What Will Your Verse Be?

This week, my school celebrated Grandparents' Day.  It's a long-standing tradition and one we haven't had in person for the last two years.  It was so lovely to hear them laugh at the corny jokes of our emcees, cheer for our band, and oh and ahh over our theater dance class.  Even better, I get to travel from classroom to classroom photographing kindergartners running and leaping into their grandpa's arms, 3rd graders proudly showing a project to their grandma, and 5th graders interviewing their grandparents about major historical events on a timeline.  It's a precious day, but this weekend, I have mulled on its deeper importance.  It's more than just sweet.

Yesterday, I was sitting in a MacDonald's drive-through behind a car whose license plate was CARPAYDM.  After I chuckled at the clever way to express Carpe Diem, I started thinking about the movie Dead Poets' Society, a favorite of mine since I saw it in the theater decades ago.  My love for Robin Williams knows no limit, and as a person who loved teachers so much I eventually became one, it's an inspiration.  Most people carried away the phrase Carpe Diem or perhaps quoted "Oh Captain, my Captain" at school, but the scene that has always stuck with me is the one in which Mr. Keating quotes the Walt Whitman poem "Oh Me! Oh Life!" which ends with, 

"That you are here—that life exists and identity, 

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

Carpe Diem essential became YOLO in Latin, basically meaning you should do what you want now, but the end of the Whitman poem should cause you to examine it differently.  You are here now, continuing a story that began long ago.  Watching kids talk to their grandparents about their memories of historical events reminds us of that. The world didn't start with our birth, and it won't end with our death.  "The powerful play goes on."  What we have the opportunity to do in our time here is to "contribute a verse."  The scene ends with Robin Williams looking Ethan Hawke in the eye and saying, "What will your verse be."

Schools are ever-changing plays in many ways.  No matter how nice we are to them, seniors leave every year.  New students join.  Some teachers stay for decades; others are in a school for only a year or two.  Unless you are the school's founder, it was there before you were, and unless you are unfortunate enough to be part of a school's end, it will be there after you.  What you have the opportunity to do while you are there is leave a mark, contribute to a legacy, and leave something for those that follow.  

What will your verse be?

Student Meetings

Instead of lunch and planning periods this week, I've been holding one on one meetings with some of my 8th-grade students.  So far, I've met with seven students (and a mom).  I have four meetings scheduled for next week.  No one is in trouble.  No one has done anything wrong.  These meetings are about preparing for tests.  

At GRACE, the 8th-grade team understands that our responsibility is to meet kids where they are and get them ready for where they are going.  This is, of course, true for teachers of every grade.  The first grade team is preparing kids for second grade.  But there is something that most students and parents understand about the eighth grade - high school is next.  The curriculum in 8th grade assumes a fair amount of foundational knowledge, and it is now time to learn analytical skills.  Students are no longer only learning the name of a family on the periodic table; they need to know how to use the periodic table to calculate how many neutrons are in the atom of an element in that family and how many valence electrons it has.  This requires more than the flashcards that they have been so dutifully making all these years.  It means that note-taking can't mean copying what the teacher projects from their PowerPoint presentation.  It means dropping most of the little tricks our older siblings have passed down (like choosing all of the above because it's only a choice if it's right - I will break them of this belief).

I spend a fair amount of classtime talking to them about why retrieval is superior to rereading and how to prepare for different levels of thinking-level questions.  I try to prepare them for the fact that they will have to change some of the habits that have led to their prior success, but they often just don't believe me.  Until it is real, I'm just saying stuff teachers say. Then, a student who is accustomed to As makes a B- or a C+ and they want to know what they can do.  While they mean extra credit, I bring them in and talk to them about how they currently study and how they might modify that to be more successful with tests that inlcude higher level thinking.  I divide it into three sections of advice - in class, studying, and test taking.  Let me share some of that with you.

In Class -  I work in a one to one laptop school, so there are plenty of ways to be distracted, but that isn't new.  Students have always found things to distract them in class.  I watched a student read her pencil once just to avoid doing what she should have been doing.  When I speak students about learning, we start there.  First, if your computer is distracting you, feel free to take your notes by hand.  

