A Letter to My Students

Dear students,

I am proud of you. Over the past few weeks you have had to take on the weight of the world. You have lost so much you were looking forward to. You have lost your activities. You have lost your friends. You have lost your routine. You have lost a sense security. You have lost closure to your school year and, for seniors, to this entire chapter of your life. You have lost the ability to believe that the world as you knew it might always be the world. You have lost the right that usually accompanies youth - the right to take things for granted. You have lost in these last few months more than many of us have lost in our entire lives.

But you persist. You endure. You carry on. You survive.

Because I teach mainly concurrent enrollment courses, I have carried on teaching most of you, holding higher expectations than I have wanted to, grading the work as it comes in, holding you accountable in ways that felt far more important in early March. I have kept teaching, and through it all, somehow you have managed to keep learning.

I want you all to know how proud I am of you.

To those of you who have embraced this new, self-directed learning with enthusiasm  and are working hard on every assignment, I am proud of you. I am proud of your newfound confidence, of your optimism, of your desire to learn. I am proud of you for refusing to let our changing circumstances take control of your motivation. I am proud of your willingness to carry on with this semblance of life as usual. I am proud of you.

To those of you who have found yourselves suddenly working all day, every day to keep the grocery stores, the restaurants, the daycare centers, the nursing homes, and any number of essential services running smoothly, I am so proud of you. I am proud of you for coming home at night exhausted and doing your homework anyway. I am proud of you on the days when you just can't find time to do your homework. I am proud every time you manage to meet a deadline, and every time you email me to tell me why you can't. I am proud of you.

To those of you babysitting siblings, cousins, neighbors, and friends so essential workers can keep the world humming, I am so proud of you. I am proud of you when you attend a Zoom meeting with toddlers on your lap. I am proud of you when you didn't read the assignment but share with me the chalk drawing you did with your little brothers. I am proud of you when you find time in between meals and Pepe Pig and story time to research for your paper, or put together an annotated bibliography that seemed so much more important when I first assigned it. I am proud of you when the work gets done and I am proud of you when you email me to tell me why it isn't done...yet. I am proud of you.

To those of you who are stuck at home, missing everything you love but somehow manage to pull yourself out of bed in the morning, I am proud of you. I am proud of you as I see you sitting up in bed, wrapped in a comforter because you not only woke up, but sat up for our Zoom discussion. I am proud of you when the assignment comes in a week late, because I know motivation was nearly impossible to find, but you found it anyway. I am proud of you when you look at the world right now and wonder why anything I have assigned matters and send me an email to tell me you really are trying. I hear you. I understand. And I am proud of you.

To those of you who have fought through circumstances beyond your control to accomplish anything at all, I am proud of you. I am proud of you for driving to a parking lot for Internet. I am proud of you for finding a safe place to stay. I am proud of you doing your best when there is no para-educator sitting beside you. I am proud of you for putting on your headphones to drown out the ceaseless noise at home. I am proud of you for surviving the loss of everything that normally allows you to maintain your mental health. I am proud of you for focusing on schoolwork when you are worried all day about your nurse parent. I am proud of you for surviving today even if you did no school work at all. I am proud of you.

And to those of you who still haven't checked in, I am worried about you. I am more worried about you than you can even imagine. I'm not worried because I think the opportunity to write a peer reviewed research paper, participate in a scholarly discussion of Steinbeck, or read an essay on the Patriarchy is the greatest loss you will ever face. I think we all realize by now how insignificant those things truly are in the grand scheme of things. I am worried, because your absence means maybe you are not surviving. Maybe you are not enduring. Maybe you are not carrying on.

Dear students, you have been catapulted into adulthood in ways none of us saw coming. We - who have grown up in times of peace, in times of health, in times when tragedies were targeted and isolated to "other places" on the map and other people who were not us - we cannot understand what you are enduring. We can only love you, believe in you, and stand in awe of what we hope is your resilience and your strength - whether the strongest thing you do each day is stand in a grocery store for eight hours, worry about your mom at work for twelve hours, or pull yourself out of bed for a single hour.

