Featured by nflanagan

Who ARE These People?

For most of my adult life (other than a brief but wonderful stint in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor), I’ve been the proverbial blue dot on a red background. Although I am out there as a Democrat (on the executive board of the county party, and Democratic candidate for office), I always felt fine about living near, and occasionally hanging out with, Republicans.

They were my neighbors and my work colleagues, the white-collar parents of my students, singers in the church choir I directed. When we moved to northern Michigan, it was easy to understand (if not align with) the uber-conservative, agricultural, take-care-of-your-own legacy of the small rural county where I now live. For long stretches of time, I had a Republican state legislator in mid-Michigan who exemplified cross-the-aisle politics for the greater benefit. I thought I understood good people with different political beliefs and habits.

That was then, of course.

I think the distinction today is not Democrats=good / Republicans=bad. It’s not about liberal vs. conservative, either. What we are seeing is an elevation of fear and disinformation, the breaking of the contract of democracy, where majority beliefs, rule of law and consideration of the common good are suppressed–in favor of anger, chaos and feeding the greed of apolitical billionaires and those bent on amassing power.

Anger and resentment. Fear. Disinformation. Crushing respect and generosity of spirit.

There’s a wonderful, brief passage in Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel, “Tell Me Everything.”  One of the minor characters volunteers at a food pantry, because she’s lonely and likes feeding people. She meets a nice man on an online dating site, and they begin a relationship. He tells her he knows that many undeserving people go to food banks and take food they don’t need—so she stops volunteering. And that, Strout remarks, is how the divisions in our towns and families begin.

Resentment. Disinformation. Crushing the human urge to share and socialize. Simple stuff—the kind of things kindergarten was designed to ameliorate. The kinds of things that a good education should serve as prophylactic against.

Years ago, when school of choice language became law, and charter schools began popping up in Michigan, it seemed to me that the people who were driving the movement to destabilize public education had two goals: 1) It’s my money and you can’t have it and 2) I don’t want my children to go to school with them (whomever their own personal “them” was).

Well-funded, non-diverse public schools chose not to participate in school of choice, claiming that there were no seats available for students who lived two blocks over the district border lines. Poorer schools welcomed kids from ‘over the border,’ each one of whom came from a public school district that couldn’t afford to lose them and the public money they brought with them.

I never anticipated that those two principles–let’s call them greed and discrimination–would become the driving force in larger social issues, like immigration, affordable housing, elitism and ‘political correctness,’ trade and the national economy. Illiberal, lawless crapola for schools to deal with, as well, like faux book bans and suppression of the truth in ordinary school curricula. If you think those aren’t really happening, or can be prevented in a blue-state school, here’s a heads-up from the “new” federal Department of Education.

So who ARE these people, the ones actively working to disrupt public institutions (including public schools) and reasonable laws? It’s important that we know, because they’re everywhere now—including Europe. If they’re not conservatives, and not precisely Republicans (aside from the craven, rabidly partisan, power-hungry idiots in Congress), who are they? And why did they think Trump would make their lives better?

Every now and then, the New York Times (and please don’t tell me not to read the NYT) interviews citizens about their political views, another opportunity to wonder: Who ARE these people? Where did they get them?

Last week, the NY Times Magazine published a glossy piece, What Trump’s Supporters Want for the Future of America. Here are some excerpts:  

I don’t like the way this country’s turned — all this woke stuff. Stuff that the kids shouldn’t be exposed to. I think I was 18 before I knew that there was gay people, you know? 

I believe with Jesus at Trump’s side, America will be safe again.

The left has been so gung ho about just taking away rights and trying to demolish what it means to be an American.

You’re going to see so much economic prosperity, the cost of energy going down.

He has excellent people in place in the cabinet as well as throughout the White House staff. 

He has become wiser because of what happened to him. He almost died.

What we want is that they give us more hope that immigrants won’t get deported if they haven’t committed a crime. 

I was at the Capitol that day [January 6]. It was a setup.

I transferred out of the high school that I was going to graduate from because there were guys that were going into the girls’ bathroom.

We are home-schooling him [son] right now, because of what the schools have become. This one has always been like, obsessed with Donald Trump. I mean, every paper he writes, every project he does in school, everything is about Trump.

All of these people gave their names, occupations and hometowns, and were photographed for the article. They were, apparently, eager to talk about their hopes and dreams for the next four years. None of them were politicians or architects of Project 2025—they were ordinary folks, across the economic spectrum.

It’s easy (and I see this all the time on social media) to call these people dumb—or even evil. But I keep going back to the goals of the 2024 campaigns: Disinformation. Fear. Resentment.

