Tag / teachers

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.

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.

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.

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.

by nflanagan

Gifts of Christmas Past

In a holiday-themed archetype of legislative overreach, Alabama passed an ethics law back in 2011, forbidding K-12 school teachers from accepting expensive presents.  Previous legislation set a $100 limit on individual gifts to public workers, but the 2011 law specified that gifts to teachers be limited to those of nominal value. The stated purpose: to reinforce ethical practices by state employees.

This was such a big deal that the AL Ethics Commission was receiving about 25 calls a day from parents who didn’t want to get their children’s teachers in trouble. The Ethics Commission released a detailed report, letting parents know that cookies, hand lotion and mugs are OK. What I found interesting was what was forbidden. Four examples: hams, turkeys, cash and “anything a teacher could re-sell.”

I was a classroom teacher for more than 30 years. I received hundreds of Christmas and end-of-year gifts over that time. And I never got a turkey or a ham. Maybe that’s an Alabama thing?

Nor did I ever get cash– and if I had been slipped a card with cash, I would have returned it immediately. In fact, I don’t know any teacher who would accept cash or an extravagant gift, especially if they thought the gift came with strings attached. The teachers I know have a whole shelf full of holiday mugs with “from Brittany, 1998″ written in Sharpie on the bottom.

Besides the obvious issues of unenforceability and heavy-handed mistrust of those charged with educating Alabama’s most precious resource, the whole brouhaha in Alabama had a kind of cheesy self-righteousness about it.

Does a $25 Starbucks gift card come with expectations built in? What if it’s given by a shy first grader who noticed his teacher often brings a Starbucks cup to school? When does the impulse to give a hard-working teacher a nice token of appreciation morph into a calculation of what special favors might be granted through a generous present?

Jim Sumner, director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, was in favor of clamping down on all public workers. No gifts, period:

It takes away the sense of entitlement that people have built up over the years that people serving the public need gifts.

Sense of entitlement?

Several states have laws limiting the gifts that public employees can receive. About ten states have even tougher rules, not even allowing public employees to get a free cup of coffee. Research tells us public officials and employees are rarely influenced by a meal paid for by a lobbyist or by a gift. But states send a message with firm ethics laws and build confidence among the public that leaders can’t be bought.

Theoretically.

Here’s what I wish I could tell Jim Sumner: Teaching offers many very rewarding experiences, but it’s not and never has been about the great swag.

I’m not sure I ever had a “sense of entitlement” as a public worker– but then, I never came in contact with lobbyists and don’t think most people consider non-elected teachers “public officials.” I’m not sure I ever had anything–like a legislative vote–that could be bought.

Alabama Ethics Director Sumner: “if [a parent] said, ‘I don’t care what the new law is, I’m going to give them a cruise,” that’s a different case …”

A cruise? I can’t speak for legislators–who, after all, can change much more than a mere grade–but I’d be hard pressed to find a teacher who regularly went on international junkets, courtesy of Pearson, the way state education officials have. Don’t we have much bigger fish to fry, educationally speaking, than fretting about setting strict guidelines for what parents can spend on a present?

The whole dustup felt sad to me– part of the impulse to punish and control something that happens rather naturally everywhere: kids giving presents to their teachers. All presents from students are good presents.  They’re appreciated, but the sentiments around giving are what’s treasured.

Thinking back over all the gifts I got –there must be 50 music-themed Christmas tree ornaments– one stands out. I had a kid in my 6th hour jazz band, who came to class the day before winter vacation with what looked very much like a tightly wrapped bottle of wine. “My mom says don’t open it until you get home, and keep it in your drawer today,” he said, all innocence.

When I got home, I unwrapped it. It was a bottle of wine–a very nice bottle, in fact. I saw the boy’s mother in the grocery store over holiday break. “About the gift…” I said and she held up her hand. “You absolutely deserved it,” she said. “We won’t speak of it again.”

by nflanagan

Help! I Can’t Read!

It started, frankly, back in July.

