Category / Community

by nflanagan

Where the Boys Aren’t: Why is Teaching Still a Female-Dominated Profession?

Last week, the Michigan Department of Education named Candice Jackson, a third grade teacher and instructional coach in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the 2023 Michigan Teacher of the Year.  Hearty congratulations to Ms. Jackson, and my heartfelt wish for an awesome year, packed full of opportunities.  In my (admittedly unasked-for) opinion, teachers in Detroit have been beaten up for decades, but are a talented, determined bunch—teachers with a mission. It’s especially wonderful to see one of them recognized, and their work showcased.

What I found interesting is that all ten of the regional finalists are women. They’re a diverse bunch, too, teaching across the K-12 spectrum in multiple subjects and contexts.

I’m old enough to remember when hiring men to teach in elementary schools was a district goal—we thought that men would serve as role models for younger children and were ecstatic when our new varsity basketball coach was hired to teach kindergarten.

Hiring women as administrators and in secondary jobs that usually went to male candidates (like—cough—band directors) was seen as progressive (by some school boards and hiring committees, anyway); the percentage of women in formerly male-dominated education roles has steadily crept upward.  Over half of school principals are women, in 2023, and a quarter of superintendents are female, a 12% jump over the past two decades.

There’s some research that suggests blended teaching cultures benefits students—that veteran teachers and novice teachers have much to teach each other—and there’s research that supports learning gains when students have teachers of the same race. But what about gender?

The K-12 teaching force has grown increasingly female, although slicing and dicing the numbers is tricky. States where teacher unions are still strong tend to have more male teachers, especially secondary teachers—which may be a function of higher salaries. In Southern, right-to-work states, the percentage of male teachers is lowest—about 18%  of the K-12 workforce in Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

An imprecise but useful stat: about three-fourths of K-12 public school teachers are women, across the United States. Interestingly, there are more men (white men, anyway) teaching in private schools than in public—and for considerably less money.

You may not have noticed, but this week is both National Nurses’ Week as well as Teacher Appreciation Week. A cynical person might wryly suggest that it’s efficient to double up these “honor women” weeks, get all this female recognition nonsense over with and let them get back to their underpaid service jobs.

But something has been happening in nursing careers. There are more men training to become nurses—nearly doubling their numbers from 2008 to 2021—and salaries are rising fast.

As we consider how to stop the hemorrhaging of the teacher workforce, the question might be: What is happening, in K-12 public education, that makes women stay—and excel in—teaching and aspire to school leadership positions? What is driving men away from education jobs? And why would men decide to pursue nursing, but not teaching?

I have some thoughts about that—but need to preface them with a disclaimer: None of this is hard evidence, let alone causal evidence, but it’s pretty clear that the female-dominated teaching profession, once the refuge of intelligent women who wanted interesting careers and couldn’t find them elsewhere, is in trouble.

Money is one obvious reason—although male teachers in the U.S. make about $2200 more than female teachers. Teaching is, always has been, a low-paying job, and it’s getting worse. As a society, we’ve moved away from the idea of a male breadwinner and female secondary income—the “my wife is a teacher so she can be home with the kids in the summer” syndrome.

When teacher unions began lobbying (and striking) for more (fair) pay, decades ago, the never-ending source of a low-cost, qualified female workforce for public education dried up. The response was not acknowledging the importance of public schools in building society, and paying up, but pushing back and even vilifying the unions.

But it’s more than salaries—because blaming it all on low salaries implies that women, more than men, are more willing to be servile, working for peanuts because women have always worked for peanuts and a good feeling. When you look at the puff pieces around Teacher Appreciation Week, it’s important to note that Americans have accepted the idea that public education programming and materials (not just salaries) are funded by goodwill, generosity and Donors Choose– and that’s OK.

The United States is also an increasingly technocratic society. We have not gotten over our love affair with STEM education, although it’s clear that fabulous STEM jobs have been way oversold. We don’t value the humanities or important work with very young children, two things that are absolutely dependent on skilled teaching and judgment. In fact, we’ve embarked on yet another wrong-headed reading war with the mislabeled “Science of Reading,” a triumph of misplaced faith in a one-size-for-all, science-will-save-us method for the ultimate individualized task, learning to read. A task, it should be noted, that is overwhelmingly accomplished by women.

I think teaching, despite a lot of empty rhetoric, has steadily lost social prestige. This is ironic, because (trained and certified) teachers today are better prepared and more skilled than teachers of yesteryear. There were enormous strides made, pre-NCLB, in teacher professionalism: increased education, greater selectivity, mentoring, innovative curriculum development, pilot programs in teacher ladders and a marvelous new tool—computers in the classroom.

All of that turned around, c. 2001, and the public education focus shifted from mastery to accountability. Good teaching was less about creativity, community and judgment and more about test scores and competition. If you were looking for autonomy, mastery and purpose, you were less likely to find it in a public school—this might explain why white men still teach in higher numbers in private schools, despite lower overall salaries: because their personal work is acknowledged as central to student success.

You would think that a global pandemic—which was devastating to nursing– would have sent more people out of nursing than teaching, but nursing is a growing profession, with more candidates than the available programs can handle. And more of them men, willing to do difficult, important work.  

The pandemic has upset occupational norms, goals and rewards.  Anyone who’s passed a McDonald’s advertising $21.00/Hour jobs understands that it’s a brave new world, a re-ordering of priorities.

The people who will be standing in front of classrooms in the future, the Gen Z educators who assume schools are for testing and competing, not nurturing, those fully accustomed to shooter drills and recurring violence—will they be willing to just follow orders?

