Tag / parenting

by nflanagan

Does Love Really Make the World (or Classroom) Go ‘Round?

Some years ago, when talk radio ruled the discourse, I was listening to a national teacher union leader talk with a right-leaning—and nationally recognized—radio host. The topic was teachers as catalysts for improving public education.

The union leader mentioned National Board Certification as a model for identifying teacher leaders, the kinds of folks whose classroom expertise was validated, whose ideas about advancing public school achievement could be valuable.

Radio host: So what do these so-called nationally certified teachers have to do to prove they’re good?

Union leader: Well, they are assessed on five core principles of pedagogical excellence. The first one is knowledge of their students, and what they need to succeed. Teachers need to be committed to their students and their learning.

Radio host (full of snark): So good teachers just have to love the kids? Hug ‘em until they drop out?

That conversation—which could have featured any of the podcasters grabbing the public ear in 2026—is familiar. Lots of media figures seem to feel that the cure for “fixing” public schools is coming down hard on kids, raising the bar, forcing them to pull up their (nonexistent) bootstraps and get to work, damn it.

I thought about that conversation when I read this headline:

‘Valentine’s Day events around Minneapolis take on the ‘horrors of the world’in the Minneapolis Star.

Tag line: After a heavy start to the year, some Minneapolis residents are using Valentine’s Day to love thy neighbor.

Bingo. ‘Love thy neighbor’ is currently working in besieged communities like the Twin Cities. It works in the classroom. In fact, getting along is Job #1 in classrooms.

Kindness. Patience. Respect, a two-way street.

And then—and only then—engagement. Communication and collaboration. Joy, even. Deep learning.

Why is that so hard to believe—or understand? Human beings seldom respond to fear, threats, isolation or humiliation. They shut down—or fight back. People who relish the idea that the modern-day equivalent of smacking kids’ hands with a ruler is a productive idea are wrong.

From the National Education Policy Center newsletter:

…70% [of surveyed U.S. principals] said that “[s]tudents from immigrant families have expressed concerns about their well-being or the well-being of their families due to policies
or political rhetoric related to immigrants.” These impacts on schools across the nation are shockingly pervasive, and those impacts can be devastating, even for those students not directly targeted. “Fear undermines the ability of public schools to foster a civic community,” [survey author John] Rogers told Education Week last month.

This is unsurprising—and none of this is new. The ecology of school success has always centered on relationships. When everyone—and this includes teachers—feels comfortable and part of the community, stuff gets done.

In fact, Herbert J. Taylor created a set of ethical guidelines for the Rotary Club in 1932 that might be useful for anyone concerned with kids’ well-being in 2026. It consists of four questions to guide all our decisions:

  1. Is it the TRUTH? 2. Is it FAIR to all concerned? 3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? 4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Is our government using any of these old-fashioned, even corny, principles to guide their actions around immigration? Or election security? Or ethical business practice?

Do we have to love our students? No. That’s not reality—or practical.

But caring for each other may be the only thing that will save us, in these dark times.
Happy Valentine’s Day.

by nflanagan

ICE: Not your friendly neighborhood cops

I was talking with an acquaintance, and made a comment about ICE being reported in Leelanau County. Don’t you want to see illegal immigrants gone? she asked. Besides, they’re only picking up the ones with a criminal record.

I was dumbfounded. I knew she was likely a Republican; our points of contact have nothing to do with politics. But still– it came as a shock to know that she felt ICE was doing good, justifiable work– keeping her safe, here in nearly all-white Leelanau County.

This didn’t feel political. It felt personal. How could anyone who’s paying attention to the news support an out-of-control federal agency, ripping families apart and harming American citizens, with our tax dollars? Could you be a good person while accepting government-sponsored violence against innocent people?

There were lots of questions I could have asked, researched and validated arguments to be made, beginning with data about the non-criminals and citizens who have been detained. But–shamefully, I admit–I said nothing, just changed the subject to the reason we were meeting.

Thinking it over, I resolved not to just ‘let it go’ anymore. It’s true that many of these folks have made up their mind and are impervious to facts. And, at this moment, nobody is out in the streets when the wind chill is 25 below.

But–thinking people, actual good citizens, care about the people who live in and serve their communities. We are not seeing public safety being played out. We are seeing the base of a presidential posse–men with vicious grudges and biases empowered to destroy public services and schools. We all need to speak up.

Even when it’s socially awkward or unlikely to change minds.

Why? Well– read the article below. It’s a gift article, so you can read the whole thing.

by nflanagan

Where Do Kids Get Their Information?

Their music and media tell them individualism will pull them out of squalor. The people behind those messages shove the economic ladders from underneath them.   (Jose Vilson)

One of the most stunning bits of clarifying data I’ve seen in the past few weeks is this chart from Media Matters, with data from February 2025:

It’s a graphic of most listened-to online news and commentary shows, color-coded and sized to represent the magnitude and political leanings of the American audience. It’s year-old data, remember—but it goes some way toward answering the question I’ve spent the past year obsessing over: Who ARE these people and how could they have re-elected the corrupt man who led the insurrection against their pretty-good government?

