When the Urgent Must Rule

I try to live the majority of my life by the motto, "Don't let the urgent drown out the important."  

Life moves fast.  Something is always due next, and it is easy to get into a pattern of thinking about only the next deadline and letting the things that matter in life get past you before you realize it happened.  I believe in meeting deadlines, but I also know that sometimes you have to stop and have an important conversation with a student.  

I handle this balance in most of my life by planning well.  If I have allocated my time properly, I am less likely to get into a situation where the thing that is due in a few minutes has been worked on at all.  I make a lot of lists and estimate the time each thing on the list will take and prioritize the items by either importance, urgency, or doing the quick things first so that I get a lot of things off the list quickly.

No matter how good your planning, there are times when things pile up.  Some things are simply out of your control.  And it is okay during those times to let the urgent rule.  It is not a way to live your live, but it may be the way you have to get through a week or two.  I find myself in that situation this week.  Because of our virtual return from Christmas break, I changed the order of the chapters in my 8th-grade curriculum this year, making their NASA paper deadline 2 weeks later.  I also had to tweak the timing of my physics class' free choice project presentations, so their grading is going to overlap this week.  This weekend is also the final deadline for my yearbook staff.  All three of my preps are finishing their major projects within days of each other.  

So for the next two weeks, I'll be focused on those three things.  That doesn't mean I won't have important conversations, but it does mean that I won't engage in long-range planning or reflective thinking until these three things are done.  I'll be using my planning time to work on these three things until they are finished.  

I think it is okay to do this for two weeks as long as it only lasts for two weeks.  What is not okay is to fall into this pattern as a lifestyle because without appropriate boundaries, your life will spiral out of your control.  There are times, however, in all of our lives where the motto simply must be "Do the next thing" for a little while.  

Don't Feed the Crazy

Conspiracy theories have been around for as long as I can remember, but something has changed.  

We've stopped recognizing them as crazy.  We've started engaging them as though they deserve our attention.  We've started sharing them without regard to their impact.  Instead of rolling our eyes at the weird uncle who says crazy things at Thanksgiving, we hit share on his post, and because we aren't as crazy as he is, our friends interpret the statement as more credible than they would have it had come from him.  You may have shared it sarcastically or because you thought it was funny without really believing it, but your friends are going to do with it whatever they will.  Social media didn't create spreading crazy ideas.  That's always been around.  However, when you had to say things out loud to share them, it took time to do and died faster because you might not remember to share it with the next set of people or you might think better of it before you had the opportunity.  The spread was relatively linear.  Email made it faster; I remember well the emails I got that started with, "I don't know if this is true, but just in case."  It made the spread faster, but because you had to type in email addresses, you might have shared it with a few dozen people.  If you chose to delete it, it was gone and likely didn't come back up; so the spread was faster than word of mouth, but it was still limited.  Social media has made it possible for a crazy thought to go from one keyboard to a worldwide trend in a matter of minutes.  

Why is this dangerous?  When you feed something, it grows.  When you keep feeding it, it can grow beyond control.  We talk about things going viral as though we aren't part of the spread, but if we hit share, we are part of the problem.  

When was the last time you read an entire article or watched an entire video before you hit the share button?  Most of us read the headline.  Did you check the source?  I don't mean your friend who shared it; I mean the actual source.  Did it come from a credible source, or is it just someone's blog?  (Yes, I'm aware of the irony that I'm writing this on a blog, but I make no effort to make this site look like a news source.)  Do you look at more than the title of the site?  Frontline Doctors sounds like a legitimate source until you remember that it is the home of the crazy lady who believes cervical cancer is caused by dream sex with demons.  Have you asked someone with some degree of expertise, like my friend who sent me a video to ask if I had an explanation for why the snow turned black in the crazy lady's "experiment"?