Then we talk about notes.  Most students fall into one of two extremes - they either write down almost nothing or they attempt to write down everything.  Neither of those is conducive to good learning.  Note taking involves paying close attention and making decisions about what is important to write down, which is not the same for every student.  In a class like mine, where the book is very closely aligned with what we are doing in class, it may be better to think of notes as a map, pointing to the information you need to study and supplementing with a few things from class.  Students have grown accustomed to copying the power point presentation and are surprised when I say, "Oh, that's just to remind me of what to talk about next or to give you a visual aid.  Unless I tell you that you need to copy a slide, you probably don't need to."  (There is a technique I'm afraid to experiment with called "retrieve taking."  In this technique, students to not write anything down during the class period.  You give them five minute at the end to write down everything they can remember.  I want to try it, but I'm a little afraid that I would have a hard time justifying it if it didn't work.). 

We also talk about asking and answering questions as a way of remaining engaged rather than just letting the class wash over you.

Studying - This is the longest part of the conversation and the one with the most research based support.  I start by asking them what they currently do to study.  By far, the most common answer I get is, "I look over my notes."  After asking them what they mean by that, it is clear they do not know that study is a verb.  They are re-reading notes that don't accurately represent what they did in class and hoping that will be enough to have it stuck in their heads.  We talk about why that is not helpful for their memory.  I ask them if they have ever memorized lines for a play; you don't learn your lines by reading the play again.  You learn them by trying to remembre them, crashing and burning, and trying again.  We talk about flashcards and making a list of questions for yourself and brain dumps a number of other retrieval strategies.  

For higher level thinking questions, flashcards may not be your best tool, so we talk about that too.  How might you "think outside the book" and prepare for questions that require using the knowledge they have gained from their flashcards.  How might you write yourself a question that is similar to one we have gone over in class?  What skills might you need to employ that would help?  This, again, requires that you have been engaged in class.  Learning is a complex activity, and it requires your full attention.  

Test Taking - About three-fourths of the students I meet with identify themselves as people with test anxiety.  I don't say identify themselves as a way of criticizing them; I think we all have at least a little bit of test anxiety, and it is not really a diagnosable condition.  We talk a little about taking the time to breath or pray or count to ten or whatever it takes to calm you rather than trying to ignore your feelings and power through.  And then I give them what I think is a simple but powerful piece of advice.  Cover up your test with a piece of paper.  It keeps you from seeing how much you have left to do and allows you to focus on the question you are currently on.  Most students with anxiety are also prone to talking themselves into all of the choices, so I tell them to cover the choices with the paper, read the question and think of the answer in their mind first; then just go look for that answer.  The only questions that doesn't work for are ones where the answer is "all of the above," but that's usually only one or two per test.  It's worth the trade.  These students are also generally prone to changing their answers while going over their test after they finish.  All of the research I've read says this is a bad idea.  I can't remember the exact number, but it was much more likely that students who have prepared well would change from a right answer to a wrong answer (or from one wrong answer to a different wrong answer).  It is rare that they change from a wrong answer to a right one.  If you have prepared well, trust yourself.

I want my students to be successful in all of their subjects, not just mine.  None of this advice is specific to my class or to the 8th grade.  If they actually absorb this, it should serve them well for years.

I'm Naming It - Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome.

I don't respond to things appropriately anymore.  This week, five people were shot and killed four and a half miles from my house, and I have spent very little time thinking about it unless someone else brings it up.  Yet, I overreact to small setbacks during the day and laughed unreasonably hard at a story during this morning's sermon.  It's like the pandemic damaged my barometer.  My colleagues have reported they notice the same thing in themselves.

As it turns out, this is a symptom of dealing with chronic stress, which teachers and other essential workers have definitely been doing since the beginning of the pandemic.  Now that things are returning to somewhat normal, many have been feeling things they had not been during the height of the pandemic. I compare this to getting sick on the first day of Christmas break; your body knows how to power through the time it needs to an allows you to give in when there is a chance to use that energy in other ways.  While most people are calling what we have right now PTSD, I have been searching for another term.  For one thing, I am uncomfortable with the idea of being in the same category as those who have experienced acute trauma, like soldiers who have watched a friend die, kids who have witnessed and/or experienced abuse, or victims of bank robberies.  Our jobs were very hard, but our experience is not an acute high level event; it is a prolonged endurance of physical, mental, and emotional difficulty.  I have spent about a year searching for a name for what we are confronting, and I haven't found it.  Therefore, I have decided to name it myself. I am calling it Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome.