I’m old enough to remember 2008, when Barack Obama’s online media savvy and fund-raising prowess was attracting voters and the envy of the other party, stuck in Walter-Cronkite land. Kids who were primary consumers of social media then, are in their 30s now, and apparently have shifted to eating up Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes.

But what are kids listening to in 2026?  I think the JLV, in two sentences, above, sums up what I’m thinking: They’re young. They’re being bamboozled by glitzy media and music, convinced that their own swagger will save them. And then it doesn’t. In fact, they’re a generation that almost certainly will experience less prosperity and fewer prospects than their parents’ generation.

I volunteer in an after-school program for middle-schoolers, usually on afternoons dedicated to homework (or missing assignments). It’s no secret to any teacher that a lot of incomplete and missing work happens because the students don’t know how to do it. They will finally tell you—I don’t get this—after making excuses and going to their locker or the bathroom three times. This happens a lot with math, but also with conventional Q & A, end-of-chapter reviews and short writing assignments.

Our kids have their own Chromebooks and most of the teachers provide several vetted information sources beyond the textbook, which is great. But only if students go there, and wade around. Unfortunately, chatbots have now given them a get-out-of-jail quick option.

These students are—I emphasize—not dumb (or any similar but less insulting word). After homework is completed, we often play board games or cards. They understand and can negotiate things that the games require—similes and other wordplay, strategy and logic, memory. Some are also readers (passing around personally owned books that I never ask to see). There are conversations full of humor and current music and YouTube video references.

But at age twelve or so—where are they getting their information about the world at large? On the day after the 2024 election, our coordinator stopped by to remind volunteers NOT to speak about the election. Not that any of the kids mentioned it. It was as if it hadn’t happened.

A couple of days ago, there was a local protest in town about the Venezuelan invasion, and Indivisible posted photos on their Facebook page. This drew a flood of bot comments and an irritated response from protest organizers. Bots have taken over the normal give-and-take on many social media advocacy platforms. We are no longer getting honest news from legacy sites, and right-wing frat-boy videographers get millions of eyeballs on their dishonest grift.

If we can’t count on legacy media, who’s going to sort through those red and blue bubbles of independent media? It’s going to take more than hope and good will to teach kids to be critical consumers of media and music, to discern the difference between glittering generalities and sometimes unpleasant truth.

Somebody needs to clue them in to the fact that not all elected and appointed leaders can be trusted, and actors and musicians run the gamut from good guys to sleaze . There are malignant forces in the world,  people who are capable of extreme evil, which, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is typically characterized by mediocrity. 

Of course, teachers are proscribed from sharing their opinions on the best sources of accurate and unbiased information, lest they be labeled DEI or woke. Makes you wonder how the public opinion on DEI and woke, two ideas that were once debatable if not accepted, solidified into broadly understood negative concepts. Where did that “information” come from?

Because I hang out with middle schoolers on the regular, I don’t think it’s too late to take a stand for discretion around the truthfulness of media sources. But simply letting the red bubbles win is a mistake.

by nflanagan

Most  Depressing Blogs of 2025

“A generation raised under the [moral tone set by FDR] went on to build the modern middle class, defeat fascism, and help construct a postwar world that valued democracy, human rights, and shared prosperity.

Contrast that with the bigoted, hateful, revenge-filled claptrap children have heard for the past decade from the emotionally stunted psychopath currently occupying the White House.”                                                                                                          Thom Hartmann

My goal in blogging—something I’ve been doing for almost 25 years—has always been to write about what it’s like to be a teacher in the United States. I wanted to focus on teacher leadership, to write about the ‘inconsistencies and inspirations, the incomprehensible, immoral and imaginative, in American education.’

Because—back in 2001, when I got my first paid gig writing on the internet (there were unpaid local newspaper columns before that), there were many inspiring things to write about, from my own experience as a classroom teacher. There were also important questions about instruction, thorny policy issues and curricular problems to solve, but it really felt as if public school educators were on the same page—valuing democracy, human rights, shared prosperity, as Thom Hartmann says.

You could see a turning point coming. Topics from my December 28, 2016 “best blogs” review when I was writing for Education Week: Charters aren’t the answer. Women are disrespected even in a field where they’re a huge majority. We still don’t know what “teacher leadership” looks like—or might accomplish. Standards may shape practice, but they don’t automatically raise achievement. Competition and marketing aren’t the answer, either. And the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.

Going through the blogs I wrote this year was an exercise in dismay. Although I had many rewarding experiences volunteering in schools, in 2025, pulling the camera back to see where we’re going in pubic education is – no other word—monumentally depressing.

