Teacher Action Week

Teacher appreciation week is drawing to a close, which got me thinking about how the people currently attacking education are in the minority. The love teachers get this week from parents and students has the potential to be turned into something more impactful than mere gratitude. Over on Substack I wrote about how next week should be Teacher Action Week. 

Why the Teacher Shortage Will Only Get Worse

I hadn't posted last week's Substack post here because I wrote right before leaving town to visit a friend and didn't have the time. I wrote about the current shortage of teachers, particularly on why the current responses to it are so inadequate. It's not all doom and gloom, though. I also get into some signs of hope and the potential for change that exists only if we tap it. 

Reflections On A Not Normal "Normal" School Year

The beginning of this school year held out the promise of being "normal," that ineffable thing so many of us have been craving (rightly or wrongly) since March of 2020. This year the Zoombots were taken out of my classroom, students who were absent no longer telecommuted in, and masks were even able to come off after awhile.

The masks were a reminder that everything hadn't changed back to "normal" of course. Not to mention that we had to go a week remote right after the winter holiday in the midst of the Omicron spike. Around that time plenty of students and colleagues had to quarantine as well. That at least was a major exception, rather than the rule.

Even now, with mask mandates gone and the latest COVID wave dying down, things aren't normal. In the first place, the experiences of students and teachers could not be erased overnight. It took time to get used to being in the same space together again. Students who had passed through important years of adolescent socialization in isolation were more likely to engage in anti-social behavior. The increased mental health struggles faced by students (and faculty, let's not forget) did not simply go away. The sequestering of the pandemic has shown up in smaller ways. Students used to come by my desk during free time to get guidance or even just to chat, that rarely happens now since we've all been conditioned to handle those things electronically. 

The extra work teachers had to do to adjust to the pandemic didn't stop either. Going back to full classrooms meant the third major change in my teaching practice in two years, and we were pretty tired to begin with. On top of that, we simply could not flip a switch and go back to the way things used to be. Students are still tired, the same demands that they could meet in 2019 are just too much in 2022. This has meant a lot of adjusting on the fly and extra work to make it happen. I always feel tired at the end of the school year, and this year I feel far more beat than after a "normal" school year.

Right now I want to start thinking about what we need to do in the next school year, because educators must come to grips with the reality that there is no going back to the old days. Our students have been fundamentally changed, and so have we. First and foremost, faculty and students need to meet each other halfway when it comes to expectations. Students, used to not paying attention during Zoom classes, need to find more focus in class and lean into face-to-face interactions. Faculty need to be much more aware of the mental load their students face and make curricular decisions accordingly. 

Essentially, we need to establish a new social contract in the classroom that accounts for what we have all been through. More than just about anyone else, teachers and students endured the harshest disruptions from the pandemic. No matter how "normal" things might look, that experience will continue to weigh on us, maybe forever. If we are able to have a better school year next year, we need to create a new normal that's humane for all involved.

The Consolations of Philosophy

In April of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic's shutdown phase, a student at my school asked if I would read some Nietzsche with him, since he heard I had some philosophy background. (It was my co-major as an undergrad.) In those days, with personal interactions so curtailed, I went for it even though I was drowning in work at the time. (This is the conundrum every teacher faces. The only way to do your job well is to work well past your contracted hours. But if you work well past those hours it gets draining and makes it easier for your employer to exploit you.)

It was a great experience, and out of that he started a student philosophy club that I oversaw. The club got very high attendance, despite the fact that it had to survive the ravages of the pandemic and hybrid meetings. I asked the students if I should offer a philosophy class, they said yes and I obliged. (Again, I am a sucker for my students.)

After co-majoring in philosophy as an undergrad I had mostly left it behind in the ensuing years. In a little bit of kismet I started getting back into it right before that student asked to read some philosophy with him. A friend gave me a book about Stoicism for Christmas in 2019, detecting the slide in my mood at the time. When the pandemic hit I decided to read the dang thing and started to realize what I had been missing for so long. 

It was the exact right time for philosophy to come back into my life. When quarantine began and the dangers of the disease were unknown, and as it absolutely ravaged my state of New Jersey, I took an inventory of my life, and asked myself if I was prepared to die. At its most fundamental, this is the question philosophy forces us to answer. I had been spending so many years on the hamster wheel of work as a teacher and parenting that this important question had been forgotten.

Since dipping back into philosophy I have gained a needed sense of perspective about what matters, and what doesn't. As much as I can I have been cutting myself off from the bullshit that stands in the way of a meaningful life. I am not so concerned any more about my status, for example. I have distanced myself from things that drain me, like the drama on local Facebook groups and political disagreements with friends and family. When group texts devolve into endless kvetching I just mute them or turn off my phone. I don't finish watching a TV series on streaming just to finish it. If it's mediocre or just drops in quality I let it go. Listening to music while I read a good book usually gives me far more pleasure. 

I still work beyond my contracted hours, but with more limits. For instance last week my school had its back to school night for parents, meaning I worked from before dawn to past 8PM. On the evening the next day I sat down to get a head start on some grading of papers my students just handed in, and I stopped myself. It could wait another day and still be done in a timely fashion. I sat down and watched Barry Lyndon again instead, a film that reveals more and more with each viewing. When it was over I felt happy and content and energized. 

And when I do my work, I do it with a greater sense of purpose. I know that as a teacher what I do matters, and that I should center that in my practice. That deeper meaning of my work is something I no longer take for granted; most people in modern capitalism can't really say their job does anything of much lasting value. I don't think I have had a single day in the classroom this year when I felt like I was just going through the motions. My re-immersion in philosophy has meant a revival of my sense of intentionality. My main goal in life right now is not to lose it to the ravages of middle-aged despair and cynicism. 