Will we eventually lose the dedicated and talented female education workforce, too?

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by nflanagan

Are Schools Responsible for the Racist Behaviors of Students?

In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all… Paul Simon, My Little Town

I spent the bulk of my teaching career—over 30 years—in a single small town in southeastern Michigan. When I started teaching there, the district was distinctly rural. There were several farmers on the school board, including one who came to board meetings in overalls. When I was hired, my principal described the district as the far edge of white flight.

Over time, a lot of that farmland was carved up into new subdivisions and a 600-lot mobile home park—folks moving out of the inner suburban ring around Detroit, looking for good schools and politically conservative neighbors. I thought about my principal’s remark all the time: white flight.

There was racism, all right. I experienced it in my own family. But I was never afraid to talk openly to my students about diversity and equity. Teaching music, I was determined to open their minds to the roots of the music they were marinating in.

I liked my students—and I liked the teachers I worked with. We probably didn’t talk about discrimination and intolerance as much as we might have; some of my former students, now adults, have shared their resentment at how relentlessly white and narrow-minded their classmates and neighbors were.

And it’s gotten worse, I believe, although I no longer live there. The elected school board has grown more conservative—and more vocal about issues du jour, including racism, sexual preferences, to mask or not to mask–and dealing with student discipline.  These days, there is a local incarnation of Moms 4 Banning Stuff, and packed, heated board meetings.

Now, the district is being sued over claims of racial harassment:

A former Hartland High School student is suing the school district and three district administrators, over what she claims was a relentless and cruel pattern of racism directed at her and other Black students while she attended the school.

Tatayana Vanderlaan, now 20, filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District that claims Hartland Consolidated School District and administrators were negligent in failing to stop racist attacks that included students saying Vanderlaan “should get lynched.”

The suit describes repeated racism directed at Vanderlaan from the time she first entered Hartland High in 2019. Vanderlaan says white schoolmates directed racial slurs at her, including the N-word, and that administrators did not address the behavior, even as it escalated.

Vanderlaan says she’s seeking “accountability,” a word that strikes me as rather perfect—isn’t accountability the holy grail of all the school reforms we’ve been chasing for decades? And furthermore, just who is to blame for vile and racist behaviors in students? Are they being held accountable?

The behaviors are vile and racist—confederate flags, the N-word, lynching threats, references to the plantation and hurtful ridicule referencing personal appearance. The taunts happened at school, but also on social media. Administrators are named in the suit, and teachers painted as dismissive.

The U.S. Attorney’s office also opened an investigation, after Vanderlaan filed a complaint. I am not surprised that former students and those still attending this school described other racist incidents to investigators. Some things, I suppose, never change.

But who’s responsible?

I want to believe that teachers would interrupt these behaviors, that at least some students would stand up for what is right. But in another little Michigan town,  two brothers wore ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts to school. They were ordered by teachers and an assistant principal to remove them, because they were vulgar and profane—and for that seemingly appropriate action, the school has been sued by the boys’ mother, for suppressing their First Amendment rights:

The slogan…has become a popular form of political commentary, appearing on T-shirts and bumper stickers and is chanted at right-leaning rallies, the lawsuit says. Even members of Congress have used the phrase during speeches on the House floor, the suit states, yet no one has been censored or punished.

So—if Congressional reps are making vile and/or racist remarks, it’s now OK in middle schools?

It would be nice to think that the courts would support public school educators in their quest to keep schools from being overrun by ugly “free speech” that disrupts the learning process—and trust me, vulgar and racist speech have the capacity to do just that. Big time.

It would also be nice to think that policymakers could have an impact on hate speech and resulting violence. But making laws is one thing—getting people to believe they are fair and useful, and willingly follow them, is another.

The small town where I used to live and teach is in Livingston County—which has just declared itself a “Constitutional County” (spoiler: there’s no such thing). According to the Sheriff, a Constitutional County’s policing personnel do not have to enforce laws they find “unconstitutional”—specifically, a package of gun safety laws recently passed by the State Legislature. So there’s that.

Something has changed in this country, all right. Respect for the rule of law, respect for civic order and civil speech, respect for all our fellow citizens.

Just who are we going to hold accountable?

In my little town
I never meant nothing, I was just my father’s son.
Saving my money
Dreamin’ of glory
Twitching like a finger on a trigger of a gun

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town

by nflanagan

Where Does Your State Rank? Your School?

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who had recently moved to East Lansing, and was searching for the best elementary school for her daughter.  Michigan has long had school of choice language—intra-district and between public school districts, with some conditions.  She shared her experience in visiting a half-dozen local schools with my class—which ‘points of pride’ they promoted, how they welcomed new families, what the vibe was when touring the buildings.

If they led off with their high test scores, she said, we immediately rejected them from consideration. What we were looking for was a lively atmosphere, a diverse student body, a school leader who introduced us to teachers and students, and whether they asked questions about my daughter and her interests.

It was a class in education policy analysis. Every week, we were reading data-loaded books and detailed monographs about comparative school success. I was older than most of the students, and my children were in college, but my classmates often had school-age children. They were invested in good local schools for their kids, as well.

To hear a trusted professor say that she wandered around on school playgrounds talking to kids, and didn’t really care about how many computer labs they had–that was a thing, 15 years ago–was a bit of a shock. The professor and her spouse (who were white) ended up choosing the school with the lowest test scores and the highest percentage of children of color.