Here are 10 blogs from 2025 that I think represent our current trajectory, such as it is. Wish I could offer readers better news:

Teachers are Patriots! Who Knew?

You might say that teachers’ observations and informal experiments—Teach it this way? Or that?—are the most valuable action research data to build a successful practice. But don’t say it too loud, because research is tied tightly to the source of the money that funds it—and the commercial products and politics that drive educational change.

“Progressive” Schools

Speaking as a person who has spent decades working in public schools and with public school teachers across the country, schools are generally among the most conventional and cautious institutions on the planet, subject to pressures and opinions from a wide range of (often clueless) critics. And likely headed by someone who adamantly does not want to get phone calls from honked-off parents.

Moral Clarity in the Classroom

If we were to sit down together over a cup of coffee, I could tell you dozens of stories from my teaching career that illustrate both moral clarity in my classroom, as well as times when I absolutely failed at establishing a trusting, collaborative ecology. It’s probably enough to say that I got way better at it, over 30+ years.

What I Still Believe about Public Education

Why would we abandon public schools’ infrastructure and experienced personnel? Crushing public education is not policy—it’s vandalism. It makes no sense.

Maybe the question is not: Is Public Education Over? Maybe the question is: What’s worth saving in public education?

Political Violence in the Classroom

Times do change. People do change. And I would assert that changing people for the better happens in good schools, every day. Not all classrooms, not all playgrounds, not all teachers—but public schooling is an overall force for good, for a better, healthier nation.

The Good News in August and Why It’s Baloney

 This is not just another start of school. This is (among other things) the first school year since 1979 when there hasn’t been a functional Department of Education. It’s a year when there’s now concrete evidence that addressing equity and appreciating diversity can get you fired. It’s a year when federal funding —especially for the neediest schools—can disappear overnight. Maybe never to return.

What’s Better than DEI?

Actually, if you’re taking away (via federally approved punishments and reduced funding) inclusion, equity and diversity, what you’ve got left is exclusion of non-preferred students, discriminatory distribution of resources, and separation of student groups based on physical characteristics. In other words, Arkansas in 1957. What happens when a latter-day Orval Faubus emerges?

Boys

While it’s important for boys to have personal agency in their learning, and be trusted by their teachers, boys need to have role models, as well. Who are we offering up as heroes, men whose lives and actions are worthy and admirable? Men worth emulating, who care for their spouses and children, men whose values serve as guardrails, men who are civically engaged?

Boys are growing up in schools where their neighbors on the school board worry about “weaponizing empathy.”  Where men at the highest levels of government power are uninformed bullies, careless in their actions but never held accountable.  

Five Things Your Child’s Teacher Accomplished Last Week

When I first heard about Elon Musk’s email blast to over two million federal employees directing them to submit approximately five bullet points of what they accomplished in the previous week, I was reminded of a couple of school administrators from my past.

Eugene Robinson called Musk’s scheme “an exercise in contempt”—also a great description of some of the so-called professional development teachers routinely endure. When a principal doesn’t trust their professional staff to know what they’d like to do with time available for their own learning or planning, you end up with meaningless exercises like “five things I did last week.”

Ultimately, it’s about control.

Who’s in Favor of Authoritarianism?
For the current administration, bent on “saving” federal dollars for their own preferences, breaking up this monolith will be a giant display of power that impacts some 50 million students and their families. Think you’re in charge of your local school, your classroom? Think again. Easy peasy.

No, the federal government–and supporting Republicans and conservative courts–say. No, we don’t want your media literacy classes. No, we don’t want kids nosing around in issues like fairness and equity in our recent history. No speaking Spanish. No arts classes or events to help students make sense of the world they live in. No vaccines to protect them, or accurate health information.

by nflanagan

Youth. For Christ? At School?

I should probably preface what I’m about to say by noting that I self-identify as a liberal Christian. Without getting too far into the theological weeds—or alienating those who are rightfully skeptical about some current Christian churches’ lack of commitment to feeding the poor, etc.—I have been a church member and/or employee for decades, off and on.

All the way back to the 5th grade, in fact, playing “Angels We Have Heard on High” on my flute and swapping out my little-kid animal ears for a white robe and tinsel halo in the church Christmas pageant. Good times.

Or maybe—not so good. I’ve dealt with the insertion of religious tunes into public school holiday programs for my entire career. It’s the evergreen issue for music teachers in December. Bottom line: Public schools need to tread lightly, when it comes to the separation of church and state, even at times when you are hearing angels on high in your local grocery store or used car lot.

I retired—for good—from my last church music director position after Easter, and have since had the pleasant experience of being asked to play in several local churches, which are always looking for free talent.

Last summer, I was surprised to play a service and see two dozen teenagers seated together. There was a junior trad-wife fashion sense for the girls, all with long, curled hair and cute summer dresses. The girls were mostly carrying Bibles; the boys, with their llama-head haircuts, were carrying phones (and scrolling on them during the sermon).