High School Dirtbag Rock Playlist

Today was my first day back in a non-hybrid, full classroom since March of 2020. By the end of the day I felt like I had run a teaching marathon. When I got home my children, experiencing their first day of the same, were exhilarated. I can't remember the last time I saw them so happy. (This makes me more mad than ever at how badly their school district has fucked things up under COVID, but I digress.) 

It struck me that I was NEVER this happy to be back at school. I was a good and diligent student, I just felt pretty ambivalent about school itself. A lot of the time seemed wasted, and I had to endure bullying and exclusion. For this reason I have weirdly gravitated towards having rebels and stoners and friends even though I am pretty straight-laced nerd. I appreciated these other people because they didn't seem to like school all that much either. 

This rebel attitude towards high school has long been present in rock music, especially in the 1970s, when denim-jacketed wearing dirtbags had plenty of anthems for their lifestyle. Here are some of my favorites.

Brownsville Station, "Smoking in the Boys Room"

Going to the bathroom to smoke during school is a classic dirtbag hobby. A couple of years ago when vaping spiked among the youth it made an unfortunate comeback. I first encountered this song via the pretty flat Motley Crue cover back in the mid-80s. At the time I loved it despite being a nice little Catholic boy, my fascination with rebellion that I myself would never commit already evident. The Brownsville Station original has some fantastic blues rocking riffage behind it, one of the great examples of the genre. 

The Runaways, "School Days"

The Runaways don't get enough credit for being one of the most viciously hard rocking bands of the 70s. They were in fact teenagers themselves, giving songs like this a real verisimilitude. This song isn't about being in school, but the cry of release after finally being done with it. I certainly remember my graduation day as being one of the most satisfying of my life, to finally be free from a place where I never felt at home.The Ramones, "Rock and Roll High School"

1979 gave birth to the two all time classic dirtbag high school movies, Rock and Roll High School and the scarier and more serious Over the Edge. Both had good soundtracks, but only the former had the Ramones. This is one of the best examples of how their love of classic 1950s rock translated into punk. 

Alice Cooper, "School's Out"

This might be the best of the 70s era dirtbag high school songs. However, as a teacher playing it in September rather than June it just seems like a cruel joke. Used to amazing effect in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused.

The Donnas, "I Don't Wanna Go Back to School"

No band carried the spirit of the aforementioned Ramones and Runaways like The Donnas. Great punk energy on this one.

Chuck Berry, "School Days"

Just as Berry basically invented rock guitar, he also invented the high school dirtbag rock genre. I can't imagine how subversive this was in the context of the 1950s. 

Watching Ikiru on School Year's Eve

I start back at school tomorrow. It's not the first day of classes, but the ever-metastasizing gauntlet of meetings and trainings that educators must go through before the school year starts. (How else will the ever-growing corps of administrators justify their existence?)

Due to how awful and difficult the last school year was and the Delta surge I had been thinking about this school year with a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. I look around at my non-educator friends who are also white collar professionals but aren't expected to show up to the office most days and get resentful. I think about all of the sacrifices and extra work I did over the last year and a half in order to completely alter my teaching practice from top to bottom TWICE, which was not rewarded with extra pay from my employer or respect from other people in society, many who really seem to hate teachers. I saw the latter as a history educator this summer, witnessing the reactionary mobs scream about "critical race theory" and making laws that would basically make it illegal in many places to teach the actual events of American History. After a year and a half of wearying sacrifice, it felt like getting punched in the face.

Reader, I will be honest and admit I did a thought experiment last week. I asked myself, if I was offered some dumb useless corporate job that paid me the same as my modest salary and allow me to work from home half the time, would I take it? I decided I would take it in a heartbeat. 

Today I changed my mind because of a Japanese movie from 1952.

With the school year looming and my kids in day camp and my wife at work, I decided to use Monday and Tuesday this week to watch the movies I would not subject my family to but which require too much concentration for me to watch late at night when everyone is asleep. Today I decided to watch Ikiru, since I love Kurosawa but have mostly watched his movies set far off in the past.

Ikiru's title means "To Live." It is the story of a local bureaucrat named Kanji Watanabe. At the start of the film he is an old man detached from those around him, focused on his work but mostly just pushing paper and avoiding actually doing anything of substance. His diligence and hesitance to rock the boat helped him rise to the top of his department, but he is clearly not a happy man. He then discovers that he has stomach cancer, and thus six months to live.

At this point he questions his life. His wife had died years before and he had dedicated himself to providing for his son. However, his workaholic ways meant he never emotionally connected with him, and his son is thus more concerned about his inheritance than his father's health. This of course breaks his heart, and he first reacts to impending death by becoming decadent, going out to bars and brothels. This does not satisfy, so he strikes up a friendship with a young woman who clerked in his office. She still has a zest for life which lifts his spirit, but as a young person she gets bored with their relationship. At this point Watanabe realizes what he needs to do. He goes back to work.

However, he does not go back to work as before. At the beginning of the film we see a group of women trying to get a cesspool in their neighborhood covered and a playground built. They get the runaround from Watanabe, who as the head of Public Affairs is supposed to be helping them. When he goes back he throws himself into this project, pushing the stodgy bureaucrats in the other departments to get this important work done. The day the park is completed, he dies, satisfied that he had actually done something. At his funeral dinner the other bureaucrats try to avoid giving him credit for the park, but the mothers come in weeping, despondent that they lost the one man with power who had actually listened to them. The bureaucrats then realize they too should be spending their lives more fruitfully.