Like other Type A, rule-following teachers, I can’t just relax and retire. Reading is my favorite year-round way to spend free time, so you think I could just curl up and enjoy lots of books. But no. I have been setting reading goals and tracking the books I read, for the past 10 years.

I know. Get a life.

But I really like tracking what I read. First, it helps when you’re intermittently reading a series by the same author, and the titles are interchangeable. It’s a lot better than taking a book home from the library, and 10 pages in, when it’s starting to feel familiar, wishing you’d kept a list.

Then, there are the easily confused books. The Woman in the Window. Or the train. Or Cabin 10. Or just… The Women. (I’ve read ‘em all—can’t recommend any of them.)

For about 10 years, I’ve been trying to read 100 books a year, and for eight of those years, I’ve made the goal, and sometimes significantly exceeded it. It’s a nice round number. I give myself credit for physical books read as well as audio books (usually a small percentage of the total—they take more time). Fiction and non-fiction. And I only log the ones I finish.

But this year, I’m way behind. I blame Donald Trump.

The only other year that I didn’t make the goal was 2016 (and got off to a slow start in 2017, what with the Womans March and joining groups and deciding to run for office and knitting pink hats).

This year, I was about 8 books ahead of my goal in June. When Biden dropped out of the race, and Kamala Harris quickly became The One, I found that the long stretches of time dedicated to reading were transferred to activities centered around politics. Including a ridiculous amount of time spent where I am right now: in front of my computer.

It’s summer, I’d tell myself. Check a big fat beach read out of the library!
When I did, it would sit in my reading corner until I brought it back, a month later. A month filled with doom-scrolling, sign-delivering, attending debates, wading in hope, drowning in despair.

And in the last month? No books. Just endless commentary. Seventeen takes on the same depressing story (Matt Gaetz? Really?), each with its unique, snarky—and depressing—viewpoint.

Speaking as a person whose most-read column was a screed against the Pizza Hut Book-it Campaign, because it turned kids reading for pleasure into a competition where discounted pizza coupons were the prize, you’d think I could blow this off, and just be happy I read a lot of books.

It isn’t gone—the goals, the book discussion groups, the afternoons on the couch. I’m too much of an old-school reader to end up like the college students who can’t—or, rather, won’t—read.

Ever been in a reading slump? Got a title to bust through my ennui?

My reading corner, below.

by nflanagan

Backward, in High Heels

If someone suggests a Women’s March, so help me… (Twitter comment)

I remember sitting in the teachers’ lunchroom at my middle school, January 2001, and having a woman I like and consider a good teacher exclaim–after Dubya was finally declared president-by-hanging-chad– “Doesn’t it feel good to have a nice, respectable family in the White House?”

It didn’t feel all that great to me–and that feeling grew worse and worse, as we rolled through 9/11, Abu Ghraib, the Iraq war and the financial meltdown.

Still–she was sort of right. It is undeniable that character matters in public leadership. Or should. Turns out, however, that good character—the kind of person whom we can trust to lead– is very much in the eye of the beholder. Welcome to 2024.

Nobody needs to hear what I think about what went wrong with this election. I would describe myself as bewildered. Sorting through the post-mortem will take time.

But I have to say that my one niggling worry, watching Kamala Harris run an energizing, upbeat, intersectional campaign through these last 100 days, was this: She’s a woman.

Backwards, in high heels, and all that. Please don’t let this be another case of a fully qualified woman passed over for a blowhard jerk.

The campaign downplayed the “firsts”—first woman, first Black woman—but mixed in with the horror of who got elected and what they promised to do, is the bone-deep conviction that this loss had a lot to do with sexism, coupled with racism. What America is “not ready for.”  

And lies. So many lies. If there’s anything the nation “isn’t ready for,” it’s the truth about our residual prejudices and historic power-hoarding.

It’s not just women and people of color who were betrayed by the election, of course. The Republican party dropped $215 million on anti-trans ads ($134 per trans person in America). And Capitol police officers, who put their lives on the line on January 6, 2021: “Why the f— did I risk my life on Jan. 6 to defend our elected officials, our government, from the mob that this person sent to the Capitol, only for him to be returned to power?”  The list of people who were betrayed—and have good reason to believe they will further lose ground—is endless.

