Courage of Everyday People

Like everyone, my mind has been occupied with serious events this week.  Our school went mask optional, which was great, but did leave me thinking about some "what ifs."  Tuesday was the third anniversary of the death of one of my students, and since she would have been a junior, it affected many of our students.  A school we are closely associated with suffered a similar loss this week.  I have a couple of students and co-workers going through terribly difficult situations.  And, of course, Russia invaded Ukraine late this week.  It has been difficult for teachers and students alike to maintain focus, but time moves forward.  

One of the pearls of wisdom attributed to the late Mr. Rogers is that when times are difficult, we should "look for the helpers."  It helps to know there are people trying to make things better.  I have also read (though I cannot remember where to credit the source) that resilience can be fostered vicariously through pondering stories of courage.  That's what I've been thinking about this weekend - the helpers and the courageous.

One of my students is adopted from Ukraine, and her mom sent us the names of people on the ground who have been helping children in Ukraine, not only in this situation, but for years (Fathers-Care.org, Marinaskids.net, and https://hebron-academy.com/about.html if you are interested in making donations). I've seen photos online of people rescuing animals as they evacuate.  Our head of school has been keeping us looped in on an email conversation he is having with a Ukrainian school teacher, and it helps to have a name to attach to our prayers.  

One of the best and worst things about social media is how quickly stories can spread.  Right now, it is a great thing.  We are seeing stories of people exhibiting courage on a scale we could not have predicted (certainly Putin didn't predict).  The story that has garnered the most attention is that of President Zelenskyy, and rightly so.  He could have easily justified fleeing the country as a way of continuing to lead his country; America even offered to evacuate him.  His response, "I need ammunition, not a ride" should stand in history with "I have not yet begun to fight" and "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country" as a statement of bravery, loyalty, and leadership.  He could be in a bunker or delegating orders from a comfortable place, but instead, he is out there, looking like a Jeremy Renner character in a tactical vest, fighting alongside his troops.  A MiG pilot, known as "the Ghost of Kyiv," is taking down Russian planes, and regular Ukrainian people are fighting back, throwing Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks.  These people are not taking the invasion of their country lying down.

All of these people are acting with courage and should inspire us, but the ones who I can't stop thinking about are the Russian people who have gone into the streets to show their opposition to the actions of their President.  As Americans, we are used to this.  It seems half of our country is always protesting the actions of our President, and it is not an act that requires a high amount of courage here.  Even those who may be arrested in a protest in America know that, with notable but rare exceptions, it involves a night in jail and a slap on the wrist.  We have the luxury to take the first amendment for granted (so much so that one of the Canadian truck convoy members tried to claim it as a defense, not realizing that Canada's first amendment was not about freedom of speech).  This is not the case in Russia. The people who took to the streets in Moscow last week did so, knowing that it could mean the loss of their lives.  

 

Vladimir Putin has long been a murderer; he was the director of the KGB.  Speaking against him is the fastest way to incur his wrath. As long as they were at home, they were not in danger.  They could have stayed home and stayed safe.  They knew the likelihood was high that they would be arrested (nearly 3000 have been so far) and that it could result in the loss of their lives (Putin's history of poisoning journalists who speak against him well-known), but they wanted the world to know that they did not support the invasion of their neighbors.  

Teachers, as we help our students process their thoughts and feelings about all of the events around them, both worldwide and here at home, we must address pain and fear.  We should not, however, leave it there.  When they are feeling despair, help them look for the helpers.  When they are scared, help them see the acts of courage that normal people exhibit during difficult times.  When they are feeling helpless, help them to find ways they can help, from prayer to charitable donation to writing letters to their representatives to voice their thoughts.

Either/Or/Both/And

Last night, on Twitter, a teacher account posted the question, "Should students be allowed to use their notes on tests?"  At the time of this writing, there are 570 replies, and it has been retweeted 148 times, presumably each with their own share of replies.  As with all things on Twitter, the replies were extreme.  From one commenter who said tests were nothing more than "an anxiety-producing tool of compliance" (which I might point out isn't an answer to the question) to people who said a student should absolutely never be able to use notes "or it wasn't a test" to those who thought anything other than open notes were cruel.  It made me wonder how much stress these people live under.  I find it hard enough to manage my own classroom decisions without having to decide what every teacher in America should do in theirs.

Notably, of the over 500 responses, only two acknowledged any nuance.  Few could recognize that there might be times when an open note test is appropriate and times where it is not.  Of course, that is the truth.  It depends entirely on your goals for the test.  An earth science teacher testing whether a student can interpret a weather map might rightly allow them to use notes, while an algebra teacher testing order of operations is right not to.  

Conversations like this play out on EduTwitter every day with the same extremes of views.  Direct instruction is lambasted by some (How dare you think you are a source of knowledge?) and revered by others as though it is the only way to teach.  Again, it depends on the content (It's dangerous to have kids figure out chemistry on their own and I was an unfortunate recipient of the constructivist calculus experiment of the late 90s, but there are some topics that it makes sense to have kids discover on their own) and the goals.  