As a lifelong educator, I ask myself if I am partially responsible for young adults who fall for the politicized crapola they hear, who are unable to distinguish just who’s taking away their rights, who believe that the January 6th insurrection was a setup. Why would any student be obsessed with Donald Trump—see him as a hero?

Who are these people? It’s a question that needs answering.

Featured by nflanagan

Why Senate Cabinet Hearings are a Lesson for Schools

Here’s a reflective statement that will probably irritate—or enrage—my fellow music educators: When it comes to inappropriate behavior on the part of educators, performing arts teachers have a bad reputation. Often deservedly so.

Offhand—and I’m only one music teacher—I can think of a dozen instances of band, orchestra and choir teachers who have been accused of sexually unacceptable behaviors with students. Am I going to name them? I am not—although I have written about my own experience with a sexual predator/band director who used his power in that position in destructive, demeaning ways. For years.

Why are teachers in certain disciplines and grade levels more prone to sexually abusive behaviors? Opportunity. When you take students to camp, or on regular field trips—or when you are responsible for private lessons or after-school rehearsals—there are plenty of occasions when bad stuff can happen.

I kept thinking about this, watching the Hegseth hearings. Stuff that used to be distasteful and shameful is now, per Markwayne Mullins, a mere “mistake” up to and including criminal acts— Why did Hegseth do it? Because he could. Sound familiar?

Holly Berkley Fletcher has a great piece on the hearings in Bulwark: Mullin went on, “The only reason I am here and not in prison is because my wife loved me, too. . . I’m not perfect, but I found somebody that thought I was perfect . . . but just like our Lord and Savior forgave me, my wife’s had to forgive me more than once, too.”

Mullin’s mini-sermon was a lasagna of problematic messaging—the lauding of a woman for sticking with an abusive man, more generally giving women responsibility for men’s redemption, and calling longstanding patterns of behavior a “mistake.” Oh, and there was also the obligatory reference to Jesus—whom Hegseth also repeatedly invoked to get out of every jam free.

David Brooks, in the NY Times, had a hissy fit about all the ‘character’ questions lobbed at Hegseth, calling them “short attention span” and “soap opera” queries. He lists some undeniably concerning realities about our military and the global conditions it might be called upon to address—and hey, all of that is fine, and very relevant.

But. Character still matters in the application of expertise (which, it must be noted, Hegseth has pretty much none of, either). Being in charge of our military is the ultimate “opportunity for malfeasance” job.

As I watched the brand-new, low-information Senator from Montana—not naming him either—joke with Hegseth about how many genders there were and how many pushups he could do, I thought about how this works in my bailiwick—public school teaching.

What do we ask new teachers or principals, in hiring interviews? Questions that reveal character? Or questions strictly related to the disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary for the job? More specifically, how did all those music teachers I’m not naming get hired?

(And yes, I do realize, that merely getting someone certified to teach is often the best many districts can do, in 2025, given teacher shortages.)

Not all that long ago, Michigan was a teacher exporting state. Recent grads, who would have preferred to teach near home, were actively recruited by other states, often in the south. Interviews and job offers were done by telephone—before Zoom, where you can at least see the person you’re talking to. A number of my former students moved out of state to begin their teaching careers after a couple of phone calls netted them a job.

I used to wonder how administrators or hiring teams felt they knew enough about a person to believe they would do a good job with the children entrusted to them, with only a phone conversation. One of my formers, on her way to South Carolina, told me that her interviewer said they were impressed with her local university’s reputation as a teacher-prep institute, and her resume’ (which, it must be noted, showed zero experience as an actual teacher).

As Fine Arts Department Chair for many years in my district, I sat on lots of hiring committees. A strong resume’ is a good reason to interview, as are references. But there are things—character things, maybe even “soap opera” things—that emerge in an interview.

The guy who’s too slick, and can’t meet your eyes. The person who makes promises when they have no idea whether they can keep them. Worst of all, the teacher who’s leaving their previous district because the principal is “dysfunctional.” Things like this emerge when you ask character-related questions. And you use your human judgment skills to observe and evaluate.

This week, we’ve had a front row seat for the most important and consequential job interviews in the nation. Every person being grilled by senators has a comprehensive, publicly available resume’. And each of them deserve to have the nation watching them squirm or deflect or repeat their pre-arranged, “anonymous smear” responses.

Who’s going to get hired? As always, the person the administrator wants. But establishing a public record of questions asked and answered—or avoided—is critical.

And no question—not a single one—is unfair or irrelevant.

Featured by nflanagan

Would YOU Go to the Inauguration?

Should prominent Democrats attend the inauguration next Monday? Including Michelle Obama?

Old 2024 me would have said yes– part of the peaceful transfer of power, respect for the office if not the man, norms and institutions, blah blah. Even though Trump did not invite Biden to the WH or attend the 2021 inauguration, we go high when they go low. Maybe.

