Category / People You Need to Know

by nflanagan

(Almost) All You Need is Love

Scene: Interview with right-leaning MI media personality, c. 2003, re: National Board Certification

Interviewer: So you say that National Board Certified Teachers—NBCTs– are the cream of the crop. What, specifically, do these teachers do that other teachers don’t?

Me: Well, lots of teachers have the qualities and skills that NBCTs have—but NBCTs have undergone a rigorous assessment of what they know and are able to do. They have studied standards for professional teaching and provided evidence that they are demonstrating those standards.

Interviewer: So what are those rigorous standards that all teachers should be aiming for?

Me: The first one—a foundation for good teaching—is knowing your students well, and being committed to their learning.

Interviewer: Seriously? You’re saying you just have to… (adopts snarky tone) love the kids? Even the bad kids? That’s all it takes?

 —————————————–

In case you’re wondering, the interview did not improve much after this moment. Many folks are laboring under the notion that some teachers have magical, almost indefinable skills that whip classrooms into shape and make learning come alive. Other teachers, presumably, have to rely on a boring combination of content knowledge, discipline and fear.

Nobody expects teachers to love every one of their students—not even the National Board. But teachers who do not develop positive and open working relationships with their students, teachers who believe that their job is dispensing knowledge, then measuring students’ retention of that knowledge, will always be behind the instructional curve and may never become what we think of as a “good teacher.” 

Peter Green, whose work is always worth reading, just wrote a moving and beautiful piece about teaching, in which he says this, about loving our students:  Here’s a big thing I believe about love–it’s not so much a feeling as an action and a choice, a commitment. You can choose to love people, and you can do it based on who you are instead of waiting to be inspired by who they are.

There’s that word, commitment, again. Greene also says this:

Twenty years of modern reform and especially two years of pandemess and CRT panic have worked to drive love and trust out of schools. Since (at least) A Nation at Risk, critics have deliberately ignored and abused the notion that teachers might choose to teach out of love and care, but must instead be threatened with Consequences.

Bingo.

All of this love talk goes a long way toward explaining why—again, and again, and in spite of what sometimes seems like an organized media conspiracy to crush public education—parents (somewhere between 80% and 85%) report being satisfied with their public schools.

If the only information you get about the public schools in your community comes from Moms 4 Liberty, or articles about School Board uproars over book banning and faux accusations of grooming, or the relentless drumbeat of “learning loss” that substitutes quantification for compassion— well, you’re likely to be in the majority of non-parents who think public education is failing.

And let’s be brutally honest—some public schools are so stressed that trust and commitment aren’t in the cards. They are, in fact, failing to be committed to their students, and their students’ learning. These failures show up in inability to hire qualified staff, incoherent curriculum, lack of strong leadership or trust, and general chaos—not test scores.

I like the way Matt Barnum (or whoever wrote his headline) phrased it: Are Parents Mad at Schools?

The data-supported answer is no. No, they’re not.

Because— in spite of the pounding that public schools have taken during and post-pandemic, there is still commitment and caring, teachers who drove around rural districts with stapled-together packets and backpacks full of food. Teachers who persisted in trying to adapt to teaching on-line or outdoors. Teachers who went to school unvaccinated, because their students needed them.

Parents also see, up close and personal, what the impact of a global pandemic has been on their own children— not just the disruption to their normal lives, but the free-floating anxiety around masking, illness in the family, squabbling over vaccines and fear of catching a potentially lethal disease. Children who were sad or bored, whose days lacked the social and intellectual structure of M-F schooling, recess and friends.

What kids need now is not, God help us, “acceleration” techniques to get them to an arbitrary (testable) level of learning. They need the aforementioned structure, knowing what to expect from their world. They need the concern and commitment of their teachers.

What about content— knowledge and skills, the measurable outcomes of school? Here’s a secret: Most of what is learned in school has to be continuously refreshed and applied in order for it to stick and be useful in adult life. Scoring well on a test is not a mark of being well-educated, prepared for adulthood. Human relationships prepare us for life. Content comes and goes.