So—I am only speaking for myself here. But as the meme says: We ask women why they don’t come forward when they are sexually assaulted. It’s because we live in a world where an abuser can become President.

In a must-read article in Atlantic, Xochitl Gonzalez says this:
Sexism, it turned out, was not a bug but a feature of the Trump years. Misogyny certainly appears to come naturally to Trump, but it was strategically amplified—through surrogates and messaging—to attract supporters, particularly younger men of all races. 

Many of these young men apparently see Trump—with his microphone-fellating pantomime and his crowds chanting the word bitch—as presidential. Misogyny helps disempowered men feel empowered. After Trump’s victory, the right-wing activist Nick Fuentes tweeted: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” It really is a man’s world now.

And here’s what’s making me saddest, right now:

Trump’s return to power—his imminent control over the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, the coming dissolution of the very idea of the government providing any sort of guardrail against corporate power, carceral violence, and environmental destruction—is the beginning of a political era that will likely last decades.

I’m not sure I have decades.

What seemed—last week—like a more equitable way of addressing (and I hate this phrase) the war of the sexes has melted away. And for me, it’s personal. Here’s my story—one I’ve shared before—about a very powerful man using that power to abuse women:

I did my student teaching in the mid-1970s. I was assigned to a male band director (they were 98% male, back then), who told me at our first meeting that he was accepting me as student teacher because he needed a free assistant. He had a top leadership position in the state organization for instrumental music teachers which took him to many conferences and meetings. He said that he never would have consented to taking a woman as a student teacher—the university had merely asked him if he was interested, and he assumed that, naturally, I would be a young man, ready and willing to do the things he didn’t have time to do for a semester.

He repeated those remarks to the audience at my first concert. By then, it had become a polished story–“I said yes–and then they told me it was a woman!” (Audience hilarity.) I, of course, was making the morning coffee, re-ordering his messy music files and writing his monthly columns–the man couldn’t construct a coherent sentence–for the state organization newsletter.

I was also being sexually harassed and bribed by the promise of a good evaluation and letters of recommendation, something that I very much needed to get a job in a male-dominated field.

I put up with it for about a month, making up excuses to leave early so we wouldn’t be alone together. He grew more aggressive. Finally, I went to the student teaching supervisor from my university. I have repressed a lot of memories about that time–but I can remember that meeting as if it were last week. The supervisor, behind his large polished-wood desk, was wearing a red ski sweater. Behind him, multiple holiday photos of his family, in front of a fireplace, the lovely wife and four children.

I told him my story, in detail. He leaned back, hands folded over his chest. “Are you sure you’re not leading him on?” he asked. Then he ticked off the reasons why he would not recommend another placement: It was too late and would cost me another semester in time and fees. Nobody would take me, once the story of my accusation became public–and it surely would, possibly all over the state given the man’s public profile.

I would be seen as a too-sensitive whiner in a male-dominated field. I thought you wanted to be a lady band director, he said. This is what it’s like. Either handle it yourself or drop out now.

So I handled it, as best I could. I can’t say I learned anything about being an excellent music educator during the remaining three months–the man never turned his classes over to me, not even for a single rehearsal. His pedagogy was best described as intimidation and humiliation. Plus openly flirting with high school girls.

I worked individually with students in the practice rooms (where I learned, from a sweet flute player, that Mr. Exemplary Band Director was also having sex with his students). The one time I was allowed to stand on his podium and conduct a number, he stalked around behind me, making faces and mocking my conducting.

I got through, by “ignoring” lots and lots of grabbing. I had proof that telling anyone what was going on would reflect badly on me–that I would be labeled the spiteful “nasty woman” who was seeking to take down someone who had earned his considerable fame.

After graduation, I got a job far away from the man, in spite of his mediocre evaluation (which specified that I would be best placed as an elementary music teacher, as secondary band directors needed more “stamina” than I had). I built a successful 30+-year career as a band director, including being named Michigan Teacher of the Year. When I saw him at music conferences, I avoided him.