Later, I learned that they were a newly organized chapter of Youth for Christ, meeting with their leaders (an attractive, early-20s married couple), in their home for coffee and prayer before school. Several of them had been baptized by that couple in Lake Michigan, earlier that month.

The guy sitting next to me at the service whispered that he was hoping that these kids were associated with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which claims over 1000 chapters in high schools across the country: ‘Turning Point USA is also getting an assist from Republican leaders. The U.S. Department of Education announced it was partnering with the organization, along with dozens of other conservative groups, to launch a coalition to produce educational programming for schools and universities in advance of America’s 250th birthday next year.’

Eek.

I can’t tell you, precisely, what made me most uneasy about seeing perhaps 25 teenagers attending a conservative church en masse. None of the small, rural churches in this county have dozens of HS-aged members, for starters—so their organizational point was obviously somewhere other than an actual church. And the occasional teenager who showed up at the church where I worked never came dressed like a candidate on Bama Rush or looking like a Department of Labor poster boy.

It turns out that the Youth for Christ leaders are salaried, and were posted here to start a chapter, a task they accomplished by volunteering at a local school district. They got some help from a friendly uncle (real estate here is sky-high), and found a place downtown to meet, then began recruiting the kids they met while volunteering as tutors and cafeteria supervisors.

And, miracle of miracles, parents in this conservative community didn’t like it. There were 78 non-consent forms, representing 109 minor children, filed with the Youth for Christ leaders and their organization, saying, essentially: Hands off our kids. If we want them to have religious experiences, we’re in charge of that.

It’s a small school—109 minor children represent a third of the school population. YFC is undeterred, planning to establish a ‘teen hangout’ in the tiny resort downtown, courtesy of Generous Uncle. And downtown merchants, perennially cramped for space, parking and business have turned this into a zoning issue. They might actually win—as I noted, this is a conservative, business-friendly town.

But I want to return to the Christianity—if that’s the right word—inherent in recruiting members for your religious club from a public school setting. When I think about all the angst about not referencing equity, inclusion or diversity in school curricula, and all the book-banning Moms 4 Censorship types showing up at school board meetings, shouldn’t there have been outrage over paid recruiters “volunteering” and proselytizing during lunch?

Not long after Charlie Kirk was killed, CA Governor Gavin Newsome remarked on his goal of organizing young men as effectively as the TPUSA model does. He asked why left-leaning young men have not collectively fought the ‘epidemic of loneliness’ with liberal activism. I don’t have an answer for that, but it’s a good question.

In the season where Jesus sneaks into the daily life of families and communities—Joy to the World!—I am in favor of parents’ careful attention to who’s recruiting their kids.

by nflanagan

Gratitude and Canned Goods—Teaching Children to Care

From one of my must-reads, Culture Study, on November 12:

‘If you’re not on TikTok, you might not have heard about the woman who’s been calling religious organizations to see how they respond to a mom’s request to source formula for her two-month-old daughter, whose cries you can hear in the background. (Nikalie does not have a two-month-old daughter; she plays a recording of a baby’s cries in the background).

Nikalie records the conversations (Kentucky, where she lives, is a one-party consent state, so this is legal) and then posts them to TikTok, along with a tally of how many organizations have offered to help and how many have declined. You can see all the videos here, but viewers have been compelled by the overall stats: only a quarter of the religious organizations she’s called have offered direct assistance. The larger the organization, the less likely it is to help.‘

Even if you’ve seen the Tiktok, I recommend reading the Culture Study piece, wherein Anne Helen Petersen deftly dissects this kind-of experiment, pointing out that some of the organizations that did not offer formula or money sent the caller to another resource, where they did.

She also raises the right questions: How do we help the needy efficiently, elevating proven logistics above feel-good impulses? Should religious institutions have serving the poor as an ongoing mission? (Yes.) And—why are there so many needy folks right now?

As a veteran teacher, in a relatively well-off suburban school system, I’ve been part of any number of school-based community service projects. My middle school used to have a canned goods drive around Thanksgiving.

Homerooms competed to see who could bring in the most cans, with the winning class getting donuts and cocoa. Piling the cans into an edifice—you can make a fairly impressive structure with hundreds of them—then plunking a few students in front of the Great Can Pyramid—well, there’s a shot for the monthly newsletter.

But it always bothered me. There were the rabid competitors—Come on! Just go where your mom stores cans and put a few in your gym bag!—who were definitely in it to win it. I mean, free donuts! From the bakery! There were also plenty of well brought-up girls who wanted to feed the poor (and maybe get their photo in the newsletter), counting and re-counting the cans.

The people who didn’t get mentioned: The Student Council advisor who had to transport a thousand-plus cans to the food bank. And food bank volunteers who had to organize the donations, throwing out outcoded or bulging cans of beets and butterbeans.