I pray the day will soon come when you can return to your childhood, even if just for a little while.

Love,
Your honored and humbled teacher

Just a Minor Meltdown

Don't read this blog for a pick me up. Or do, because it might make you realize you are holding it together better than I am. Just a little disclaimer before you get started: I love my job. I love my school district. I love my family. I feel lucky that I GET to teach online.  I am grateful.

I am also officially exhausted. I thought this time away from school would be sad, but easier. I imagined all the things I might suddenly have time to do. I planned to learn Spanish, to read a dozen books for fun, to be super present for my kids. I wanted to be at school but, I thought, as long as I am home I will make the most of it. My spring semesters are always crazy busy and this might be just what the doctor ordered (ok, it is exactly what a doctor ordered but I am speaking metaphorically).
For the first couple of weeks that is exactly what happened. I was getting lots of exercise. I was enthusiastic about trying out new recipes. My college freshman daughter, dealing with her own pandemic grief, smiled broadly one day and announced, "Quarantine mom is even better than summer mom," as she tasted a piece of freshly baked pie.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. OH MY GOSH! I do not remember the last time I was this tired. Teaching my concurrent enrollment classes online takes a lot of my time - and I mean A LOT. The feedback on assignments has to come fast because kids who are working without a teacher nearby depend on written feedback to be able to move on to the next step. Fast feedback is hard. Turns out it wasn't just taking me a long time because I was so busy before; it just actually takes a long time. How did I EVER get this done while teaching face to face all day?

Zoom meetings are hard - well the Zoom meetings with kids aren't, but the Zoom PLCs and the Zoom staff check-ins, and the Zoom everything else are actually harder somehow. Everyone is well intentioned, but most teachers seem a little out of practice in their small talk skills and their collaboration skills. Most teachers seem to be struggling a little to be sociable with kids and cats climbing onto their laps. I resort to mocking comments about the beards the men are all growing, hoping it distracts their attention from my own gray roots and forest-like unibrow. Sorry, but that stuff is hard.

And then this week, we unfurled our plans for optional learning opportunities for our students. They should be high quality, meaningful, prepare kids, meet standards, hit essential learning targets, give kids what they need for the right now, and for the future. They should also be non-threatening, loaded with opportunities to extend grace, respectful of the reality that not every child has equal opportunities, that some high school kids ARE the essential workers everyone is praising and some are caring for children so others can be the essential workers everyone is praising.  Oh, and the learning opportunities should be so engaging kids will choose to do them - even though they are optional - even though they are not graded - even though they will receive credit for the class anyway. Ok, no problem. I actually believe in all those things. I believe this is important. I will do it. AND I will collaborate with my whole team and an assortment of teaching partners as I do it. From home. While monitoring five sections of concurrent enrollment learning. NO PROBLEM!

If I am being honest, I will say I love challenges. Creating that learning was an exciting challenge. Providing feedback to kids that is so strong they can move on without me standing next to them cheering them on, is an exciting challenge. But holy smokes, this whole thing is full of challenges. It's like we kept all the less fun parts of the job (meetings, grading, written feedback) and lost all the best parts of the job - seeing our kids face to face, listening to them laugh, seeing the spark in their eyes when they uncover an amazing idea, coaching them, directing them, looking forward to exciting school events with them. We lost all the things that give us energy and kept all the things that sap it from us.

Add to that the reality that I now perform an endless number of mom duties during my workday, and  it is a recipe for exhaustion.

Here is the deal: I get it. I am sitting in a place of tremendous privilege. I can work from home and get paid. My husband and I are not worried about our jobs and we are not worried about our kids. We are isolating well so we are not even that worried about our health. Others are out there doing things that are genuinely exhausting, and I am grateful to every essential worker out there. Others are isolating in circumstances that are not as safe and comfortable as my home, and my heart goes out to them. But the novelty of this is wearing off. I am tired. I am worn down. I am sad. Having to cook yet another meal while here at work makes me want to set my own kitchen on fire, but I do not have time to set my kitchen on fire because I have six students who can't remember their college library logins, my husband needs help finding the V-8, and I have a lengthy worksheet to complete because I am on evaluation cycle and we are doing that meeting via Zoom this week.