But now– I am saying “You are right to sit this one out, Michelle Obama.” Partly this is because I read Rachel Bitecofer’s book “Hit ’em Where It Hurts” wherein she points out that in American politics, nice and respectful politicians lose. And in order to govern for justice and equity, to get things done, you actually have to win.

It’s one thing to call the returning president tRump, or elderly golfer, or any number of clever pejoratives. You can dissect his “speeches” and comment on his addled goals. But it’s not funny any more, if it ever was. The man is immoral and malevolent. He’s going to cause a lot of damage and heartache.

So why is anyone duty-bound to stand by, quietly, and watch him take the oath of office?


Not showing up is a tangible, noticeable act of resistance. A statement of principles. Not today, Satan.

What do you say?

Featured by nflanagan

TIASL Best Blogs of 2024

I used to blog for Education Week—for nine years, in fact. And at the end of each year, the teacher bloggers were asked to choose our ten best blogs and post a piece about them. We were given viewership statistics (for our personal blog only), so we’d know which ones got the most eyeballs. And invariably, the most popular ones—the winners–were my least favorite pieces.

I’m writing for myself and like-minded readers these days, so I’m not sharing the most-read 2024 columns from Teacher in a Strange Land. I’m sharing eight blogs that I think best reflect the, well, Strange Land we find ourselves in, educationally speaking.

Before I list them, I’d suggest you read two recent—important– blog posts from Peter Greene. The first informs his regular readers (I’m among them): If you have ever had an urge to send money my way, I ask that you transfer that urge to someone whose work you appreciate and who has, however shyly or boldly, held their hat out. Plunk down some bucks for the work that you value and that you want to see staying in the world.

You’ve probably noticed that the most famous people who write about education are often not educators. The best—most accurate, most creative, most humane—writing about schools and learning comes from people (like Peter) who’ve done the work and have first-hand observations about doing right by children. In 2024 alone, I have subscribed to seven newsletters, paying a modest fee and developing an informed reading habit on screens, rather than newspapers and magazines. Some of those writers have interactive publishing modes and write back.

I have favorite ed writers—and it is those writers who introduce me to other ed writers. Which is Peter Greene’s second point: Share the good stuff. If you’re wondering who to read, click here. There are dozens of suggestions, curated by Greene. But first, subscribe to his blog, because his work is terrific, soaked in reality. And free.

Here are my eight picks:

Do Core Democratic Values Belong in Schools? Some Say No.
When looking at curricular change over the past five years—immediately preceding the onset of the COVID pandemic—it’s easy to see that there were plenty of precursors to the anti-woke, book-banning, teacher-punishing mess we find ourselves in as we slowly recover from that major shock to the public education system.

The scariest thing to me about the abuse teachers are taking, across the country, is its impact on curriculum. Here’s the thing: you really can’t outsource teacher judgment. You can prescribe and script and attempt to control everything that happens in the classroom, but it doesn’t work that way.

My Research is Better Than Your Research:

Simple theoretical questions—like “which method produces greater student understanding of decomposing geometric shapes?”—have limited utility. They’re not sexy, and don’t get funding. Maybe what we need to do is stop ranking the most influential researchers in the country, and teach educators how to run small, valid and reliable studies to address important questions in their own practice, and to think more about the theoretical frameworks underlying their work in the classroom.

Ignoring the Real World in the Classroom:

What happens when teachers can’t take questions about the daily news? It makes us look like idiots, for starters. Uninformed content-dispensers, unable to connect facts to causes or outcomes. What have our students learned from our unwillingness to discuss national crises, like 9/11?

Weaponizing Empathy and other Heritage Foundation Rhetoric for School Reform:

I was dumbstruck on hearing this little clip from a recent school board meeting.

Board member says: “This gets into the weaponization of empathy, where empathy is taught as the highest goal, the highest order. Do we teach empathy to the effect where students disregard parental authority—and accept anything and everything? Do we teach kids that any kind of judgment is bad?”

Wait. What? Who is he accusing? And what is the weaponization of empathy?

Too much empathy leads to kids defying their parents, evidently. The moral ambiguity of school confuses students. That’s their big fear?

DIS-Information in Schools:

There are, indeed, public schools where media literacy is a formal part of the curriculum. There are outstanding digital literacy resources for students, supported by high-quality research. What’s missing is the will and the urgency of the need to educate kids about distinguishing between truth and whatever it is they’re getting on TikTok.

Or, unfortunately, at their kitchen tables or their church or on the bus. Misinformation—can you remember Things You Used to Believe?—has always been a factor in growing up and becoming educated. Disinformation is a darker thing altogether. Especially when it comes from people who should, theoretically, represent integrity. Legislators, for example.