I trust my gut, she told us. Stuff like student artwork and kids happily practicing plays in the hallways means more to me than an extra four point-something in their statewide assessment scores.

Now—it’s worth noting that East Lansing is a majority-white town and home to a large university campus. While there are pockets of poverty, discrepancies in test data, economic differences and ethnic diversity are smaller than they might be in other places.

Still—her “I trust my gut” remark stuck with me. I think about it all the time, especially when I read articles like this: Michigan ranks 27th on 2023 national education ranking.

There’s a lot of blah-blah in the article about what seem to be factors that put us squarely in the middle of the pack, but there’s zero supporting data—just the headline. There’s this quote from “business leader” (and, unmentioned, former Republican Lt. Governor) Brian Calley:

 Michigan has fallen behind much of the rest of the country in overall education performance, student retention rates and reading and math scores at a time when education funding is at an all-time high.  “We know that it’s not just a money issue. We desperately need alignment between what kids are learning and what they need to be successful in an increasingly global economy,” [Calley] said.

Here’s some data that explains how “all-time high” funding is definitely not happening in Michigan, although it may well be in other states.

Here’s what I worry about: the average citizen reading the article in their local news outlet assumes it’s true—that credible sources have deemed Michigan to be 27th in a lineup of the 50 states, and any parent looking to move here might well be cautioned to seek some other state because they’re doing a better job.

The truth is, of course, that there are superb schools in every state—and poorly managed schools in every state, and you might have to do a little legwork, trusting your gut, to figure out which schools might be the best choice. For you, and your children.

Or — more likely—you won’t really have a choice. Your circumstances will dictate that you need a school where a bus picks your children up from your neighborhood, and offers after-school care so you can work. Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli can turn up their noses at families who choose schools because they provide transportation or have great sports programs, but those reasons may be way more valid and satisfying to parents and students than test score comparisons.  

Where does your school or state rank?

Why would anyone think they could accurately assess this—and why would any educator or parent brag about rankings? More money—whether tax-based resources or family wealth—produces better test results. Always has, always will.

But there is a broad and diverse array of factors that make schools good and useful, beginning with the people who work in them.

I went to the Graduate School of Education page at MSU to see if my professor was still there—and noticed that the first tab on the home page was “National Program Rankings.”

 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

by nflanagan

America’s Most Vulnerable and Important Profession

The Teachers: A year inside America’s most vulnerable, important profession (Alexandra Robbins) does what many other books about teaching are not able to do–take the reader right into the classroom, and describe what’s happening, with empathy and perception. There are lots of books about problems in American education, and lots of books that suggest solutions for those problems, but we seldom get to see examples, conversations and the people doing the work.

If you want a drone’s eye view of American public education—where it’s been, what bedevils the century-old movement to improve it—I would recommend Diane Ravitch’s trio of excellent books that follow education reform over the last couple of decades, or A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire.

But if you want to see what happens in the classroom and in the lives of teachers, Robbins accomplishes that better than any book I’ve read since Tracy Kidder’s Among Schoolchildren, written in 1989, which now feels like ancient history . The book is a tour de force—every teacher I know who’s read it agrees—unapologetically written from the POV of teachers without feeling the need to make excuses or backpedal.

Robbins chooses three very fine teachers and takes us through one year (immediately pre-pandemic) of their classroom and personal lives, deftly illustrating how those lives overlap, the pile-up of frustrations and issues bleeding into their emotional well-being.

All three teachers have huge and versatile skill sets and genuine dedication to kids as well as subject matter. Interspersed are data and editorial comment about education and current “reforms” (scare quotes are deserved here), as well as real-life anecdotes and comments that reveal just how far teaching and teachers have sunk, in public estimation.

Robbins highlights things that other education books don’t notice or can’t be bothered with–in-building teacher jealousies and vindictiveness, physical violence against teachers, the long-term effects of cuts to things once considered normal in every school, what it’s like to sit in an IEP meeting with a recalcitrant parent or clueless colleague.

One of her teachers is a middle school special education teacher who finds himself taking on every troubled kid, something that school administrators often push, seeing him as the ultimate “male role model.”  Another is an overachieving fourth grade teacher who knocks herself out to be the perfect teacher for every child, leaving her with no time to build a satisfying personal life (and illustrating, to readers, just how arduous differentiated instruction is, even in a building with adequate resources and good teachers).

The third teacher is a 20-year veteran, a sixth grade math teacher who has mastered the delicate art of getting the best out of her students and runs afoul of a clique of punitive teachers who resent her success and want her to punish kids who are doing well in her class for their sins in other classes.

(Here’s a story from my own experience that parallels her problematic relationships with the people who should have her back—feel free to skip it): We’re having a staff meeting, late spring, to talk about the imbalance of students in elective classes. The middle school bands keep getting bigger and bigger. I will have 93 students in my 8th grade band next year. What this means (besides a classroom management nightmare) is that other elective classes will be tiny, because “too many” students want to be in the band. The Woodshop teacher is outspoken—we need to limit the number of students in band, perhaps allowing the 93 students only one semester of band, in order to give him the minimal 12/class that will keep him employed in the building full-time, rather than splitting his time between middle school and high school, or forcing him to teach a second elective subject.

Everyone knows why all those kids want to be in the band, he says. I turn to him, surprised. I have no idea why kids sign up for band, beyond the fact that they like it.  Mrs. Flanagan gives them all As and Bs, he says. If we forced her to use a bell curve like everybody else, we’d see half of them drop out.