 And I am not going to learn Spanish during quarantine.

Teaching - Love in the Time of Corona

Over the past month, education has changed dramatically as teachers have been asked to move instruction online and students have been asked to learn online. By now, most teachers have read the various "we didn't sign up for this" articles and most parents have shared the memes about "homeschool," with a few laughs about principals drinking on the job and maybe the occasional nod to the difficult job educators face each day.  Iowa has been a little slow to the party. Either out of an abundance of eternal Midwestern optimism (we do boast the largest contingent of Cubs fans outside of Illinois) or foolhardy Midwestern stubbornness, we held on to the misguided belief that everything would be fine by April 13 and kids could acceptably miss a month of school.

All that changed on Thursday. The governor extended our absence from school until the end of April (still holding out hope, I guess) and the DE rolled out a list of options for schools to begin delivering instruction to students. Suddenly those laptops and tablets the vast majority of schools in Iowa have provided students in the interest of enrichment and equity, will become the primary vehicle of instruction for students throughout the state. Suddenly teachers who build their instruction on platforms of engagement, connection, and interaction, have to learn how to teach from behind their computer screens.

Because the majority of the high school classes I teach are concurrent enrollment courses, I have a head start. Those courses for which students are receiving college credit moved online three weeks ago. That head start has provided me a little time to reflect and a little insight I think is worth sharing.

The first week of teaching online, I cried every day. Every single day, I would sit with my Macbook in my lap and before finger hit key, I would cry - for everything my students were missing, for the conversations that would never be the same online, for the stress I knew they were under, for how much I missed their bright faces, for how inadequate I felt for this job, and for how fortunate I felt to get to teach them at all.  It didn't take me long to realize this could not go on for the remainder of our confinement and I had to find a way to pull myself out of the hole of loss I had managed to dig. Then in a brief moment of clarity it dawned on me -  it's all about perspective. I can choose to look at this as an impossible task, given the seemingly insurmountable hurdles involved with teaching students in the midst of a global crisis or I can choose to look at this as an opportunity to reinvent myself as a teacher and discover how good I can truly be.  Thus began a Thoreau-like purge of my curriculum, beliefs, and even my teacher identity, during which I cast out all but what is truly essential. 

That was hard, the stripping away of layers, the sacrifice of lessons that in a normal year I would deem critical, the realization that what I do right now simply cannot look the same as what I did last year. That is the number one piece of advice I would like to give educators who are at this very moment considering how to move their instruction online:

Do not be tempted to take everything you normally do and put it online. The world is not normal for our children right now. Nothing about any of this is normal, and pretending normalcy will not fool or heal our children. Besides, this is not the time for your Clark Kent glasses; this is a time for your superman cape. So put it on and start asking yourself some hard questions:

What are your students going through right now? I know some of my students are suddenly working 40 hours a week in grocery stores. Those seniors who just earned their CNA certifications are doing their best to keep the elderly protected in nursing homes. Some of my students are babysitting so healthcare professionals can keep doing their jobs and some are living with friends because their parents are healthcare workers. My high school kids have lost the certainty of the things they love - their sports, their theatre productions, maybe even prom and graduation. My seniors aren't even sure when their freshman year of college will begin. Right now, those are the kids I must teach. Those are the kids I must convince literature is important, the quality of the sources for their research paper matters, APA style is critical to future success. Do you think they believe me?