What do parents know about public education:

Adults’ perceptions of what’s happening in public schools mainly come from their own personal experiences (and this includes people with no K-12 children in the home). The percentage of people who read books or articles, watch cable news or videos, or listen to podcasts about education is small. People who get their education news from newspapers? Fifteen percent. Second highest source of ed news? Social media.

That’s a lot of guesswork, memes and faulty memories.

Man with Sixteen College Degrees Can’t Read:  

Things that ARE apparent in this article:

  • Third grade is WAY too early to label ANY child a non-reader (or punish them by retaining them). It’s too early for labels, period.
  • When it comes to effective learning (the kind that sticks, and can be applied), experiences trump worksheets.
  • Continuously reading to your children, even when they are supposedly “reading to learn” at age eight, is absolutely the right thing to do.
  • Visual interpretation of text symbols is not more efficient or of higher value than hearing that text read aloud.
  • Many, many children are “bright but different.”

The Return of the Trad Teacher:

It strikes me that tradwives are just another glitzy, social media-driven facet of a larger wave of backlash against a whole lot of un-trad trends in American society: Full-blown reproductive freedom. The continued shrinkage of mainline religions. Honoring personal sex/gender choices. Women running for office and corner offices–and winning. And so on.

I also see lots of pushback against untraditional teaching, curriculum and school organization models. The whole “Science of Reading” battle rings very familiar to those of us who started teaching in the 1970s, when teachers were pushing back against the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” –because teachers theoretically weren’t teaching phonics–crusade in the late 50s.

Thanks for reading. Remember: Share the good stuff.

Featured by nflanagan

Let’s Blame the Pandemic

Hey, I know it’s the holiday season, the end of a long, incredibly stressful and disappointing year. You’re entitled to a few days’ respite and mindless merry-making before returning to your job, if you are lucky enough to have a job that offers vacation time off over the holidays. I get it.

But as we move into a loosely organized resistance to whatever the hell comes next—Measles? The end of special education? Further loss of reproductive rights?—I think it would behoove us to poke around in the causes of what made has now made us, the so-called Greatest Nation on Earth, vulnerable to the likes of Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin.

Perhaps you remember the movie “Don’t Look Up.” The film follows two scientists who discover an extinction-level comet heading for Earth,which they then attempt to warn humanity about. The makers of the film have publicly stated that the film is meant as a satirical metaphor for the response to the climate emergency.

But the movie was also about how people don’t want to hear about bad things coming their way. They find it hard to believe that terrible scenarios could happen—their homes could slide down the mountainside, or an organized group of terrorists could invade the Capitol. So they pretend that genuine crises won’t happen, couldn’t happen—or didn’t happen.

How is it that Trump voters are now wondering—before he even takes office—if he will “keep his promises” to the poor? Why couldn’t they just think back to, you know, eight years ago, when his first (and, it turned out, only) leadership success was focused on tax cuts for the rich? Aren’t they listening when he suggests nominating  as Attorney General a dude who asks his teenaged “girlfriend” for freebie sex, as ”customer appreciation?”

That was not a rhetorical question, by the way. Who IS seriously listening to what Trump and his acolytes are currently saying they intend to do?  Are we all just opening gifts and going to the movies, eating ourselves into a stupor, because nothing can be done? Why is the Titanic backing up, planning to hit the iceberg again?

Think back to a time when it absolutely felt like nothing could be done—and we (everyone on earth) were facing an existential crisis: March 2020, as COVID rolled around the globe, and its potential as history-making killer became obvious.

My working theory for why we were confused enough, as a nation, to vote Donald Trump back into office, centers around the divisions, deprivations and misconceptions we all experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are still living with the repercussions, but pretending that it’s done, gone forever.

Here are six ideas about how the pandemic is still with us, impacting our institutions and daily life:

We totally underestimated the impact of a pandemic, before it occurred, and since, whenever we declared our personal liberation from living with a potentially mortal disease. We underestimated our capacity for coping with danger, and we underestimated the need to see ourselves as in charge, not helpless in the face of that danger. We underestimated the fear and lack of patience. We were panicked but—living in a rugged individualism/patriarchy—pretended not to be. We talked endlessly about when we could return to normal.

We especially underestimated the impact on children—on their emotional security, their need to play and learn with children their own age, their need to succeed at tasks set for them, as they built a mature personality. We’re still feeling those insecurities in our schools and often, responding with more pressure, rather than flexibility and the gift of time. We’re still having trouble getting kids to show up at school, a flashing red light for school leaders.