I know I constantly sing the praises of Learning and the Brain, but one of the things I most appreciate about them is their understanding of context.  When the @learningandtheb account posts research, they start with a question, and the answer rarely includes the words always or never.  The answer includes words like if and often and sometimes.  It describes the conditions of the research and boundaries of the experiment.  Several of their speakers embrace the complexity of education, notably Dr. David Daniel who used a plant analogy - Research is like raising plants in a greenhouse where you have control over the conditions.  Classroom teaching is like raising plants in your yard, where the variable are many and unpredictable.  John Almarode uses this line: "Don't adopt.  Adapt to your context."  Andrew Watson says, "Don't do this thing.  Think this way."  

The needs of different classrooms are different.  The age of your kids matters (older students can handle more direct instruction than younger ones).  Their background matters (if they come from a place where collaboration is not valued, it may take a while to teach them to do it well).  The subject you teach matters (you will obviously need to use more visuals in geometry and art than in other disciplines).  The personality of the teacher matters (some of us are comfortable with controlled chaos while others are not).  Your goals matter.  The climate of your school and your community matters.  That's a lot of variables to include in any decision, so let's stop going on Twitter and acting like what works for one works for all.

I love the West Wing, and there are often lines from it that play in my head.  While they were written about politics, I find that many lines apply well to other situations.  I will leave you with one of them.  "Every once in a while, there is a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts.  Other than that, there aren't very many un-nuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words."  

Education Is Not Static

Something happened in Indiana this week, and while I don't have a wide audience, I hope others will write about it too because it should not have happened, and it should not happen elsewhere (There are ten other states considering similar proposals).  The Indiana house passed Bill 1134, which would require teachers to publish their lesson plans for the entire year by June 30 of the preceding year.  If you are not in education, you might not know how crazy that is, so let me help.

First, let's address why this happened because it didn't come out left field.  When Glenn Younkin and Terri McAuliffe were running against each other, a discussion was sparked about how much control parents should have in what public schools teach.  I know this is shocking, but both sides went to the extreme, with McAulliffe saying parents should have no say, and Younkin promising that certain things would never be taught under his administration.  Yes, this is basically about fear of CRT.  In spite of the fact that CRT has never been taught in a K-12 school, some parents are terrified that their first grader will soon have their brains molded to its shape.  Neither the parents nor most of the lawmakers could recognize actual CRT because it is only taught in law schools and philosophy classes (It's like being worried that your elementary school student will learn Torte reform), so they label any book, movie, or lesson that even mentions race as CRT.  Because social media and politics cause us to fear "the other side," many assume that every classroom teacher entered it with a political agenda and the only way to protect their child is to scrutinize everything.  They do not trust the very people to whom they send their children every day.  They trust teachers to keep their children physically safe, even marching to demand that they return to the classroom during a pandemic, but they don't trust them to teach English, Math, or History. (Remember the spring of 2020 when they realized how hard teaching was and expressed nothing but love for teachers?  Good times.)

Nothing campaigns as well as fear, so politicians jump on board, fomenting that fear into votes and then into bills.  Did they consult classroom teachers when writing this law?  Based on the wording, I'm going to assume they did not.  If they had discussed their thoughts with educators, they might have learned the difference between curriculum and lesson plans.  I could easily give you a broad overview for next year.  It would let you know that we would be discussing atomic structure in early September and the properties of acids near the beginning of December.  Most school systems have their curriculum posted for public viewing, but again, that is pretty broad.  It's a list of objectives and major resources.  Lesson plans are an entirely different thing.  When I am very much on my game, I write my lesson plans for a week on Monday and Tuesday of the previous week.  Even then, things will likely change a bit by Friday.  I might have an idea over the weekend that requires editing them.  

What the lawmakers (and I assume the parents who are supporting the law) don't understand is that lesson plans are active.  Curriculum is relatively static (or at least slower-changing), but the daily practice of teaching is not.  When I first started teaching, I couldn't predict how long it would take to reach an objective.  I'd plan a lesson, thinking it would take a class period, and it might take 20 minutes or 3 days.  I simply hadn't been teaching long enough to estimate it.  After 23 years of teaching, I now have the tools to adapt to that, keeping my left eye on the clock and expanding or contracting as needed, but there is no way to expect that of all teachers.  I have had days where I taught my 6th-period class differently from my 3rd-period class.  I taught them the same thing and achieved the same objective, but I did it differently because it wasn't working that well or because my 6th-period class had more students with special needs.  I've had to change lesson plans based on the weather.  If you are a parent, ask yourself if you want a teacher who is animated or animatronic.  Do you want them to have a creative idea for how to help your child and then realize they cannot implement it until next year because they didn't have it on the plan last summer?  

