Category / public-education

by nflanagan

Mission (Not) Accomplished

I’m seeing a lot of fellow political junkies spending their weekend posting about The Road Ahead. What are the most important issues? Where are the quick wins? Two of my local legislators (bless their hearts, unironically) have asked for input on social media. These are mostly exercises in shooting the moon—everything, everywhere, all at once. So much to do.

But it’s OK. As long as someone mentions education in every one of those rambling comment threads. Because public schools are an evergreen issue, and a fundamental part of healing from our recent insanities. We can do so much better for our public school kids.

Let me say that again: We can—we must—rebuild and (I hate the way this word has been abused, but it’s on point) re-imagine public education.

Thank goodness for Jennifer Berkshire and her partner Jack Schneider, who have kept the flame burning for public schools being an issue that the Democrats should own. (There’s good stuff on their Education Wars site on the new, no-evidence Direct Instruction nostalgia trip, as well.) There’s work to be done, and perhaps, a window of opportunity.

If I have had an overarching life goal—my professional mission, if you will—it would be preserving and enhancing public education as central and critical to the shaping of American culture and democracy.  America needs a strong public education system, for purposes ranging from nurturing civic engagement to building workplace skills to understanding our global world. Not to mention developing productive human relationships—or the range of literacies now required for successful life in America.

Give me a minute to tell you about a classic exercise often used in professional development sessions for teachers: the Four Directions Leadership Compass. I’ve seen this done a dozen different ways, but it’s basically an exercise in understanding that the way you like to work may not be the way other people prefer to accomplish common goals.

In the exercise, participants are asked to identify with one of four groups: North (Action), South (Community), East (Mission) and West (Organization). Profiles of the four preferences are shared—the Get ‘er done, task-accomplishing North, the South teacher who brings donuts to the staff meeting and cares about needy kids—and the West educator with her color-coded files and two months of pre-written lesson plans.

Almost invariably, educators identify as North, South or West. In the questioning and debrief, they identify East as the teachers who derail staff meetings by asking “Why are we doing this?” and resisting change without endless discussion beforehand.

This is not surprising. Teaching, especially these days, is more like putting out continuous fires, running to stay ahead of the next crisis, than gathering to think deeply about our vision for an excellent school that serves all students well.

But. Missions matter. Visions can inspire.

Way too much work done by educators is ticking boxes, test prep, following someone else’s plans, often developed for students that don’t exist, and getting through another day. Besides, having a vision of how much better things could be is only step one. If there’s anyone who understands the disconnect between the visionary and the barely good-enough, it’s public school educators.

In a recent blog, I wrote about my surprise at discovering that the mission statement I carefully discussed and composed with my district teaching colleagues, one that embraced the idea of nurturing caring individuals, had been overturned and replaced with some blah-blah about ‘enabling all students to be independent and successful to the maximum of their potential.’

Of course, we want students to succeed. But defining that success, and our role in pushing students to succeed, remain unclarified by that statement. What it says to me is that it was written by people who believed they could identify the “maximum potential” of students (probably by data) and train them to use that potential for their own benefit. And to hell with the community. And maybe dreams and visions.

The blog led to interesting discussions on my social media outlets, about the process of writing a mission statement. I’ve forgotten a whole lot about my 32 years as a classroom teacher, but I remember writing that mission statement, something required by the Michigan Department of Education as part of a (here it comes) “re-imagining of public education.”

I remember old veteran teachers who saw a mission statement as just more phony reform nonsense being drawn, by a skillful principal, into discussing what brought them into teaching and kept them there. I remember Jack McManus (may he rest) finally saying—Well, in my day we saw public education as a way to build citizens and democracy, to stir the melting pot, and develop appreciation for the American way of life and opportunity.

There’s a mission if I ever heard one.

Maybe—probably—your statement would be different. There’s room for other ideas about what constitutes a purpose for public education. There’s room for action, organization and community. But the mission is the horse that draws the cart. And yes, I am an East.

Illustration credited to Eyes on Meme. If you spent any time in the classroom, check the site out. It’s hilarious and so obviously written by teachers.

by nflanagan

Empathy. Again.

A couple of years ago, I was astonished to learn that the school where I taught, for over 30 years, had declared war on… empathy. Yes, empathy, a quality I assiduously cultivated in my music classes and was—at one time—referenced in our school mission statement, as the nurturing of ‘caring individuals of all ages.’

Later, I learned that empathy was now being targeted by the Heritage Foundation.

Since then, it’s become one of those words or concepts that you see everywhere. Including from Elon Musk, who called it the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization. This was, BTW, about the time he and Big Balls were stealing your personal data from the government, under the guise of rooting out fraud. No empathy for you!

Here is some recent survey data from PRRI:

‘A new PRRI survey asked Americans whether empathy is a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society. Among the religiously unaffiliated, 83% agreed. Among Jewish Americans, 77%. Among Latter-day Saints, 65%. Among white evangelical Protestants, 42%.