Not to mention the folks who depend on food banks, getting there early to get what they actually needed (formula, perhaps) and not be left with stuff that had been sitting in suburban cupboards for years, unused.

For several years, I was advisor to the National Junior Honor Society, the stated mission of which was acknowledging scholastic excellence in middle schoolers. Hey, I was always down to honor academic effort, and lots of my band kids were in the NJHS. It was one of those “make of it what you will” volunteer jobs, and I thought it was a place where some smart kids could wrestle with the idea that they were more fortunate than—well, the rest of the world. A middle school kind of noblesse oblige.

One year, we raised money by hosting a dance, then sent those proceeds to a homeless coalition in Detroit. It was a pretty bloodless project—the only outcome for us was a nice thank-you note from the nonprofit—but it was a good opportunity to talk about just who the homeless were, and how you get to be without shelter in the richest country in the world.

Another year, we “adopted” a family through the local Salvation Army (this was before their stance on LGBTQ folks was questioned), to provide a nicer Christmas. The first order of business, after raising a few hundred dollars, was discussing the word “adoption,” relative to extending charity to folks who are less well-off, but live in the same community. We were not adopting anyone; we were providing temporary, anonymous assistance.

Then, we went shopping. There were two cars full of 8th graders, with lists provided by the Salvation Army, pushing carts around Meijers, picking up a holiday dinner and gifts for everyone in our assigned family. What was interesting to me was the assumption that “the poor” weren’t like the kids in the NJHS; they should have to live with less expensive, less attractive products and even be grateful for them.

In our assigned family was a girl (14), who needed a warm winter jacket. The kids debated: the cheaper, ugly one or the acceptable style that was $20 more? This took a lot of time, standing in the aisle. I asked: Would YOU wear cheaper/ugly? No. Never in a million years. So—why should she? The answer (a good answer): because then we could get frozen macaroni and cheese for their Christmas dinner.

In the end, the chaperone mom and I kicked in extra cash, and we got them both. But life isn’t always like that.

I don’t think you can teach kids to care for their neighbors via school projects—but you can teach them to think about inequity and compassion. Just because SNAP benefits returned this month does not mean the less fortunate will be well fed in the long term. And the misfortunes of rising unemployment, rising food prices and rising social uncertainty will not be ending soon.

The foundations for eliminating food insecurity are cracking. The best gifts: Money and time. Happy Thanksgiving.

by nflanagan

Absence Makes the Smart Go Wander

Recently, Bridge Magazine—a Michigan-focused news venue—ran a series of articles on the appalling numbers of absences that Michigan schoolchildren have been racking up since (and, let’s be honest, before) the pandemic.

Last year, more than a quarter of Michigan students, nearly 388,000, were considered “chronically absent,” which includes excused and unexcused absences — everything from sickness and appointments to skipping school without parents’ knowledge. Before the pandemic, there were 290,000 chronically absent students, or 19.7% of public school students. 

The definition of chronically absent? Ten percent of the school year, or 18 days. There’s a handy little infographic where you can see how your district ranks, and how their absence rate has fared in the past six years. I was happy to see that the suburban school where I taught for more than 30 years, and the district where I now live and volunteer have low absence rates, generally a mark of an economically secure community. Kind of like test scores.

Also—like test scores—high rates of absenteeism are something that outside observers (read: Bridge Magazine) seem to want to pin on school districts. Here’s a headline: Unlike Michigan, Indiana got tough on missing school. It’s already working. Bridge features a story about the low absence rate in Fremont, Indiana, just across the border, with a photo of a motherly kindergarten teacher and her (white) students.

‘New [Indiana] laws standardize school response to absences, threaten criminal action against students and families and create a reporting system that streams data daily from individual classrooms to state officials.

Fremont has fewer economically disadvantaged students (about 40%), which researchers tie to increased absenteeism, but district leaders say they also have stepped up effort to help get kids in school. Small buses pick up homeless students, schools offer telehealth and dentistry care and a countywide “teen court” serves as a first accountability step for some truant teens.’

Well, bully for Indiana—especially for picking up homeless kids and offering wraparound services for those who might be inclined to skip school because they can’t get there, or their clothes are dirty, or their tooth hurts. I’m guessing that if Michigan schools could lower their rate of disadvantaged students our absence rates would also drop. As for threatening criminal action—truancy has been a recurring issue since forever, and carrots work better than sticks in encouraging positive habits and behaviors.

In one of Bridge’s articles about the Shocking Absence Crisis, this interesting tidbit appeared:

‘Last year, 162 school districts — 59 traditional and 103 charters — faced potential financial penalties for school days when fewer than 75% of students showed up. In five districts, all charter schools, the 75% threshold wasn’t met at least 22 days, according to data provided to Bridge Michigan by the Michigan Department of Education.’ 