I look around. Nobody’s making eye contact, so it’s clear that this has been a topic of conversation before. And there’s some truth there—I do give a lot of Bs and As, mainly because the students are meeting the goals set for the class. Their parents are paying for their instruments and students must practice to do well in class. We do many performances—both band and individual players. The bell curve is stupid; have all my colleagues really been using it?

I can justify everything I do, but I spent the rest of the year eating my lunch in the band room, paranoid about disrupting the building schedule. And the next September, I have all 93 students in my first hour class. Nobody ever shows up to help. The Teachers is full of stories like this—real things that happen. There is no paradise, no perfect school, although there are many vivid examples of teachers bending over backwards for students and colleagues. Why aren’t we honoring this, financially supporting this work, applauding the folks who show up to teach every day, sacrificing their time and energy for other people’s children?

This book is also the first and best description I have read about the impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning. There have been endless articles and research on “learning loss”–all rife with meaningless data and numbers–but nobody talks about the impact of being expected to position family needs as secondary to students’ needs. Robbins gets this right–there is a line between acting morally vs. choosing school over family, a choice that teachers were urged to make, and reviled when they chose their own families and their own health. We have not yet reconciled that, here in America—but the book makes a good start on it.

Highly recommended for everyone, but especially teachers. It’s a fairly fast and facile read, although well-documented with endnotes, and should give teachers a lift, knowing that their work and their dilemmas have been acknowledged.

by nflanagan

The Absolute Folly of Standardization

Remember the days when Arne Duncan insisted that having different ‘goal posts’ in every state was preventing us from improving public schools in America? Good times.

I wish I could say we’ve evolved since 2015, when Duncan stepped down. Or after it became obvious that the pandemic was rendering test data even more corrupt and useless than the test data we were enthusiastically generating early in the 21st century to solve our problems and raise that bar. (Sarcasm alert.)

Alas, we’re still hooked on the idea that a third grader in Manhattan should know and be able to do the same things as a third grader in rural North Dakota, that Algebra belongs in 8th grade (or is it 9th) and six year-olds should be starting to read, dammit. Because global competition, falling behind, blah blah blah.

In fact, one of the problems with the word “standards” and its etymology, is that everyone thinks they know what standards are supposed to mean and determine. A precise definition…

I’m not actually referring to standardized testing in this blog, although if you believe standardized testing is the only way or best way to understand how your child is doing in school, read this.

Nor am I particularly concerned about the standards (whether local, state or cleverly disguised Common Core Standards) that many educational institutions use to organize curriculum. It’s worth remembering that most of the first “national standards” (in the 1990s, spurred by the Nation at Risk report) were created by educators’ disciplinary organizations, with lots of teacher input—and were voluntary, with grade-span suggestions for what students should know and be able to do, and the order in which things were most effectively taught.

If that doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because those standards sank like a stone. It’s hard to even find links to them by diligent googling, but non-educators rejected them for various reasons, most notably Lynn Cheney who went after the History standards in the Wall Street Journal. They often included updated instructional methods and curricular ideas (constructivist math, teaching English as a second language, hands-on science and, of course, new ideas about how America actually became a nation).

The first round of national standards weren’t attached to mandated standardized tests, either. They were about curriculum and instruction. When the second round of national standards—the Common Core– were developed, they were part of a standards-aligned tests package, part of the movement toward “accountability” (a word that should forever have scare quotes when mentioned in an educational context). Practicing teachers weren’t seriously invited to the creation process and the word curriculum was not mentioned.

If tests and curricular benchmarks aren’t standardization, what is? Here’s a quote from Nel Noddings that explicates this beautifully:

The worst feature of current moves toward standardization is the insistence that all kids meet the same standards, regardless of their interests and aptitudes. This insistence is claimed to be a gesture toward equality, but it really is a sign of contempt for the wide range of human talents and the necessary work done by many of our citizens.

Any parent of two, different children understands this at a cellular level. Contempt, indeed.

Can’t meet the standards? We’re placing you on the left downslope of the bell curve, when you’re eight years old. Because we’re pursuing equality. It’s science.

There is value in knowing at what age we can expect most, if not all, students to reach intellectual and developmental milestones. That’s not the problem.

The trouble arises when we use the tools of school—instruction, curriculum, assessment—to compare the students in our care, to label them, to sort them into standardized categories when they are very young. To essentially assign their potential. To show contempt for the wide range of human talents.

What about grade levels? Aren’t there specific skills and knowledge we should be demanding of 5th graders or sophomores? Shouldn’t they all be getting the same core content at the same time?

It’s important to remember that grade levels were an efficiency tool invented when there was a big push to get everyone to go to school, rather than relying on tutors, homeschooling—or no schooling at all. Anyone who has taught school can tell you that grade levels are ephemeral, an organizational fiction.

A room full of children of precisely the same age will always have different skill and aptitude profiles. That’s not to say that we should try to adjust groups to meet academic levels, because kids learn at different rates, at different times, and in different ways–and punishing students by keeping them from their peers is insulting and bound to backfire.  

Age-based grouping is probably as good a method as any for group instruction and socializing. The trick is providing children with educational experiences that match their interests and present skills. Teachers know this as differentiation—and it’s a major challenge. (One of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of a teacher who is trying to differentiate instruction for a wide range of same-age students can be found in Alexandra Robbins’ The Teachers. Mind-boggling.)