Famous Band Director lost his job–very publicly–about a decade later, when a student finally came forward, supported by her parents, to report that he had lured her into a sexual relationship. He denied it, in the newspaper pieces, then pointed out that the school had one of the state’s top band programs–all because of him.

Mostly, I stopped thinking about him, after that. Then, a few years ago, after community band rehearsal, one of my colleagues, a man I deeply respect, caught up with me after rehearsal, asking “Did you hear that [Famous Band Director] died?”

The first words out of my mouth were: I hope he rots in hell.

Taking a deep breath, I mentioned I’d done my student teaching with the man. My friend already knew–the man had been having breakfast regularly with a group of retired band directors, and had talked about me. Explaining why this monster had been invited to the breakfast club, after being fired for sexually abusing students, my friend said: We took pity on him.

I realized that the Band Director’s breakfast companions, a kind of Old Boys Club, had probably been fed a fabricated storyline about me, too. I felt like I was going to vomit. And nearly 40 years had passed.

 — – – – – – – – – – –

We just elected a convicted sexual abuser BACK into the White House.  Anita Hill, who has also had plenty of time to muse on why people don’t believe women, is right–we should be focused on the victims of sexual assault, and not the perpetrators.  They’re not strongmen, or role models.

Because paying attention to bullies and sexual abusers feeds their megalomania. And lets them train a new generation of persecutors, the white men who feel they’re entitled to power and the women who hope to bask in their reflected glory.

by nflanagan

Work Hard. Be Nice. Or Don’t.

I hate it when retired teachers comment on how glad they are not to be in the classroom in 2024. Their reasons range from academic and justifiable (“teachers have lost their professional autonomy”) to annoying (“kids today…”) to reflections on teaching in the era of Trump, when general nastiness is perceived as strength.

When teachers leave the classroom early in their careers, we lose something that was once commonly understood, across a diverse nation: teachers as respected members of the community, educated people whose opinions were valued. Teachers taught kids to wash their hands, tie their shoes and read books, and hauled them up for threatening weaker kids on the playground.  And parents appreciated those efforts.

In between critical content, from calculating sales tax to constructing a coherent paragraph, teachers must build little communities where kids can work productively together, pass safely through the halls, and experience the parameters of getting along with others.

Are all teachers successful in nurturing this? Of course not.

But all teachers do understand that there is not a lot of learning happening without order, structure and consideration for others. Every single teacher, from green newbie to grizzled veteran, struggles with this.  And there’s turnover every year, a new set of behavioral challenges that need to be addressed.

It’s the foundation of that recently vilified educational concept: Social-emotional learning.

I am currently running for school board in the community where I (happily) live—a school district that is well-run and offers solid programming, a place where students are known and cared for. I attended a Board retreat last week, and as part of the goal setting process, the facilitator invited attendees to name teachers or other school staff who are doing an outstanding job.

A dozen hands went up immediately, and the comments made by Board members, administrators and parents were all about things staff members did to enhance students’ personal growth and well-being. In other words, social-emotional learning, woven into curriculum, instruction and school climate.

Understand: all teachers either consciously include social-emotional elements in their daily practice, or benefit from good SEL, instituted by other educators in the pipeline, teaching kids how to behave in school along with their ABCs.

This—empathically—does not refer to pre-packaged “character” curriculums, as one size never fits all. You can’t buy genuine social-emotional learning. It has to be custom-tailored to the kids in front of you.

If you try to remove genuine social-emotional considerations from instruction and classroom management, you’ve created more problems for yourself. It’s the old saw about kids needing to know the teacher cares and will try to make their classroom a safe space for everyone.

So they can learn.

I’ve read lots of pieces about the corrosive effects of SEL, which generally boil down to the fact that SEL, as a set of pedagogical ideas, is not value-neutral.  And that’s true. Social-emotional learning reflects the values of the teacher and school, whether explicitly expressed or not.

That’s really not what anti-SEL commenters are worried about, however. As self-titled “Instruction Geek” Daniel Buck says: At its worst, SEL is a means to slip progressive politics into the classroom.