And bad kids? How do we love them?

I was fortunate. For most of my career as a music teacher, I had students for two to three years, sometimes more. I did come to genuinely love—or at least get along swimmingly with—nearly all of them. I was fond of them, and am curious now about what they’ve done with their lives.

But there was this one kid…

It was a year after I’d been out on leave, and had been assigned to teach a semester-long music class that students did NOT choose. Lots of those students were surly at first, being forced into an elective they didn’t want. It was an uphill climb, but eventually, I started winning them over. I saw them relax and even enjoy the things we were doing. There was laughter. Except for one boy.

He was defiant. He refused to participate. He muttered things about me and his fellow students under his breath. I tried ignoring him. I tried gently looping him into groups. I tried calling him out, but with humor. I kept thinking he just needed to know that I was committed to him, and wouldn’t give up. He remained bitter and overtly hostile. Once, after students had formed groups to create compositions, he picked up his belongings and left the room, for no apparent reason, letting the door slam (of course). He was hard to love.

So I mentioned him in the teachers’ lounge (sometimes, good things happen in the teachers’ lounge). You know about his brother, right? one of my colleagues asked. It turned out that this boy’s older brother had committed suicide in the school parking lot the previous summer. Because I had been gone, I didn’t have a clue. Nobody bothered to tell me.

The semester was almost over. I never did develop any trust with this boy. I would have given him a great deal more emotional space, had I known, and interpreted his anger very differently. I would have tried much harder to love him. Because— and this is often true— students often just need the security that comes with knowing their teachers are committed to them, no matter what.

by nflanagan

 I Know It When I See It

“I know it when I see it.”

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when asked to describe his test for obscenity, in 1964.

When it comes to K-12 curricular materials and library books, what, exactly, is “pornography”— and its corrupt cousin, obscenity? Do you know it when you see it?

Most parents, I think, have a good handle on what they think is appropriate reading / viewing for their children. As the omnipresent meme says, if you don’t want your children to read or watch something, fine—just don’t make everyone else follow your personal rules. I know parents who found Harry Potter frightening and disgusting, and parents who proudly say their children can read anything they like.

I actually think there are plenty of books that don’t belong in school libraries. But I worry way more about parents who let their school-age kids watch an unending stream of violence on TV, then tag along to the shooting range on weekends.

I don’t think books, per se, engender anti-social behaviors, especially when discussion follows reading. And while it would be lovely to think that schools can dish out value-free “content,” any teacher will tell you that managing classroom learning is a daily encounter with weighing and expressing values. The more you sterilize subject matter, boiling it down to a bunch-of-facts curriculum, the less sticky and engaging instruction becomes.

Thus—it bothers me to hear Christopher Rufo call school library books, even certain textbooks, “pornography.” He’s not just talking about sexually explicit stuff, either. He’s talking about a whole range of, well, values that he finds offensive: Delicate and careful discussions about race and discrimination. Questions around gender identity. The use of impious vocabulary. Characters who are decidedly not religious or Christian.

Pornography is something else.

I first encountered pornography in school, ironically enough. When I was in 10th grade, I was in the school play. It was a minor role—a half-dozen lines and maybe 10 minutes on stage. I can’t remember the name of the (forgettable) play, but my character’s name was Bunny. One of the other secondary characters was played by a girl named Pat, who wore copious black eyeliner and carried a metal rat-tail comb in her purse, both grooming tool and potential weapon.

There was a lot of waiting around for our bit on stage. Pat was always reading a paperback, sitting on the metal stairs up to the light booth. I didn’t think of Pat as an avid-reader type, but she was buried in that book. I asked her what she was reading—and she said it was really good, and I could borrow it when she was done.

It was a plain cover—no pictures. I stuck it in my tote bag with my geometry book and took it home. When I opened it up at home, holy tamales. It was—no two ways about it—porn. I read a little, then hid it back in the tote bag. I took it back to school and kept it in my locker for a few days, reading bits here and there—and, I have to admit, being exposed to things I never even heard of or considered.

