Tag / teachers

by nflanagan

Diversity and Tracking

If you were in the classroom, as I was for well over three decades, you will have had some experience with tracking— ability grouping, or dividing the class into the Bluebirds, the Orioles and the Buzzards at reading time. And you will know that some teachers strongly resist the impulse to sort and label students, while others endorsed the practice of dividing students by their—key word alert!—perceived differences.

I taught 7th grade math for two (non-consecutive) years. Students were leveled into math groups both times, although the labeling process was different. The first time, there were four levels—Honors, Advanced, Basic and Remedial—and I taught Basic math.

The math faculty, understanding that ability differences were, indeed, perceived rather than scientifically determined—and that skills and understanding were also likely to shift, over the course of a semester or two—proposed testing the students quarterly, using the same test. Any student whose test scores were wildly out of line with their perceived peers could be moved. Up or down.

Except—this was a lot less feasible in practice. Most kids (and their parents) had internalized their math labels. Honors or Advanced? Try suggesting, after nine weeks, that their skills were really… kinda basic.

I also had a couple of kids in my “basic” group who, right off the bat, were obviously sandbagging. Their actual skills and math sense were so far above the norm that I wondered immediately how and why they were placed in the Basic group.

After a few weeks, however, I started to understand how behavior issues impacted the sixth grade teachers’ divvy-up process at the end of the previous year. Act like an attention-seeking four year old? No Honors for you! The only African American kid in the 7th grade? Basic.

Point being: Leveling students, in most academic settings, has limited and conditional value. More importantly, grouping students is often about things totally unrelated to academic ability or potential.

There is probably no education writer who has influenced me more than Alfie Kohn, whose book No Contest inspired me to stop using chairs and challenges, something band directors everywhere see as a normal practice. (I wrote about how that actually improved my school bands, HERE.)

Alfie Kohn just wrote a rather brilliant essay: Heterogenius; Why and How to Stop Dividing People into Us and Them. It’s well worth the read, packed with evidence-based observations and sharp analysis, and incredibly timely in an era when we have to be reminded that diversity, equity and inclusion are actually good goals—especially when teaching children—not merely “DEI,” a catch-all trigger for the people currently in power to run roughshod over the rest of us, including our future citizens.

Here’s a sampling from Kohn’s column, on the measurable, research-supported benefits of diversity:

The idea of minimizing homogeneity has a great deal to recommend it even on a biological level. Genetic diversity allows for adaptation to a changing environment. Species diversity makes for more robust ecosystems. Plant diversity (for example, through crop rotation) protects against pests and disease. Even nature, in other words, seems to be saying “Mix it up!”

As for human interaction, the experience of being in a heterogeneous group not only attenuates tribalism but can enhance performance on various tasks. Social psychologist Adam Galinsky put it this way: “Diversity increases creativity and innovation, promotes higher quality decisions, and enhances economic growth because it spurs deeper information processing and complex thinking…[whereas] homogeneous groups run the risk of narrow mindedness and groupthink (i.e., premature consensus) through misplaced comfort and overconfidence.”

It’s that last quote that explains why Trump, after raving about–and winning an election on—his goal of deporting millions of brown people, has now decided to welcome White “refugees” of European descent from South Africa.

It’s all out in the open now—how politicized the pushback against diversity and equity are. Long-time right-leaning ed-research houses like Fordham keep pumping out anti-diversity reports, in favor of reserving education goodies for the top layer of (white and Asian) HS students. However:

As the report notes, research does support the finding that many students are insufficiently challenged. The research is also mixed on how best to design schools to avoid any students languishing academically. But the report fails to take seriously the decades of research showing the harms of the tracking and ability grouping systems in secondary schools that have stratified opportunities to learn. After muddling the research evidence, the report then recommends the practice most harmful to equity: increased tracking (called, “readiness grouping in separate classrooms”).

Ah. You’re not tracking kids. You’re readiness grouping them. In separate—but decidedly unequal—classrooms.

A blithe quote from the Wall Street Journal:  On day two of his administration, President Trump ordered federal agencies to terminate “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the government and combat them in the private sector. The order follows through on his promise to forge a colorblind, merit-based society and to end the engineering of race and sex into every aspect of American life.

Jamelle Bouie: This is the “merit” two-step. First, you strongly imply or state outright that the presence of anyone who isn’t a straight, able-bodied white man is unfair “DEI,” then you argue that just because an institution is all-male and lily-white doesn’t mean there is discrimination. That’s just merit!

Been there. And had those conversations with my fellow math teachers, back then. One of the words to watch for: deserve.

As in: He’s going to be an engineer, like his Dad. He deserves to be in Honors math, even though his score is a little low. Or: She doesn’t turn her homework in—says she has to babysit. Even if she aces the test, she doesn’t deserve to be in Advanced math.

Because tracking (stratifying, merit-based clustering, readiness grouping, whatever) happens at the school level, it is something local schools and districts have some control over, despite Donald Trump’s empty threats against Stuff He Doesn’t Like in schools resulting in pulling federal funding.

Teachers, even threatened, fearful teachers, can hold firm to the time-honored principle of doing their best to challenge every child, to look for and support their strengths, without arbitrarily dividing them into academic stars and lesser lights. They can also honor the principle of diversity, knowing diversity makes a classroom, a school and society stronger.

As Alfie Kohn says:
That’s a message that children need to hear — and to see modeled for them — by the adults in their lives: a commitment to inclusiveness whose implication is that there is no future in tribalism, no justice in “just us.” Every day our kids should watch us encounter and talk about others in a way that highlights how those people are not alien beings; they’re like us with respect to the things that matter — and, at the same time, their qualities can’t be reduced to membership in any category.

by nflanagan

The Folly of Settled Science

It was on Morning Edition, seven years ago—a cheery little piece on how we now know just how to teach students with dyslexia how to read. Interesting, I thought then, expecting to hear about some new breakthrough technique in reading pedagogy. Instead, what I heard was this:

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare. “They wouldn’t acknowledge that he had a problem. They wouldn’t say the word ‘dyslexia.’’’