It's often not pleasant to think about death, but it is clarifying. Yes teaching under COVID is grueling, and yes it forces me to take risks and reimagine my work in ways I would not have had to do had I gone to law school. Needless to say, it pays a lot less, too. But this film was a reminder to me that my work MATTERS. At a time when reactionaries are trying to force false propaganda about the past on our students, my work in the classroom is necessary. I know too that what I do has had an impact on so many people who still bother to remember me and talk to me. That's what gets me up in the morning. Now time to get to work. 

Saying Goodbye To My Virtual Classroom

This past week I got new marching orders. From now until the end of the school year I am going to be teaching face to face in the classroom five days a week, as opposed to two. This weekend it suddenly hit me: I have perhaps taught my last class from home.

I have used four different spaces in my home as a classroom in the past year, all depending on availability and who was at home at the time. When it's been warm I have preferred our screened-in back porch. When I am here and my kids are too I've used either my office nook at the top of the stairs, or the guest bedroom if it was especially loud in the house. On those rare days when I was home alone I would use the dining room table, with our beautiful glassed-in cherry wood bookcase as a background. 

Gone are the days of frantically preparing lunch for my children and desperately trying to keep them on task while I had my own work to do. Gone are the days as well of taking my laptop to the breakfast table at 7AM, the only hope I had of processing all of the mountains of work that needed to be done that day.

I will miss having a commute of one minute, and that is all I will miss. Parenting and teaching simultaneously is a nearly impossible task. It's also just really hard for me to concentrate on my work when I'm at home. Everything took more time to do, and while at home 11-12 hour work days were pretty regular. 

The blurring of work and personal life has also been giving me a headache. A little compartmentalization is a good thing. I remember back to this fall when I watched the webcast of my aunt's funeral in Texas between teaching classes on my back porch. I was bawling my eyes out with my kids nagging me for attention while checking the clock to see when I had to be back in the classroom. I should have taken a personal day, but that just seemed weird considering I was already at home.

Leaving the virtual classroom behind is a reminder to me of the sacrifices and adjustments I have been forced to make over the past year. I despair thinking of how many of them will be made permanent. Every day I powered through a ridiculous amount of work while being my children's cook, nurse, and teacher's aide was a victory for the bosses. They could be oh so pleased that their employees didn't abandon them. We do it for the kids and not for the money, and I worry that makes us suckers. 

So goodbye, virtual classroom. As exhausting as teaching hybrid is, I hope I can avoid you forever.

 

The Upstairs/Downstairs World of Education Under COVID

The education workplace feels more and more like Gosford Park

COVID has been a test of American society, one that we have completely failed. It has also further exposed pre-existing realities that were not as close to the surface. If anything, it has exposed what a grossly unequal and stratified society that we live in.

In areas where public schools have been closed, private schools have been open (including the one where I teach.) Actually opening schools in a safe manner under COVID requires monetary support and funding, something being deprived from public schools. Poorer students are less likely to have reliable internet and to live in place where schooling from home is comfortable. It's more likely that their parents have to work outside of the home. They were already struggling, now they are underwater. Meanwhile, wealthier parents in schools that are shuttered can afford to be pod people and pay someone to be their children's governess. It's like a return to the 19th century. On top of this, they have the kind of white collar professional jobs that allow them to work from home, allowing them to avoid steep day care costs if they are not pod people.

Others are not so lucky. Not only must they work outside of the home and sometimes confront angry customers who refuse to cover their faces, they are more likely to live in the kind of crowded circumstances where the disease spreads easiest. That's the result of the country's crisis in affordable housing, which was hurting people before but is now killing them. 

Those of us who are lucky enough to have better housing and steady work during this mess can still see the hierarchy play out in more subtle ways in the workplace. This is especially the case in education. Administrators get to sit in their offices without being exposed, often without their masks on, while teachers are there in the trenches in the classroom. The admins also get to make decisions about opening and closing, which impact them the least. They can make those choices without bothering to take the concerns of their faculty into account. After all, they're just the people teaching the students. 

Meanwhile those teachers have completely altered their pedagogy and teaching materials. We have been forced to do our jobs in entirely different ways that we were never trained for. In the hybrid classroom we get to try to teach in two different worlds at once, real and virtual. Sometimes this means constructing two lessons for the same class. Our reward will be firings, furloughs, and pay cuts. The government is refusing to help state and local governments, meaning public schools and universities are screwed. Private schools are seeing students leave due to the cost and fund-raising dry up in the midst of a recession. 

In higher ed there are stories of universities slashing whole departments and tenure track faculty members. Those same institutions still have football coaches who are the highest paid public employees in their state. They still possess an army of deans whose only purpose in life is to make their faculties  do stupid shit just to justify their useless positions. 

I know a lot of teachers and profs who are furious about this situation. I know multiple educators very close to me who contracted COVD at institutions that were irresponsible in their handling of the virus. Without any radical action the inequalities in education, already festering, are going to defeat any possibilities for future change. I foresee a scenario where teachers start quitting en masse due to burnout, and public schools start de-professionalizing teaching by plugging in untrained employees who can at least apply a pre-set digital curriculum. At the college level adjunctification will overtake the totality of entire disciplines. Those fortunate enough to live in the right zip code will still have a good public school education, and will get accepted into universities what have not been converted into glorified vocational schools.

The only way forward is to join together and fight. It's time to tell the "bone spurs" types among our colleagues that they need to orient their dissatisfaction away from unproductive spite towards action. It's time to tell the "company men" among our colleagues that the company will throw them away if they feel like it. It's time to tell our bosses that they need to make a shared sacrifice, and if they want our labor, they have to listen to us. It's time to demand that the government actually fund public education and do right by our students. 