We’re not talking about Lady Chatterley or Henry Miller or even Anais Nin. This was poorly written, printed on cheap stock, and raunchy. When I gave it back to Pat, she asked if I liked it. I said yes. And that was a true statement, even though it felt like a bomb when it was in my locker.

Did it hurt me, a relatively innocent 15 year old, to read that book? Nah. But there was a reason I kept it sequestered in my locker.

Nor did it hurt me to read Black Like Me, Naked Lunch or Lolita, all of which I read as a teenager.

Kudos to the Michigan Board of Education for proposing and passing a resolution last week supporting school librarians’ work as qualified decision-makers, when it comes to what should be shelved and available in their respective educational contexts (with the two Republican members voting no):

The board’s resolution calls on local school leaders to follow best practices in handling book challenges and affirms that school librarians have the professional skills to select age-appropriate materials. The board’s statement also recognizes that certified librarians have a positive impact on student’s learning and academic outcomes.

One of the two Republicans, Tom McMillin, promptly proposed another resolution to keep (here it comes) “pornography” out of school. That sentiment already exists in the School Code, so that feels just a bit performative, a chance for McMillin to say he fought for kids or some such. A chance to repeatedly use the word “pornography,” as if schools were the source of the actual porn that many teenagers consume.

 My friend, Reverend Jeanne Hansknect, an Episcopal priest, said this, in her comments to the Community Library Board, as they dealt with charges of offering inappropriate literature:  Reading breaks open our limited experiences one book at a time.

And that’s the real shame of restricting kids’ access to books: things that they learn from, and explore at their own pace, are labeled and locked up, making it harder to encourage broad perspectives and critical thinking. Making it harder for teachers to gin up enthusiasm for the basic process of reading, and harder to use language to teach rich, relevant content. Making it harder to look at the most challenging issues for all Americans, and think together about how to solve them.

None of this is really about skills—or even about obscenity or fake pornography.

 It’s about politics. It’s about trigger words like “pornography,” and unsupported accusations.  We know those unsupported words when we see them. And we’re not seeing them in school.

by nflanagan

Things that Make Teachers Go Hmmm

For flat-out exhausted teachers, finishing a school year filled with unjust accusations and pointless restrictions, the headline must seem ludicrous: Want to Make $100,000 a Year? Here’s Where You Should Apply.

Turns out it’s a charter school in Detroit, and the spiel initially sounds like they’re seeking the best and brightest teachers (at least 18 of them, anyway) with “strong criteria” to “meet student needs.” The strong criteria? They need to be licensed and certified to teach in Michigan, have five years of experience, and have been rated “highly effective” twice.

It also turns out that only 35 percent of the current staff at the Hundred Grand School is, in fact, certified to teach in Michigan. The charter is essentially soliciting, or perhaps poaching is the more accurate term, a more experienced staff by offering them huge salary increases. Because two-thirds of their professional staff is uncertified. No word on whether any of the current teachers would be considered for the $100K.

My first thought? Where are they getting the money?

Closely followed by imagining a scenario where 18 teachers, identified on Day One by their much-fatter paychecks, are parachuted into an existing staff. And– if you think esprit de corps isn’t really a factor in teaching, you would be wrong.

The tight market for high-quality teachers even seems to be leading Teach for America to a rebranding. A few months ago, TFA was shrinking–Oh No!– but now they’re (get this) focused on training new teachers. Really! I’m serious. Twenty years of asserting that in-depth teacher preparation wasn’t really necessary if the person was smart and well-meaning, and now they’re experts in professional preparation?

The organization said it aims to recruit, retain and develop about 700 teachers in Michigan over the next five years. The announcement comes as Michigan, like other states, struggles to retain qualified teachers, particularly in high-poverty schools, and as far fewer college students choose education as a profession. 

Teach for America was always good at recruiting and marketing. But retaining teachers? And professional development?