What do your students REALLY need?This question is a trigger for a lot of us. We have been asked this by well-intentioned district administrators for years and we have "packed," "unpacked," and "bundled" our standards, putting them in spreadsheets and curriculum planning resources where they will live until we do it all again. But that isn't really what I am asking. I am not asking which standards are your "rocks." I am asking what your kids need RIGHT NOW, when they are scared, or overworked, or depressed, or stressed, or lonely. I am also asking what skills your kids really MUST practice to be ready for their next step. While an elementary teacher might want to make sure her students do not lose prior learning and growth in this time away from traditional school, someone who teaches seniors might very worried about the two or three skills that have not been taught but college freshmen will certainly be expected to know. Figure out what those "can't move forward without them" skills are, and be honest with yourself. Yes, it's all important, but what is ESSENTIAL? Ask yourself that and then ask yourself "why" again and again until you boil it down to what matters most. To borrow a phrase from Thoreau (and Robin Williams), suck out the marrow.

How can you make it something they want to do? Motivation and uncertainty are not friends. Kids who don't feel they can count on the future, are less likely to jump into assignments designed to prepare them for it. Now is not the time to be the teacher who insists "life is not fun," and "we are not in the business of edutainment." If you want to motivate a kid (especially a teenager) in crisis, you better step up to the edutainment plate or at least the relevancy plate. This is especially true if your school has chosen the "voluntary" model for learning in your school. Ask yourself what will be so relevant and engaging that even a student who is not earning a grade will want to do it. Try tapping into the realities of their worlds a little more. Can you involve them in projects that get them to create solutions for some of the problems the world is now facing? Can you adapt your curriculum to get them to reflect on their own mental health right now? Can you create activities that will allow them to improve something in their own homes? Can you create an activity that encourages them to go deeper than they normally could into a topic or project that inspires them? Can you develop activities that provide them with an opportunity to have what they crave most - connection? Can you tap into something you know they already love or are doing - Netflix, music, social media, Youtube, work, going out in the backyard for fresh air - without sounding like the dorky parent who doesn't get it? Could they share learning in a new way? Can you ask your students for ideas? This is a time for us to deeply reflect on what we know about our students and how we engage them. See that as an opportunity to pull yourself out of a rut and sprinkle a little glitter on your curriculum.

How can you create something that meets the needs of everyone? This is the greatest challenge of all. So far, I have had it easy. My five DMACC classes do not include any students with identified special needs (of course all students have unique needs), so my only hurdles have been helping a few at-risk students check in and finding work arounds for a student without computer access. As I add my two non-concurrent enrollment courses to my load, I will need to ask different questions. I will focus first on what skills students already have and need to practice. Rather than immediately introducing new learning, I will tap into the skills already learned and ask students to practice and deepen those skills and apply them to new situations. We spend a lot of time casting the learning net wide, but I am going to look at this time as a chance to instead, dig deep.  I know what skills each student has and I will look for ways to make those skills stronger and to have them use those already learned skills in new ways. 

I know this doesn't answer the equity question fully and I will have to explore every tool available to me to meet the IEP requirements of my students and to ensure economic status is not a barrier to learning, but that is also an opportunity. Sometimes I ride too tightly on the tails of my special education co-teachers. Sometimes I rely on the equity of the public school classroom, to do the work that is my work to do. I can't be complacent right now, and I can't be lazy. I must reflect deeply on what my students need and can do. I must consider each and every one of them as an individual who needs something individualized from me, even as I attempt to create online learning for ALL.

Lessons to Be Learned

I know none of this is easy. I know that it will not be perfect. I know there are kids who will be missed by my instruction. Some kids have help at home and some do not. Some kids are busier than they have ever been and some are bored. Some kids are up and eager and some are too depressed to get out of bed. Some kids need their paraeducators to help them focus and some will manage somehow to get by without them. Some kids hate every minute of being out of school and some find online learning on their own schedule to be a dream come true.  Realistically, I will not meet all of their needs. But I am not a realist. I am a teacher and that makes me an idealist. I will embrace this new challenge and use it as a gift - an invitation to become more individually focused, more engaging, and more acutely aware of what matters most in my courses. It has already made me think about equity more deeply than I have ever considered it. It has already made me think about the value of engagement, relevancy, and connection. I don't want to walk this path. I want to be in a classroom with 150 amazing teenagers this week. I want to listen  to their discussions, hear their stories, direct their play, dance with them at prom. I want all of those things, but in the absence of the bone, I will find the marrow. I will boil what I do down to what is most essential and I will do what teachers always do. I will give absolutely everything I have to give,  go to bed knowing it was not enough, and get up to try again tomorrow. That is teaching and teaching, my friends, is love in one of its purest forms. Love in the time of Corona (shout out to Marquez!).