Teaching High School Debate Differently

High school debate's worst case scenario

Friday was my last day of regular classes for the school year. It feels good to get across the finish line of a really difficult year. Going online presented a lot of challenges, especially when I had to teach debate over Zoom. My school's schedule has the year divided into five "mods," and the last mod has been completely under quarantine.

I did competitive debate for four years in high school and four years in college. It's an activity that gave an extremely withdrawn, nerdy kid a great deal of confidence in public speaking. In college it allowed me to travel to Ireland and fall in with a great group of friends. My mom was my high school's coach, and so this meant getting to spent a lot of quality time with her. One of our assistant coaches, a local college student, turned me on to philosophy, which I had never read before. My college coaches were wonderful people too, and I learned a lot from them.

It was a very good experience overall, but by the time I was done I realized that the whole enterprise was about playing games with rhetoric and not about actually changing the world for the better. In fact, too much immersion in debate can breed a certain kind of cynicism. I remember when we did a public debate on campus and my philosphy professor, who I greatly admired, attended and said the whole thing was "sophistry." That got me thinking abou the true nature of what I was doing, and whether it was the best use of my abilities.

When I parted ways with debate I was ready. After awhile, however, I missed the high I would get from the frisson of a hard-fought round. When I switched from being a college prof to a high school teacher I thought debate would be an interesting and enjoyable thing to introduce to my students. My school preaches progressive education, meaning that the learnign should be student-focused and geared toward exploration. Debate, when done well, certainly fits the bill.

However, I was also aware of how debate can so often work at cross-purposes with a progressive mindset, especially with learning for life. The world of competitive debate is so insular and byzantine that competitors rarely talk in ways that make sense to ordinary human beings. Policy debate, where competitors read evidence so fast that they can't be understood and keep trying to prove that the affirmative team's case will cause nuclear war, is the most infamous example of this. But even in other formats debaters talk too robotically and pepper their speeches with jargon because the judges are members of the same closed system. It's not necessarily a great education for learning how to engage in public discourse. At its worst its a training ground for new Ben Shapiros.

I really believe it can be if done well, however. When I taught my class I set about focusing on educating my students for life rather than competitive debate rounds. Since the school doesn't have a team, I could ignore the latter imperative. We used the Public Forum format, which is easy for the students to learn and allows for a range of resolutions. Each topic we debated was chosen by the students. The main topics ended up being the death penalty, cannabis legalization, and gun control. I maybe would have liked some less obvious topics, but they all allowed for lots of back and forth and an ease of entering into the topic.

For the last week of class I had initially planned on doing a parliamentary style debate on something related to the school. The more relaxed format would allow the students to branch out more and the topic would allow an emphasis on passion and humor. (There is nothing students are more poised to debate than their school's rules.) However, with the protests over George Floyd's death going on, a silly debate like that seemed pretty inappropriate. Instead I had the students all do their own speeches presenting what would have been their opening case for various resolutions related to the situation. If my class was supposed to be educating them for life, I thought it best to let them choose the position and build a case for a position they truly cared about, instead of just being assigned a side.

I was really blown away by the results. The speeches actually gave me a lot of hope, considering how hard the students worked in a short period of time, and how articulate they were in their calls for change. Considering the state of the world right now, high school students should be learning debate so that they can participate and make their own mark in the public sphere. If they come out of it thinking that the truth is immaterial to any debate, or that they have mastered a bunch of rhetorical tricks to win arguments, what have we actually taught them? The world has enough bullshit as it is.

It's About More Than Just The Textbooks

24 years later this clip from Lone Star is stil relevant

There's an excellent Times piece making the rounds where they compare history textbooks between California and Texas. As you could guess, the study reveals discrepancies driven in large part by partisan politics.

We need to talk more about how history is taught to high school students, but way too much space is taken up in the discourse by textbooks. Examining them ought to be a starting point, and they are something that only tells us so much. Students tend to read textbooks pretty indifferently, what the teachers emphasize in the classroom matters a whole lot more. I also know from my time as a student that much of what is in the textbook gets stepped over, too. I only really use textbooks as a reference guide for my students, and we do very little reading from it in my survey class.

I am sure that there are teachers in Texas who are giving their students a very bottom-up version of American History that takes a critical and honest view of the nation's past. (I should know, I taught high school students in Texas once upon a time.) I am also totally positive that there are history teachers in California giving their students a traditional top-down narrative full of "America is the greatest country on earth." I am even more sure that in both states there are football coaches teaching history classes without even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject who don't bring anything to the material.

Of course, it's hard to know what all these teachers do in the classroom without some intrusive studies or potentially inaccurate self-reporting. Getting access to the course plans, syllabi, and schedules teachers use might be possible, however, considering the number of schools that require them. Just looking at the readings that teachers assign beyond the textbook would probably tell you all you need to know about the approach being taken by the class.

Or better yet, I have often thought that a survey asking teachers what movies (or movie clips) they show in class and how they use them would perhaps tell you the most, since most teachers would find this to be an inoccuous question. I got to thinking about this when a former student of mine tweeted about her rural Texas high school teacher, who would show movies like Dances With Wolves multiple times. I've seen others mention Remember the Titans as a favorite of football coach teachers (for obvious reasons) as well.

If a teacher shows films uncritically as secondary sources, and these films tend to confirm America's goodness and downplay any problems, that will say more than what textbook they use. If a teacher uses films to teach about the time they were made in, or examines them critically to get at popular myths of American history, that would tell you something else entirely.

If we are to improve the quality of history education in our schools, we need to get beyond the textbook wars. A good teacher incorporating primary sources, deep knowledge, and a critical perspective, will more than negate a bad textbook. On the other side, a teacher with little content knowledge who does not assign readings from diverse voices from the past and takes a completely uncritical approach will turn even the best textbook into hash.