Here’s another thing Arne Duncan used to say: Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

I actually think he was mostly right about that—and the fact that his phrase has been co-opted by ugly right-wing thinking and lawmaking may be proof that it’s a powerful thought, when it comes to actual equity and using our schools to support and encourage individual potential.

Which is the opposite of standardization.

by nflanagan

Girls. Period.

Alternate title: The Idea that Girls’ Menstrual Cycles are Shameful Information, Unless Important People Need to Know.  And you’re right–that doesn’t make sense.

Back in the day, when I was in junior high, girls were excused from taking showers after Phys Ed by discreetly telling the gym teacher, standing ever-ready with her clipboard, that they were having their “P.” She would dutifully note this on a mimeographed list of students.

This wasn’t done to assure that the girls weren’t chemically altering their bodies, thus making them superior athletes. In fact, girls weren’t even considered competitive athletes until Title IX. The reason for tracking girls’ menstrual cycles was to ensure they took showers unless their delicate condition and public embarrassment temporarily exempted them.

It’s clear—and it’s a good thing—that the old rules about even mentioning menstruation have long since crumbled. I spent 30 years teaching middle school band, and routinely kept menstrual supplies in my lower left-hand drawer, because you just never knew when a middle school girl would be surprised. And, possibly, mortified.

We didn’t have a school nurse, and the machines in the girls’ restroom were no longer refilled. Unless I wanted hapless girls canvassing 10 of their friends or making group trips to lockers and restrooms, freebie necessities were kind of like Kleenex and hand soap—donations to civilized life in the band room. Items not provided by the school—but nothing to feel embarrassed about.

Recently, a friend who is currently teaching at a local middle school emailed a cluster of friends and asked if any of us would be willing to donate pads and tampons. Not just for school-based emergencies, but also making it possible to send home overnight and weekend packages for girls whose families were not routinely supplying them. Because they’re expensive.

I keep thinking about that as I read the news out of (naturally) Florida—and other benighted states. Whose business is teaching girls—and boys—about menstruation, a natural human function? And why are legislators sticking their noses into what should be an everyday occurrence in schools, ho-hum?

Headline in the Washington Post: Florida bill would ban young girls from discussing periods in school. So—stop me if I’m wrong here—a child (and there are many girls whose periods start when they’re in elementary school; the age of menarche is getting increasingly lower) discovers that she is bleeding. In addition to needing some supplies and some friendly support, she will be breaking the law should she talk about it. According to some old man at the State Capitol.

Let’s name names:
During a Florida House Education Quality Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D) questioned her Republican colleague, state Rep. Stan McClain, on his proposed legislation that would restrict certain educational materials used in state schools. House Bill 1069 would also require that instruction on sexual health, such as health education, sexually transmitted diseases and human sexuality, “only occur in grades 6 through 12,” which prompted Gantt to ask whether the proposed legislation would prohibit young girls from talking about their periods in school when they first start having them.

“So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in fifth grade or fourth grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” Gantt asked.

McClain responded, “It would.”

I guess that’s one reason why Florida girls might be given menstrual products before their first period—so they won’t have to ask for them, risking arrest, or subject a sympathetic teacher to law-breaking by doing what I used to do, all the time: quietly sending girls to my lower left-hand drawer.

I repeat: this is all normal and natural. It was a great day when Health and Physical Education teachers started delivering sex education information to mixed classes of boys and girls. I wish all schools provided free pads and tampons for girls who needed them. We could do better.

Although I agree that parents should be their children’s first and most influential teachers on the range of human sexuality topics, I was profoundly grateful that both my own children had great, no-nonsense sex ed teachers, beginning in 5th grade. Learning about your body—just the facts—and having your gender-based questions answered truthfully? What a gift to children approaching adolescence, a gift we can all benefit from.

As for the claim that FL Governor Ron Desantis is collecting information on girls’ menstrual cycles—well, that’s not precisely true. It’s the statewide High School Athletic Association that’s asking questions, and they’re saying it’s not about rooting out transgender students or embarrassing girls, yet again. There are legitimate reasons for caring coaches to watch for amenorrhea due to eating disorders or exercise stresses, for example. A student athlete who became pregnant would need special treatment. Here’s the information they want to know (click).

What if we were a nation where normal body functions were well-understood, and stuff like knowing how and why to delay pregnancy were agreed-upon knowledge for all pre-teens? I’d feel a lot better about the Florida HSAA asking girls how old they were when they began menstruating, and how many periods they had in the past year in that case.

In the current context, that information feels private, to me. There is trust lost, on all sides, between girls and young women– and whoever’s running the educational show in Florida right now.

And that’s sad.

by nflanagan

Introduce Yourself in Seven Books

Saw it on Twitter—or, rather, what’s left of Twitter—and kept thinking about this prompt: Introduce yourself in seven books.

What I liked about the prompt was that it asked players to “introduce themselves”—and after reading a few dozen entries, you could sort the self-introduction tweets into categories: Braggers. Folks from non-American cultures. YA readers. Chick lit lovers. Educators. Dishonest academics. Economists (shudder). Political advocates. And so on.

The prompt didn’t say “What are your seven favorite books?” or “What seven books have been most influential in your life?” (although there were numerous tweets that began or ended with The Bible). It said—introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, through the lens of seven books.

I set out to write a quick tweet, listing the first seven books that came to mind. Then I crossed out two of those, because a half-dozen better titles bubbled up. I spent a pleasant hour or so, rummaging through my mental Books Read rolodex, asking surprisingly deep questions, like Who am I, Really? At one time, I had about 45 titles on the list.