The pandemic was socially disruptive. It took families away from landmark gatherings—weddings, holidays and even funerals. It ruined existing workplace norms; we’re still trying to hire workers and adjust prices. The entire labor market has been disrupted, and the people in control don’t like the backlash of workers (including teachers) demanding more money. Mask-wearing (to keep either wearer or the people they encountered safe) became controversial.

The pandemic unsettled traditional religious beliefs and practices. Injecting the divine into a global pandemic was confusing to believers: Did God send us a lethal pandemic for a reason? If you trusted in Jesus, did that mean you didn’t need to wear a mask? Attendance at churches, which impacted their ability to stay afloat financially, dwindled—causing many churches to close, and others to put more faith in a Christian nationalism theology, where humans were in control.

The pandemic revealed how little Americans knew or cared about actual science. You remember Anthony Fauci, bona fide expert in viral disease transmission, putting his hand over his face at one of Trump’s COVID press conferences, right? Or the charge that the COVID vaccines “didn’t work” when some vulnerable people thought they were a magic shield instead of a lifesaving mitigator? All the scientific advances that have come in the past four years—and now we’re moving   toward vaccine refusal and, God help us, RFK Junior driving the public health ship.

The pandemic was politically disruptive. Donald Trump’s leadership style during the last year of his presidency—the Ivermectin and the bleach, the assertion that we’d be packing the churches by Easter, his drive around in a limosine to wave at fans while being treated for COVID at Walter Reed—was horrifying. But establishment of the Big Lie and the January 6th Insurrection at the Capitol ripped the fabric of American politics more than the previous hundred years’ worth of wars and rebellions. For every person who felt relief at having Uncle Joe in the WH, passing useful legislation, rebuilding international relationships and remembering the dead, there was an angry voter who thought he’d stolen the presidency (and pissed off that he still had to wear a mask in the grocery store).

Which brings me back to the last days of 2024, where we—like the heedless citizens in “Don’t Look Up”—are standing on the tracks of democracy, facing an oncoming train, but feeling too hopeless to muster a response.

Susan Glasser, on the Musk/Bannon/Ramaswamy/Loomer blah-blah on Twitter:

Would it be too 2016 of me to suggest that this is absurd, embarrassing, worrisome stuff? As 2024 ends, the prevailing attitude toward the manic stylings and overheated threats of the once and future President, even among his diehard critics, seems to be more one of purposeful indifference than of explicit resistance; call it surrender or simply resignation to the political reality that Trump, despite it all, is twenty-five days away from returning to the Oval Office.

Or, as Paul Waldman suggests in a terrific piece, everything is just awful: You can date it back as far as you like, but the prime suspect is the covid pandemic, a trauma that still profoundly affects us. That’s true not just for those who lost family members or businesses, or whose kids basically lost a year of schooling, but for everyone, the way it blanketed the country in misery and left us at each other’s throats. One of the most revealing data points is that during the pandemic, pedestrian deaths skyrocketed. People were just driving angry.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, sitting here, lonely, at my computer, I imagined a dozen ways that surviving a global pandemic might lead to improvements in our habits and way of life. Read it—it’s embarrassing to imagine that I believed a country that chose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton could turn the corner on a dozen issues and needs, courtesy of a pandemic that brought us together. We should all know better, now.

A couple of days ago, Dr. Vin Gupta (speaking of pandemic heroes) wrote this:  I’d recommend everyone regardless of medical risk bring a mask on your airplane journey, a disinfectant wipe to clean the seat you’re in and hand sanitizer. It’s going to be on you alone to protect your health. Warning signs are everywhere.

There you have it. It’s on you. Me, too.
Let’s work together.

Featured by nflanagan

Whiplash: Worst Teacher Movie Ever

If you’ve been paying attention to the DOGE Brothers—Elon-n-Vivek—lately, as they explain their personal theories around the failures of American parents to instill tenacity and a work ethic in our young citizens, you may have seen Ramaswamy’s rant on our deficit culture: A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell” … will not produce the best engineers. More movies like “Whiplash,” fewer reruns of “Friends.”

Ramaswamy goes on at some length, all Tiger Dad, about the virtues of immigrant parenting vs. native-born slacker parenting. As a veteran teacher, and thus long-time observer of American parenting, I think he’s flat-out wrong. True, there are parents who simply want to make things easy for their kids. But there are also plenty of non-immigrant parents who run a tight ship, academically, pushing their kids toward competitive excellence, breathing down their necks. The idea of hard work leading to a better life is not exclusive to immigrants.

It’s tempting to ignore the DOGE boys’ blah-blah on Twitter, although our incoming President has anointed them fixers of the entire political economy. It’s hard to see how your average Trump voter will suddenly decide that it’s time to claw their way to STEM careers via choosing the right TV characters to admire, or deciding not to (Vivek’s words) venerate mediocrity any more.