So yes, we have now unearthed the textbook discrepancies. Instead of endlessly litigating this particular point of conflict, let's bear down and get deeper. That's the only way forward.

New School Year's Resolutions

Time to dispense some advice to myself

I am an educator, which means that I do not measure the passage of time by the calendar year, but by the school year. On Monday I go back for my first day of pre-school year preparation at the New York City independent high school where I teach. I feel it is always good to make a list of new school year's resolutions.

I Will Read Books On The Train During My Commute

I mostly did this last year, and it was great for my mental health. Too often I would scroll through Twitter or listen to podcasts, and when I got home at the end of the day, I was so exhausted that I could not read without passing out. Reading is by far the most meaningful spare time activity for me. If I do not have time to read I may as well not be alive. I am saving the podcasts for when I am doing household chores and the like, and hoping I can keep the Twitter use to rare moments.

I Will Lean Into Parenting When I Get Home From School

This is a big one. After enduring my commute after a long day of work, I am usually ready to just collapse into my chair and zone out. During the school year it feels like I barely see my children during the week, and I need to do more to make the most of our time together. This also keeps me from scrolling through social media or reading the news and getting depressed. Plus my kids need my support as they go into the first grade this year.

I Will Not Get Sucked Into Drama and Petty Bullshit In My Workplace

I have a great job and I teach with wonderful colleagues, but even in such fortunate circumstances there's going to be drama and petty bullshit. That's something that's just endemic to the American workplace. It can be even worse in the hothouse atmosphere of schools and universities with a lot of people used to being leaders of their classroom domain. Teachers also tend to have big personalities (part of the reason I love working with them.) Of course, this can lead to personality conflicts. In life I tend now to have a practice where I assume best intentions. In the rare case after giving someone the benefit of the doubt and they turn out to have bad intentions, I do my best to disengage and not get bogged down in their negativity.

I Will Try To Get Seven Hours of Sleep A Night

I resolve this every year, and rarely go through with it. Part of the issue is that I need to get up at 5:30 AM to get to work, and the hour or two at night that I get to myself is so precious. Hopefully I do better this year.

Last Day Of School

Yesterday was the last day of school, a day that feels very different as a teacher. When I was a child it was the king of all holidays, the day of the year when I knew I would never have more freedom. The entire summer, two and a half months of sun and fun without any bullies or authoritarian teachers to ruin it, was stretched out before me, seemingly endless. Leaving school on that day was always such a high, a feeling of complete and unaltered joy that I have only had small glimpses of since.

Nowadays the last day of school comes as bittersweet relief. My wife and I have honed our morning routines with military precision in order to be able for both of us to leave the house at the same time and for me to get to New York City, her to her school in suburban New Jersey, and my daughters to their preschool. Balancing the intensity of the school year with parenting is a daily test of our abilities. Summer feels less like freedom and more like being a World War I soldier on leave from the trenches, knowing full well that we'll be back at the front for the fall offensive.

Thus the relief. The bittersweetness comes with saying goodbye to the students at the end of the year, especially the seniors. This year there is a group of seniors who I have advised for several years and feel very close to, and their hugs and tears have moved me but also made me sad for their parting. Working in secondary education means constantly meeting new young people and helping them grow, and then having to watch them leave right at the moment they become adults.

Amidst the bittersweetness of the last day of school, I also get a needed reminder of where I've come in my life. Once summer starts I usually begin thinking about how fortunate I was to escape the world of academia and land where I am now. It is sad to see the students go, but they make me feel so appreciated. They make me feel like my work MATTERS. I got that feeling so rarely in my former life. It's the feeling that has me looking forward to September and a new beginning with a new class of students, an anticipation so foreign to my childhood summers, but one that tells me I've made the right career choice.

Suffer Little Children

Today brought an article in the Times about the educational tactics used in Success Academy charter schools.  Here's a brief glimpse:

"Indeed, several of the current and former staff members interviewed said that the network’s culture encouraged teachers to make students fear them in order to motivate them. Carly Ginsberg, 22, who taught for about six months last year at Success Academy Prospect Heights, said teachers ripped up the papers of children as young as kindergarten as the principal or assistant principal watched. She once witnessed a girl’s humiliation as the principal mocked her low test score to another adult in front of the child.
In one instance, the lead kindergarten teacher in her classroom made a girl who had stumbled reciting a math problem cry so hard that she vomited. Ms. Ginsberg resigned in December because she was so uncomfortable with the school’s approach. “It felt like I was witnessing child abuse,” she said, adding, “If this were my kindergarten experience, I would be traumatized.” She is now teaching in Los Angeles."

This article made me so very glad that I teach in a progressive school where students are treated with respect and humanity.  At the same time it brought back some very bad memories, memories that are lodged so deep in my brain that I will never forget them.

I did in fact did have a traumatizing kindergarten experience myself.  For my first two years of schooling I went to a Catholic elementary school in my Nebraska hometown before my parents pulled me out and put me in a public school in second grade.  My first grade year wasn't that bad, but kindergarten was a nightmare. Later I learned that it was supposed to be a time of exploration and happiness, of nap time and play.  My kindergarten was a misery.

My teacher was evidently brand new, and considering the protocols of small town Nebraska Catholic schools, I doubt she had much in the way of training or education.  You would think that a teacher of kindergarteners would love little children, but she seemed to despise us.  For some reason she had a special dislike of me.  I was constantly getting yelled at, usually for the crime of daydreaming, hardly.  We had to bring athletic socks in for some kind of activity one day, and while I was looking out of the window (most likely because I had been able to do the day's schoolwork with little fuss), she yelled at me and made me sit in a chair in the hallway outside of class.  While doing so, she threatened to shove my socks down my throat.  (And I hadn't even said anything!)  At least my mom called the school and demanded to talk to the teacher.