Gaining Perspective

Shortly before break, I was deep in preparations for the state individual speech contest. I was also auditioning students for a spring play and preparing for the most epic Roaring Twenties prom of all time. It is typical for me to spend 12-16 hours a day at school during the spring semester, when all my extracurriculars converge, and one season bleeds right into the next. While it is happening, I convince myself I love it. I convince myself I thrive under pressure and that I am not nearly as busy as people think. What a thrill to know my classroom has a revolving door creative students enter to thrive! What an amazing opportunity to get to be a part of so many incredible projects and watch so many incredible kids grow in their talents, their leadership skills, their confidence, and their sense of self! There is some vanity there too - I like smugly to brag that I balance numerous activities at once.





But something happened right before spring break that stopped me in my tracks and left me to reconsider my hectic schedule. It was the week before the state speech contest that never happened when a student posed a question that has returned to my mind again and again over these past few weeks at home. As she finished up her practice, my last practice of the night, I packed up my bag to head to my Wednesday night church youth group. “Mrs. Vernon,” she said, “You are the busiest person I know and you never seem to let it get to you but what are you trying to avoid by staying so busy all the time?” I laughed it off and assured her I wasn’t trying to avoid anything - I just love what I do.





Two days later, we learned our speech contest was cancelled, and, as we began what was supposed to be spring break, it became increasingly clear that the end of that break was a moving target. It was not long before my mind returned to that young performer’s question, “...what are you trying to avoid by staying so busy all the time?” Well, I thought, I guess we are about to find out. I am not going to lie - I was worried about what answer I might uncover, but, rather than uncover what I had been trying to avoid, I discovered what I had been missing. What follows is a list of things I have rediscovered under self-imposed quarantine with my husband and three of my kids:





Taking walks - I never have time to take walks during the spring semester, unless they are walks from my classroom to the stage. It feels great to exercise daily.


The sun - Apparently the sun shines during those hours I am in my classroom or on the stage and I have been missing it, entirely.


My husband - Turns out, this guy I usually only have time for in June and July is actually pretty fun to be around.


My college freshman daughter - She is not happy to be online learning fashion design from home, but I am incredibly grateful to have this extra time with her in the years before she fully springs forth on her own adventure.


My high schooler son - This kid is the busiest person I know (busier than me). He loves people, he loves performing, he loves being active. This whole thing is incredibly difficult for him but, for once, I get to see his face and listen to his voice telling me something other than “see you later.”


My middle schooler - No kid in my family is more neglected than this one. She never complains about the hours I spend with other people’s teenagers, but I am starting to get the feeling that she was missing time with her mom.


Creativity - Ok, I had lots of this at school too, but I have been amazed at the displays of creativity I have seen from everyone all over the world. From online concerts to online Broadway musicals the famously creative are responding to a need for art, but here at home people are growing wildly creative as well. My kids take dance class and piano lessons online now. I am writing an elaborate mystery play for my girl scouts to perform from their own homes and solve in movie form. My teacher colleagues have found fun and engaging ways to keep kids thinking and learning in different ways than the traditional classroom allows. A friend of mine who teaches in another district arranged a play reading activity for a small group of local teens who are friends with her niece. Listening to my son read The Importance of Being Earnest with her from his bedroom is one of my favorite confinement moments to date. Even the small town library in my school district has found incredibly creative ways to keep people connected and reading.


Connection - I have had time to call my mom every day. I have connected with my adult daughters every day. I have texted back and forth with my best friend every day. You might take these things for granted, but I do not have time to do these things every day during the spring semester. Ever. In addition, I have watched my kids connect differently. My son’s friends have dropped off baked goods in our mailbox and he has dropped off novels in their mailboxes. My kids are sharing quarantine stories with their friends in Spain, Japan, and Puerto Rico. In some ways, connections are strengthening during what so many thought would be a lonely time of isolation.