Many teachers are not even hired by the end of June, so unless the Indiana legislature has a plan for early hiring in a time when teachers are in short supply, they are in for a surprise on June 30.  Laws like this are not going to help with the impending teacher shortage.  Teachers are hard workers by nature and are driven by the idea that our work is meaningful, but we resent being asked to do meaningless work.  We know that whatever is posted in response to this law is meaningless because it will change after we meet our students and find out what their needs are because that is what education is about.

And therein lies the crux of the problem.  This law is not about education.  It's not about keeping students from feeling uncomfortable (We don't mind that math or PE makes a lot of them uncomfortable).  It is about control.  It is about government control, ironically coming from the side of the aisle that most abhors government overreach.  It is about wanting the right to scrutinize and then object to what they read in the plans.  (I don't know what they think a teacher is supposed to do if parents object in opposing ways, which absolutely will happen.)  I'm not against parental involvement, but I am against control by anyone who hasn't been in the classroom.  I would not lobby for a law in which my doctor has to list what medications he intends to prescribe to me a year before my physical.  I respect judicial nominees who refuse to answer hypotheticals because they have not yet seen the details of a case.  I don't expect to control how an airline pilot reacts to turbulence.  Let me suggest that if you, as a parent, want this level of control, you should probably homeschool your child.

If you live in one of the states where laws like this are being proposed, please contact your lawmakers.  Let them know that you want your teachers engaged in the meaningful work they are trained to do.  

Support For Administrators

Teachers are tired right now.  And, we haven't been shy about saying so.  Twitter is filled with tired teachers talking about how tired they are.  There are articles and polls about how many plan to leave the profession at the end of the year.  I can relate to the exhaustion and have concerns about the imminent teacher shortages that are most certainly to follow.

What I cannot relate to is the discussion about unsupportive administrators with unrealistic expectations.  I know they are out there, but I am beyond blessed to work in a school with administrators who listen to us, love us, and protect us.  During the first two weeks after Christmas break, every school in America was dealing with too few substitutes to cover the classes whose teachers were out.  This was happening in my school as well.  Our executive leadership team covered as many classes as possible to minimize teachers subbing for each other.  While they can't take away the stress of this difficult time, they have done everything they can to hold us up through it.

A little less than a year ago, we had a department chair meeting, in which I cracked from the stress of the year.  I mean I fell apart.  I cried through the entire meeting.  Every time I tried to articulate a thought, I couldn't get it out because I was envisioning a future of hybrid learning and couldn't take the thought of it.  After the meeting, I said to a friend of mine, "I've never left a meeting less sure of how it went."  While I knew they had listened to us, I couldn't gauge what the outcome of it would be.  Several weeks later, at a different meeting, it was clear they had responded to our feedback.  I was grateful and relieved and felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  

In America, there's nothing easier than complaining about the decision made by those above you.  It is easy to think they sit in their office all day and don't remember what it is like to be in your position.  It is easy to think you would make different decisions if you had their jobs.  I remind myself frequently that I would not want to be the one making those decisions.  No matter what they do, they will hear from those who disagree.  They not only have to make tough decisions; they have to defend them.  I don't like having to do that, and I can't imagine a job in which that is such a large part of what I do.  

I have rules for a lot of things in my life, and one set of criteria governs what I will speak up about in a meeting.  

1. Do I care deeply enough about this issue to desire to add to the outcome of the discussion?  
2. Do I believe I can change the outcome of the conversation by speaking up?

The answer to number 1 is yes more often than not.  I've been teaching for a long time, and I care about a lot of things.  It is important to note, however, that I don't have to have to have a firm opinion on everything.  

The answer to number 2 is yes slightly less often but only slightly less.  If our administration presents a question for input in a meeting, it is because they truly want input and will listen.  There are a few issues in which I am aware that my opinion is different from the majority, so those are the few times where the answer to number 1 might be yes and 2 might be no.  I'm not going to keep arguing something just to be ornery.  Those are in meetings where a decision has not yet been made.  Once a decision is made, I would have to answer a really emphatic yes to both questions in order to go to the administration.  I think there might even be a third question.  Would I want to defend this decision to upset students, parents, or others who object to it?  That's an awfully high bar, so it isn't going to happen very often.  

Teachers are tired, yes.  Our entire profession has been put through the wringer for the past two calendar years.  And the whiplash from the adoration we received in March 2020 to the current state of affairs (where parents in some states are pushing to ban books or demand lesson plans for the year to be posted for review so they can make sure their kids aren't being taught anything they don't like) has been jolting.  But teachers, please do keep in mind that most of what your administrators do is not front-facing.  They are not just sitting in their offices.  They are tired too.  They may not be facing students every day the way we are, but they are doing a job we wouldn't want to do.  They were given just as little preparation for the pandemic as we were, and they have been fighting through it for just as long.  They may not be having to enforce mask mandates in the room in the same way we are, but they are getting the angry emails from parents over the decision to have them.  

We are all fighting through this the best way we can.  Your human administrators need your support as much as you need theirs.