The chief complaint about TFA has always been that it was most often a two-years (or less) then-out prospect. Something to burnish the resume’ when you seek a grown-up job in a few years. And TFA teachers had to learn on the job. None of this coursework or field experience nonsense. You’re smart—you’ll figure it out. Catch up.

None of the things Teach for America says it can do in this project—which amount to professionalizing teaching—is in Teach for America’s wheelhouse/origin story. Their job (and they’ve been spectacularly good at getting money and good PR to keep this initiative going) has always been promoting a small group of recent graduates who want to do something different (and, presumably, useful). Save our schools, yada yada, by bringing in some elite temps.

But there has never been a critical mass of practicing TFA teachers in the profession to use their hard-won experience to push for necessary policy change. They take other jobs (easier, better-paying jobs) in education because they can. Or they go to law school. Or work at Morgan Chase.

Teach for America has never been a positive force for change in the teaching profession.  What makes them think teachers will turn to them now?

Hmm. Maybe it’s the $35K bonus teachers earn for being part of Teach for American’s new professional development and teacher leadership programs.

I know all about businesses needing to be nimble and pivot quickly when people stop signing up for your prestigious product, but real professional growth for teachers takes time and experience. You can’t manufacture excellence or buy it. It comes from persistence and dedication. That esprit des corps thing matters, too.

Meanwhile: A bill introduced in the state Senate last month would remove provisions in the Revised School Code that say all teachers and staff in the Detroit Public Schools Community District hired after September 2019 must have their compensation based primarily on job performance, rather than seniority or educational credentials. 

Worth noting: Only teachers in Detroit—not in other districts around the state— were subject to this provision. A financial thumb, pressing down on Detroit public educators, tying them and only them to student test scores, built into the school code.

The common link in all these examples? Money.

Money as teacher lure, money paid to an organization founded on undercutting teacher training and preparation, money for improved testing data, but only if you teach in Detroit.

Hmmm. Maybe we should significantly raise teacher pay across the board. Or recruit candidates by promising better working conditions and sweeping investment in public education. One can dream.

In the meantime, a hearty thank-you to teachers everywhere, winding down.

by nflanagan

Memorial Day 2023– Thanks, Band Directors

I’m not much of a flag waver, really. I always thought that author James Baldwin captured my feelings precisely in Notes of a Native Son when he wrote:

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

These days, perpetual criticism is essential. We are headed into dark times, I think, redefining the meaning of patriotism and sacrifice. It’s easy to lose faith in our government and the grand experiment—all men created equal—that founded this nation. It’s easy to let hope die when our rights have been systematically eroded by power-hungry politicians. When our children are not able to read certain books or study our actual national history, we’re in trouble.

I still believe, however, heart and soul, in the shining but imperfect ideals of a democratic education –equality under the law, the American common school, a free, high-quality education for all children, simply because they deserve it. Thirty years of teaching school have given me a hard crust of cynicism about many things related to education and America. But I never lost my enthusiasm for the Memorial Day parade.

For 25 years, my middle school band students marched through the small town where I taught and lived, in the Memorial Day Parade. There was a whole set of traditions around this event, which grew larger and more complicated every year: the aural passing down of our special drum cadences from the self-appointed 8th grade drumline leaders, mending the color guard flags originally purchased through a pizza sale back in ’88, and patching up hand-me-down snares and sousaphones scrounged from the high school.

There was never a budget for this–middle schools don’t typically have marching bands–but somehow there were always T-shirts, and cold drinks at the end of the parade route. We had a stunning handmade banner that two moms whipped up with lots of lamé and sequins. In my last year, we marched nearly 300 students, on a morning when the sky was a sapphire blue and Air Force jets flew overhead as we rounded the corner by the cemetery.

This took up a fair amount of teaching time. I would get on my knees and beg colleagues for 20 minutes on the Friday before the parade, to assemble five bands into a single marching unit and take a few spins around the parking lot. One year, as I was trying to get the back of the band to master pinwheel corners, the front rank (rambunctious 8th grade trombones) marched right up the sidewalk, opened the front doors, and led the band, playing America the Beautiful at top volume, through the school hallways. By the time I sprinted up to the head of the band (and the principal popped, red-faced, out of his office), marching through the school was a done deal–and became yet another annual tradition.