Our days were an unending train of wretched rote learning.  I remember distinctly for our school's Christmas pageant the entire class had to memorize an extremely long nativity story.  We spent hour after hour, day after day, repeating it over and over and over again, getting barked at when we made a mistake.  It's a miracle that my love of learning survived that year.

Of all the rotten things I experienced that year, two were worse than being threatened with physical violence by my teacher for the crime of looking out of the window.  One day I was pulled out of class.  I was taken to the cafeteria, which was empty, and two strangers asked me to do things and took notes.  I had no clue at the time what was going on.  I later found out fifteen years later that I was being tested for developmental disabilities.  My teacher, who never bothered to understand me, assumed that there was something wrong with me.  At the time I didn't know the reason I was made to jump up and down on one foot in the cafeteria, but it felt pretty ominous, nonetheless.

The worst thing didn't happen to me, but to another student.  We were tasked with being able to tie our shoelaces.  One day we were to come in and demonstrate our ability.  One little girl did not seem able to do it.  The teacher, in a fit of rage, shoved her out of the way.  The girl, flung to the side by the shove, struck a desk right on the bridge of her nose, which started bleeding out a gusher of blood.  I have yet to see another bloody nose so scary in its fearsomeness.  The blood covered the front of her white puffy Catholic school blouse.  The teacher sent her off to the nurse's office for help, but without a single shred of compassion or remorse in her voice.  The vision of that bloody blouse has been burned into my mind like a hot branding iron.

My mom swears that my experience in kindergarten had an extremely negative effect on my social abilities.  I was already anxious before all of this, but afterwards the anxiety and lack of confidence I felt became crippling.  This makes me think about those children being taught this very day in the Success Academy, and how many of them are losing heart when it comes to learning.  I wonder how many them will have their belief in themselves permanently shredded.  All the while Eva Moskowitz, the Success Academy's leader, will keep amassing power and influence amidst the Success Academy's systematic mental abuse of children.  Like I did, they will grow up, too.  I can only hope that they are able to recover from trauma, as I have been lucky enough to do.

Son Of A Teacher

I've written before about my decision to leave academia and become an independent school teacher.  In the past I've written about how it was a hard decision, at least in terms of leaving my career behind, which I had sacrificed a great deal to sustain.  However, there was difficulty on the other end, too.  Being a high school teacher is just about the last thing I ever expected myself to be, and not because I thought myself above it.  My wife is a teacher, my little sister is a teacher (with a blog!), but most importantly, my mother was a teacher.  I knew all too well what I would be getting myself into, and knew that it would be challenging.

Lots of education "reformers" act as if the teaching profession is full of layabouts collecting inflated union salaries, but I knew from experience that stereotype could not be further from the truth.  The profession has an insanely high attrition rate; about half of new teachers leave the profession before their fifth year.  It is a job that requires full mental, emotional,  and sometimes physical commitment.  It is very hard to do right, and is not well paid work.  On top of that, teachers are constantly being vilified, and parents and students feel more entitled than ever to challenge the authority and decisions of teachers.

I saw a lot of this first hand through my mother, who taught about thirty years total.  I saw how giving bad grades to students resulted in angry phone calls from their parents on Sunday afternoons.  On those same Sunday afternoons I would see her grading for hours on end while other people were out having fun or relaxing.  I saw her car egged and a small homemade bomb that (thankfully) didn't detonate put on our front walk.  I saw how people could put years and years and their whole heart and soul into a job, only to be treated as a threat to be tuned out rather than listened to.  I saw how teachers don't get more authority and power in the workplace with age, but often a lot less, unless they join the dark side and become administrators.  I saw how she coached speech and debate teams, sacrificing multiple Saturdays to get up at 4AM to ride a bus full of students to Omaha, for which she was paid a bonus as big as the teacher sponsor of the cheerleading squad.  I heard her tell me about dishonest and borderline illegal acts by her bosses that I can't mention here for liability reasons.  I even saw her in one case be the object of an obscene, verbally abusive rant by a student whose father threatened to sue because his daughter had been taken to detention as a result.  At the end, I saw the criminal lack of gratitude shown by the school for her decades of hard work.

To be honest, growing up I didn't think I could ever be as strong as she was, to endure all of that to get a comparatively small salary in return.  I'm lucky to teach in a much easier environment, with smaller classes, motivated students, and all the resources I need provided.  I hate that people assume that because I have this rarified job that that somehow makes me a better teacher than a public school teacher like my mother.  From what I've seen, it is quite the opposite.  My mother doesn't have an advanced degree, but I could never do what she did.  Our society treats people like her -outspoken experienced teachers who don't put up with anyone's shit- as some kind of obstacle to be overcome, rather than the heroic figures that they truly are.  Some can be proud to be the son of a politician or the son of a banker or the son of a CEO.  I'm proud to be the son of a teacher.

Eliminate Tenure For New York Times Columnists

Former restaurant critic Frank Bruni used his platform as a New York Times columnist today to attack teacher tenure. The whole thing was basically him just repeating stuff that some ex-TFA guy now administrator was saying. It was, I must say, rather lazy journalism in that respect. That seems kind of odd, considering that Bruni thinks that teachers are somehow not hired or retained for "talent" and are encouraged by tenure to be a bunch of lazy layabouts. Now I'm not going to directly refute his arguments right here, partly because they are effing weak, and partly because others have already done it so well.