Gasp! There’s the rub, all right. Things like examining evidence for truth? Not in my school!

In fact, there’s always been social-emotional learning in schools, from the dunce cap to the hand-slap ruler wielded by Sister Victorine against misbehavers in your fifth grade. Labeling it and examining it—whether you call it character education, or classroom rules—is a good thing. What are we trying to teach kids, besides Algebra and World History?

I’ve always been intrigued by the KIPP Charter Schools’ founding motto, established in 1994: Work hard. Be nice. Those are certainly two explicit values, values embedded in what I think Americans want from their public schools—academic rigor and cooperative students.

When the KIPP organization decided to drop that motto in the summer of 2020, here’s what their CEO, Richard Barth said: It ignores the significant effort required to dismantle systemic racism, places value on being compliant and submissive, supports the illusion of meritocracy, and does not align with our vision of students being free to create the future they want.

Which the Wall Street Journal and a dozen right-wing bloggers called “woke nonsense”—and worse.

If KIPP schools can re-think their expressed values, for the benefit of students, so can public school teachers. It’s possible for schools to reflect the values of their community, as well as cultivating the characteristics of civic engagement, kindness and diligence.

It’s how you build a learning community.

by nflanagan

In Praise of Social Studies

In my long and checkered career as a classroom teacher, I taught instrumental and vocal music, mathematics, ESL and the occasional oddball middle school class necessitated by the fact that, as a (qualified) music teacher, my music classes could contractually be huge—so I could be assigned a class of kids left over in the scheduling process by putting 75 students in one beginning band class.

I learned a great deal while teaching things I wasn’t technically qualified to teach. But I never got to teach my favorite non-music subject: Social Studies. (Notice that I didn’t call this subject History or Economics, two narrowly defined class titles that are approved by the anti-public school mafia.)

I think that poor, maligned Social Studies, the last outpost of mostly-untested subjects, is probably the most critical academic field for K-12 students to explore, if we want them to become good neighbors and engaged citizens. It’s where they learn (theoretically), what it means to be an American.

But ask any third grade teacher what gets short shrift in their daily lessons. Or ask which secondary curricula is the most scrutinized by people who haven’t been in a classroom in decades.

When you hear people talk about how we need more Civics education in this nation, what they want is a range of social knowledge: history, of course, but also government, geography, sociology, political science and early-elementary trips to the fire house and the public library.

What it means to be an American. How we got to where we are—arguably, the most powerful nation on earth. What values we claim to embrace. How physical and historical features, and population migrations, shaped our culture.

Isn’t that critical, essential stuff? Not to mention engaging—when taught with the mindset that this is the content that one needs to know, to become a fully functional adult in the United States?

Today, which used to be the day we honored Christopher Columbus for a bunch of shady reasons, might be a good time to ask some questions about social studies, and their current place in the school curriculum.

My fear is that Social Studies, an incredibly rich and applicable field of interrelated content, will be further squeezed out of the curriculum, or become a dry, testable, bunch-of-facts sequence, none of which bears relevance to the diverse, often catastrophic world our students live in. What Hess calls catastrophism might just describe how passion has always shaped our politics.

And politics, civil or not, is just the means to get the world we want.

A couple of years ago, the Michigan Democrats posted a statement on their Facebook page:

The purpose of public education in a public school is not to teach students what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”

The statement was quickly criticized—Parents’ Rights!—and walked back, but I think there’s some truth there. Parents want their children to be literate, and numerate, for sure. But when it comes to understanding what science tells us about climate change, or encouraging 18-year olds to become informed voters, should a subset of parents be able to shut that whole thing down?

Here’s a toast to social studies teachers everywhere, as we approach November 5. You go.

by nflanagan

Nine Reasons Why Standardized Tests and Grades Shouldn’t Necessarily Match Up

Headline from a recent piece in Education Week: Grades and Standardized Test Scores Aren’t Matching Up. Here’s Why.