I was always clear with my students about the meaning and purpose of Memorial Day. They would occasionally whine about how boring America the Beautiful was–Mr. Holland’s band played Louie, Louie, right? I explained that they were old enough to dedicate a morning to thanking local patriots and acknowledging the sacrifices made by Americans over centuries. Older people, watching them march by, would be pleased to hear traditional music. It was about respect.

We do this, I told them, to remember and honor those who made it possible for you to live in this beautiful little town, in this safe world. People like my Uncle Don, who died in February 1945, part of the Fourth Marine Division which stormed Iwo Jima. Or Ray Shineldecker and Joey Hoeker, two high school classmates who lost their lives in Viet Nam. I had lots of funny stories to tell about Joey, who lived around the corner in my old neighborhood–a big, goofy kid who was what guidance counselors in the 1960s called “not college material.”

On our last band trip to Washington D.C., after performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I was loading tympani onto the buses as my students toured the Mall. A few girls came running up, calling “Mrs. Flanagan! We found him!” Found who, I asked.

Joey Hoeker, of course–on the Wall. And I lost it, right in front of all those kids.

I thank those who served and sacrificed so I can love my country, and criticize it, too. A hat tip to all the band teachers and student musicians who help make Memorial Day meaningful this weekend. And to hero teachers and band directors everywhere– donating yet another weekend to the community –please keep teaching, in spite of everything.

And another hat tip to community bands, providing the same service. I’ll be in Northport, Michigan on Memorial Day–playing Taps from the porch of another flutist, then settling in the cemetery, to play the National Anthem, Sousa marches–and a tribute to the Armed Services. Join us at 10:30 a.m. You won’t be sorry.

by nflanagan

Eight Topics Education Bloggers Should Avoid (if they want readers)

I have been blogging for over twenty years—and before that, I wrote the occasional column about teaching for the local newspaper (until The Superintendent sent me a “cease and desist” memo). I have written for a handful of education non-profits, magazines and journals, and spent nine years blogging for Education Week.

When I started blogging, many educators didn’t know what a blog was, and the ones who did spent a lot of time reading and writing about all the Amazing New Tools available, via the miracle of technology. It was an era when financially strapped school districts didn’t hesitate to buy more computers, and everyone wanted to jazz up their lesson plans and see students’ work “published” on the internet. It goes without saying that this was way before Tik-Tok.

Now, I’m writing for myself and anybody who’s interested in reading the thoughts of a veteran educator. Those thoughts aren’t always focused directly on classroom practice, anymore, which was the overt mission of my first paid gigs. Increasingly, my thinking centers on the socio-political reasons for changes in school practice, and what I see as the very real danger that public education might collapse. Even that kind of alarmism is not a sexy, sticky topic for blogs these days, however.

Point being: I’ve been at this for a long time. I’ve written thousands of blogs, columns and op-eds, and observed what gets read and shared, and what sinks like a heavy, published rock. Some of my best work (IMHO, of course) has gone mostly unread. Some tossed-off columns written to meet a deadline got tens of thousands of eyeballs. It’s hard to say what’s going to cause people to read and share a blog.

There are some things, however, that no longer seem to engage teachers (my primary audience) and other education-junkie readers:

#8. Book Reviews  Every now and then, a spectacularly good book about education is published—the kind of book that would help teachers see the work they’re valiantly doing in a new light. I used to teach a graduate course in teacher leadership. One of our icebreakers was naming a favorite book about education. Teachers would routinely admit they hadn’t read an education-related book since college or fulfilling a masters-level coursework requirement. Ironic—and understandable, because working in crisis conditions means you’d prefer to take a break from stress when you read—but also kind of sad.