Wow. Not true in my school. We talked about dyslexia and reading instruction endlessly, being very careful not to throw around the label (which impacts 3% to 7% of students, depending on how the condition is defined) indiscriminately. I found it hard to believe that parents who sought help for a genuinely dyslexic child would find the process ‘nightmarish.’

I spent most of my career in one school district, but teachers there expended a great deal of effort and analysis in teaching kids to read and reinforcing ‘reading across the curriculum’ in upper grades. Over three decades, and via my own children’s reading instruction there, I saw several reading programs come and go. I was part of countless conversations about how to incorporate new pedagogical thinking into practice. But–teachers refusing to identify the issues with a student who struggled to read? Never.

Turns out, the Morning Edition piece (in 2018, remember) wasn’t really about a new, proven strategy for helping kids with reading disabilities. The program was fanning new flames of the always-politicized Reading Wars:

Research shows that they learn to read better when they are explicitly taught the ways that sounds and letters correspond. And research shows that even students without dyslexia learn better this way. “I have started to call it not dyslexia but dysteachia. It’s the teachers who are not giving the right kind of instruction!”

Aha! Kids can’t read? It’s the teachers’ fault. Again.

The Reading Wars (which have been going on for over 100 years) tore local school boards apart in the 1990s, in an effort to determine which reading program was “the best.” Many of these bitter arguments were framed as “Phonics” vs. “Whole Language,” but anyone who’s studied the acquisition of literacy knows that’s a simplification so gross as to be useless. Reading instruction is never binary, or limited to right vs. wrong strategies.

The National Reading Panel, convened by a government department with an agenda, put forth a major report, designed to settle the question, once and for all—but the lone practitioner on the panel strongly disagreed with the methodology and policy implications that rolled out, post-report—if not with the actual findings. So, hardly a consensus among teachers.

Then the heavy hand of accountability pushed the discussion—the professional work of reading teachers—out of the classroom, and into whatever place it is that reading programs are measured by their efficacy in raising test scores. And possibly forcing children to repeat the third grade.

I am sincerely happy to know that students correctly identified with dyslexia, a complex, multi-layered diagnosis, seem to be more successful in learning to read, using a phonemic awareness/phonics-intensive program. Still, I am putting my faith, as always, in the discernment and expertise of the teacher.

Students classified as dyslexic have varying strengths and challenges and teaching them is too complex a task for a scripted, one-size-fits-all program. Optimal instruction—meaning the most effective methods for students with disabilities as well as those already reading fluently and making meaning–calls for teachers’ professional expertise and responsiveness, a full tool bag and the freedom to act on the basis of that professionalism.

It’s worth mentioning—again—that formal reading instruction in Finland does not begin until students are seven years of age, long after some children in the United States have been identified as dyslexic or learning disabled, because they’re unable to decode at age six.

Seven years ago, the author of the Morning Edition piece, Emily Hanford, claimed that the superiority of phonics/phonemic awareness instruction for all children—and the failure of whole language programs—was settled science, ‘like climate change.’

I certainly hope there’s never a rigid, unchanging agreement on the One Best Way to teach people of any age to read. All scholarly disciplines should undergo regular re-assessment, as research reshapes knowledge. There are still classrooms in the United States, after all, where evolution is not settled science.

I dug some of this information out from a piece I wrote in March of 2018 for Education Week, because yesterday, for the first time, I had an unpleasant skirmish on Bluesky.

I had posted a comment re: the just-released, drooping NAEP reading scores which are now being dissected in the media. There’s a lot of alarmism and pearl-clutching in the mainstream media, but here’s a pretty good piece from NPR. (The piece also reminds readers that “proficient” doesn’t mean adequate or even OK—it means considerably above average.)

While 4th and 8th grade reading scores overall are still below pre-pandemic levels, it’s worth remembering that this year’s fourth graders were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, and many spent much of first grade, prime learn-to-read time, learning remotely. Fourth graders in the tested NAEP group did not experience typical reading instruction.

Scores for advantaged students—the top of the heap, economically—were actually strong; scores for the poorest quadrant were dismal. Nothing new, but that gap was much bigger in this round of testing. That is actually useful information. We should be putting more resources into the public schools that serve disadvantaged students (not vouchers to subsidize wealthy families choosing private or religious schools).

I thought about how the ‘settled science” of learning to read has become the “Science of Reading”—and how, over the past seven years, since I first heard that piece on Morning Edition, kids who were first learning to read then (and are now 8th graders) have not moved up the testing ladder, even though over 40 states now have laws or policies based on the so-called Science of Reading.

If SOR was the one best way, why haven’t scores been creeping up? It was a simple, non-hostile question.

Which drew a very hostile response from a Bluesky account that appears to be an online tutoring service with one of those improbably aspirational—think Rocket Reader!!–names.  He or she refused to give his/her name, and the exchange (wherein I kept asking for research supporting his/her claims) got increasingly antagonistic.

S/he kept returning to how old and out of touch I am, and insulting not only me, but other researchers and opinion writers with far more credibility than I on the topic of learning to read. His/her final comment (before I blocked him/her) was “Go live in the nursing home with Lucy Calkins!”

Here’s the thing, though. Having seen reading instruction up close and personal—as a professional, not a student—over decades, it’s very clear that it will never be settled (or, probably, science).  It’s complex and variable and entirely dependent on what students bring to the table.

by nflanagan

Why Senate Cabinet Hearings are a Lesson for Schools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.