It seems like I'm asking you to do a lot of work.  I'm not.  In fact, you can do less work.  Don't hit share.  If you do not know something is true, just don't share it.  Otherwise, don't kid yourself; you are just a gossip.  If you haven't looked into the source and don't wish to, just keep scrolling.  You do not have to share something just because you paused at the headline.  You don't even have to reply to your grandma on Facebook with the counter-argument.  Stuff will go away faster if more people ignore it than it will if you engage with it, causing people to dig in their heels.  Every time you reply, it brings the crazy thing back into someone's newsfeed and makes it seem debatable.  If it is crazy, nothing better can happen to it than for it to get no likes, no comments, and no shares.

In short, stop feeding the crazy, and it will die.  Keep feeding it, and it grows.

Normalizing "I Don't Know"

I have spent my life as a highly opinionated person.  It's the result of being my father's daughter.  From whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie (yes) to the time I told a student he was eating his Oreo wrong (He just bit into the whole thing - who does that?), I have been able to summon an opinion on most things.

It seems, though, that as I have aged, I've recognized that there are issues that are more complex than I am qualified to parse in a knowledgeable way.  There are issues on which more information would help me make a decision on my opinion (statistics on the efficacy of exercise or test data on whether my students understood a specific point I taught them), but there are issues also for which no amount of information would qualify me because I don't possess the ability to interpret the information I would get.

As I write this, the Sunday morning shows are addressing the issue of reopening public schools for in-person instruction.  As an educator, and one who has been teaching in a hybrid model with the majority of my students in-person since August,  I have to tell you that I don't know what they should do.  While I understand the motivation of the parents who are holding "Reopen schools" signs outside of the governor's residence, I wonder if they realize that they don't have the full perspective of the complexities involved with asking kids to wear masks and social distance all day.  There are some teachers' unions who refuse to return until all of their teachers are vaccinated, and while I am gratefully looking forward to getting my shot, I have to wonder if those union leaders have looked at the data on those schools that are teaching in person without that protection.  The decision-makers have to balance the values of both the physical and mental health of students.  They have to look at the limited resources they have available.  They have to look at the age of the adults in the buildings, not just say "kids don't get it much."  They have to look at the differences in building-design (involving room size, ventilation, efficient temperature screening ability, and sanitation ability) within their districts.  They have to acknowledge that returning to school buildings after a year of at-home learning is going to involve its own kind of culture shock.  I am so grateful that I am not the one who has to make this decision, and I will, therefore, not criticize those who must make it.

My students have very strong opinions on things that don't matter.  They care about what direction the toilet paper roll hangs, how to pronounce the word caramel, whether a hot dog is a sandwich, how to squeeze a toothpaste tube, and how to say gif.  When things like "Laurel Yanni" go viral, they each believe what they hear is right, and anyone who hears the other thing is crazy.  They ask me these questions all the time, and, because I have been doing this a while, I know that my answer will make them think they are right.  Because of this, when they ask me how I pronounce caramel, I start by saying, "Before I tell you my answer, just know that the way I say it isn't the one right way.  There are regional differences, and neither pronunciation is wrong."  They don't like that answer because it isn't fun, but I do believe it is an important lesson.  The way I do it is the way I do it, not the one right way to do it.  To quote Sorkin, "The world is a more interesting place than that."  

For years, I have stated that social media turns us all into 7th graders.  Scroll through your newsfeed for a minute with this in mind, and you will see it.  The conversations we have over small things are exactly like those my middle schoolers have.  The conversations we have over big things make everyone think they must comment with their opinion, no matter how uninformed it is.  Occasionally, someone will acknowledge their lack of qualification before giving their intractable opinion, but I have never seen someone comment, "Since I am unqualified to have an opinion on this, I won't post one here."  

Even if you are not on social media, your kids see you yelling at the tv screen during the news, and you teach them to make quick judgments and stick to them no matter what contradictory evidence comes along.  We are adults, and we have to do better.  We have to show kids that we can hold strong opinions only after learning and that we are open to changing those opinions when other information is learned.  Don't think they aren't listening just because they don't look like they are paying attention.  They absorb far more than you think.