#7. The Philosophy or Purpose of Education  When Finland gutted and re-did their entire public education system (one that is now deeply admired in the data-driven Western world), they spent years dissecting and re-forming their education goals, before launching an entirely new concept—time that appears to have been well-spent. We don’t do that here. We adopt new programs and slogans on the regular, based mainly on what the people in power think will “work” (to improve data). We resist that deep national conversation about purpose and meaning in education, what our real aims are. We apparently also resist reading about what should matter most.

#6. Teacher Leadership  This one breaks my heart. Teacher leadership and professionalism are at the heart of what I think might save public education, releasing teachers’ moral commitment and creativity in the service of doing right by kids, instead of pursuing goals set by people who haven’t stepped foot in a school for decades. Want to be depressed? Ask practicing educators for their definition of “teacher leadership”—or sit in a teachers’ lounge at lunch and listen to stories of how dedicated and skillful teachers are now treated, in their own workplace. Hint: not as potential leaders.

#5. The Pandemic  Our entire focus, as we move out of a massive global emergency, is trained on two meaningless issues: So-called learning loss—a fancy name for entirely predictable drops in test scores. And a weird obsession with which schools took the risk of meeting face to face, when it was safer for students to be at home.  One might reasonably expect a devastating pandemic to have an impact on students’ emotional well-being as well as endemic confusion about “best practice” during a health emergency. But shouldn’t the questions and initiatives now be around how to support our kids, and figure out what such a traumatic event can teach us all? Instead, there’s all this finger-pointing and blaming. And writing a blog about what positive changes a pandemic might spur gets you zero readers. 

#4. Religion Perhaps you think that religion and public education are two separate things. If so, you are wrong. The intertwining of Church and State—a very bad idea—lies under a lot of the angst in public education in 2023, from book-banning to whatever Hillsdale College is cooking up at the moment. Writing about schools and religion, especially nuanced viewpoints, is a losing proposition. The blogs that get the eyeballs are anti-Christian (on the left) and anti-all non-Christian religions (on the right). Nobody wants to read about a positive role for any religion, like opening church doors to AA or feeding hungry schoolchildren, let alone offering comfort during times of great fear and upheaval.

#3. Racism This one needs an asterisk—because there are plenty of people writing about racism, the most eloquent and productive being those who have lived with its aggressions all their lives. But white women wanting to open a dialogue around racism in schools? Maybe they’re virtue signaling? Writing about racism, and the panoply of school-related issues impacted by systemic bias, is dicey for someone who might be perceived as, well, removed from the action. But as Ijeoma Oluo says in So You Want to Talk About Race? —you have to keep trying. Even if nobody responds.

#2. Research  I’m hardly the first person to write about the disconnect between valid education research and education practice (let alone policymaking) in public schools. And there are readers for pieces that present the most recent grant-funded studies from the Hoover Institution and the folks at Fordham.  Mostly, the commentary is something like: My research is better than your research or Your results don’t mean what you think they do. Even when the research is credible and useful (which isn’t always the case) the audience for genuine research breakthroughs is small and parochial.

#1. Women  I am always fascinated by the fact that teaching is such an overwhelmingly female occupation, and the corresponding chronic disdain for teachers that shapes education policymaking as well as mainstream media. It seems logical that asking a question like “Does the reason teachers make so little money while doing such important work hinge on the fact that they’re mostly female?” would be a hot research topic. But of all the issues I’ve written about in the past 20-odd years, blogs and columns about gender and education get the fewest eyeballs. I’m not sure why—women dominating the teaching profession and the outcomes from that seem to be like the sun coming up in the east: just the way it is.

I used to do blogging workshops, to encourage teachers to write and publish their thinking about education reform and classroom practice. Invariably, the audience would be largely female, but of the prospective bloggers who attended, the ones who followed through with creating a blog (or being hired by someone to write) were most often men. That has changed a bit —there are now more online options for teachers to share their tips and opinions—but I doubt if we’ll ever see four female educators blogging for every man.

Last thought: What blog topics always draw lots of traffic?

