Do I Really Look Like A Guy With A Plan?

August 3, 2018June 12, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring… Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16, English Standard Version)

I know, right? Not that I’m in any real danger of over-planning. It’s all I can do to keep track of today, let alone regiment tomorrow.

But I’m trying. At least in regards to the upcoming school year. I’ve been reading over standards, reviewing content, organizing visuals, bookmarking relevant articles or videos. Heck, I’ve even set up a calendar week on the new district student-learning-eduganza-management system, so that I know what we’re doing in class the first three or four days.

Possibly.

It’s always been hard for me to plan very far ahead – even when I’d been teaching the same thing for a number of years. The start of a new year is especially tricky, because, well…

I haven’t met the kids yet.

“Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.” (Jiddu Krishnamurti, Philosopher & Speaker)

OK, I’ve met some of them. I had a few last year. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve had kids two years in a row (for different classes, not as retreads). Some of them will be happy to see me again, and I them. Others, not so much.

But I don’t know the class dynamics yet. I don’t have a “feel” for them yet. And that’s limiting in terms of just how ambitious I can be in preparing to beat the learnin’ into them.

It doesn’t help that last year didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I moved to a new district in a new state to teach a new subject in a whole new reality stream. I love the new district, and the kids, and even the town. If only I’d not, you know… sucked so badly.

OK, that’s not fair – I didn’t suck most days. What I did was spend far too much of the year trying to prove myself to a fictional audience (one deeply wedged in my subconscious and snacking on popcorn and emotional baggage, no doubt) before adjusting to the real kids in front of me – who weren’t ready for where I wanted to take them, and who didn’t trust me enough to go for it anyway. Once uncertainty and insecurity set in, well… it was a rocky start.

We finally reached a sort of groove, although in retrospect it, too, was distorted by dirty grace – a lenience built on guilt, like a divorced parent trying to “make up” to the 12-year old what he or she was unable to fix with their ex. I started off asking too much without figuring out where they were and finished by asking too little in an effort to offset whatever damage I thought I’d done.

All of which assumes I had much more control over the situation and the players than any of us really do.

“A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges.” (Paul Johnson, Historian & Author)

So perhaps “planning” isn’t the right word at all, so much as “preparing” – I hope to be better prepared this year. To have more options loaded and ready, to be more familiar with more content (which is essential if we’re going to be at all creative; “how” grows out of “what” and “why”), and to anticipate some of the time-intensive things I know I’d like to try, but wasn’t logistically able to construct before.

Most good teachers will tell you that it can take several years for your best lessons to evolve. Even then, that activity that totally churned the knowing and doing and growing for years in a row can suddenly just… not work anymore. Kids change. Different years are, well… different. Time to rework, rethink, re-valuate. You can’t always know ahead of time.

Still, you can prepare. We can prep ourselves, our ideas, our goals. We can prep the salads and the sauces and the skillets and the other chef-ish metaphor stuff I can’t quite pull together as I type – probably because I didn’t prepare to use them. (See what I did there?)

But you know what we can’t do – at least not consistently or effectively? We can’t plan it all, not really. Not honestly. Not effectively. Some of you can reach much further than I in your logistical outlines and have a much better idea what to expect based on your history in the district or with kids you’ve seen before. Nothing wrong with that. But the vast majority of us aren’t nailing down specifics until we’re in it – talking to the kids, watching them interact, asking them questions and otherwise pushing them as best we can.

Even when we’re in the middle of it, I’m not sure intuition and guesswork don’t play just a big of a role as knowledge and preparation. We can work mighty hard and it still seem like some of the best moments are a function of weird luck as much as anything.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work – preparation creating the luck, and all that. I’d like to think we play some role in the mess. I’m positive that my kids do. Individually, and in how they react to and interact with one another. And events around them. And the weather. And the time of day. And their worlds. And their wiring. And the divine spark of random free will that keeps everything interesting and so damned difficult.

That’s not even taking into account their other teachers, other classes, and innumerable intangibles. You just never know what’s going to happen.

“In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.” (Rose Tremain, Author)

This, of course, drives ed-reformers and edu-financiers absolutely nuts. Folks accustomed to agenda-creation and content outlines and footnoted studies demand (but don’t really expect) better from those of us at the bottom of the pedagogical food chain. In their defense, many of them come from worlds awash in status, money, or influence (or some combination of the three). They are often accustomed to decreeing how things should go while others make it thus – or they’re at least surrounded by people good at pretending.

In my tiny little job, if things don’t go the way I’d hoped and planned, I usually know right away, and it’s immediately my problem and my scramble to adjust. As Peter Greene of Curmudgucation has pointed out, poor (or lazy) teaching brings on its own worst consequences – bored or antagonized teenagers, in your room, making you pay all day, every day.