The same survey found that 54% of white evangelicals agree empathy can become dangerous when it leads people away from “a society guided by God’s truth.” No other major religious group put a majority behind that statement.

The widest split was over Christian nationalism. Of the people PRRI classifies as adherents, 38% called empathy foundational. Of those who reject it, 94%.’

I need to take a minute here to reflect on just what “God’s truth” means to white evangelicals. Even agnostics and atheists understand that there are some principles—love your neighbor as yourself—that are universal to world religions and pretty good guidelines for everyone, believer or non-, choosing peaceful lives. And weren’t we a nation FOUNDED on freedom of religion, or lack thereof?

I’m much more interested in the outcomes of building a school culture on caring for humans (and property, as stewardship of community resources), than the outcomes of a culture that cares first about competitive test scores.

One of my wisest teacher friends, Mary Tedrow, mused once that we used to talk about our historic purpose as teachers being building good citizens. Those citizens were our product—some went to college, some went into the workforce, some to the military, some to raising the next generation of students. Now, Mary said, our product is test scores.

And woe to the empathetic teacher who elevates building a community where students respect each other, feel responsibility for each other’s happiness and success, over competitive score-grubbing.

I’ve been thinking about the utter lack of empathy we’ve seen in midterm campaigns. If you Google “opposite of empathy” you get a range of unpleasant emotional responses, from apathy through insensitivity to contempt, heartlessness and sociopathy. None of which seems like something schools should be endorsing.

The poster child—poster ad, actually—for this lack of empathy is Vivek Ramaswamy’s zero-empathy-for- childhood-abuse advertisement featuring Amy Acton’s elderly, estranged and mentally ill mother. Salon points out that the ad also suggests there is another audience his campaign has in mind: aging MAGA voters who are obsessively angry about the phenomenon of parental estrangement.

You’ll never guess who MAGA blames for all this parental estrangement. Yup. Your local school, and its empathy-coded mission statement and libtard teachers willing to give other people’s kids extra help and second chances.

One of my favorite columnists, Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark, takes a closer look at the PRRI data, and Christian Nationalism. Read it! Standout quote: Societies that lack empathy cannot sustain either liberalism or democracy.

I think—no data to back this up—that an overwhelming majority of public school educators would agree.

JV Last, again: ‘Cultural changes produce institutional changes. To a measurable extent, the culture of American Christianity among white Protestants and, increasingly, white Catholics, has shifted toward Christian nationalism. As such, large numbers of adherents now reject foundational principles of Christianity in order to reconcile the faith to their political preferences.’

And this, lest you think this is just a Trump thing:

JD Vance does not believe in the Christian doctrine of compassion, empathy, and help to those ailing and in need. Instead, he embraces the Musk/Thiel doctrine which puts self-love first and teaches that empathy is a blight on the world.

Repeating: Societies that lack empathy cannot sustain either liberalism or democracy.

Ball’s in our court, fellow voters.

by nflanagan

Tough Talk

Scroll back with me to the presidential campaign of 2016, the so-called debates between the best qualified candidate ever to run for president, Hillary Clinton, and Biff Tannen You Know Who. Even with a decade of unprecedented political chaos intervening, those debates are memorable.

I thought I was watching Clinton destroy Trump, for varying reasons, in the first debate. She was prepared and articulate; he was a bully. He claimed she didn’t have the “stamina” to be president, and that not paying taxes made him smart. He did not follow the rules of debate, demanding more time and shouting over Clinton. I was convinced that she mopped the floor with him.

But it turned out that a lot of people found him purposeful. Or something. Remember all the Trump voters who love him because he “says what he thinks?”

An informal CNBC poll on its website found that 61% of people thought that Mr Trump won while 39% went for Mrs Clinton, but as CNBC itself points out, the poll is not scientific. A post-debate survey by Public Policy Polling of 1,002 debate-watchers found that 51% of national voters thought Mrs Clinton had won, with 40% choosing Mr Trump and 9% undecided.

There were two more debates, including a town hall format where Trump followed Mrs. Clinton around the stage, stalker-like, and the one exactly ten years ago where Hillary aptly pointed out that Putin preferred to have a puppet like Trump running the country and he snarled over her (again): You’re the puppet! You’re the puppet!

He also called her a nasty woman, and interrupted her three times as often as she broke into his answers. There was pundit talk of “male dominance.” And large percentages of viewers declared him the winner—not only of televised debates, but ultimately, at the polls.

Tough talk—name-calling, insinuations, intimidation, rudeness, shouting, domination, misleading statements bleeding into vicious lies. Why do we admire the aggressive blowhard? And what are we teaching our kids to emulate?

As a person whose entire professional career was driven by the goal of building cooperative communities of students, this is distressing to me. Of course, my secondary students had conflicts—talk to me about color guard spats at band camp sometime—but using civil language and considering the feelings of people in your chosen group, the band, were touchstones.