Let me be clear from the start, I have no expertise or training in psychology.  What I'm good at is learning, so what I am about to talk about comes from reading and listening.  Also, I cannot speak to what this time has been like for doctors, nurses, restraunt employees, or Amazon delivery drivers, all of whom had to reinvent their practice at a time when their services were in the highest demand they had ever experienced.  I can only speak to teaching in my context. For me, that included a spring of remote teaching, a year of hybrid teaching, and year that was supposed to be normal but wasn't (due to the Delta and Omicron variants).  Also, since I have no professional expertise, my intent is to speak to those of us with relatively mild symptoms that we can treat ourselves.  If you are experiencing anything more than that, please seek the help of a qualified professional.

With those disclaimers in mind, here's what I have found.

The symptoms of chronic stress are:

• Fatigue - Teachers all over Twitter are talking about how tired they are.  I've seen things like, "I'm February tired, and it's only October."  (If you aren't an educator, you may not understand the idea of being February tired, but I have written about it before if you are interested.)  Any stress requires physical energy to manage.  During the hybrid year, we were learning so many new things, making decisions without being confident in them, and operating each day using every ounce of energy we had.  Some days, we operated at an energy deficit, and because it was a chronic experience, there wasn't time to refill those stores of depleted energy.  One thing I've learned is that fatigue may present itself differently in some people than others.  In most people, it will feel like exhaustion; in others, it may be muscle aches or soreness.  
• Emotional disregulation - This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the post.  You may overreact to some things and underreact to others.  As teachers, we have to be careful because answering an email from an emotionally dysfunction place can get us in trouble pretty quickly.  I found myself needing to apologize a few times last year for reacting to a student's behavior disproportionately.  
• Frequent headaches, digestive disruptions, and weight changes - Your brain and body are connected, so they tend to influence each other.  Fortunately, this is also part of helping yourself, so keep reading.
• Lowered immune system - Because your energy reserves are being used elsewhere, there isn't energy left for fighting off germs.  This is obviously not ideal in a pandemic.  You may also be more prone to injury and take longer to heal.  

So the news is not good for the chronic stress sufferer.  With time and intention, however, things can get better.  Here are some ways to help yourself, but don't expect it to improve overnight.  Your mind has been through a lot, so in the same way you would give your body time to recover from an injury or surgery, give your brain time to adapt to the new normal.  Here are some things you can do:

• Eat well and exercise - I know you are thinking that you can't possible exercise because you are so tired.  That's the paradox of exercise.  Once you have overcome the inertia, it gives you energy because your body is working the way it should.  If you go outside, you'll also get a much needed hit of vitamin D.  Grab a quick walk during lunch or your planning period, even if it is just five minutes.  Consuming nutrient dense foods will help with your immune deficiency and fatigue as well.
• Breathe well - Have you ever noticed during times of high stress that you take pretty shallow breaths.  You may be tired because you aren't fully oxygenating your blood.  It's posisble you havne't taken a deep breath in two and a half years.  I'm not suggesting that you have to take a yoga class, but a couple of times a day, take a second to notice your breathing and take a few deep breaths in a row.  It will calm you, decrease your heart rate, and help your blood pressure.
• Social interaction - One of the most difficult parts of social distancing was that we were, well, distant.  I went ten and a half weeks without being physically touched by another human being.  Even then, it was hugging my mom about once a week.  Thankfully, I have friends who made the effort to have lunches over Google Meet during that time and who made sure we talked for whatever time we could during the hybrid and depressed year.  We sat far across the room from each other while we ate lunch or after school, but we made each other laugh, which mattered a lot.
• Do things you don't want to - Early last year, when I noticed that I wasn't feeling right, I reached out to our school counselor (speaking of people who are still experiencing chronic stress - they are taking on all of ours - pray for them).  Perhaps the most important piece of advice she gave me was to do things I didn't want to do.  When you aren't mentally healthy, neither are your desires, so what you want to do is probably not what you should do.  You may want to stay home and curl up on the sofa with your cat, but you should do the opposite of that.  Following through on your commitments will help you feel a sense of accomplishment that staying in won't, and you will usually be glad that you participated in the activity once you are there.  Volunteer for something (It doesn't have to be huge, maybe a school activity or a church event that only lasts one day).  Meet a friend for lunch or a card game.  When you feel the pull of the bed or sofa, say out loud, "I should do the opposite of this."  You'll be glad you did.
• Gratitude - It is so easy to slip into cynicism.  It requires no effort at all.  Gratitude takes effort, but it is well worth it.  Unless you are a natural journaler, I'm not suggesting that you start a gratitude journal because you won't keep up with it, and then you'll feel like a failure, which helps nothing.  What I'm suggesting is that each morning or night (or both) that you think of something for which you are grateful.  It could be a small thing, like having enough school supplies when you know other people don't.  It could be a person you love.  It could be the fact that we aren't in masks this year.  It could be the flowers in your front yard or that you have a front yard.  Don't try to force yourself into something with rules (like writing down five things - again, you don't want to set yourself up for failure).  Instead, sit on the edge of the bed and think of something, anything, that you are glad to have in your life.