Let me give you the gist: Grades are unreliable, whereas standardized test scores scientifically measure real content knowledge. Grades are given by teachers. Therefore, teachers’ grades are not to be trusted, and teachers should receive additional training on how to accurately measure what students know. There’s also a jab at grade inflation, post- pandemic. Who is quoted in the article? That’s right, the College Board and the ACT folks.

From my point of view: a) Sure, additional training for preservice teachers on the art and purpose of assessment would be very useful. b) Also useful: a common understanding of what a grade means. Is it a representation of a student’s progress—or an evaluation of how well they’re meeting pre-set standards—or an educated guess about how the student will do in college?

I don’t think teachers’ grades and standardized tests should, necessarily, measure the same things. Furthermore, standardized tests don’t have relationships with students, or know what the student brought to the table, when starting the course. 

I have written lots about grades as assessment, including the piece I’m including, below, about the Soft Bigotry of Low Grades. It begins with an essay on “low expectations” then morphs into nine points about grading that teachers understand (and argue about).

Whoever wrote the phrase ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ back in the early days of the Bush (W) administration, was a genius. In one nifty sound bite, the blame for the so-called achievement gap was placed squarely on the shoulders of educators, those barrel-bottom, unimaginative civil servants slogging along in low-paying careers.

Not only were veteran teachers unable to conceive of their students’ success (presumably, getting into a competitive-admissions college)—they were also bigots, kind of. Perhaps they hadn’t read 25 books on racism, been hooked on The Wire, or stayed for two grueling years in a no-excuses charter before heading off to Goldman Sachs. They were just stuck in those dead-end teaching jobs.

Early in the ‘reform’ days—a couple decades ago—Disruptor types were prone to proclaiming that high expectations for all students were, in fact, a positive disruption to what they assumed was the low and unimaginative level of teaching practice endemic in public education. Especially in schools filled with kids who took home backpacks full of peanut butter and whole wheat crackers every Friday.

If only teachers had faith in their students, cracking the academic whip and believing they could someday rise above their circumstances and excel—well, then things would be different. What we needed was new—high and rigorous—standards, better aligned curricula, more sorting-out data. We needed ‘choice’ to remove kids from low-expectations government schools.

And of course, better teachers, teachers who embodied these great expectations and were willing to rip up unacceptable assignments. Even if it made kids cry.

The ‘low expectations’ trope became a thing. The 74 was still printing pieces about it, 18 years later, using phrases like ‘complacency is also still alive and well’ and ‘having teachers who were confident that their students would complete college made a real difference in their college attainment.’

The 74’s suggestions for improvement? You won’t be surprised: higher standards, more testing and raising the cutoff scores, rigorous curriculum—and better teachers, the kind who expected more. Nary a mention of better health care, better jobs with higher wages, better childcare options, better support networks for people in poverty. Or less racism.

When I read that Fordham was releasing a new report entitled Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement, I assumed it would be more of the same: a screed against ‘grade inflation’ that urged teachers to use the threat of bad grades as ‘motivator’ in getting kids to Learn More (and score better on high-stakes tests, quantitative ‘proof’ of learning).

Turns out I was right.  Here’s the first paragraph of the summary:
We know from previous survey research that teachers who hold high expectations for all of their students significantly increase the odds that those young people will go on to complete high school and college. One indicator of teachers’ expectations is their approach to grading—specifically, whether they subject students to more or less rigorous grading practices. Unfortunately, “grade inflation” is pervasive in U.S. high schools, as evidenced by rising GPAs even as SAT scores and other measures of academic performance have held stable or fallen. The result is that a “good” grade is no longer a clear marker of knowledge and skills.