And civil language begins with leadership—teachers modeling both thoughtful disagreement and problem-solving. If the band director is always yelling at the kids, eventually they’re going to yell back. Then quit.

‘Former President Bill Clinton famously warned fellow Democrats that voters prefer “strong and wrong” over “weak but right.” His point was that tough talk resonates so powerfully among voters — especially low-information independents and moderates with weak ties to either major party — that strength can mask and even compensate for bad policies or poor governance.

Clinton’s mantra was a thinly veiled reference to George W. Bush’s governing failures, yet his warning is even more applicable during the Trump era.’

Remember “Boots vs. Flip-flops”—George Dubya cuttin’ brush in Crawford, Texas, while John Kerry went windsurfing? Which was supposed to prove that fumble-tongued Bush was a real man? When you look at the attack ads on James Talarico, nothing seems to have changed in TX, in the strong-and-wrong category.

It’s hard to even consider Vivek Ramaswamy’s ads against Amy Acton as ‘tough talk.’ They’re evil, abhorrent and socially damaging. And false, too—but remember that strong and wrong works on low-information voters. And we’ve certainly got plenty of those.

Pause.

So—after all my high-minded blah-blah about odious tough talk, and building community, I come here to confess my joy at seeing Democrats—finally—clapping back.

Barack Obama, tonight, speaking here in Michigan: “That well-known evil empire Canada. That historical adversary of ours. Canada! *laughs* It’s your neighbor. It’s a few minutes’ drive over the bridge! These are the people who gave us Martin Short and maple syrup. They are the nicest people! And somehow we’ve gotten them so mad.”

Obama’s genius is being funny while telling pointed truths. But there are other Democrats who have stepped out—using humor, but also biting accusation, righteous anger and verbal snark. In fact, I started a list, last year, when Gavin Newsom (or more likely, Gavin Newsom’s creative college intern) was mocking Trump’s words and actions, on Twitter and Bluesky, to hilarious effect.

Every time I saw an articulate elected Democrat call out the current administration with clear language—“travel with Natalie”—I tried to write their name down. Bonus points for verbal and pictorial humor. More bonus points for acting like a leader.

I look at the list frequently (it’s up to two pages now), to see who is still talking, being quoted and grabbing attention (in an attention economy). Your mileage may vary, of course, but keeping a list of democracy defenders has been instructive for me.

This isn’t a horse-race evaluation for 2028.  Who knows what the next two years will hold? But we do need to look for leadership—for the candidates and elected officials who will fearlessly describe the mess we’re in. And talk tough about what needs doing.

Who is both strong and right? And who will pursue justice, decency and order?

by nflanagan

Does it Matter What Other Nations Think of Us? Why?

Here’s something I might ask middle school and high school students:

What do we, as Americans, think about other countries? Suppose I asked you, right now, what you think about, say, Germany? Or Nigeria? Or Thailand? Are there better countries and not-good countries? How do we judge? Where do we get our information?

And further—what do other countries think of us? Why?

On the question of what people in other countries think of Americans:

Two weeks ago, we were in Lisbon. On our last night, we went to the top floor of our hotel to see the city spread out below us, red tile roofs and undulating hills. Only one of the six elevators in the hotel went all the way up to the Skydeck, so we had to wait several minutes for the elevator to come to take us back down. One other person — an attractive 50-ish woman— was also waiting.

Hearing us talk, she turned to us and said ‘Where ya from?’

Assuming from her accent that she was also American, we said ‘Michigan. And you?’

I’m Canadian, she said. And I want to know—do you approve of your president? Because he’s ruined my life.

She said her husband was in the oil and gas industry and tariffs had caused their business to wobble, then fail. They built a new house (for more than two million dollars) and could no longer afford the payments. She was about to lose her new dream home. She was angry, and got angrier as she talked— she would never buy an American product again, never trust an American again, etc.

Finally, she said: Do Americans have ANY idea how much the world hates him— and Americans for voting for him TWICE? I mean, really. It begs belief. We told her we were working hard on flipping Congress in the midterms, and she cut us off, sharply. I don’t care about your midterms, she said. He has to go now. The world can’t afford two more years of his bullshit.

Our elevator arrived, and she refused to get in with us. We kept apologizing. She stood there with her arms folded across her chest and her mouth pinched, shaking her head.

I have thought often about getting into this kind of conversation while traveling, and what I would say, and it all seemed like weak sauce in the moment. Her take was: you’re hurting the rest of the world by accepting him. And it’s YOUR fault for not stopping him. Immediately. Waiting two years for an election that may or may not happen is just an excuse.

We were both rattled by it. We had just come from a lovely dinner, where we ate Portuguese food and drank their awesome wine, and were happy not to turn on the TV or doomscroll the evening away. We had the means to take a vacation from the daily chaos of life during the Trump administration. We have not been threatened by ICE or lost our Medicare.