Decent meals - From January to June my family is lucky to have a home cooked meal together twice a week, and even then the meal is usually something thrown together quickly by an exhausted teacher mom who grumbles through the whole process. This spring, my family is eating together every night and the food is fresh, delicious, and made without my exhausted, resentful rage.


Reading - There was a time when I believed being an English teacher would allow me to read a lot. Turns out, it allows me to read a lot of essays (which I do love), and the same novels year after year as I try to keep up with the same reading schedules I assign my students. In week one of confinement I finished The Goldfinch just because I wanted to. In week two I am reading a mystery novel, JUST FOR FUN.


The joy of teaching - Five of my seven classes each day are concurrent enrollment classes. That means I am still teaching online for several hours a day right now so kids can earn their college credit. During this time at home, I have been able to think hard about what is most important in their learning and, with little else to distract me, I have been able to provide engaging lessons and immediate personal feedback to every child. Of course, I would rather teach in my classroom and see their faces every day, but this experience has forced me to to focus on what matters most, and I think my students will learn better because of it.





My list could go on, but you get the idea - I wasn’t avoiding anything, but apparently I have been missing a great deal. Don’t misunderstand - I will be excited to get back to my students. I hope we can have a spring play. I hope this Roaring Twenties prom is only made more epic for our isolated spring. I won’t pretend I will suddenly change my entire life because of what I have learned during quarantine. I won’t magically become someone who manages a perfect work-home balance. Frankly the life of a high school teacher doesn’t lend itself to that easily. Maybe, though, I will approach my time both at school and at home with a little greater appreciation. Until then I will take a breath, look for the silver linings, and maybe shoot my student a message to let her know I have an answer to her question - finally.

Remembering What Matters: Education in the Age of Pandemic

I am a teacher. It isn't just my job; it is who I am. I have watched other teachers post their musings on our current reality readily and often, but I have resisted, not wanting to put down on paper anything I worried might make things real, might make things raw, might make things hurt more than I want to bear. See, I know that I have only two settings: calm and total collapse and I worried in writing down my feelings I would resort to total collapse. I can't do that because, though I am a teacher, I am a mom even more and I have three teenagers at home who need calm. Besides, there are others who have it so much worse than me that I can't even entertain the thought of feeling too sorry for myself - not when there are nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers literally risking their lives, not when there are grocery store employees working long hours and subjecting themselves to so many germs, not when there are truckers, sanitation workers, and mail carriers still showing up to work every day, not when there are people worrying how they will feed their families because they cannot work, not when there are people dying.  I am sitting home. I am healthy. I am teaching from behind a computer screen. I don't get to cry. Anyway, I am not a crier.  I don't cry. I don't cry...except I do. At least today I did.

Today I watched from my front yard as the elementary school teachers from my neighborhood paraded through the streets in their cars while children stood on the corners screaming and laughing and holding up signs professing their love for the teachers they missed. They screamed for them as if they were celebrities and the teachers honked their horns and waved wildly out of car windows. That was my moment. That was the moment the wall collapsed and I was left to realize the magnitude of this job, the magnitude of this loss, and the depth of my sorrow. I ran upstairs, locked myself in my room and just cried while my husband comforted me.

I cried because it was beautiful, but also because the love in the air was so thick you could almost touch it and it reminded me why I love this job so much that I claim it as a part of my identity. So much has gotten lost over the years in a push to hold schools accountable for every child's success. So much has been introduced to quantify and standardize what we do, to slap a "one size fits all" sticker on education and legislate, mandate, and collaborate our way "to the top" (whatever that means). Frankly all of that has burdened and exhausted me in recent years and I had begun to worry that "education" had moved on from teachers like me, who lead with our hearts and know what kids have learned just "because we know." I worried that my unwillingness to sacrifice my idealism at the altar of data made me an irrelevant vestige from another time "before we knew better," and that my insistence that building human beings was more important than building skills was something that would not allow me to long survive.

