Wise Words to the Class of 2013

American colleges have planned your rut for you. You go to school, you spend four years trying to avoid being sexually assaulted by a Phi Delt (that goes for women and pledges alike), you graduate $250,000 in the red, and then you DESPERATELY try to find a job—one that offers you upward mobility so that you might quickly work your way up to a salary that helps you pay off all the loan installments you’ll be accumulating throughout your adult life: college, a house, a car, college for your kid, etc. It’s just one giant hole you’ll never dig out of. And that debt you amassed has not only deprived you of thousands upon thousands of dollars, but it’s taken something even more precious: your sense of FREEDOM, dammit.

 

Every year, I look forward to Drew Magary’s open letter to the recent class of college graduates and today’s is extra special because it’s been exactly fourteen years since my graduation from Loyola College in Maryland.  So, without further ado, go here (WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE):

“You’re Fucked But You’re Free: A Message to the Class of 2013″

Why the Jeff Bliss story makes me want to quit

I am sure that by the time I am writing this, you have read about, heard about, or seen the viral video featuring Texas high school student Jeff Bliss going off on his teacher about having to complete another packet.  The video is roughly a minute and a half, was recorded “undercover” by a classmate using a cell phone, and is largely out of context, although if other sources are to believed, her request for him to “quit bitching” and subsequently throwing him out of the room prompted his tirade.  Her dismissive attitude comes off as a combination of her not caring about her students and her not trying to get flustered and overreact to his ranting (although maybe I’m assuming too much with the latter–I have been in situations where students are yelling at me and one of the few ways I keep myself from yelling back is to act casual).

No matter what the teacher did or what her behavior was before, during, and after the confrontation, two things are certain:  she’s been placed on administrative leave and Jeff Bliss has become a folk hero.  A smattering of praise via a quick check of the internet …

• “aaronburr,” commenter on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet:  ”Way to go, Jeff! You’re a true American hero.”
• HumanWazHere, WaPo commenter:  ”GO JEFF GO!!! We need more people like this in the USA!! I Support YOU!”
• Zak Malamed, Student Voice:  ”Hey, buddy! You are quite an inspiration & great representative of the work [Student Voice] is doing.”
• Lisa Nielsen:  ”I commend Jeff Bliss for standing up for himself and all the other students who deserve a beyond-the-packet education … Our children are not our future. They are the voices we need TODAY. Our job is to listen and support them. When they say they can’t learn the way we are teaching (or not teaching in this case) we must hear them and do what we can to ensure they receive the education they deserve. When we do that we will have citizens who are not just good at sitting down and filling in packets but standing up and filling our world with those who are empowered with embrace their right to change the world.”

Now, there are many more tweets, posts, and comments that are similar.  Many are quite different, ranging from John Spencer’s post about how we don’t have the whole story and therefore shouldn’t rush to judgment to Teaching Underground’s post about how all this really does is perpetuate the “bad teacher” narrative to more caustic comments about how Bliss was being disrespectful (although I’d say petulant is more accurate a term).  

The Jerry Maguire Moment

In the past couple of days, I have seen and read about five or ten articles and posts that all deal with the same topic: whether or not it’s worth it to be a teacher.

I’m sure you’ve seen them too.  There’s someone saying his profession no longer exists.  There’s a response to that, saying they won’t quit despite “inane” reform.  There’s the post saying that young people shouldn’t become teachers.  And then there are the responses to that.  So, in keeping with the trend I’d like to add my voice to all of this and say that if you’re young and you’re thinking about becoming a teacher, good for you.

But I honestly don’t care.

There but for the Grace of …

 

Earlier today, John Spencer posted this problem to Education Rethink:

The title of the post “See if you can spot what’s wrong …” dares you to see how this is a poorly worded test question.  And it is.  But in putting on my Wizard of the Language Arts hat (because “English teacher” suggests an image I choose not to be associated with), I realized that this goes much deeper than a simple fractions problem about Grace and her bean plant.

You see, Grace was like any other student.  She was tired of having her learning dictated to her and wanted to own it.  So, she sought learning experiences that were authentic.  Rather than learn the facts about the process of photosynthesis and plant growth, she thought it more important to plant a sprout and measure its growth, thinking that the miracle of curiosity and learning is what made the bean plant grow.