Canada is—or was—Michigan’s largest trading partner. Most Michiganders don’t perceive Canada as a ‘foreign’ country. I have friends who teach in Detroit but live in Windsor. Last year, there were joint protests with people waving signs at each other, across the Detroit River.

Most of the folks we met in Portugal and Spain were polite and friendly and willing to discuss anything. On one English-speaking tour, an American asked our guide about Portuguese politics.

He gave us a thumbnail sketch, beginning with Prime Minister/Dictator Salazar (1932-1968) and the three largest parties jockeying for power currently: the fascists, the socialists, the democratic socialists. He expressed worry that fascism was growing across Europe and relief that the democratic socialists had just returned to power in Portugal. His use of the phrase ‘democratic socialists’ caused some Americans in our group to gasp, however.

All of this made me wonder: If a European visitor to the United States asked a guide about our politics, what would he say? Where do we learn about the goals and aims of political parties? We talk about civic engagement—but what about accurate information?

When the current administration is hawking public school educators to ensure they don’t discuss politics—and 59% of Americans get their political information from social media—how are Americans supposed to understand how the world sees them?

Just asking.

Rossio Square, Lisbon. My photo.

by nflanagan

Information vs. Knowledge vs. Application

Let me cut to the chase: You should read Peter Greene’s piece, Teachers Should Know Stuff, if you’re involved in education in any way. Actually, you should subscribe and read all his work, because there is no more articulate observer-explainer of what actually happens in classrooms in American public schools. Plus, he’s funny, in a not-trying-too-hard way.

And teaching school is funny, in addition to being personally rewarding, critical to the health of democracy, and much harder and more intellectually complex than most people think. It’s an intrinsically human job, one that requires adaptability and a sense of humor.

Greene’s piece walks us through any number of Big Questions around modern pedagogy, including teacher preparation (good v. bad), the crushing impact of standardized testing on actual learning, and the vital importance of context expertise. He tosses in a few bits about the fallacy of believing AI is having a positive impact on learning, and the test-driven focus on Skills That Can be Measured vs. Concepts That Students Understand and can apply to their worldview and actual lives.

And he’s right. Teachers have to have deep content knowledge.

I can’t tell you how often, in my own 32 years of classroom practice, I was the Sage on the Stage, rather than the Guide on the Side. Happily, and correctly, so.

I was, after all, the best musician in the room, the person who knew how to shape a musical phrase, how to execute a dotted eighth-sixteenth pattern in various musical styles, and how to illustrate fingering options for an in-tune high F# on the flute. Plus buckets full of other musical and technical knowledge that my students needed to make a piece of music come alive, the whole point of being in band class.

I knew stuff. Things that could be demonstrated. Things that a method book or even a video could never explain. I could lead a lively discussion on how ragtime led to swing led to cool jazz and how the rhythms driving the music my students listened to were born in other places and spread by (voluntary and involuntary) immigration.  

Every year that I taught, I knew more stuff. I remained curious about better ways to teach what I knew—both the technical skills as well as the impact of music on American culture and human relationships.

I also—and this is important—spent time thinking about what my students were taking away from my class (besides the actual location of 5th position on the trombone), into adulthood. I’ve met plenty of younger teachers whose own K-12 experiences and college training have left them believing that we can actually measure useful learning in real time, via computer-delivered tests, and that’s our job.

Not so. We can measure short-term retention of skills and bits of information. But the thing about knowledge is that it is applicable and adaptable. It’s not embedded knowledge unless it’s useful to you in some way, over time. It’s just information, to remember or regurgitate, or not.

In addition to teaching band, choir and general music, I also spent two years teaching 7th grade math, one of the places where teachers were encouraged to be guides on the side, facilitating problem-solving using the algorithmic skills students had been taught to replicate.

I can still hear my students’ dismayed voices as they turned the page and saw (dunh dunh duh)… story problems! We were using a constructivist math curriculum, and I also heard from parents on the regular about how they couldn’t help their kids with word-based problems. (Usually because they “weren’t good at math.”)

But word problems ask students to apply the skills we all (sort of) learned. They are about the usefulness of math. Teaching students how to analyze what a word problem is asking them to do is way more difficult than having them replicate an algorithm.

And putting them in small groups to struggle with that process is not likely to yield knowledge, no matter how many facilitating questions you ask. It’s a time-intensive process, nudging them along. Good math teachers (and I wasn’t particularly good) need to know how to turn information plus skills into useful knowledge.

Worth noting: Repeated testing, scripted curricula and pacing charts–the central tools of standardization– often get in the way of developing useful knowledge, the stuff that 7th graders will still be using when they’re in their 40s.

I used to have a principal who, at every staff meeting and public event, would identify himself as the “lead learner” in our school. It was a private joke among the faculty that he found the phrase in some textbook for school administrators and kept repeating it because it seemed cool. In fact, he had a limited vision for student learning, centered around data, rather than enthusiasm, imagination or even the utility of what we were teaching.