But I think what this epidemic has taught us about education is everything I knew all along. Your child will still be ok if he doesn't grow a year in reading comprehension. Your child will be ok if he doesn't practice math for 30 minutes a night. Your child will be ok if his research paper has three sources instead of ten because he is writing it in the middle of a global pandemic. But your children do need school. They need it for the reasons those little children on the street corner screaming with glee were celebrating. They need it for what it teaches them about community, about connection, about trying hard and thinking deeply, about creativity, about laughing with friends, about loving and being loved. What school gives them is a sense of purpose, a sense of place, and sense of their own value.

Don't misunderstand. I want kids to learn, to grow, and to meet and exceed the standards the government has set for them, but that isn't my primary purpose for teaching. My primary purpose for teaching is the speech kids who enthusiastically performed at a make-shift state contest when their scheduled contest was cancelled before we were really social distancing,  the young women who begged me for book recommendations on day four of social distancing, the young man who emailed me an idea for his research paper with great excitement on day five of social distancing, the teams of teachers who poured their hearts into building creative lists of optional learning opportunities for kids, the seven adult men who called me from their individual man caves this week because they were so bored in isolation they longed to speak to their classmates from twenty years ago and invite their old teachers to join. My purpose for teaching is human beings.

This pandemic has forced us to peek behind the curtain of our schools and realize the elements of daily education we truly value. Turns out it was the very things this seasoned teacher thought mattered most all along. And so I watched the teachers waving wildly and the children jumping for joy at the sight of them and I cried like a baby, because I remembered how much I love the teenagers I teach, how much I depend on their smiles, their ideas, their "good mornings" to get me through my days and most of all, how very much I miss them.

Teachers Matter

Let me be perfectly clear, I love what I do. I am a teacher. It is not just a job; it is not just what I do. It is who I am. Every day I am humbled to be entrusted with the care of Iowa’s most important resources. I take that responsibility very seriously, and believe passionately in the power a caring teacher has to change lives. Do not mistake my defense of my profession for a lack of gratitude for the opportunities I have been given. I love my students, I love my district, and I am happy to go to work each day. I have never been one who feels the need to tell the world how hard we work, never shared a single post about how summers off are a myth, never complained about spending my own money on school supplies, never shared that silly meme about counting down the days to vacation. I love what I do with such intensity that my attitude is typically one of almost annoying enthusiasm and joy. That will never change.

But today, for the first time, I am worried. Today, for the first time, I feel the need to put up my defenses. Here in Iowa, a bill has been presented to severely limit teachers’ ability to collectively bargain. The presumption seems to be that teachers are milking the system by bargaining for such outlandish perks as quality healthcare, a personal day or two, and a 25 minute duty-free lunch.

In a nation that promotes online virtual schools as equal alternatives to public education, and wields anti-teacher memes like swords across social media, there seems to be a severe lack of understanding of the humanity of teachers and the role these dedicated professionals play in shaping the lives of children.  I cannot make anyone truly understand how important what we do is. I can only tell you that we are not exaggerating when we say we save lives, we shape futures, we give hope to the hopeless, and voice to the voiceless. We build thinkers, and innovators. The world is changed by how we do our jobs.  Eliminating our ability to bargain and to be protected by contracts, makes our most experienced and highly educated teachers vulnerable to losing their jobs as a money saving measure for struggling school districts. It makes teaching less appealing to the best and brightest our governor once insisted he wanted to attract to the profession. It makes our schools weaker and our students will suffer for it.

Each time a tragedy occurs in a school, teachers are held up as heroes and for a few moments the nation marvels at the selfless dedication of its teachers. Then they forget and they move on. We do not forget, however. We were in our classrooms when the tragedy occurred at Columbine and we came to school the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. We cried with Sandy Hook, and we came to school the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. We never stop coming because our love is so much bigger than our fear, or our exhaustion, or our frustration, or even our need to be treated with respect. But do not minimize what we do and do not treat us as if we are irrelevant and easily replaceable. Your children know our worth. Ask them.