No, instead I would like to deflate his assumption, oft repeated by anti-tenure ranters, that teaching is the only profession in the world where incompetent people keep their jobs. Here's what Bruni had to say: "There’s no sense in putting something as crucial as children’s education in the hands of a professional class with less accountability than others and with job protections that most Americans can only fantasize about."

So I guess other professionals, like say journalists, are totally accountable and always get fired for poor work, and are never allowed to coast on their past accomplishments. Does that sound like bullshit to you? It sure does to me. I figured I would turn the tables, and be an evaluator of the job performance of Bruni and his colleagues, assigning them grades with commentary.

Charles Blow: A
Blow has gone from a statistics-bound column to a more traditional style, and he writes with passion and intelligence. Unlike many other columnists, he is willing to talk insightfully about racism, poverty, parenthood, and rural life. His column is the only absolute must-read in the bunch.

Gail Collins: A-
Collins is by far the funniest of the columnists, and is often able to translate that wit into hard-nosed critique of Washington. However, she seems to be coasting recently, and has become more bemused than critical of the shenanigans of our political class. She never fails to make me laugh, which is why I always read her.

Timothy Egan: A-
A good writer who wrote a great popular history of the Dust Bowl, Egan often brings in interesting historical backing as well as knowledge gleaned from actually rubbing shoulders with and talking to regular people. He could be more consistent, but his better columns are really worth reading.

Roger Cohen: B
He writes solid and insightful stuff on world affairs. His grade is harmed by a tendency to engage in apologist behavior on behalf of Israel.

Paul Krugman: B
Krugman was once a must-read columnist full of wit and insight on numerous topics, but since the beginning of the recession he has been sounding the same note over and over again. Each of his columns is a repeated argument against austerity economics and for Keynesian stimulus. It is an important thing to be saying, but to properly fulfill his job he needs to be presenting new material.

Joe Nocera: B

Nocera has a maddening tendency to uncritically endorse education "reform" initiatives. However, his quest to call the NCAA to account for exploiting its players is very admirable, as are his columns about regulating the financial system. He's mediocre when talks about what he doesn't know, but great on the stuff that he does.

Frank Bruni: C
Former restaurant critic Bruni is alright with his slice of life columns, but when he writes about broader issues it can be a little embarrassing. His aforementioned piece on tenure just repeats talking points from corporate reformers. Anyone who has a platform like his should be expected to do a lot better.

Nicholas Kristof: C-
Kristof's column has become a regular soapbox for colonial white saviorism.

Ross Douthat: D
Douthat's columns are full of sophistry and scolding. He presumes to critique America's moral failings while supporting free market capitalism, a system whose only value is money. Avoids a failing grade by actually have an occasional original thought, such as his columns on classism in college.

Maureen Dowd: F
She has a tart pen but usually deploys it in a quest to be the queen bee mean girl of Washington. Anything she writes about Obama is meant to emasculate him, and she has a never-ending vendetta against Hilary Clinton. In the midst of the turmoil in Ferguson and Iraq, she still insisted on making an attack on Hillz her biggest priority.

Thomas Friedman: F
Friedman is heroin for middle-aged corporate drones who want to appear educated without actually being so. There is more cant and sophistry per column inch in his work than anything else published these days.

David Brooks: F
Brooks' columns are almost always based on some kind of false dichotomy he uses to oversimplify complex issues. He is a tireless purveyor of Conservatism Lite, completely unaware of the fact that he is a self-parody. If you printed his columns in the Onion, people would think they were a satire on neo-conservatives.

Overall, I would say that except for Krugman, Collins, Nocera, Cohen, Blow, and Egan there are literally hundreds of bloggers who could do just as good or better a job as the other columnists. I don't think the Times has a tenure policy, but it sure as hell isn't "talent" that's keeping these people in their jobs.

Introducing "Police For America" (some satirical fun)

"Police For America"Seeks To Use Elite Graduates To Patrol Underserved Communities

AP)  Backed by money contributed from the Gates Foundation and other wealthy donors, the organization Police For America has recently grown from a small non-profit to a prestigious entity that elite college graduates from around the country are angling to get on their resumes.  PFA has responded to the spike in crime in poor communities by providing them with recent college graduates to work on their police force for two years.  PFAers get six weeks of training in criminal justice over the summer before walking the beat in the fall.

While some have criticized the readiness of PFA cops and questioned their lack of experience, PFA maintains that their graduates are the best and brightest of their generation.  As one spokesman said, "Our graduates come into the police force with much higher credentials than regular officers, and bring their drive and will to succeed with them.  Any issues with police work they can easily learn on the job.  Anyone who has ever had contact with the police and watched a lot of television shows understands all to the basic stuff, anyway.  Who wouldn't want the future leaders of this country patrolling their streets?"Some cash-strapped mayors in cities like Trenton, New Jersey, where hundreds of PFA cops were hired right after massive lay-offs of traditional police, agree.

While most PFAers leave the force after two years to work for the likes of Goldman Sachs, a select few have used their time in PFA to claim high-level positions in law enforcement.  This has proved especially controversial in the case of former Washington, DC, police commissioner Michael Lee, who once was caught on camera duct-taping shut the mouth of a suspect in the back of his squad car while working as a PFA cop. Although Lee lost his commissioner position after local opposition and near-mutiny by police officers in the wake of his policies, he has used the backing of wealthy foundations to advocate for "police reform" across the country, calling forcefully for privatization of the police in many communities.  "We have too many failed police departments in this country that need to shut down," Lee asserted at a recent $2,000 a plate fund-raiser in Manhattan.