 Peter Greene is right: Teachers need to know stuff, especially in an era where information is suspect, misleading and paywalled. When teachers are not seen as experts—or don’t see themselves as experts—we’re in trouble.

by nflanagan

Defining the Future We Want

I was recently contacted by a group of civic-minded folks working on a project through one of those nonprofits you’d be keen to believe can actually change the world. Fund MI Future is a joint effort of nonpartisan community organizations, unions of working people, and policy experts striving to create shared prosperity for all Michiganders by fully and fairly funding our public services like schools, roads, access to care, and clean water.

What’s not to love, right?

This particular initiative is called “It Takes a Millage–Getting local campaigns to pass” and the bright and articulate voices in our Zoom meeting wanted to know how to engender support for schools and other public essentials, like libraries and parks. How could we build campaigns that gave citizens a voice in improving their own communities?

I wish I had a scrapbook of victories to share, stories where clusters of vocal citizens used the power of organizing, sharing information, then voting to better fund schools. But no.

In my long career as a public school teacher, I’ve been a part of at least two dozen campaigns to improve schools via taxation—millages to build much-needed new buildings or playgrounds, millages to support programming that the community wants or already loves. I’ve done school open houses, phone banking, and door knocking with other teachers to spread the word about what that extra $138/year would yield for kids in our community. Not to mention meeting with other districts who had successfully run school millage elections to figure out what their secret sauce was.

Spoiler alert: there is no sure-fire way to build support for something that benefits the community in general, including necessities like emergency services and fire-fighting. School districts that routinely pass millages don’t have a winning formula that they roll out at each election. What they do have is consistently good leadership and a sense of community: It’s our school. We like it here. Voting yes is good for kids and for long-term property values.

People’s willingness to spend a little more money on common benefits largely depends, I think, on how they’re feeling about their life circumstances and prospects at the moment. And in 2026, I’m not sensing a lot of confidence in current leadership or optimism about America’s future. And that hopelessness… trickles down. So to speak.

My new friends in the “It Takes a Millage” (smiling) campaign were not put off by my gloomy memories, however. They were looking for stories about times when The People decided to create their own future, piece by electoral piece. And those stories are out there—communities like mine, for example, that tax themselves to fund installation and pickup of bins for recycling. Zohran Mamdani is currently running a masterclass in providing community services and cohesion, in New York City. It can be done.

Again—it takes leadership. But also a vision of what we want—how we could improve our personal futures, as well as our neighbors’, in the places we live and work. If we want to use our collective power to make [Your Town Here] a better place, what does that look like, precisely?

Subhead from a recent piece by Jennifer Berkshire: The left has no vision for public schools – and that’s a big problem. (It’s an awesome piece.)

Berkshire is thinking about the lack of attention to public education in the current political discourse. The Right has “choice,” culture war memes, and the dismantling of public education via various means and narratives.

But who’s championing positive, future-focused change and equity in K-12 schools?

Which is why I found the idea of local initiatives, locally funded, so appealing.

I’ve had enough experience in education funding to know that, when it comes to schools, Americans are often welded to two ideas. Neither of them is particularly honorable:

  • It’s my money and I don’t want to share it with my community
  • I don’t want my children to go to school with “them” (whoever your own personal “them” is)

If we want a better future for our schools—and our parks, roads, libraries and public clinics—we need to build support for common goals. And we need to clearly define those goals for a better future.

What changes would you vote for, to improve your local schools?

by nflanagan

Educational Guilt

From a piece by Steven Mintz:

[Yom Kippur is] a very different conception of moral responsibility from the one modern liberal societies generally favor. We tend to think guilt should track individual action and intention. I am responsible for what I did, you for what you did.

Yom Kippur preserves an older idea — that human beings are also implicated in families, institutions, communities, and histories, and that moral responsibility may extend beyond the narrow boundary of personal culpability.

As a teacher—a middle school teacher, primarily—I am fascinated by the concept of moral responsibility in an educational community. Occasionally, I read (OK, usually in the comments of some “self-researched” social media post) that teachers should teach, you know, content and only content.

It’s our job to drop facts into brains, then test those brains to see how the facts are holding up. Not to consider values or, God forbid, moral responsibility. To stay in our facts-only lane.

Leaving aside the obvious truth (to teachers, anyway) that knowledge without a place to apply it has a short shelf life and not much utility, I would suggest that all classroom interaction and all learning are impacted by our collective sense of right and wrong.

Everything that happens in schools reflects the prevailing norms and beliefs of that classroom, that school and that community. From scientific research to understanding literature to world history, right down to the playground and bus behavior—it’s all value-based. Students learn in context. It’s never about a disconnected bunch of facts.