But we’re not going to nurture talent and work toward genuine accomplishment via movies like Whiplash, which is possibly the worst movie about education ever produced.

OK, maybe not the worst movie ever. But a stylish, seductive acting tour de force based on All the Wrong Stuff. An excellent showcase for two major talents–J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller–but with precisely the wrong message, for young people who want to excel in spite of setbacks, for educators, and for anyone who ever hoped making music was a rewarding, life-affirming pleasure instead of just another competition.

Several years ago, I had a very talented drummer–call him “Zach”– in one of my middle school bands. Zach was a natural–great innate rhythmic sense, great unforced stick technique and most important, a kind of fearlessness you don’t often see in an 8th grade percussionist. When something went wrong in the music-reading process he–perfectly illustrating the cliché– never missed a beat. Zach was what teachers call a “good kid,” to boot–polite, friendly, and willing to let other kids have the spotlight often, even though he knew he was a better drummer.

Zach’s mother was a physician, and at our first parent-teacher conference, she let me know that my ace drummer’s biological father (someone he now saw only sporadically, once or twice a year) was also a musician. She was clear: her son’s formal musical education would be ending with 8th grade; it was “too risky” to have Zach get involved in the high school band program, even though he was interested in doing so.

Zach was bound for better things than music, she said, adding a few bits of folk wisdom about how musicians aren’t trustworthy, goal-oriented or even rational, and make terrible husbands and fathers. It was her story, and she was sticking to it.

When I saw Whiplash I remembered that conversation with Zach’s mother. Because Whiplash is pretty much a dishonest conflation of myths (the only way to pursue excellence is through cut-throat competition) and truths (a lot of music teachers embrace that myth, the blood-and-thunder school of music teaching). The artist as anti-social and single-minded, driven stereotype.

When I watched J.K. Simmons, playing Fletcher, the tyrannical jazz band director, scream “MY tempo! MY tempo!” I flashed back to all the petty dictators I’ve seen on the conductor’s box, over 50 years of being a professional musician and school music teacher. I’ve witnessed at least a dozen school band directors say the exact same thing, transforming into little Napoleans, using their baton as weapon, “proving” that students must be prodded into worshipful obedience in order to play well.

Here’s the thing: you can be a superb, meticulous, demanding music teacher without being a hostile jerk. You can also be a driven, determined, even obsessed music student, bent on creative brilliance and perfection, without being inhuman or ruthless.

In a movie supposedly about “what it takes” to achieve true excellence in performance, we never saw Fletcher teach, or drummer Miles Teller’s ambitious character, Nieman, learn anything about music via guidance, example or instruction. Everything that was accomplished happened via psychological manipulation: Terror. Lies. Tricks. Bodily abuse. Even, God help us, suicide.

It was a movie designed to prove Zach’s mother right: music is a rough, vicious game, filled with people whose talent means more to them than family or human relationships. It’s about ego–and winning.

Except–it isn’t, really. Music is available to everyone, from the supremely talented to the amiable, out-of-tune amateur. It’s what we were meant to do as human beings–sing and play and express our own ideas.

Let’s not turn anyone away, Mr. Ramaswamy.

Featured by nflanagan

Christmas Music: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Ugly

Music is my life. I play several instruments and sing. I majored (and double minored) in music in college and am active in civic groups and church music as participant and conductor. I even went to flute camp (for adults) last summer. And I spent 30-odd years as a public school music teacher.

So– I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas music. Mostly love. But.

December can be brutal for musicians—and for school music teachers, brutal on multiple levels including community expectations and endless rounds of kids-on-risers. Music teachers become de facto activity directors, lurching from frigid parade to caroling at the nursing home. 

But still—there’s the rich opportunity to teach excited kids something about their cultural inheritance and surround. Which includes a clear definition of the divide between music as spiritual practice and music as auditory clutter.

Because you really can’t get away from Christmas music in America in December (or November), hard as you might try. People of other faith traditions, people who don’t believe in any of the Christmas iconography (like Santa or Jesus), people who loathe the downtown decorations and the Hallmark channel—we’re all stuck when Santa Claus comes to town.

For many people, Christmas music becomes irritating aural wallpaper, especially if they’re tuned into one of the omnipresent satellite radio Holly-day stations, or actually paying attention to what’s on the PA system as they’re perusing cheese in the dairy aisle. Because most of the commercial Christmas music readily available in businesses and on Sirius is, frankly, somewhere between uninspired and dreadful. I don’t want to hear—to choose just one example—Burl Ives at any time of year, let alone at holly, jolly Christmas.