So, she asked her teacher if she could plant bean sprouts.  But her teacher was not an innovative educator.  Her teacher was doing what she could to follow orders and not get fired.  She had considered that Grace and her classmates bring their own seeds, but the class parents–with whom she kept in constant contact–balked at the idea because for all of the money that Grace’s teacher earns with getting the summers off, she should be able to afford to buy seeds, sprouts, plants, dirt, and gardening equipment for all of her students out of her own pocket.

Grace’s teacher tried to say that she has been doing a lot more with a lot less, so this is really not realistic.  For Grace’s mother, that was the last straw.  Fed up with the unwillingness of the teacher to teach her daughter outside of forcing her to be compliant within a system designed for a factory-model society, she pulled her out of the school and took her to a gardening store.  They went home and planted the seeds and waited for the miracle of curiosity and learning to occur.

Grace measured the bean plant at the end of each week.  At the end of week 1, the plant was 4 inches tall.  At the end of week 2, it was 4-1/2 inches tall.  At the end of week 3, it was 5 inches tall.  Grace liked how the plant was growing and would come back week after week.  But soon after, it didn’t get much taller.  In fact, it stopped growing and shrank altogether.  She used her savvy as a digital native to find out the answer to her question, but none of the answers that were provided seemed to apply to the problem at hand.

The plant eventually died.

Years later, as a high school student, Grace was back in the public school system–teacher’s pensions had wrecked the economy so she was forced to endure public indoctrination–and when she was taking a chemistry test, there was a question about volume of liquid in a watering can that was being used to water bean plants.  Grace thought back to all those years ago and wrote,  “Clearly, this is an indication of the liberal conspiracy to indoctrinate students.  I have decided to opt out from this test because plants cannot all be expected to require water in order to grow.”  She then left the room.

This story made its way into a rejected application to one college and then her blog where it was reposted and retweeted by a few people, but within a few weeks fell back into obscurity.

Grace is now in her early 30s and unemployed.  She lives at home and blogs about how the public education destroyed her curiosity, quashed her love of learning, and stole her dreams.

The answer, by the way, is c) 6.

You don’t need to brag more, you need to advocate

Among the many articles and blog posts I’ve seen this week concerning New Year’s resolutions, the one that stood out to me the most was the one Julie Conlon wrote for EdWeek Teacher wherein she talks about how she has resolved to not just be more positive as a teacher, but show off the positive things that she and her students have done in her classroom (“A New Year’s Resolution:  Brag More”). This came about because she had been invited to a local chamber of commerce happy hour and found that she felt excluded from the conversation, which was mostly people commiserating over their jobs and having the other types of conversations you have when you’d network.

When she tried to join in on the conversation, Conlon got the typical patronizing responses we in education all get and responded with some jokes:

All they had for me were sympathetic shakes of their heads and a few patronizing quips.

“Not a lot of money in that.”

“Ninth grade? I remember what I was like in 9th grade.”

“I don’t know how you do it. You’re a much better person than me.”

I found myself making excuses and jokes. “It’s nice to have my summers off. Why do you think I’m at a bar on a school night? When it comes to 9th grade boys, it’s not me you should feel sorry for, it’s the girls in my classes; At least I’ve learned to laugh at the boys’ antics. The girls are still crying—and will be for the next 10 years.”

Later on, she has a similar experience in a department meeting and it’s not until she actually has classes that she realizes that she needs more of her students’ stories to be heard and that quite possibly, that will help change the image of teachers:

The people we meet in a bar or those we sit next to on a plane cannot see into our classrooms to witness the daily flashes of brilliance, inspiration, and enthusiasm that fuel our fires and give us the energy to teach. Instead, they hear the stories on the news and believe them. We need to invite them into our world and tell the stories about the students and the teachers we work beside everyday. Let’s show them that what happens between our opening and closing bells is just as significant as what happens on Wall Street. When they hear about what we really do—rather than our complaints of low pay, unfair testing, and kids who really are just kids—maybe then we’ll start to see some changes. Changes in the conditions we work in, changes in the pay we receive, and changes in the future for our students—which is really what it is all about.