Which means that even unpleasant emotions—shame, guilt, fear, ambivalence, boredom, anger, loneliness—will be present in the classroom, and dealing with them is part of the process of both teaching and absorbing new knowledge and skills. You cannot run a guilt-free classroom; every now and then, bad behavior will pop up and will impact the rights of the (edu-word alert!) learning community. Feeling remorse will be an essential step in regaining equilibrium.

The party line pushback against DEI is that white kids should not be made to feel guilty because their great—times five or six—grandfathers kept slaves or slaughtered the tribal folks who lived on the land where their subdivision now sits. Because they are not (to quote Mintz) personally culpable.

I belong to a handful of local organizations which begin their meetings with a land acknowledgement. And yes—it’s easy to let a spoken paragraph or two feel rote or performative. But—like the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Lord’s Prayer, which nobody seems to find problematic—it feels right to me to include this at every gathering, especially in a state that had functioning Indian Schools until the 1980s and contains a dozen reservations, with their own tribal governments.  

There are plenty of non-historical things to critically examine for opportunities to balance the moral scales, and the current zeitgeist—where school board members openly fret about “weaponizing empathy”– is, IMHO, moving us rapidly in the wrong direction. And this unwillingness to take moral responsibility for the community will impact everyday life in the classroom.

Here’s an example: Vaccination rates are dropping precipitously here (and elsewhere in the U.S.). Sifting through the data, it’s clear that private schools and charter schools lag far behind public schools, where basic immunizations used to be mandated upon entering kindergarten. Vaccination protects your child—but also the unfortunate child who is medically unable to tolerate a vaccine.

Do people understand this? Is vaccinating your child who will (probably) survive measles just too much empathy? We’re certainly not getting any moral responsibility from our nominal political leadership.

I have many friends who are also retired teachers. And speaking of guilt, a frequent topic of conversation is whether we were too circumspect around what were considered “controversial” topics. Most teachers I know were careful—very careful—about expressing political beliefs and taking sides on moral questions.

But maybe that was wrong. Maybe we should have been standing for justice, modeling moral responsibility, channeling MLK’s observation: He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

So—a belated Shana Tova. And consider the idea presented by Yom Kippur—we’re in this together.

by nflanagan

Labor Day. Happy Birthday to Me.

So—I just had a birthday. A big, round-number birthday.

All my life, my birthday has taken place in and around Labor Day weekend, and—fairly often—happened on the first day of school. For my entire elementary school career, my new school shoes, binder and pencil box were ‘birthday presents.’ (Sad trombone.) Kindergarten:

But I didn’t mind. The whole Labor Day weekend–in my experience–represents the new year, academically and seasonally, a fresh start. One year older, one year wiser, roll up your sleeves. A day to honor my personal antecedents, who were Dutch farmers and hands-on laborers. Country builders. People who truly appreciated the respite of a long weekend and family barbecue.

When you turn 75, your past divides neatly into thirds (and lets you plan, as Gloria Steinem did, to live to 100). Although neither of my parents (58, 73) celebrated their 75th birthday, my grandmother (also named Nancy) made it to 103, so a century does not seem out of reach.

I do not remember most of my birthdays. Who does? But I do—clearly—remember #25 and #50. Thinking about them is a good way to reflect on what I’ve accomplished and what I have left to do.

I turned 25 in Aspen, Colorado with my then-boyfriend, now husband. I had already been married at 19 and divorced, returned to school to finish the degree and started my first big-girl job as a middle school band director, although it took at least two dozen humiliating interviews followed by rejections. Mostly because who ever heard of a woman band director?

It was a fun birthday, camping at Maroon Bells in the Snowmass Wilderness area. On my birthday eve, we went bar-hopping in hippie-town Aspen. Things are a little blurry, but we had five days to drive across the country and get back in time for teacher report day, the Tuesday after Labor Day. It felt as if my life were finally falling into place. Adulthood. In Colorado:

The chunk from 25 to 50 was all about family and professional goals. We were married, had two children, and I learned what it meant to be fully engaged in both motherhood and putting equal energy into becoming an accomplished teacher. We bought a house and lived there for 10 years. Then we bought another house and lived there for 20 years.

I both earned (National Board Certification) and won (Michigan Teacher of the Year) some awards for teaching. Early on, I completed a master’s degree in education at Michigan State. We took some amazing vacations, seeing at least 20 National Parks. A month before I turned 50, we went to South Korea for two weeks and Maui for another week.

I turned 50 on September 2, 2001, just nine days before 9/11. My sister and brother, spouses and kids came for a Labor Day weekend picnic. My sister wrote a snarky poem about how old I was, and there was a paper crown.

But 9/11 was a turning point. I had been teaching for more than 27 years, same job, no formal advancement (teachers everywhere, I see you nodding your heads). I felt restless. I took a Teacher in Residence job with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for two years—then, because the grass isn’t always greener, went back to the same school district.