When I began my teaching career, the thing about me that shocked my students the most was when they asked a question, and my answer was, "I don't know."  That was a time in which many teachers felt their authority was undermined by saying they didn't know, so they rarely said it to students (that has, thankfully, changed).  My approach was that there was too much science for me to have it all in my head, so I would look it up for them or ask my colleagues and give them an answer the next day.  In my current situation at a one-to-one school, I can say, "I don't know, but that seems Googlable," and we usually have the answer in a few seconds for simple things.  For more complex things, we may Google something, and then I spend some time interpreting what we found and adding my own judgment to it.  I think this is important modeling because they need to see that the first thing that pops up on Google is sometimes enough, but it sometimes requires more.  Not all questions have equally simple answers.  A person can know a lot and not know everything, or they can know a lot about one thing and nothing about other things.  There have been decisions made by administrators in every school I have taught in that I disagreed with.  Students have asked me about those opinions, and my standard answer has been, "I would imagine that they have some information that you and I do not have."

There's a lot of complaining right now about the polarization of our society.  My favorite posts on that topic are the ones in which the poster blames the other party for the polarization (it's like we are irony-impaired).  The fix for polarization is so easy that I can give it to you in one sentence.  Are you ready?  Be willing to say "I do not know."  This is not a trick.   It really is that simple.  Be willing to acknowledge that there are people who know more than you do.  Be willing to say that, while you wouldn't make that decision, you understand they have reasons why they did.  Our leaders seem to think it makes them look weak, but it doesn't.  It shows strength of character.  

There is strength in saying, "I don't know."  Let's normalize that and watch what happens.

  

The Absurd Normal

There's a lot of talk about the return from CoVid and what will be the "new normal."  While I'm not a big fan of that phrase, I am starting to get behind the term, "the absurd normal."  I have been back to in person teaching since August, with one brief move to remote learning just before and after Christmas break, and what was bizarre in August is now just what we do.

There has been plexiglass separating my desks since August, and I barely notice them anymore.  We have gone through so many disinfectant wipes that we had to start making our own (our facilities team, not individual teachers).  Each day, students walk through the door and lean in for temperature scanning.  Our chairs at lunch are six feet apart, and half the kids are either outside or in the chapel.  And, of course, masks are just part of our wardrobe.  

All of this is just logistics, but we have more absurd normal activities than that.  Every teacher in our building logs into a virtual class every day because there are at least a few kids at home.  Our entire basketball program is virtual as part of a sports bubble.  There are some who quarantine due to exposure or close contact, and there are some who have chosen to stay home from the beginning.  While it is difficult in ways that are hard to put into words, we have incorporated talking to the kids in front of us and the icons on our screens as a normal part of our lives.

If you teach a course in which a hands-on component is expected, it can be weird to navigate teaching kids who are at home.  I send an email when needed to tell my students what kind of supplies they might use at home.  If they don't have those things, I make them the partner of someone in the room so that they can at least see the experiment and contribute their observations.  Our chemistry teacher has set up after school times in which the virtual students can come and complete the lab (and during the basketball bubble, she has offered a second time period so that they won't be interacting with anyone outside the bubble).  That means she is running a lab three times, two of which are outside of her "normal hours."  Test equity between kids at school and at home is part of our weekly discussions.  As a yearbook teacher, I am photographing kids on a screen in order to represent them in the yearbook.

I am not complaining about any of this.  We are doing what is necessary to both educate our kids and keep them as safe as possible.  But every once in a while, there is a moment when it strikes me how strange our lives have become and how we have just absorbed it onto plates that were already at capacity.  

I am astounded at how adaptable the human brain is.  I have always known that there is a limit to how much the brain can process at once, but I am daily shocked at how much higher that limit is over what I would have guessed.  I look forward to teaching with my face exposed again.  I miss being able to pull a student quietly aside to tell them something (which is hard to do while social distancing and impossible on a virtual call) or pat them on the back.  I'll be happy to lack awareness of my daily temperature average.  But for now, I am happy that God made my brain adaptable.