Since the piece was posted on EdWeek, it was guaranteed a pretty large audience. And unsurprisingly, I have seen it shared and retweeted at least a couple of times since I first read it yesterday morning. And why not? It’s a pretty great sentiment, one that definitely is focused on our mission as educators. But I have a couple of problems with it.

Talking Points vs. Perspective

I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block lately when it comes to this blog.  I’ve also been doing a lot of soul searching when it comes to both my writing about education and my teaching career in general.  I’ve been able to overcome the writer’s block a little–there are a couple of posts that will be forthcoming before I take a break until after the New Year (well, provided the Mayans aren’t right)–but I still find myself doing a lot of that soul searching, which I’m not sharing a lot of for a couple of reasons.  One is that it’s very personal, another is that it’s nothing I am ready to share at the moment, and another is that I’ve found myself very angry at times.

Back at the end of October, I wrote a post, “Connected Educator Disconnect” wherein I expressed my frustration with how #edchat and the like have made me feel like I’m a bad teacher–it seems that everyone is setting the world on fire but me.  I haven’t really been on #edchat since and have only done one or two tweetchats altogether (though part of that is due to being too busy), and have cut back on the number of articles and blog posts I have been reading as well.  So I haven’t been wanting to post a lot of my thoughts because I’ve been quite frustrated and I didn’t think it was constructive for me to express my anger, especially since I didn’t feel like being eviscerated by certain bloggers if I dared expressed frustration with students.

Which I don’t, really.  Oh yeah, there’s the standard-issue things that annoy me but this year, my classes have been all right.  I’d rather not go off on administration, other teachers, or policy, because I’m trying to maintain some modicum of professionalism here, and that’s not what bugs me.  What bugs me is that the same rhetoric I’ve been hearing for the better part of the last couple of years still persists and that’s what sends my blood pressure spiking when I’m reading my usual blogroll.  Because the talking points never, ever, ever change:  I’m a cog in a 19th-Century industrial model system that is abusing children, stealing dreams, and destroying the country.  I don’t have a monopoly on knowledge.  College is unecessary.  There are many examples of students out there who go on their own and don’t need the system to succeed.  Oh, and I make too much money and have too much time off.

Though I honestly dismiss the writer when those talking points come up, there is some truth here and there to what I read.  I’m working in a system that is far, far, far from perfect and I am trying my best to enrich the 100 or so young  minds I encounter on a daily basis and make them feel like they’re getting something out of my class.  But then I read articles like “In New Castle, Pa., trying to outrun poverty,” which was in today’s Washington Post and I feel that things are put in perspective.

This is why.

MEMORANDUM

 

To:  The youth of America

From:  A teacher in his mid-30s

CC:  The Internet

Date:  11/10/2012

Re:  Social media

So as you probably have heard, President Barack Obama recently won reelection.  Moreover, the youth vote was just as significant this time around in 2012 as it was in 2008.  This surprised some “experts” because voter enthusiasm was supposedly low this year and that often translates to a low turnout, especially among youth, because of a belief that if you don’t believe in it or like it you won’t do it.  You’ll find out as you go through life that “experts,” especially if they are pundits, are quite often wrong (statisticians, on the other hand?  Surprisingly right).  Good job on keeping things going and if this was your first time voting, I have to say you’re lucky to have voted in such an important election.  My first presidential election was 1996 via absentee ballot.  Not exactly the excitement of pulling the lever in person.

I watched election returns on Tuesday night and went to bed at about 1:00 a.m. after Mitt Romney finally conceded.  I didn’t fall asleep until 1:30 or 2:00 because I was so hyped from the Obama victory.  The next day I was a zombie through most of my classes, but I did have a great conversation with a few students in my study hall, a couple of whom voted and a couple of whom were too young to do so.  We talked about the Electoral College and how that worked (and how fortunate they were to see it work in a year that they–seniors–were taking government), and why there was such a focus on Ohio and not on, say, Texas or California, which had more electoral votes.  It was the type of intelligent conversation I don’t hear enough among adults when it comes to politics and I think I closed it with some advice: “Keep following the news, and if you get frustrated, that’s okay.  Politics is frustrating and makes you want to bang your head against the wall, but you should stay informed.”  I have been reminded time and again by “experts” in my field that I do not have a monopoly on knowledge and am not a sage, but I’m pretty sure I was in the position to offer said advice.