Teachers are held accountable for innumerable things over which we have no control to begin with; we’re certainly not escaping the fallout of our own plans gone awry. It keeps you honest, I’ll tell you that.

I’m all for respecting expertise and I’m a big fan of having lots of money, but our culture too easily validates the pronouncements and preferences of power and prestige. Being rich doesn’t make you smart about everything – at best, it makes you smart about getting rich (although even that is often a function of circumstances or inheritance). And at the risk of sounding defiant or defensive, I’d even argue that being an “expert” in the field of education doesn’t mean you know anything about my kids or my content, let alone my classroom. You want authority? Tell me about your world and your experiences – your studies, your observations, your suggestions. I can adapt what’s useful for mine from there.

I have plenty to learn, even after twenty years. But any presentation, any training, any report, that opens with some variation of “stop ruining the future and behold my revelation of this season’s edicts” can pretty much kiss my aspirational posters.

If I were a nurturing, supportive type, I’d encourage you as the new school year ascends to prepare more than plan. Hold yourself to a much higher standard than is required by the paycheck or the system, absolutely – but cut yourself some slack when it comes to implementation and juggling the impossible and the unknown.

There will be real live little people in front of you soon, and they don’t need a better study or a more determined philanthropist – they need you to figure them out and to love them and to be stubbornly flexible on their behalf. Read the research and watch the TED Talks and follow the blogs, but own your gig and your obligations. We can demand far more of ourselves and of our little darlings without letting someone with a fancier title or a government study dictate exactly what that looks like in our reality with our kids.

No one knows better than you what’s best for your kids this coming year – a truth as terrifying as it is freeing. Anyone who claims otherwise is “boasting in arrogance.”

They’re coming. Let’s get prepared.

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Becoming a Hard@$$

July 11, 2018June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I was 29 years old when I did my student teaching. The first day I was with my new mentor, he asked me at lunch if I’d been paying attention as I sat in his classroom while he talked through whatever that day’s topic happened to be. I said I had. “Great,” he told me. “How ‘bout you take over after lunch?”

I seem to have stumbled through well enough, and at the end of the day he asked me the same basic things he’d ask me every day I was with him.

What do you think went well?

Anything you would do differently next time?

Did you notice ________________ ? {Usually a disengaged student or other issue.}

How do you think you might handle/fix/address __________________? {Some difficulty specific to that day’s topic or skill.}

It was intimidating as hell. Made me all kinds of uncomfortable. I got used to it, however, and it forced me to be a bit more intentional about my planning and – more importantly – my reflections. In retrospect, I’m thankful for his approach (well, not the taking over the first day… but the rest of it) and I still frame my discussions with baby teachers in the much the same terms. For that matter, I periodically run through the same basic questions with myself.

In recent years, I’ve had a nagging realization which I’ve shamefully tried to ignore. An adjustment which needs to be made in my classroom. Something that should help many of my kids. It would probably do wonders for my stress levels as well, once established and… comfortable.

Assuming it ever became comfortable.

And yet I don’t seem to be doing it. Not yet. It’s unforgiveable.

I need to become a hard-ass. Or… hard-er, at least.

Not in terms of attitude. That’s just not me. I can be firm from time to time (and in brief bursts), but I’ll never be the drill sergeant, the no-excuses, stand-up-straight-when-you’re-giving-me-another-dumb-answer type. I’m not universally against a little harshness – not when it comes with consistency and fairness and a genuine commitment to the long-term success and happiness of kids. But that’s not me. Not by any stretch.

My relationships with my kids are fairly casual. I don’t mean they’re boundary-free – I’m not going to their parties or talking to them about my ex-wife. But my preferred tone is relaxed and low-judgement, and my classroom management fairly loose. Sometimes that means wrestling to keep things on track, and accepting that not every kid makes great choices about how far to color outside the lines, but that’s a trade-off I can live with.

It’s not tone, or discipline, or even the proverbial “bar” of high academic expectations in which I fear I’ve failed my young wards. It’s more basic than that.

I think I need to stick to due dates. Late policies. Expectations, especially when it comes to having one’s proverbial manure together. Insisting they keep and maintain a clue or two, if you will.

I’ve written about this before – more proof I know better and have failed to adequately act – but I keep hoping it will magically become unnecessary. I’ve instead kept doing the same basic thing and hoping for a different outcome each semester – and we all know what that’s called.

