fast, and he eventually won them over.  A diagnosis of HIV is no longer the death sentence it was then because scientists took the time to look for real solutions rather than jumping to conclusions.  

If you are facing a problem (or your students are), take the time to solve the problem rather than instinctively throw ideas at it.