Clearly, I had no idea who I was, beyond “wide-ranging reader.”

I started paring back titles, limiting authors, rejecting books I loved, years ago, but haven’t re-read, discarding show-offy titles for books that I didn’t merely complete, but books that steered my thinking in another direction.

Eventually, I ended up with seven non-fiction titles and seven fictional books. And a recommendation for those of you who like to read to try this exercise. It’s revelatory, for one thing. And because I’m sure if you posted yours, there might be something on it that I totally forgot, or would be excited to read.

The Non-Fiction Titles are one path to introducing oneself—teacher, gardener, social class observer, education reformer, etc.  Your mileage should vary.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Postman and Weingartner) All of Neil Postman’s work is worth reading, but this book made me re-think my entire career, forty years ago. 

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work  (Matthew Crawford) Did you like Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig) back in the day? Then read Crawford’s book about the reality of academic hoops contrasted with the practical value of working by hand and craftsmanship.

Nickeled and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich) Together with Crawford’s book, and my own working-class upbringing, this book is how I learned to understand class and power in the American economy.

Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates) The first, and most personally moving, books on race. I read this book a sentence, a paragraph at a time, needing pauses. He broke the path for all subsequent reading on race in America.

Here Comes Everybody (Clay Shirky) Made me understand online organizing. Wildly outdated, but also prescient. You’re reading this because I read Shirky’s book.

Mrs. Greenthumbs (Cassandra Danz) I have probably 35 gardening books, but I read Mrs. G every spring. May she rest in her fabulous heavenly garden. I have her to thank for mine.

A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door (Schneider and Berkshire) On my first list, I had one of Diane Ravitch’s (excellent) books on education reform, which, sequentially, tell us what’s happened to public education in the past two decades. “Wolf,” however, is the newest and best-aligned with the abyss we find ourselves standing next to, at the moment. If someone asked me what I believe is true (another way of asking who I am) about my life’s work—I would suggest this book.


Perhaps you’ve noticed that there are no music books in the non-fiction titles. If I were asked to introduce myself verbally, the two nouns I would choose are teacher, and musician. Most of the best books I’ve read about music are fiction (sorry, Grout).  So let’s start Fictional Titles with one of those:

Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) A lovely book about how music changes people. Even terrorists.

The Whistling Season (Ivan Doig) What teaching really could and should be, set in Montana, a hundred years ago.

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) First read it when it was a new book. Have re-read multiple times. Scary as hell every single time, woven with truths and warnings about sexual oppression.

The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell) The author’s own description: Jesuits in space. And so much more.

The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson) Strangely hopeful, while centering on climate change and just how existential this crisis is.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles) This book introduced me to an entirely different model of education, and beautifully illustrated the role of relationships in learning and personal growth.

Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks) What would happen if there were a plague, and folks had to isolate, to save their own lives, and their neighbors? What would be the terrible cost—and the unexpected benefits?

Your turn. Introduce yourself in seven books. Cheating encouraged.

by nflanagan

Teacher of the Year: Popularity Contest or Tall Poppy Syndrome?

My opinion on various teacher recognition programs has always been clear and simple: Teachers in America get so little in the way of acknowledgement and perks that every single teacher honored for their excellent work richly deserves the spotlight and whatever rewards come with it.

Teaching, as Lee Shulman famously noted, is impossible. And yet millions of teachers get up every morning and head off to do critical work that benefits our communities–and is also underpaid, misunderstood, phenomenally challenging and complex. If any of them get a public pat on the back, or a tangible bonus, it’s deserved. No question.

So I was surprised to see an article [pay wall] in Education Week, generally considered the educational equivalent of the Gray Lady, with the headline The National Teacher of the Year Award: A ‘Call to Service’ or a ‘Popularity Contest’? :

Past finalists and honorees have said the process of being considered for National Teacher of the Year was a humbling experience that allowed them to advocate for the profession they love. It’s not meant to elevate some teachers at the expense of others, they said, but rather allow them to represent the needs of teachers and students on a national level.

But, but, but—when the five finalists for this year’s National Teacher of the Year award were posted on EdWeek’s Facebook page, there was a flurry of negative comments—over 200, last I checked, beginning with the snark about Teacher of the Year programs being a popularity contest. There was some defense of the National Teacher of the Year program, but the bulk of the comments might be summarized as suspicious, even resentful, of teachers who are singled out for recognition.

Comments clustered around three assertions:

  • Competitions pit teachers against each other. This is a uniquely ‘teacher thing’—the desire to build community and work together is central to running a productive classroom. If you’ve ever been to a teacher award banquet or ceremony, you’ll notice that honored teachers cross the stage humbly, heads down, then “share” the honor with their colleagues and students, if they get to make remarks. Compare that to, say, realtors being rewarded for millions of dollars in sales—pumping their trophy, and promising that next year’s sales will be even higher. The metrics of good teaching are—and absolutely should be—personal and site-specific, unlike other careers where it’s easy to say who is “best.” There were also some spiteful comments of the “I can’t believe they picked this lousy teacher I know” variety.
  • Not all teachers have access to Teacher of the Year or similar awards. There were lots of remarks about the work that teachers needed to do to be considered for an award—papers to write, interviews to schedule, evidence to assemble. All of this takes away from being awesome in the classroom (true). In addition, teachers’ workplace conditions are vastly dissimilar. Some teachers have adequate resources and students whose families have helped them become goal-oriented. Other teachers have none of these things, but do their best anyway. How could that be fair, when assessing a teacher’s impact and outcomes?
  • All teachers are Teacher of the Year for someone. I absolutely agree that all teachers deserve more—lots more—than having one of their colleagues plucked out for a certificate or prize. I concur that teachers everywhere are grossly underpaid for the complexity and importance of the work they do, and—especially these days—unfairly beleaguered. But I’m not sure if this means that outstanding teachers (because there are outstanding teachers) should never be identified and feted. This feels like Tall Poppy Syndrome.