Protect the Work We Have Done

In recent days the possible confirmation of Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education has been a hot topic on social media. While I pride myself on remaining publicly quiet on politics in the interest of encouraging free thought among my students, I am never quiet on matters of educational importance. With that in mind, I feel the need to share some thoughts today. Originally, I started writing about Arne Duncan and Betsy Devos, hope that didn’t materialize and the monster it created. That post turned into a pages long rant no one would ever read. Instead, I want to focus on just one argument I have seen popping up among comments over the past few days – the argument that education in America has never been so bad.

This comment makes me sad. It makes me sad partly because it is founded on memes, social media posts, and a general disrespect for the teaching profession. Primarily though, it makes me sad because it just isn’t true.  I could spend pages attempting to dispel every myth out there but I won’t. Instead, I want to talk about what is going right in education today. In doing so, I hope I can shed light on why we, as teachers, are so fearful of handing the keys to someone who seems so bent on a complete reboot of the system. You see, we know there are educational reforms that need to happen. We also know there are some great things happening in education we do not want anyone to undo.

·      Teachers today have a far greater sense of why they are teaching what they are teaching to students. Every day children in the classrooms I visit and in the classrooms my children visit, inform students not only of what they will be learning, but why they will be learning it. As a student, I wanted nothing more than to understand where my learning would benefit me in the future. Today’s students don’t have to guess. They know.

·      Teachers today are working hard to innovate and help students to innovate. Contrary to popular belief, the Common Core many decry actually encourages, pushes, and forces creative and innovative thinking. The literacy standards are filled with analytical thinking requirements. The science standards push students to think creatively. Social studies departments are intent on helping student see the connections between history and current events rather than embracing the memorization model of the past. Above all, the Common Core math many social media posts have criticized and demonized is designed to encourage divergent and creative thinking by honoring multiple paths to solutions.

·      Innovation is tied to practical application. Yesterday my 7^th grader read me the business plan he and a partner had thoughtfully constructed for his social studies class. The assignment required creative thinking, math, and writing skills in a very real world application of learning. This is just one example of many but it seems a little more valuable than the maps I colored in the 80’s or the five years of learning I did about the Fertile Crescent.

·      Speaking of the Fertile Crescent, education today is guided by such clear standards that the days of teachers teaching students the same material again and again are over. Repetition happens when it is useful but no child should have to build a solar system three years in a row and history classes should eventually make it out of Mesopotamia.

·      Every student matters. With a renewed understanding that every child is every teacher’s responsibility, teachers work hard to meet the educational and social-emotional needs of children so they can all be successful. Educating a mind isn’t enough. The complete human being is our mission. There is much work to be done in this area. Not every school consistently meets the needs of students of all cultures and socio-economic groups but we have a system in place to help us track that. We are paying attention and we are working on it. That is progress.

I admit there are plenty of weaknesses in education today. Above all, our government mandated testing systems do a poor job of measuring the actual work the Common Core encourages us to accomplish. Reforms are necessary, but we cannot advocate for throwing the baby out with the bath water. Many good things are happening in education despite what the meme pushers want you to believe. Many great teachers are working hard to meet the needs of every child. Many positive changes are occurring. It is ok to admit that the last administration didn’t get it perfect with regards to education, but when I don’t like my doctor I certainly don’t go out and hire an entrepreneur because I need a change and “she can get things done.” I find a new doctor. I will be very honest with you. Teaching is more specialized than you realize. What we do is difficult for any outsider to understand. We need a leader that understands and can help us maintain the positive work we are doing, while reforming the pieces that are broken. While I do not fear alternatives, ideas from the outside, or challenges to the status quo, I fear being led by someone who does not understand what teachers do and why we do it. I fear being led by someone who may buy into the social media fueled frenzy that says US education is in a shambles. I fear being led by a businesswoman who may not understand that schools are not businesses.