There are about 540 fully public (not charter) school districts in Michigan, and around 300 charter schools. Data is murky—but thumbnail math says that just over 10% of fully public school districts (which includes many large urban districts and small, remote rural schools) have serious attendance problems. Meanwhile, over a third of charter schools (which are smaller and more select) are struggling with absences—and the most egregious rates (the ones dragging down the statewide numbers) come from charter schools.

Bridge did not provide that analysis. Interesting.

When thinking about the results of so many kids missing school, Bridge naturally turns to test scores. I’m not even going to summarize, because it’s exactly what you’d expect: kids who don’t go to school very often get lower test scores and struggle to learn to read. But that doesn’t mean they’re dumb, or unworthy. It means we’re not digging into the real roots of the problem.

The more essential questions are why kids aren’t attending, and how to bring them back into the gotta-go-to-school fold. What people and programs might fill their needs, invite them into a safe community?

With elementary students, absences are tied to parent behaviors—so Fremont, Indiana has the right idea: buses, free health and dental care, after-school programs, etc. With older students, building communities—sports, clubs, co-ops, supervised hangouts—are lures, but in the end, teenagers come to school to learn, to let their minds wander. When that doesn’t happen, if there’s nobody dragging you out of bed in the morning, why bother?

Here’s a footnote to the discussion: Should Kids Miss School for Vacation? Parents Say Yes, Teachers Aren’t So Sure. Synopsis: Parents are defensive about getting better prices on a Disney or skiing vacation and pulling their kids from school for family fun. Teachers are resentful about being required to rustle up packets and other busy work while Kid misses classroom discussions and contributions to group projects. Grades become an issue.

Speaking personally, I’ve never flipped out over kids missing a few days, especially if you get advance warning and a request for work that comes back completed. Learning is never uniform and predictable, and learning (not filling boxes in the gradebook) is the ultimate goal. Right?

I’ve been asked to excuse a two-month absence for a boy traveling to Egypt with his energy engineer father, and dealt with a championship snowboarder who missed most of a marking period but came back with Olympic and career goals, and a fistful of medals.

The first boy was an A student. He couldn’t make up what he missed—but the life experience more than made up for that. The second boy read at a 2nd grade level, a fact reinforced by several teachers when his parents told us about the tour of events he’d entered. Finally, his mother said: So we shouldn’t let him do what he’s so great at—we should make him stay here and fail all his assignments? How does that help him?

I have thought about her many times. Partly about the privilege well-heeled white parents have in managing their children’s absences—but also in considering why students stop coming to school.

If kids aren’t showing up to school, maybe it’s not about better data streams or legal threats, or texting their parents at the right time.

Maybe they don’t want to stay in school and fail their assignments, convinced that nobody cares much. What should we be doing about that?

by nflanagan

The Legislature Goes to the Bathroom

I remember the first time I encountered unisex bathrooms.

I was traveling, with a backpack and not much money, in Europe, staying in youth hostels and tourist rooms, often in the homes of women I would meet at train stations holding up signs saying Zimmer zu vermieten. 

Near the end of the trip, an eight-week journey which I funded with just under $1000, I was in Munich, trying to find a cheap (really, really cheap) place to stay. Someone told me about a hostel camp, maybe an hour’s hike from the train station—a field outside the city where you could stay in a huge tent. If you got there early enough, there was also food.

I schlepped out there and stayed the last two nights of the trip, also visiting Dachau on my final day. It was bare bones—BYO sleeping bag and ground pad. There were unisex flush toilets in wooden cubicles, in a single concrete building of the type you’d find in any state park campground today. There were also warm-water showers, in a large room with no dividers for males and females. BYO towels and soap, as well.

The hardest part of adjusting to this was trying to act casual, as if I were used to waiting in line to use the toilet between Hans and Karl, or nonchalantly showering with a couple dozen mixed-gender strangers. Everyone else seemed pretty blasé about it. The vibe at the camp was international, friendly and very safe.

The year was 1976, the 200th anniversary of the home of the brave, land of the free.

Now, nearly a half-century later, some people have their knickers in a twist over newly remodeled unisex bathrooms in Michigan State University’s Campbell Hall, a beautiful dormitory on the oldest part of campus, which houses the Honors College.

The retrofitting took traditional community baths and turned them into lockable, fully enclosed private stalls, each with a shower, toilet and sink.  For a quick hand-wash or teeth brushing, there are also community sinks.

Apparently, the MSU Board got a letter of outrage from a parent, although students (who had to apply to live there) seem to be fine with the plan. There were some comments at the Board meeting about walking around after showering in a towel, but I chalk those up to people with too much time on their hands, wallowing in trad-nostalgia or perhaps sexual fantasies.

Back in the1970s, I lived in a co-ed dorm with community bathrooms. There were four floors—two community baths for women, two for men—although the dorm rooms alternated between men and women. I can’t tell you how many times I went to the women’s bathroom and found some dude walking out of a stall, because he didn’t feel like going upstairs. Lockable stalls with all you need sound vastly preferable to stumbling upon your roommate and her boyfriend showering together in the community bathroom.