I have some pretty reasonable policies regarding late work – if I followed them. They’re not particularly draconian. Anything skill-based can be attempted multiple times, and in some circumstances students can “earn” retakes of quizzes or whatever. There are enough grades throughout the year that a rough week or two isn’t enough to do lasting harm. Even poor test-takers should be fine if they take care of everything else.

I’m all about the mercy and the understanding and the making exceptions and compromising and stuff. That is, I fear, the problem.

Giving a child extra time on an assignment because life is complicated is supposed to help them. There’s no other reason to do it.

We’ve all been in the workshops or faculty meetings where some earnest administrator or guest speaker is pushing for a ‘no zeroes’ policy or ‘standards-based education’, both of which have some interesting foundations but too easily end up meaning ‘just pass the little turds whether they do anything or not so we can move on’. Because we’re putting so much energy into hiding our eye-rolling and resisting the urge to scream, it’s easy to miss the possibility that they MIGHT have a point. If the work we assign is useful, the reasoning goes, it’s better that kids do it eventually. If it’s not essential for them to at least give it a shot, why are we assigning it? Zeroes just let them off the hook.

In other words, it’s better for the student if they can still do the work – especially when their lives are genuinely complicated and they’re still learning how to play secondary school.

And yet…

In recent years, it no longer seems that I’m offering them a rope when I allow due dates to evolve. It’s more like I’m pouring an unending supply of brightly colored spheres into their personal ball pit of hopelessness – and someone’s peed on the safety foam. Instead of helping them get back on track, every act of supposed grace seems to mire them further in the past, adding endless obstacles to their academic escape room.

Teenagers, as you may have noticed, are not always great with calculated decisions and sustained pedagogical commitment. Even the ‘good’ ones tend to oscillate between over-achievement (or at least grade-obsessiveness) and stretches of complete inability to muster two tiny little damns about the Swahili Coast and what it reflected about change and continuity in Indian Ocean Trade.

I mean, seriously – how can you NOT perk up and shine for THAT? Those crazy Portuguese – AMIRIGHT?!?

Students are going to mess up. They’re going to get behind – which, in a history class, changes everything. If there’s going to be collaboration, or meaningful discussions, or if we’re going to go truly wild with some tasty primary sources or thesis-writing, there has to be SOME expectation that everyone is on the same proverbial (or literal) page, content-wise. Otherwise, they might as well all stay home and take the class online, dispelling the illusion that we’re a “class” and not just a bunch of people sharing classroom space here and there.

But the whole idea of “catching up” is problematic in and of itself. The student who was for whatever reason unwilling or unable to keep up last week isn’t usually primed to do double the reading, double the analysis, or even double the grunt-work this week. The increasingly common result is that they put off whatever they’re supposed to be doing NOW in order to scramble through stuff from last week – or the week before, or the one before that. The quality isn’t high because they’re rushing, even assuming they’re not just copying from their friends, who by that time have their assignments graded and returned.

Even in class, I’ll see students disengaged from what we’re doing today because they’re trying to plug a hole from two weeks ago. That means the pattern can’t help but continue because in a few weeks they’ll be pleading for some sort of make-up version of the stuff they WERE here for, but not ENGAGED in. And my heart will hurt for them, and I’ll be stupid and consider some sort of compromise, because I want them to make it.

There’s a good argument to be made for building personal responsibility and school skills and life skills as well via the relatively benign experience of actual deadlines and cutoffs; I haven’t even really wrestled with that aspect yet. Kannimayketup Swamp has pretty much dominated my concerns – probably because of all the damned irony involved.

There are ways to partially control for much of this, of course. Teachers develop all sorts of policies to circumvent student shenanigans or foolishness. Most require a diligence I don’t naturally manifest, and many involve detailed record-keeping and personal organization.

But one of the most effective might also be one of the simplest. I think I need to say “no” more often. No, you can’t turn that in late. Sorry. Sucks to be you.

Maybe I won’t add that last part. But there’s a freedom to knowing that it’s too late – a painful freedom, perhaps, but a freedom nonetheless. It’s like closing off some of the side roads so that the only path forward is through THIS HERE RIGHT NOW.

Of course there will be alternatives in some cases – ways to “earn” that opportunity. There will be special circumstances to which I’ll likely adjust. Maybe a few situations in which it just doesn’t seem right to—

And it starts all over again.

I’m not sure where I’ll land on this come August, but I do know that I’m not letting it completely slide another school year. Hard lines and organized expectations are NOT my strongest gifts, but I can do it if I genuinely believe it’s best for my kids.

And I think I do.

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Retaining Baby Teachers (A Tale of Ms. Hope)

June 29, 2018June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Teacher retention is a… challenge – ‘challenge’ here meaning ‘nightmare-of-impossibility-dear-god-what-are-we-going-to-do?!?’