  • The Outrage du Jour (weird stuff that happens in schools and then is promptly forgotten)
  • Testing (everybody hates it, and loves reminders that it’s bogus and useless and time-wasting)
  • Wars (the war on teachers, the Reading Wars, the Math Wars, the Recess Wars, etc. etc.)
  • Lists (something about a number in the title)
  • Gifted education (there’s an organized gifted parent legion out there; I recently randomly ran across a man—on another person’s FB page—bragging about ‘ripping Nancy Flanagan a new one’ over a column on gifted education I wrote 10 years ago, a man I don’t know and never exchanged messages with, but who felt absolutely triumphant about… something)

So—what draws you to a particular blog?


by nflanagan

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and my Middle School Band

With the passing of Gordon Lightfoot, I have been surprised and touched by the number of folks posting Lightfoot lyrics and links. They’re not all aging folkies, either—lots of them are in their 30s and 40s, and some are my former students.

That’s gratifying. One of my best memories about teaching comes from a Gordon Lightfoot song—“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

It’s worth mentioning that the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald is very much a Michigan story. When you grow up surrounded by the Great Lakes, you’ve probably spent a vacation or two watching freighters go through locks, or traverse the sightlines in front of your rented cottage. The sinking of the freighter—when the witch of November comes stealin’—has just the right combination of tragedy and seaborne terror to capture the imagination of schoolchildren.

But it is Lightfoot’s ballad, which was released in 1976, exactly one year after the vessel sank, that has kept the tale in memory. Lightfoot considered the song his masterpiece, and I agree. He captures the terrifying scene and the details of the voyage pretty accurately, while giving us lines like:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Listening to the song gives me chills, even today.

 When the song was released, I was teaching in Hartland (I was pretty much always teaching in Hartland…), and the students wanted to play it. I knew what was likely to happen, but when a band arrangement was eventually released—which often occurs years after the song was popular– I bought it.

The beauty of the song (and it IS beautiful) lies in the words. There are only four measures of thematic melodic material (in 12/8 time). There are some slight melodic variations in the intro and interlude, but it’s the same four measures, the same five-chord sequence, through the whole song. Musically speaking, it’s static (that’s a polite word). Lightfoot (and pop/rock artists everywhere) take these music fragments and make them come expressively alive with lyrics and production tricks—wailing guitar improvisations, synthesized backgrounds, strings. But mostly—people are listening to the words.

When the musical palette is “middle school band,” however, there’s not much you can do to vary what becomes the same short tune over and over and over. The kids, after learning the song (which didn’t take long), recognized that: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was repetitive and (here comes that word) boring. A whole lot of long notes.  

But–here’s the Lightfoot magic–we turned that band arrangement into a different lesson, around the two questions:

  • Why is the Gordon Lightfoot song so cool and moving, and the band arrangement so…static?
  • What could we add to or change in the band arrangement to make it more interesting, more like the GL song?

It was a great, inspired, discussion– resulting in percussion mallets on brake drums to add noises that sounded like ship’s gear. Someone brought in a ship’s bell, which we added to the intro and final measures. We improvised vocal noises like roaring wind. We fussed with the dynamics–to try to tell a powerful story without words, just moody chords and phrase shaping. We even put bits of the lyrics in the program, and two students read a verse to introduce the song to the audience. (It’s a long song.)

It was also a chance to learn about ballads, and music as storytelling. It turned into the most memorable piece on the concert, judging by parent and student feedback.

Rest well, Gordon Lightfoot. Michigan thanks you.

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

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

Thinking about Teachers at the Table

In the fall of 1993, the United States Department of Education (under Richard Riley, Secretary of Education) held what was intended to be the first annual National Teacher Forum. Organized by Terry Dozier, Special Assistant to the Secretary, state Teachers of the Year and their chosen outstanding teacher partners were invited to Washington D.C. to discuss how to bring the teacher voice into policymaking.

I’ve been to lots of conferences and seminars, but few impacted my life as a teacher leader more than the first National Teacher Forum. I can remember, verbatim, phrases—Honor what we know!—and aphorisms we used: Teachers want to be partners in, not objects of, education policy.