But as bolstered as I was in my face-to-face conversations with those students, I have to say that I was both disappointed and disgusted by what many said over social media.  On Wednesday morning, Buzzfeed posted screen captures of various tweets, mainly from teenagers that expressed outrage at the president’s reelection and had prolific use of the “n” word.  Yesterday, Jezebel called out quite a number of those tweeters (twits?) in their piece, “Racist Teens Forced to Answer for Tweets About ‘N—–’ President” (they’ll put the word in the headline; sorry, I won’t).  Go through the article and you’ll see some reprehensible language as well as a running excuse, “My account was probably hacked.”

The comments on the piece are pretty interesting as well.  Several people actually seem to come to the defense of the tweeters (twits?) because of several reasons: “you wouldn’t have posted this if Romney had won,” “well, black people call each other n—– all the time,” “you’re shaming them publicly and that’s going to mess up their lives,” “blah blah blah First Amendment,” and my favorite, “they’re just kids (often followed with, ‘they don’t really know what they’re saying’).”  Most of the other commenters fall on the opposite side of that argument, saying that, no, it’s a good thing that racism and hate speech like this was called on the carpet so publicly.

I fall in the latter camp.  It’s one thing to be upset that President Obama was reelected; a few of my friends posted how upset they were at the election results.  However, none of them used a racial slur because they all realize that you can be upset about a president who happens to be black winning an election without resorting to calling him that word.  Furthermore, I don’t buy the argument that this is a First Amendment issue, because Jezebel is letting these fine youths say what they’re saying, then is calling them out for it.  I also don’t buy the argument that they’re kids and they don’t really know better.  Because first of all, they’re teenagers and by that age, there is a certain amount of common sense that they should have.  Oh sure, I did stupid crap and said plenty of stupid crap when I was a teenager, but I was smart enough to know that I wasn’t going to say racist things or put them in print (because a) you just don’t do that and b) I’m not a racist).  I teach in a high school.  I get to hear people use the word “Jew” in the same pejorative fashion they use the word “fag,” and I have no qualms about calling them on the carpet right in front of their peers.

Here’s the thing.  I realize that as the youth of America, you are smarter than people give you credit for.  I go on #stuvoice chats every once in a while and I see some great stuff; plus, I know what it’s like to be underestimated by adults because I was a teenager at the height of the whole “Generation X is a bunch of slackers” thing in the early 1990s.  But not everyone sees things the way I do.  In fact, many people choose to focus on only the negative aspects of a particular group of people, usually because they don’t like those people in the first place.  Do you want to know why adults might see you as entitled or snot-nosed or disrespectful or bratty?  Furthermore, do you want to know why so many adults who are in charge of your schools still demonize social media? Well, this is why.

No, really.  This is why.  They don’t see the value in Twitter or Facebook or whatever innovative app is being pushed at us through articles and PD because all they can think of is the time when you were posting racist things or spewing insults about faculty and administrators or bullying other students.  The feeling of discomfort, disgust, or pain often resonates longer than that which is pleasurable or positive.  So what you do online–the words you choose, the actions you take, and even the excuses you give (“I really didn’t mean it,” “I was joking,” “Oh, we’re just having fun,” “It’s my personal tweet,” “My account was hacked,” “First Amendment”)–makes more of an impact than you realize.  You might have a short attention span and think that something you said a week ago is “old,” but your parents, your teachers, your guidance counselors, your principals, members of the community, college admissions officers, future employers … well, they may not.  Furthermore, what you say may, to one or more people, represent not you as an individual, but the entire group of teenagers in your community or the youth of America as a whole.

Like I said, this is why you’re arguing about Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, or whatever with your teachers and principals.  And this is why you’re not taken as seriously as you think you should.  I am sure you find my comments here disrespectful, but I only wish to point out the unfortunate truth of the actions of those who wind up representing you in the eyes of older generations.