I am interested in all of this because I was Michigan’s Teacher of the Year, in 1993. I am also a National Board Certified Teacher—two very different, but credible teaching awards. I have seen teacher award programs from the inside, and heard all the remarks about defining exceptional teaching made on EdWeek’s Facebook article—some directed at me, of course.

My take: The single most gratifying—and humbling—accolade was being named Teacher of the Year in my medium-sized school district, where I was nominated by another teacher, where my work with students was well-known, and where I was surrounded by highly skilled and supportive colleagues.

Being named Michigan’s Teacher of the Year, by contrast, sort of dropped from the sky. I didn’t seek it (beyond writing and submitting the application, at the urging of my superintendent), and was dumfounded and a little dismayed when I actually won.

Few people understand how different “Teacher of the Year” programs are, district to district and state to state. In some buildings, the same teacher can be named year after year and it does feel like a competition. In some states, the TOY is released from teaching for an entire year, to travel and speak. Other states have significant perks: Leased cars. A seat on the State Board of Education. A wardrobe allowance, since the Teacher of the Year shouldn’t keynote conferences in her denim jumper.

During the year I served as TOY, I was also working full-time, at my regular job teaching 320 middle school band students. The district found (and paid for) subs for days when I had TOY responsibilities, which meant that frequently, teachers in my building were asked to sub when I had to leave early to speak at a banquet, or drive across the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula for a workshop. I took every request that I could manage, often paying my own mileage and expenses.

I was out of the classroom 37 days. It was hard on my students—and even harder on my family. I had two small children and my wonderful husband picked up mountains of slack. It was exhausting, and I was glad when it was over. My superintendent put up a green and white road sign at the entrance to the village: Home of Nancy Flanagan, Michigan Teacher of the Year, 1993. Later, my husband retrieved that sign from a dumpster behind the school’s bus garage. C’est la vie.

During that time, I heard lots of sarcastic “famous teacher” remarks—and a few questioning whether I was actually TOY material. Five years later, I sat for National Board Certification, because I wanted to prove that I was indeed an accomplished teacher–to put a metric on the title, to provide evidence, a bona fide seal of approval. It was a great (and similarly exhausting) experience, but it’s worth noting that National Board Certified Teachers hear many of the same remarks about maybe being too big for their teacher britches.

By far the best part of being Michigan Teacher of the Year, however, came in the years after 1993. TOYs are sort of like Jimmy Carter—once you’re out of office, the stress subsides and the opportunities to do good work are endless. I got a gig at Education Week as a teacher-blogger. I discussed professional development on C-Span at the National Governors Association Conference.  I had interesting interactions with Michigan Governors.  I still got to teach.

And—I met incredible people, most of whom are educators. That’s the perk that all teachers should have—the conviction that the nation is filled with good teachers, plus the opportunity to exchange ideas and inspirations, professional goals and camaraderie, all of which is available to any teacher willing to reach out and start a conversation on social media.

I wish all of this year’s awardees the best.

by nflanagan

Who is Indoctrinating Whom?

A few years back, I got an email from a recognizable family name in the district where I taught for over 30 years. The man sending the email graciously introduced himself and provided the year that he thought I may have been his sixth grade music teacher. Doing the math, I realized it was my first year of teaching.

Once I confirmed that yes, I was the Nancy Flanagan he was looking for, he sent a rather remarkable second email. He was working for the State of Michigan, as an attorney in their Civil Rights division. And he wanted to thank me for my influence on his life, back when he was in the sixth grade, in my general music class.

While large segments of my career as a music teacher are blurry in my memory, I do remember bits and pieces of that first year—I was teaching several sections of sixth grade music, and saw the kids perhaps twice a week. There was no set curriculum, no standards, no published materials to guide me. I was literally making it up, day by day. It was an all-white school, in a charming little town on the outer ring of suburban Detroit—and my job seemed to be keeping the kids busy for 40 minutes, and my head down.

In his email, the man said he remembered singing Black and White, a then-current hit song by Three Dog Night, in music class. You talked to us about it, he said— kind of a little sermonette (his word) about equity and integration. None of my other teachers and nobody in my family ever talked to me about race or civil rights, he said. But the song made me curious. In high school, I started asking questions. And in college, I took a course in African American studies. And then I went to law school, with the intention of doing something good with my education.

The key thing about this story is that I didn’t remember any of it—not singing the song, and especially not talking to sixth graders about the meaning of the lyrics:

The ink is black, the page is white. Together we learn to read and write.
A child is black, a child is white. The whole world looks upon the sight–a beautiful sight.

And now a child can understand that this is the law of all the land.

I have since learned that the song was originally written in response to the Brown decision, in 1954, and first recorded by Pete Seeger. A verse that was part of the original lyrics was left out when Three Dog Night recorded it:

Their robes were black, their heads were white,

the schoolhouse doors were closed so tight.
Nine judges all set down their names, to end the years and years of shame.

How would Ron DeSantis feel about Black and White? Or any of the other things millions of teachers have unwittingly said, done, shared, read aloud and even thought in recent decades? Where does ordinary classroom discourse end—and “indoctrination” begin?