This will get better, but it isn't going to happen right away.  Every once in a while, notice that you are a little better than you were a week ago or a month ago, and make that one of the things for which you are grateful.  While there is no official diagnosis of Chronic Stress Recovery Syndrome because it is a term I made up, recognize that it includes the word "recovery."  It's not about perfection.  It's about getting better, and you will get better.

Interrelated Variables Make it Hard to Interpret Results

A student once asked me about two related things in physics.  After explaining the differences, he said, "Oh, okay, they're exactly the same except for all the ways they are different."  We laughed a lot about that, but I liked it and have used it for a number of things.  I have a friend / former colleague with whom I share a similar personality and many similar opinions, but we have a few issues on which our opinions are totally opposed.  I use that sentence to describe our friendship.  

Recently, however, I see a ton of things on Edutwitter that exemplify this in a less funny way.  The assumption is that changing one variable will only change one variable without realizing that our lives are interrelated in ways we cannot predict.

When we went into lockdown in the spring of 2020, no one thought it was the educational ideal, but we adapted as best as we possibly could to virtual learning, keeping kids learning something, even though we were not teaching or assessing in the same ways we would have.  More importantly, virtual learning enabled us to keep the kids connected to each other and to us in some small way.  The following year, most schools either remained virtual or forged ahead with a hybrid model, knowing that it wouldn't be the same as being in school face to face, but doing the best we could to protect our students during the pandemic.

A few weeks ago, some research data was released about the academic and mental health impact of the methods we used to keep education moving during the pandemic.  While these numbers should have been no surprise, some on Twitter reacted to them as though they were a bombshell.  The impact on academic achievement was clearly negative due to many kids choosing not to attend virtually at all and others choosing to cheat their way through virtual tests.  While it will take time to address the lack of gains in those years, it can be done.  

The mental health impacts are tougher to interpret and address.  Lockdown is obviously not the sole source of anxiety, but those who want to criticize lockdowns are treating it that way.  Scientifically, it is hard to parse the impact of that one variable because it was coupled with the racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and a difficult election cycle (understatement?), which had their own influence on the mental health of youth facing a world in which they would soon vote.  And we may have forgotten that anxiety rates were already on the rise before 2020.   

Twitter and its 280 characters is, however, no place for nuance, so what we read there is more like, "See, we should never have even gone into lockdown" and "I told you remote learning was a joke" and "If we had just left them in schools, they would not have these mental health issues."  The problem with that is that it imagines an alternate universe in which A only impacts B, which is not the universe in which we live.  To quote some Aaron Sorkin screenwriting, "The world is a more interesting place than that."  We live in a world where A influences B and C and D and where C may be influencing A and B in return.  

If we imagine a world in which there had been no lockdown, we wouldn't just have one in which everything else would be the same except for its impact on academic progress and emotional health.  We would be looking at higher transmission rates, a completely overwhelmed hospital system, greater fear of attending school (as we saw in the hybrid year with some making the choice to stay home anyway).  I can tell you from experience that the death of a classmate has massive mental health consequences.  If staying in school had caused the 1% death rate that Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil deemed acceptable, we would be talking about 7-10 deaths in many schools.  I can promise you that would have a negative impact on both academic progress and mental health.

Lockdowns weren't good.  We know that.  Hindsight is 20/20, but we also knew that when we did it.  But attending school during the height of the pandemic would also not have been good.  Even those who won't admit it know that to be true.  Some schools continued to assess and grade students, while others made a different choice.  Some were synchronous while others utilized videos and self-pacing.  We all made the best decision we could with the information we had in our context.  Monday morning quarterbacking on Twitter isn't helpful because there is no way to know what impact a different combination of decisions would have had.