I started listening to Christmas music on my little portable record player (Christmas gift from my parents), beginning with the LP records from the gas station ($1 will Fill-up!), where Percy Faith and Ella Fitzgerald were interspersed with the Chipmunks and the NY Philharmonic. When I got my flute, in fifth grade, I was invited to play Angels We Have Heard on High for the church Christmas pageant, a gig I kept through junior high because I liked the wings and halo, as well as the tune. I was hooked.

So I started collecting (and studying) seasonal music as a teenager, eventually making yearly cassette tapes of my favorite cuts. Cassettes morphed into CDs in the 1990s. I made annual gift CDs for family and friends—then eventually, due to the magic of iTunes, custom-selected CD playlists and discs for my regular customers. I requested multiple catalogs from folk and jazz artists and ordered new CDs, unheard, in the fall. At one time, I owned 500 holiday CDs, and had a catalog of over 3000 digital cuts on iTunes.

 Yeah, I know—when does a hobby become a sickness?

The last year I made CDs was 2018, when I realized most people no longer had the equipment to play a CD. I still make my own annual December playlists on Spotify—there are still arrangers and artists creating beautiful new seasonal music. I love listening, but I am really picky about what I am listening to.

Here’s the thing, though, about so-called Christmas music: it’s familiar, or will become familiar in time. A tune you recognize, when you hear it again, come December. We don’t have a lot of those commonly remembered classic songs anymore, holding our culture together. Nostalgia is a part of cultural norms.

For centuries, there was mostly sacred music—all of which has cultural value, whether the listener is a believer in the divine, or not. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel dates back to the 9th century, for example. How often do young listeners authentically interface with such a different time, except through music?

Commercial music has been shaped by the march of new technologies and low-bar popular opinion (lookin’ at you, Frosty). Children no longer know folk songs sung around campfires in the 19th century—unless they learn in school to cross the wide prairie with Betsy from Pike. We are losing bits of our cultural heritage, including traditional carols.

Whatever you want to listen to today is immediately available on your phone. But if you haven’t explored the truly glorious—magnificent or austere or funky–songs and carols of the season, how will you know what to ask for, to know what musicians have created from a simple tune?

In collecting mountains of Christmas music, I have favorite versions of all the songs, of course. But when I want to relax on Christmas Eve, with a glass of wine, this is what I put on: https://open.spotify.com/track/5c0sQY87Iw7qUu46N31f3v. 

Featured by nflanagan

The Amazing Power of Snowpants

It started out as a simple Facebook dispatch from Detroit Public Schools teacher Ann Turner (now retired), an early childhood educator, on the day after southeast Michigan’s first real snowstorm.

We were not able to go out and enjoy the REAL stuff today as only two of my students have snow pants and boots. I would love to gather enough so that all 16 of my students can enjoy and love Michigan winters and snow as much as I do. I have four pairs of snow pants that my own girls have outgrown and two that I picked up at a resale shop. If your child has outgrown last year’s snow pants and/or boots and you would like to donate them to my winter closet, I would be so appreciative. Thanks!

Within two hours, there were 25 responders–fellow teachers and friends, sharing information about sizes, bargain sales and where to drop off donations and purchases. Ann promised to pass any extras on to the other teachers in the building, all of whom have “winter closets”–and know about the restorative power of recess in a Michigan winter. Ann’s next post, the Monday following:

I was SOOOO excited to get to school today because I knew that this would be our first GREAT snow day with all of our new gear! I am not sure who was more excited–me or the kiddos!! After everyone got suited up (that was exhausting), we headed out and we played and we played and we played some more. Some of the kids were amazed at how they could roll around in the snow without getting wet or cold. We made snow cakes, we walked in sled tracks, we made snow angels, we threw the snow, we laughed and we played some more.

When everyone was good and tuckered out, we went in and made hot chocolate. Isn’t that just the perfect day? The first thing they told their parents at pick-up? All about their adventure–and the last thing they said to me is “Are we going out tomorrow?” Thank you ALL for making a difference in the lives of children! Thanking everyone is difficult because some of you were the messengers or middlemen. I hope that you will be able to convey our gratitude to those who assisted in getting these babes suited up!

There’s more–photos and stories–and then, the collecting of snow gear morphed into a full-scale Girl Scout troop project, with the girls shopping the post-Christmas sales with their cookie money.

It’s important, however, to look past the do-good/feel-good aspects of this heartwarming story.