A good way to think about that question is to reflect on what you learned in school—remarks that teachers made, class discussions, books that lingered in your mind. Your mileage may vary, of course, but a lot of what I remember is not “content,” per se—but the odd comment, classroom habits, kindness or lack thereof.

My biology teacher, Mr. Fry, used to show us movies from the Moody Bible Institute on Fridays, 100% creationist in nature. Mrs. Wildfong, fifth grade, let me skip the SRA kit and read whatever I liked from a shelf in her classroom. My HS physical education teacher, Mrs. Firme (yes—that was her real name), once asked me if I had polio as a child, because of the way I ran the 50-yard dash, making me self-conscious about running for the rest of my life.

Was I indoctrinated by my teachers? Nearly every teacher I had subtly changed my academic and life trajectory, from kindergarten to graduate studies, and not all of them had my personal well-being as an educated person in mind. Some wanted to save my soul, others wanted to influence my political beliefs. When William Kunstler came to speak on my college campus, my philosophy professor said his speech was “garbage.” I don’t remember a great deal about introductory philosophy, but I remember that.

Was the Professor right? I had to wrestle with that question—challenging intellectual work, actually, during a time when campus unrest was the hot political issue.

In yet another excellent blog, Jan Ressenger says this:

For several hours in December, as I watched a televised hearing of the Ohio House Education Committee, I was struck by so many lawmakers who seemed to define the role of teachers as mechanical producers of standardized test scores—and who conceptualize schools as merely an assembly line turning out workers who will help attract business and manufacturing to Ohio. I listened to a conversation filled with standardized test scores—numbers, percentages, and supposed trends measured by numbers. The only time human beings appeared in the discussion of education was when legislators blamed teachers for the numbers.

As I watched the hearing, I realized again something that I already knew: Many of the people who make public education policy at the state level don’t know what teachers do. Few people on that committee seemed to grasp that teaching school is a complex and difficult job.

Ressenger gets this absolutely right–read the blog! Teaching has never been about content delivery, effectively measured by tests, where students repeat what they’ve memorized. Good teaching has always been –even if unacknowledged– about applying new knowledge and challenging beliefs.

It’s a complex and difficult job, all right.

Were you indoctrinated by your teachers? Who’s in charge of the indoctrination dialogue right now—and what’s their goal?  Good questions to ask.

by nflanagan

My Life. Is Good.

It’s one of those Facebook things—asking ten people to post ten photos with the hashtag #MyLifeIsGood. No need to explain who’s in the photos, says the meme, but one assumes the pictures will be of family, friends, beautiful vacation spots and how one spends their me time.

If you run the exponential mathematics on that, assuming you have ten cooperative friends—and those friends likewise have ten cooperative–obedient? –friends, and everybody posts ten photos, there will, quickly, be tens of thousands of harvestable images on Facebook, all neatly tagged #MyLifeIsGood.

Now—this isn’t a scold-y post about all the innocent, family-oriented, grateful folks inviting us into their (good) lives: meeting the grandkids, marveling at a Lake Michigan sunset, riding their bikes—and being scammed by Mark Zuckerberg into telling Facebook’s algorithms which ads and promoted articles to send them.

Expensive Swedish pajamas for those darling children, perhaps. A new boat, maybe—or thick flannel sheets. Or perhaps something much darker, with the collected data about what someone considers a #GoodLife going God knows where.

Speaking as a person who once (perhaps naively) called Facebook and other social media sites “our new town square,” I post personal information, as well as shared articles, snarky cartoons and my own blog on Facebook, Twitter and (now) Post.

I ran a political campaign on a Facebook page (now taken down). I have also experienced obvious bots –why do people think older women want a retired Marine General in their life?–and eerily specific products that I swear I just thought about, but never looked for online.

The thing about #MyLifeIsGood, though, is that it feels weird, somehow, to craft a colorful little photo collage about what matters most to you. My own life, frankly, is great right now in a dozen different ways—but searching through my hundreds of photos to display how lucky I am is unsettling somehow. Maybe my life won’t be so great in 2023—who knows? Or maybe there are tender or tragic factors that #GoodLife participants feel they must hide, putting up a false front. None of that is healthy.

The first thing I thought of, getting tagged to take part in the #MyLifeIsGood juggernaut was Randy Newman’s song My Life is Good. Newman’s lyrics are biting—with the chorus, ‘MY Life is Good,’ being the worst sort of heedless braggadocio: Don’t get in my way, lesser personage. Because MY life—is good. Too bad about yours.

There’s a verse about teachers:

The other afternoon my wife and I took a little ride into Beverly Hills.
Went to the private school our oldest child attends.

Many famous people send their children there.

His teacher says to us:
“We have a problem here–this child just will not do a thing I tell him to.
He’s such a big old thing. He hurts the other children.
All the games they play, he plays so rough.”

Hold it teacher. Wait a minute.

Maybe I’m not understanding the English language.
You don’t seem to realize—

MY Life Is Good. My life is good, you old bat.

Unfortunately, veteran teachers recognize this dude (and his wife)—and their entitled child.  There’s something distasteful about the idea of simple gratitude for what one has, and pride over what one’s accomplished, morphing into boasts or competition, the antithesis of building genuine community in a classroom.

Or maybe I am way overthinking this.

I am going to post one photo. It’s a photo of my dog, Atticus, who is aging, in his first (and last) Christmas sweater. He is one of the reasons my life is deeply satisfying—and good.