The idea of teachers at the policy-making table was downright thrilling. We deserved to be at the table—in fact, it was our table.  Our contributions could make a huge difference in policy around student learning and public school organization. We had answers to education’s persistent questions. Ask us!

We were all assigned a partner in the US Department of Education. We went to workshops (this was where I first heard of National Board Certification). We networked with the legislators and bureaucrats who were making policy around the work we did every day. We were encouraged to start our own state forums for accomplished teachers. Best of all, we started something few of us had heard of before this: an online bulletin board and discussion group. I was a moderator of that group—and still have many professional friends from that time.

I wish I could give you links so you could explore this wonderful program, and read the publications that resulted, but an hour of googling and a scouring of ed.gov have yielded zero information on the Forums (there were eight—the entire initiative and its published results were taken down in 2001, as No Child Left Behind turned education policy in a vastly different direction). I found two publications—Teachers Lead the Way, from the 1997 Forum, and a reprint of the 1994 Forum document, Prisoners of Time, which was apparently (and ironically) co-opted by the Education Commission of the States.

I share all this to illustrate the fact that teachers have long been interested in controlling their own professional work, and willing to share their expertise and perspectives with policymakers. Personally, I’ve been involved in several initiatives to bring teachers to various policy tables. After the National Teacher Forums bit the dust, State Teachers of the Year organized themselves—and even proposed Teachers at the Table legislation (which went nowhere). The idea keeps bubbling up.

Point being: the only people who think having a substantive teacher voice in education policymaking is a great idea are teachers. And, of course, their state and national unions—who represent the broad outlines of teacher-friendly policy via lobbying and advocacy, and are wary of independent teachers proclaiming their teaching expertise makes them policy experts, as well.

Publications and media about the teacher voice haven’t shut down in the intervening 30 years. Independent blogging, non-profits and social media have elevated pieces about the necessity of asking teachers whether a Big Sexy Idea about how to ‘fix’ issues in public education will work (usually, no) and what might actually improve teaching and learning.  

In short, as Jose Vilson says in his TED Master Class, no conversation about education should happen without the teacher voice front and center.

But—as with all things in education—there are caveats in thinking that gathering a group of teachers (even award-winning teachers) and asking for their policy ideas would be the fastest way to better schools.

Teachers aren’t trained to do policy creation and analysis. They can tell you, in excruciating detail, what bad policy does to student learning in their context. But good policy is written with measurable goals and specific outcomes in mind, accompanied by the supports and spurs that will get us there.  It requires imagining not only happy results but unintended consequences.

Policy is not (exclusively) mandates and incentives. Sometimes, it involves capacity-building, persuasion—or overt systemic change, which takes time and accrued data to analyze. Regularly asking teachers to comment on the changes wrought by policy shifts ought to be a no-brainer, however. Acting on educators’ feedback would be even better.

Here’s an example: My state instituted a third-grade retention law in 2016, wherein students who didn’t meet the third-grade standard for reading proficiency would be held back—a mandate, taking away a decision that had always been made by teachers and parents. Half the states in the nation now have similar policies—and politicized policymaking has made other states feel they need to crack down on those lazy eight year-olds.

It’s a terrible policy, for dozens of reasons, beginning with its target audience and punitive nature. In six years, it hasn’t yielded anything beyond angst and anger, much of which has been directed at teachers and schools, not clueless (or, sadly, vindictive) lawmakers.  

The good news here is that MI Governor Whitmer seems poised to sign a bill repealing the third-grade retention mandate. Nevada’s repealed theirs, too. The MI bill’s sponsor, Senator Dayna Polehanki, is a former teacher. A Michigan Teacher of the Year, Leah Porter, testified in hearings.

There’s a role for teachers in examining and fine-tuning education policy—and a strong need for teachers to run for public office to share their experience and expertise. As we said, at the 1993 National Teacher Forum: Honor what we know.

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.