I was welcomed back with open arms by parents and my colleagues. But not administrators, who suddenly saw me as Too Big for my Band Director britches. I got politically involved. I helped plan the Save Our Schools rally. I got bounced from job to job in the school district; I was a person who could no longer be trusted to put her head down and cooperate.

This third quadrant of my life has been—creaky knees excepted—by far the best and most rewarding. I retired, and launched into a PhD program in education policy. I did the coursework, but stalled, ABD, when my advisor (a famous educator) blocked my proposed dissertation topic. Instead of diligently working through this conundrum, I thought about how much more I knew, having been a target of education policy for 30+ years, than my doctoral cohort of 20-something Teach for America dropouts.

So I quit, something I hadn’t allowed myself to do for 60-odd years.

Since then, we have moved to paradise, aka the Little Finger of the Michigan mitten. I’ve had a half-dozen part-time jobs teaching, writing and directing church musicians. We have traveled every year, and spend February in Arizona. We attend lectures and go to concerts.

Best of all, I have been able to pursue the thing that got me into college, the first in my family to do so: music. I play in multiple community groups. I have time to practice. My new friends are mostly musicians.

And I muse about the maiden/mother/crone sequential archetypes in the lives of women—I am now the third, the wise woman who cares little about what others think, pursues important goals, advocates for long-term change. Also: hangs around the house, drinking wine and binge-reading.

In the past month, three of my role models have died—Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry and Gloria Steinem. It was Steinem who got me out of that first, disastrous marriage, by starting MS. Magazine, a revelation to me, and my first magazine subscription, because it was not available at the drugstore.

The NYT called Steinem “the personification of the Women’s Movement”—and I think that’s right. I read all her books, checking them out of the library. Revolution from Within was my favorite, but each of them reminded me that my voice mattered. And also that I deserved to have a credit card and my own checkbook.

I was born on the same day as Mark (still delicious) Harmon. Chrissie Hynde turns 75 today. There are plenty of us still kickin’ and taking names. And—it has to be said—trying to get us out of the ugly morass we find ourselves in. I hope to be part of the movement that sees him and his sycophants gone, although I know it will take more than 25 years to cleanse and re-direct the nation.

Here’s Steinem, again:

Four days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, she wrote an entry called “Staying Hopeful: One of the uses of a long life is remembering when things were worse, and also remembering that when bad times do come, so does an outpouring of community and energy amongst those dedicated to justice.”

Amen. (Below, Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany.)

by nflanagan

Unsubstantiated Things People Say about Public Education

There are plenty of unsubstantiated clichés people have traditionally expressed—and probably believe– about education: Private schools are better than public schools. Sports keep kids in school who would otherwise drop out.  We should flunk 3rd graders who struggle with reading. Public education is broken, and choice is the only solution.

I could go on. And on. One of the problems with improving schools—and every school could serve students better—is the time-worn observation that because everyone’s been to school, they think they accurately recognize the problems in public education and know what would fix those problems.

Nine years ago, in the summer of 2017, I was part of a project that canvassed Democrats, Lean-Dems and Independents in the county where I live. We knocked doors and asked folks about the 2016 election—what their issues were, and what they’d like to see Democrats focus on in the 2018 midterms. We didn’t ask who they voted for, but plenty of them told us.

One very elderly gentleman we visited invited us into his spotless home and offered us coffee. When asked about issues, he mentioned that his grandson was a senior at the local public HS and had never taken shop class. He was genuinely outraged, and that was his primary education issue—the local HS didn’t even offer shop class anymore!

I explained that the regional CTE Center now offered two dozen courses in machining, auto repair, welding and building construction. All public school students in the county could access a half-day of up-to-date instruction in the hands-on trades, for free.

He was not impressed. When he went to school, they had shop class, in the building, and it was the best part of his day. He pointed to his kitchen cabinets, which he’d built by hand in the 1960s. He also told us he’d voted for Trump. Maybe Trump could get shop class back in schools, because the woman he ran against certainly would not care what boys learned in public high schools.

Imagine my surprise at seeing the candidate for Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, advance pretty much the same argument as a centerpiece of his education plan.

Rogers titles the piece “Education Crisis is the Civil Rights Issue of our Time,” a direct rip-off of Obama Ed Secretary Arne Duncan’s catch phrase. He also references Martin Luther King a few times, as if that could erase his tight connection to the most racist president in modern history.

The rest of the piece reads like it was written in the1990s. There are a few menacing statistics from a literacy organization in Australia, re: how many kids will end up in prison because they can’t read, and the phony assertion that nobody teaches phonics anymore—’Getting kids reading again also means going back to the basics: teaching phonics to help students understand how letters and combinations of letters sound.’

Well. We’ve been trying to get kids “reading again” for decades, via a range of strategies including phonics, dude. (See: Dolly Parton.) Rogers also misinterprets the NAEP “proficiency” caption (which, to be fair, lots of education journalists don’t fully understand—it doesn’t mean grade level). And he’s completely onboard with flunking third graders until they learn to read, damn it.