On Wearing Purple

[A quick note:  I originally posted this entry on October 20, 2010, on my old blog.  Since the blog has been taken down, I wanted to repost it (with some minor edits) today.]

I was bullied in school.

The most overt bullying I dealt with was from the fifth grade until right about the middle of the 10th grade and it was mainly because I was your typical nerdy kid who didn’t wear the right clothes and liked to spend his Friday nights watching movies and Star Trek reruns and poring over a stack of comic books instead of heading to the nearest keg party or wooded lake area to get completely obliterated and have sex.

Not that I didn’t want to have sex, but my romantic ineptitude during my teenage years isn’t that relevant to this. The bullying tapered off as I went through my junior and senior years, or at least it was more subtle than having a “kick me” sign taped to my back at the end of science class, or the kid sitting next to me on the bus threatening to beat the shit out of me if I said to anyone that he was threatening to beat the shit out of me. Some days, I’d go from first to eighth period and not deal with anything.  Other days, my “friends” would cut me down because they came up with a creative and offensive nickname for me, or thought that my using a certain bathroom in the school because it had doors on the stalls and didn’t smell like smoke was hilarious.  There were other things, too; right up through the time I graduated college I think I heard the phrase “Can’t you take a joke?” more than I ever thought I would.

Not that I was ever completely innocent, mind you. For every person who was a victim of being picked on and pushed around in my school, there was someone that victim found to pick on and push around, even if it was someone who was a friend, and even if he didn’t realize he was doing it.   I think we called it “ribbing” or “busting balls,” and I don’t know how much we thought about what we were doing.  Of course, does anyone?

Hey dude, your swag is mint!

Apparently, this is what passes for cool when you’re one of today’s teens.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Miss Hubbard, spent part of a day introducing us to the concept of slang.  I don’t remember what the point of the lesson was, but I do remember that at one point, she went around the room and asked each of us what slang words we were used to hearing.  The typical ones went around–awesome, cool, dude–and I remember that she explained what those words really meant, but the one she couldn’t explain was the most popular at the time: mint.

Stop laughing.  It was 1986.

Anyway, she tried to explain it as best she could.  She knew what mint was in terms of a flavor, and she also knew what mint was in terms of condition, but had never heard it used as a synonym for awesome.  Had Urban Dictionary been around in the mid-Eighties, I’m sure she would have looked it up:

Mint

An expression that means something is nice or cool. This is usually used in response to a statement.

Danny: I just got some brand new Jordan retro 2′s.
Brandon: Mint

Fast forward 26 years.  I’m at yearbook camp last week, sitting in the Online Design Tips and Tricks session and Jeff, the guy running it, was showing us how to merge a photograph and some text together so that the photograph fills the text (I can’t remember what the actual term for this is.  Ghosting?  Masking? Phototextinessing?).  It was pretty easy too and got me all psyched because my staffers totally want to do this trick, and I was able to do it within a few seconds.  So were the teenagers sitting at the computers to my right–when they weren’t texting and giggling about stuff on their iPhones.  I had to do a double-take at their screen, however, because she had, in big block letters, written “SWAG.”

“I really wish that word would go away,” I thought to myself before realizing that this is what Miss Hubbard must have thought when she had 20 eight-year-olds saying “mint” every other second.

Following up on AIDS, the president, and context

So I’ve written this week about AIDS education and President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comment that the right wing has been hammering him on ever since he gave a speech.  In surfing around these past couple of days, I came across two pieces that serve as great follow-ups to what I was talking about.

First, there’s “AIDS Conference, New Documentary Raise Questions About Sex Ed.” from Education Week:

In Ms. Morris’ health education class in Greenville, Miss., a lesson on sexually transmitted diseases is almost comic.

And Ms. Morris seems to know it.

She can’t say the words condom or contraceptive to explain how the spread of an STD, including HIV/AIDS, might be prevented, much less to prevent pregnancy.

It’s a really good look at how off-kilter sex education has become in the United States (and it made me feel even more grateful for the education I did receive).

And on President Obama’s comments, we have The Daily Show, which is brilliant as always. (“Democalypse 2012–Do we look stupid, don’t answer that edition”)