Makes me wonder why Republican legislators always bring up bathrooms when they want to gin up fear around gender expression. There really isn’t anything moral or magic about using the bathroom, with either gender.

There’s this: ‘Opposition to transgender inclusion has become a rallying cry for many conservatives. The debate is at the heart of a bill advancing in Michigan’s Republican-led House that aims to restrict bathroom use at schools and colleges on the basis of biological sex. 

Sponsoring Rep. Joseph Fox, R-Fremont, suggested Wednesday that allowing transgender students to use bathrooms of the gender they identify with is “traumatizing little girls.” He called it a “safety issue.”’

Then there’s this: “Michigan must stop making references to gender identity in sex educational materials provided to schools or risk losing millions of dollars in federal funding, according to President Donald Trump’s administration.” 

The State Board of Education is also currently hearing testimony on a new set of standards for sex education in Michigan:

“A recommendation that schools include instruction about gender identity or expression and sexual orientation by eighth grade has prompted criticism from several parental rights groups and Republican politicians. 

“These proposed standards cross into deeply personal and spiritual territory, normalizing behaviors that many families find harmful and contrary to their faith.’”

Traumatizing little girls? Normalizing behaviors that contradict families’ religious beliefs? And not being allowed to talk about it, in eighth grade sex ed classes, even if your parents say it’s OK?

It’s all about what’s happening in American bathrooms, evidently.

Gender-neutral bathrooms are commonplace in Europe.  Why is that? What do they understand that we don’t?

by nflanagan

“Progressive” Schools

I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan hosting General Electric Theater, on Sunday nights, when he would look sincerely into the camera and say “General Electric, where progress is our most important product.”

Presumably, progress was both inevitable and desirable—a mashup of American technologies and innovation, bringing (GE again) good things to life. On television, anyway.

Who would stand in the way of progress? Certainly not schools, who were educating rapidly increasing numbers of Boomer kids, using the modern look-see method of reading instruction, and embracing New Math.

According to family legend, my first grade teacher sent home a note asking my mother to stop letting me read to her, in case she said or did something wrong, impeding my literary progress with pre-approved books about Dick and Jane. She stopped immediately. Teacher knew best.

Stephen Bechloss, on this Indigenous Peoples Day, shared a fine essay on progress:

“Examples of progress are all around us. I carry in my pocket a computer that gives me access to almost all the existing knowledge in the world. That same device allows me to instantaneously connect with family and friends thousands of miles away. I can flip a switch and light my kitchen. If my heart gives out, I can get a new one. I can fly in the sky and travel almost anywhere on the planet. Nearly everywhere I may go, I will meet people who know how to read.

The world is a wonder. Let’s not doubt it. The creative power of humankind has yielded a modern world that is safer, richer, more connected, more mobile and full of opportunity for more people than our ancestors could have imagined.”

Where did all this progress come from? In addition to the inherent creative power of humankind, progress is nurtured by education, wherein creativity and curiosity turn knowledge into progressive action: Machines. Ideas. Institutions. Literature and art.

Maybe even better government. Countries, for example, where everyone has health care, and citizens embrace collective efforts to address global issues like climate change. Progress—if you define progress as moving forward to solve problems, bring good things to life.

Possibly you’re raising your hand right now, itching to tell me that there are multiple definitions of progress and progressivism, or that the opposite of conservative is not liberal, but progressive. I would suggest that what we’re seeing now—the movement to damage public education—is not conservative. It’s authoritarian vandalism. But let’s try to agree on a definition of what it means to be progressive.

Miriam-Webster: A left-leaning political philosophy and reform movement that seeks to advance the human condition through social reform. Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to human societies everywhere.

It was not surprising to read this, in a must-read piece by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards at ProPublica: “In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism.”

Progressive control of schools? Seriously?

Speaking as a person who has spent decades working in public schools and with public school teachers across the country, schools are generally among the most conventional and cautious institutions on the planet, subject to pressures and opinions from a wide range of (often clueless) critics. And likely headed by someone who adamantly does not want to get phone calls from honked-off parents.

I also say this as a person who taught fourth graders about systemic racism, in a general music unit from our REQUIRED music textbook, a collection of songs (Follow the Drinking Gourd; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; Bring Me Little Water, Silvie and others) plus some pretty neutral fourth grade-appropriate text about the African formal and rhythmic roots of American popular music.

We were sitting on the big, round rug and one of the fourth graders asked why so many African-American songs (again, songs in our traditional music series) were about God. If their lives were so bad, he asked, why did they believe in heaven? It was a good question and led to an equally good discussion about what happens when people are oppressed—how they maintain cultural traditions, and hope.

If progressivism is about advancing the human condition, who’s against it? Besides the handful of people running the fatally compromised US Department of Education? The very people to whom diversity, inclusion and equity—progressive values– are anathema.