Here’s how my 30-odd years’ worth of grading some 5000 students (at least 35K individual grades) squares with the statement above:

  • High expectations are a good thing, all right—but they are not commensurate with giving more unsatisfactory marks. In fact, being a ‘tough grader’ often means that the teacher is not meeting a substantial chunk of kids where they are, then moving them forward. The easiest thing in the world is giving a low or failing grade and blaming it on the student. The hard thing is figuring out how to help that child achieve at the level he’s capable of.
  • The longer I taught, the higher my expectations were, as I learned what students at different developmental levels were able to do—but that was not reflected in the grades I gave. I assumed it was because I had become a better teacher and was getting better results as my teacher tool bag filled. I could see with my own eyes that I had underestimated what my students could learn and apply, if they chose to work at it.
  • I seriously doubt that teachers’ expectations—as defined here by more rigorous grading– have much, if any, impact on kids’ completing college, or even high school. A teacher who encourages a student to think big, to push herself, to reach for the stars and so on, may indeed have a long-term positive effect on a student, especially one with self-doubts. Setting students on a path to higher education and life success is a long-term, K-12 project, one that can’t be accomplished by teachers alone and certainly not by dropping the grading scale a few points to teach them a lesson.
  • Grades aren’t real, although the argument can be made that they’re more real than a standardized test score (which the report also uses to make the claim that ‘raising the bar’ has a salutary effect on student outcomes). No matter how schools try to standardize grading, the human judgment factor creeps in. As it should. Students see their grades as something ‘given’ by the teacher, no matter how many times teachers insist that grades are ‘earned’ and can be accurately, precisely, mathematically granted.*
  • Grade inflation isn’t real either. I am always amused by disgruntled edu-grouches who insist that Harvard, say, is awash in grade inflation. When an institution turns away 94.6% of the students who have the temerity to apply, why are we shocked when the crème de la crème who are admitted get all A’s?
  • If we were doing our jobs better, by Fordham’s metrics—following rigorous standards, choosing engaging and challenging curricula, assessing frequently—wouldn’t the desired outcome be better grades?
  • The worst kind of grading practice is the bell curve. Curving grades has gone out of fashion, but you still see its aftereffects in reports like this that bemoan the overly high percentage of students whose work is deemed good or superior. If you’ve ever had a class filled with go-getters (and I’ve had many), you’ll know it’s possible to teach to the highest standards and have every child in the class performing at a high level. Someone does NOT have to fail. What the researchers here seem to be endorsing is a curve where students in high-poverty schools are not compared with their peers, but with kids in advantaged schools—then taking the top-scoring kids down a peg or two, for their own good.
  • Bad grades don’t motivate most kids to try harder, although this seems to be the sweeping conclusion of the report, which studied 8th and 9th Algebra students in North Carolina. The researchers noted that students in advantaged schools were more likely to make gains when receiving a lower grade. There are lots of charts and graphs showing how teachers who give lower grades initially cause an uptick in standardized assessment scores eventually. This is more likely to happen if that teacher went to a ‘selective’ college or is an experienced veteran teacher, by the way. As for the poor students who go to rural or urban schools—well, they get good grades that don’t reflect what they’ve really learned. Therefore, maybe we should give them lower grades, too, as an early reality check.
  • I repeat: bad grades don’t usually motivate kids, unless there’s someone at home checking up on them, they plan on going to college and care about their GPA. In that case, a lower grade may serve as a heads-up that more effort may be necessary. Do 8th grade Algebra students and students in advantaged schools where most kids are college bound fit into that category? Yes.

Students who do well in school also know how to study effectively– or seek extra help when something is difficult for them. They’re not as likely to think that the tough-grading Algebra teacher doesn’t like them, or that they’ve finally found a subject they can’t successfully master. Lots of previous successes have given them the confidence to pursue a challenging subject.

What struck me about the report was the facile conclusion that a subset of (higher-achieving) students was motivated by a lower-than-expected grade into learning more.

Extrapolating that into a declaration that tougher grading would lead to higher achievement is giving way to much credence to a cranky-pants theory, the one where a kick in the pants is what kids these days really need.

*In my 30+ year career, I taught math for two years. Prior to that, I collected various data to develop and tweak a defensible grading process for teaching instrumental and vocal music. Music is a challenging discipline in which to assess using hard numbers, trust me; I envied my math teacher friends whose grades were always clean, clear percentages. Then I taught math and discovered—eh, you can juke the stats in math, too, through assignment weighting, partner quizzes (recommended by our math series), late assignment policies, re-takes, homework evaluation policies—and so much more. Grading—in any subject or level– is not science. Never has been.