  • Only two of Turner’s students had appropriate clothing for winter–and, trust me, snowpants are vital for kids in a Michigan winter. What other essentials are missing in their lives and learning? How do these missing elements contribute to the media-fed narrative of “failing” schools?
  • Children in Finland play outside for 15 minutes after every 45-minute lesson. Because the Finns structure their school day using research demonstrating the necessity of invigorating free play for young children. While Turner goes outside to monitor and play with her students, teachers in Finland take coffee and chat breaks with their colleagues. Pauses, movement and conversation consolidate learning and make it stick–anyone who’s ever tried to gather up participants to return to a workshop PowerPoint after a break recognizes this.
  • Playing outside in warm clothing, using sleds and snow toys–with follow-up hot chocolate– represented a special treat to the children at Palmer Park Academy in Detroit, courtesy of a dedicated teacher and her kind-hearted friends and colleagues. Kudos to Turner. But–the children in her class deserve free play and a refreshing drink every day, year-round, as part of best pedagogical practice for very young children. The research on this is iron-clad.
  • Inevitably, there were questions about whether Turner’s foray to the playground was approved by administrators as an “educational” activity. Since Michigan’s former governor once proposed pre-kindergarten testing as a means of determining whether Michigan was getting a bang for its pre-school funding bucks, this is a legitimate worry for early childhood teachers. Will this healthy exercise reduce test scores–is it more important to stay inside and do some more worksheets?

Anyone who looked at Turner’s photos would have an answer for that. But people making policy around early childhood education aren’t necessarily paying attention to snow angels, rosy cheeks and face-splitting grins.

Featured by nflanagan

We Need Hygge Classrooms in America

The ubiquitous FB meme:

In Iceland, books are exchanged as Christmas Eve presents, then you spend the rest of the night in bed reading them and eating chocolate. The tradition is part of a season called Jolabokafload, the Christmas Book flood, because Iceland, which publishes more books per capita than any other country, sells most of its books between September and November, due to people preparing for the upcoming holiday.

Nobody ever responds: That sounds awful! My family prefers watching our individual TVs!

Generally, commenters reply wistfully, longing for a country where learning is valued and books are ideal gifts, where the dark and cold are counterbalanced by intellectual curiosity and conversation.

Thanks to the Jolabokaflod, books still matter in Iceland, they get read and talked about. Excitement fills the air. Every reading is crowded, every print-run is sold. Being a writer in Iceland you get rewarded all the time: People really do read our books, and they have opinions, they love them or they hate them. At the average Christmas party, people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.

Perhaps because I live in a region that gets 135 inches of snow each winter, these cozy, fireside literary chats are enormously appealing to me. As is the Danish concept of hygge:

The Danish art of contentment, comfort, and connection…a practical way of creating sanctuary in the middle of very real life.”

Hygge (hoo-ga), which has no direct translation into English—surprise!—is many things to many people: Woolen socks. Candles and other gentle light. Board games. Comfortable couches and cozy quilts. Warm drinks.

Although hygge seems to have Scandinavian roots, it’s not exclusively a cold-climate thing, evidently. A rustic cottage on a lake, with its beat-up furniture, mildewed paperbacks from the 1950s and second-hand bathing suits is very hygge, according to Meik Wiking, author of “The Little Book of Hygge” and, not coincidentally, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. The mere fact that there is a Happiness Research Institute, somewhere in the world, makes me—well, happy.

The interesting thing about hygge and Jolabokafload is their inherent intentionality. Citizens in Iceland and Denmark take contentment, comfort and connection seriously, and pursue them with deliberation. Choosing the right book for someone means you know that person, and what they might enjoy reading. Playing games with your family means connecting with them, laughing and teamwork.

So why don’t we pursue this, here in the land of the free, home of the brave? What keeps us, a nation that often proclaims itself the best country in the world, or at least on its way to becoming “great” again, from choosing to embrace contentment and connection?

Perhaps Scandinavians are better able to appreciate the small, hygge things in life because they already have all the big ones nailed down: free university education, social security, universal health care, efficient infrastructure, paid family leave, and at least a month of vacation a year. With those necessities secured, according to Wiking, Danes are free to become “aware of the decoupling between wealth and wellbeing.”

That decoupling between wealth and wellbeing is well-reflected in this headline: Children Need Homes, Not Charter Schools or Standardized Tests, and Definitely Not Tax Cuts for the Wealthy.

That’s where our intentionality lies in the U.S., where we’re spending our hard-earned tax dollars—canned curricula designed to raise test scores and alternative school governance models, endless expensive tests—when over 100,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless last year. According to former Senator Orin Hatch, we don’t even have money for poor children’s basic health care. As a nation, we have linked simple human well-being to wealth, and sealed it with the tamper-proof cap of low opportunity.

Many teachers try to add hygge touches to the classrooms where their high-poverty students meet and work every day—from beanbag chairs to classroom sets of snowpants for outdoor play, from little free libraries to Cocoa Day. If school can become a place of connectivity, warmth and safety, they reason, students will keep coming back.

Happy Hygge-days, Teacher in a Strange Land readers. Thanks for all you do for your students.