Critics point out that high crime areas need experienced officers the most, and that six weeks is not enough time to prepare novice officers for the level of difficulties they must face.  They also point to statistics showing that PFA cops do not have superior arrest records or performance evaluations.  As far as the PFA cops themselves are concerned, however, they are very positive about their experiences.  Kyle Wilker, a Harvard graduate and Stockton, California, PFA officer noted that "This is a win-win for everyone.  I have the experience I can use to get a job on Wall Street, and this town has more people patrolling the streets.  And how lucky are these people to have a Harvard grad on duty?"  When asked whether he would ever come back to Stockton after leaving PFA, Wilker went silent.

The murder rate in Stockton has not gone down under the PFA-heavy force, but Wilker isn't worried, "The old way of policing wasn't about to be challenged by the veteran police officers stuck in their ways.  We are part of a wave of innovation, thinking outside of the box, and embracing the new normal.  I'll get back to you on the specifics at some other point."

When I Hear the Word Innovation, That's When I Start Running for Cover

If you look over at the right-hand column of this blog, you'll notice that my most popular post is an analysis of buzzwords and jargon used by educational administrators.  My ears are very sensitive to these words, because when I hear them, I know something bad is about to go down.

Case in point, Mitt Romney has been flogging the education issue recently with the usual bullshit language of "failed schools," "choice," "accountability," and, you guessed it, "innovation."  That last word has now been so misused that I can barely believe that politicians are still invoking it.  When Mitt says "innovation" he means government-sponsored giveaways to the growing for-profit education industry and its fat cat corporate underwriters.  Hence his desire to get banks back into student lending, reduce regulations on for-profit colleges, and give federal dollars to K-12 for-profit schools under the guise of uplifting poor students.  (I find it ironic that Romney calls education the "civil rights issue" of our day, but does nothing in his proposals to address our segregated schools, which are more racially divided than they were at the time of the Brown decision in 1954.)

"Innovation" is our modern day "right to work," a disingenuous slogan by the capitalist elite to get the public to behind something that they would not support if they understood what it was really all about.  After all, the banking protections of Glass-Steagall were repealed in the name of "innovation," and Chase Manhattan guru Jamie Dimon has fought against greater regulation of our financial industry with claims that such rules would stifle innovation.

Well, we all know how that's turned out.  Our economy has found innovative ways to commit hair-kari, and Dimon's bank has recently developed completely novel and innovative paths to losing billions of dollars.  Turning our education system over to for-profit entities and letting our bankers run riot do not constitute innovations, but naked power grabs by amoral greed-heads who'd throw their own grandmothers down the stairs if it meant they'd be able to make a buck from it.  That's why when I hear the word "innovation," I hold onto my wallet and run for cover.

The Favorite Buzzwords and Phrases Used by Educational Administrators, and What They Really Mean

Back when I was still an academic, my wife and I noticed that administrators at all levels of education tended to fall back on a ready reserve of stock words and phrases.  Like all experts, including those in the supposedly more rarified air of higher ed, they use jargoned language to boost their authority by implying that they know something that other people, usually the faculty, don't.  One increasingly hears these terms in our increasingly fatuous public discourse on education, where, like a virus, words like "accountability" attack the listener's brain and render it paralyzed.  Luckily, I currently teach at an institution that has eschewed most of this heinous bullshit.  Here are a few of the key terms I have noticed, with their real meanings broken down as a public service.

Flexibility
This term is borrowed from the corporate world, where "flexibility" means "we want to hire temporary and "part-time" labor so that we can keep our employees low-paid and compliant." This same meaning can apply to the use of adjunct labor in academia, but usually when administrators say they want the faculty to be "flexible" they mean "shut up and do as you're told."

The research data shows/studies say
Whenever administrators try to push a new initiative that the faculty don't like (especially in terms of assessment and online courses) they will silence their opponents by saying, "there are studies that show that this really works." Keep in mind that they don't actually present this data, or go into any detail as to how it was compiled, or even offer their own reasoning. The "studies show" gambit basically boils down to "I can't actually offer a convincing argument for why we're making you do this, just do it because we said so."

Student/child-centered learning
I am all for "student centered learning" in the abstract. My current institution actually practices it, but many administrators who invoke it do so only to make themselves sound good.  "Student centered learning" has become a well-worn cliche, and really another way of saying "do whatever makes the customers happy."

Transparency
Again, I'm all for transparency, but in my line of work "transparency" is a one-way mirror. When the higher ups tell the hoi polloi that they want transparency, they really mean "we're going to be looking over your shoulder no matter what you do."

Accountability
This word has gotten a lot of mileage recently, and has been used as a rallying cry for attacking teachers and knee-capping professors. Of course, it is faculty who are always held accountable (and mostly the vulnerable untenured variety), while administrators are never evaluated. As my wife likes to say, accountability really means "do our job so we don't have to." As for me, it also means "don't forget who's in charge."

Innovation
Administrators love to claim that they are going to bring innovation. They often fancy themselves to be innovative, creative minds who must move the lazy, hidebound faculty into action. The word innovation, however, ought to be taken with a grain of salt. I've read a lot about the shenanigans that led to the financial collapse, and bankers used to throw around the word innovation to describe extremely risky practices that exploited loopholes in regulation. Similarly, academic and school administrators call things of questionable value that benefit their CV "innovation." For instance, forcing the university to use an entirely new software program for its admissions and academic records when the old one is doing just fine is a common "innovation" that the "innovator" will put on his/her resume when looking for the next step up on the academic ladder.

Assessment
This one is so tricky and laden with landmines that I should devote a whole post to it. The new assessment regime in our universities, in all its bureaucratic insanity, is like Dickens' Circumlocution Office combined with something straight of Jonathan Swift with a dose of Orwell thrown in. Let me just say that the word "assessment" has become as amorphous in its meaning and application as academic terms like "modernity" and "transnational."

Any other terms worthy of being added to the list?