And then Rogers comes down hard on the need for shop class:

 “Putting shop classes in every high school can make a real difference. Shop not only exposes students to skilled trades and high-paying jobs, but it also gives them a reason to apply math outside of the classroom. Measuring materials, calculating angles, and working with fractions help students apply math skills.“

Rogers mentions fractions (and the inability to read a measuring tape) multiple times in the column, which makes me wonder if he’s been in a public school math classroom since he graduated from Howell High School. My 7th grade math students—back in 2005—were using graphing calculators and doing single-variable equations. All of them, not just the advanced track.

And shop class, like a lot of other coursework, has been streamlined. Exit the birdhouse, and enter home construction, from rough carpentry to wiring and plumbing. Not to mention courses in cyber security and aviation, and so much more. I checked, and both the MI county where Rogers has just moved, in time to campaign, and the county where he’s lived for the past decade, in Cape Coral, Florida, have extensive career and technical education offerings in their public schools.

My friend and super education writer Jennifer Berkshire has been on a useful quest lately, in her writings— Education is a winning issue for Democrats: ‘Democrats once preached college-for-all, and were too soft on school privatization. They need to reverse course on both these positions—and make an unapologetic case for education as a public good that benefits all kids.’

Bingo. Especially if the folks running against Democrats can’t offer anything more exciting than retaining third graders, emphasizing fractions and retrofitting schools so they can offer woodworking again.

A recent survey from the Michigan Future, Inc. concluded that what communities and parents now want as takeaways from our public schools are critical thinking skills, facility in communication, and the habit of life-long learning.

We’re not going to get those with Mr. Rogers’ outdated and unsubstantiated ideas.

by nflanagan

Band Kids. They’re the Best.

I can’t add anything to the outpouring of love and respect for Dolly Parton. She was phenomenal, in dozens of ways. As a musician, I appreciate her melodic genius and as a writer, I admire her gift for lyrical story-telling and poignancy. But what I’ve loved most, this week, is that black and white of photo of Dolly Parton, class of 1964, in her Sevier HS band uniform.

It reminds me that so very many of the admirable people in our world developed their gifts and talents in a public school classroom. Dolly was the first in her family to graduate from high school; most of her 10 siblings who made it to adulthood dropped out, to work or to marry.

And she was in the band. She also supported underfunded school band programs across the South, for decades. We all know about Dolly’s Imagination Library program (you can donate here) and the hundreds of other ways she gave money and recognition to people who truly needed a boost.

But when we think about the roots of a spectacular career in the arts—they all started somewhere, and Dolly’s did not spring from early identification of extraordinary talent, private lessons or expensive summer camps. They started at home, and were burnished at her garden-variety TN public school.

My personal children played in the band (percussion and trombone)—and both of them expressed impatience with my barely suppressed opinion that band kids were a breed apart. Several of their good-kid friends weren’t in the band—and they could both point, accurately, to some band kids who were not, in school vernacular, good citizens.

However. I built my professional career, and my life before and after that career, on what I learned as a school-aged musician—in band, and choir and youth symphony. School music programs literally sent me to college, the first in my family.

They gave me the skills to offer my services on Saturdays at a community center, as a teenager, giving private flute lessons and earning pocket money. My music teachers—in an ordinary blue-collar public school district—steered me toward scholarships at several levels, membership in the local professional wind ensemble, and opportunities to perform in public (which is one of the big benefits of playing in a school band, BTW—dealing with performance nerves and understanding the necessity of rehearsal).

When Clinton was elected, I hung a poster of him, playing the tenor saxophone, on the band room wall. The point was not political—it was that band kids grew up to do amazing things, from comedy (Tina Fey, flute) to professional sports (Walter Payton, percussion) to walking on the moon (Neil Armstrong, euphonium).

Band kids sometimes face derision from their peers, especially in schools where instrumental music is low on the coolness totem pole. It takes some maturity to get past the name-calling, and that maturity develops on a continuum, assisted by parents and other adults in a student’s life.

Doing things for pleasure, building a community of friends, developing your own opinions—these are adulting skills. The band room can become a home for kids, the place at school where you can hang for hours (and dump your belongings and snack wrappers everywhere, driving your band teacher crazy). Simultaneously, these kids are being challenged to learn complex musical literature and skills, express powerful emotions, entertain their peers and work as a team, with every member’s contribution being important.

And it’s not easy! A couple of years ago, I was contacted by one of my former school administrators. As a retiree, he had decided to learn to play the guitar. He bought a guitar and started taking lessons. And it was frustratingly difficult.

He said that he always assumed learning to play a musical instrument was easy. After all, sixth graders in his building started band in September (in classes of 60 students) and put on a concert in December. How hard could it be?

As satisfying as that was to hear, what matters even more is the number of middle school band kids who push through the difficulty and experience the reward of performing together. That’s the real lesson.

Just ask Dolly.