We, as teachers, need to set a better example.  Rather than constantly criticizing and saying, "See, I knew it," we should be teaching our students that solutions aren't simple in a complicated system.  Knowing that could reduce the polarization we see in the world today because we might not always be so certain that we are right all of the time.  If you'll allow one more Aaron Sorkin quote, "Complexity isn't a vice."

They Aren't the Same as Last Year

One of my first major rookie mistakes took place at the beginning of my second year.  I sent an email to the next level of teachers, offering my insight on the behavior of students I had the year before.  (I know. I am in the future also.)  It was not long before my principal came to my room for a chat.  Fortunately, he was a person who understood the difference between a wrong action taken out of malice and one made out of ignorance.  He very kindly said, "Listen, I know you meant well, but you can't do that.  Here's why."  Because of who he was, it was a great learning moment for me; but because of his role, he focused largely on the legal issues involved.  

I now understand the deeper reasons behind why that offer was a bad idea.  And it's simple. Those kids were not the same that year for those teachers that they had been the year before for me.  That understanding began that year and continued until last week and is likely to show up in my life until the day I die.  That year, I had a few students come back to visit.  I taught freshmen in a building that was separated from but adjacent to the rest of the high school (In fact, it wasn't just a different building, it was a separate school called the Freshman Academy.).  When these kids who were now sophomores would walk all the way across campus to visit, I was stunned by how much they had changed over the summer.  I remember saying to one of them, "Where were you last year?  You and I could have gotten some stuff done."  Then we laughed at some silly stories from the previous year.  We don't notice maturing while it's happening because they don't seem that different from one day to the next, but seeing them several months later, it was obvious that a lot of change had happened.

A few years ago, I was observing our 7th-grade science teacher.  I am not built to teach 7th-grade students.  It's just not a skill I possess, and the disastrous experiment of teaching 7th-grade health proved that beyond doubt.  This teacher, on the other hand, was a masterful manager of 7th-grade students.  She knew exactly what to respond to and what to ignore.  The period I was there happened to be one of her more energetic classes, and I was entertained as I sat in the back of the room while they calculate the air pressure on their hands.  One of the more insightful students, knowing I am the 8th-grade science teacher, turned to me and said, "Do you see what you'll have to deal with next year?"  I said, "I'm not worried. Y'all will be different next year."  Several kids were aghast.  They were a little horrified by the idea that they would change, and, even when I asked them if they were the same as they had been in fifth grade, didn't seem to recognize that they had already changed and would continue to as they matured.  The next year, I had a great time with that fun and energetic (but in a more measured way) group of 8th-graders; and they didn't seem to notice that they were different.

Note:  The following stories are about specific people, so I have changed their names.

Speaking of 7th graders, I had a conversation with a custodian a few years ago that made me grateful I am not still being judged on who I was in the 7th grade.  A friend was working on her seating chart for a sophomore class, and this custodian said, "It's a good thing you don't have Kyle Fern.  You'd be in real trouble."  She said, "Why would I be in trouble?  He's great and really fun to teach." The incredulous custodian told her about a time when he left a mess in the restroom (I believe he used the phrase "trashed the restroom") after a play rehearsal.  This event had happened three years before, but he was not ready ot let it go.  Then, he mentioned the same story to me a few days later.  I said, "Kyle's just trying to grow up, so maybe you should let go of what he did once in 7th grade." That boy matured into a delightful young man, who I taught physics during his junior year and who I am proud to have taught. 

Apparently, God wants me to keep this lesson at the front of my mind because He continues to put examples in front of me.  About two weeks into this school year, my math teacher friend said, "You know who I really enjoy this year?  Jack Hill."  I said, "Whew, I'm glad somebody does. He drove me bananas last year."  And he did.  He argued about everything and whined in a way a student should have grown out of by the 8th grade.  We had quite a bit of friction.  Last week, I stopped in her room while she was holding a help session, and he was thinking through a complex problem, answering her questions and just generally being a really great student.  I later said to her, "That is not the boy I knew last year."  Much like that first year, I thought about just how much we could have gotten done together if that had been the kid in my class.

They are not who they were.  They are not yet who they will be.  While you can get valuable insight from the previous year's teacher, you should also not assume that what they have said will be your experience with that student.  Their maturity level is different, and students interact with different teachers in different ways.  Let them show you who they are now.