Convincing people that public school educators are a) raging leftists and b) persuading their students to defy their parents and adopt outrageous worldviews, then calling that progressivism is a fool’s errand. And 70 percent of the people who have first-hand experience with that—parents—generally believe that their public schools are doing the job they want them to do.

But societal shifts happen when false and unsubstantiated statements are repeated so often they become common knowledge. So be prepared to hear a lot of blah-blah about “progressive” public schools in the near future.

by nflanagan

Political Violence in the Classroom

In November of 2016, right after Donald Trump was elected for the first time, seventh graders at Royal Oak Middle School were captured on video shouting “Build that wall! Build that wall!”  in the school lunchroom. It drew immediate attention and media coverage, but like all once-shocking incidents, quickly faded from public view.

As events of the last week unfolded, it struck me that the blurry kids in the video would now be about the same age as Tyler Robinson, the man who shot Charlie Kirk. Were they now part of the cluster of young white men who spend all their time online, getting radicalized? Do they follow Nick Fuentes or hang out on 4Chan?

Or—best case scenario—had they merely been immature, clueless, early-adolescent jerks whose irresponsible, harmful “prank” of insulting and perhaps scaring classmates of color, was made clear to them by a community of teachers and parents? In one of the news clips from 2016, the Royal Oak Superintendent talks about how the perpetrators will be dealt with summarily, keeping in mind that youthful mistakes can be learning experiences.

Exactly.

Clueless early-adolescent jerks are a regular feature in middle school teachers’ clientele. Kids do dumb things. In between teaching students about the Bill of Rights and single-variable equations, teachers do double duty as both role models and arbitrators of appropriate behavior.

Because—despite the persistent myth that teachers should just spout content and inculcate skills, nothing more—learning happens in context. When some part of your class feels rejected, afraid or angry about being harassed in the cafeteria, nobody learns. Much of what we absorb in school are lessons about right and wrong. Civility and respect.

Things that weren’t on the lesson plan–no matter how old your students, or which subject you’re teaching. School is where students learn to deal with personal differences, taking turns and not always getting your way. And teachers—witness the illustration for this blog, just posted by a friend in a series of photos of her classroom—create materials, lessons and discussions to that effect, right out of the gate, even though it’s often considered not their job or, any more, none of their business.

We are at a point, this week, where teachers in twelve states have been fired or suspended for making remarks online about Charlie Kirk’s murder. In some states—you can guess which—state officials are inviting anonymous tips on teachers who may have said something in class that offended somebody, although the veracity of who said what, reported by students, then routed through parents, has to be uncertain at best.

Not to mention a giant waste of time at the beginning of the school year, as teachers are trying to build community and trust. Nor is any of this reducing the likelihood of the most politicized and terrifying violence in our classrooms: school shootings.

While teachers should absolutely keep their partisan loyalties to themselves, speaking about political violence is speaking about current events. As Brittany Page says:

“Political violence” isn’t just a conservative activist getting murdered.

Political violence is a Supreme Court that gives the green light for people to be stopped and detained based on their perceived race or ethnicity, what language they speak, where they work, and where they happen to be standing.

It is found in a society that tells you to start a GoFundMe to pay for your life-saving healthcare so your family doesn’t go bankrupt when you draw the short stick.

Click on the link. It’s a powerful piece, proof that we are all wading around in political violence every day, no matter how much they want us to shut up about it. It’s evil. To pretend it doesn’t exist makes it even more dangerous for all of us, including children.

How did we get here? Jonathan V. Last, at The Bulwark, said this:

‘Things have changed and it’s not hard to pinpoint the moment when the normalization of political violence re-emerged among our political elites. To pretend otherwise would be to hide our heads in the sand—to deny the plain political reality of the moment. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Times change; people change.‘

The best part of that quote comes at the end. Times do change. People do change. And I would assert that changing people for the better happens in good schools, every day. Not all classrooms, not all playgrounds, not all teachers—but public schooling is an overall force for good, for a better, healthier nation.

In my time in the classroom, there have been regular encounters with politicized issues, from shootings to 9/11. In 1988, one of my students lost his father over Lockerbie Scotland, enroute to Detroit via Pan Am Flight 103, which was carrying a bomb planted by a Libyan citizen. Did we talk about that? Yes. I also know his pain was ultimately mitigated by the simple act of going to school each day.

Robert Reich: ‘If you examine our history, you’ll see that the core of that identity has not been the whiteness of our skin, or the uniformity of our ethnicity, or agreement on religion, or like-mindedness about sexual preference or orientation.

The core of our national identity has been the ideals we share: our commitments to the rule of law, to democratic institutions of government, to truth, to tolerance of our differences, to equal political rights, and to equal opportunity.‘

Every clause in that last paragraph ought to be taught every day in every classroom in America. It’s the antidote to political violence.