If you’re a classroom teacher, many of the real problems (as is so often the case) are out of your direct control. The inane legislation. The crappy pay. The constant degradation from the ruling classes. Helicopter Parents. Entrenched poverty. Betsy DeVos. It can seem insurmountable.

Maybe it is.

But there are some things we can be aware of which might help us hang on to our baby teachers this coming year – some mindsets we could all stand to practice more regularly, even when interacting with our more experienced colleagues.

Don’t worry – I’m not a particularly touchy-feely-positive guy, even with newbies. Nor am I interested in forced sunshine and faux rainbows intended to ‘change the climate’ of a building. I do, however, care about the people teaching next door to me, and down the hall, and across the commons. I do, for reasons I can’t always explain, care about the kids we share throughout the day. It’s in that spirit that I offer the following humble observations and thoughts.

Let’s imagine a new baby teacher in your department this year. We’ll call her “Ms. Hope.”

You can spot the newness of Ms. Hope all the way across the faculty meeting. She’s adorable in a quirky-nervous way, well-intentioned and innocent despite her determination not to look it. She probably has a tasteful tattoo – a dragonfly on her shoulder or a Bible verse in Zulu underneath her many bracelets. She’s wearing a pencil skirt and her best upscale blouse in an attempt to balance stylishness and authority.

In her bag you see the spine of a Marzano book, an insulated water bottle, and what looks like a Blu-Ray of Freedom Writers. Had you met her in the parking lot, you’d discover she’s driving a sensible little Ford Focus and that she’d stopped at Starbucks for an extra-skim frozen go-gurt cappuccino cinnamon power-boost mocha grande with kale and fat-free whipped cream – her go-to drink in times of stress.

Ms. Hope may be inexperienced, but she’s sharp and determined and she means business. On Day One, when most of her veteran colleagues are droning through their syllabus and class expectations, she’s distributing a ‘Learning Styles Assessment’ or some sort of ‘Getting To Know One Another’ activity. And already, things are veering badly from what she’d envisioned in her planning.

“Can I write in transparent neon pink?”
“Is this a test? Is it for a grade? Will there be a lot of tests in here?”
“My mom says I’m not allowed to fill out paperwork without her approval because you’re trying to immunize me into believing the earth isn’t flat.”
“Is this Biology? I think I’m supposed to be in Biology.”
“¿Que esta pasando? ¿Qué se supone que debo hacer con esto?”

She’s quickly discovering that students are hard-wired to do everything in their power to convince us that they’re both helpless and complete idiots – even though they’re not. They think they want us to give up and go easy on them, but they really don’t – not in their core. It’s just that they’re not overly self-aware at this age. This clusterfoolery is all impulse and instinct on their part.

Ms. Hope’s first day doesn’t go well. Still, she’s back on Day Two eager to try again.

“OK, class – let’s get out that Learning Styles Assessment from yesterday and see if we can—”

“Were we supposed to bring that back?”
“My mom wants to know why we don’t have a syllabus and if the principal knows you’re using liberal psychology on us. She said not to trust liberal transgender socialist psychology.”
“My counselor never called me in about needing Biology this hour. Can I go ask to see her again?”
“¿Estás seguro de que tengo un estilo de aprendizaje? Miss? Miss?”

And on it goes.

Let’s fast-forward a few weeks, during which she puts on a brave face and tries a few different things in her efforts to get some positive momentum going. She stays late and cancels most of her social life as she wrestles through lesson plans and writing detailed feedback on mediocre student work. She genuinely wants to do well, and she’s not particularly bad for a newbie, all things considered. She’s even getting to know and love some of her kids individually, despite her difficulties managing them collectively.

You start to think maybe she’s gonna make it, until… THE DAY.

It’s not quite Fall Break. Ms. Hope rolls in a bit later than usual, in torn jeans and a college t-shirt with a cappuccino stain on the front. Her hair is pulled back in an uncharacteristic ponytail and she’s not wearing any makeup. She avoids your gaze and at first appears hungover until you realize it’s more likely that she spent the morning sobbing uncontrollably until she absolutely had to leave for work.

You wonder if you should have stepped up before now. Maybe you’ll ask if there’s anything–

That’s when Mrs. Mulligan wanders over and tut-tuts at the fresh meat she’s been eyeing, waiting for her moment.

It’s here.

“Oh, Honey… now, now. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
“I know they tell you all these things in teacher school about personal learning journeys and flipping off the classroom and changing the world, and that’s all fine – in theory, I suppose. But Sweets, those folks haven’t been in front of a classroom in a LOOOOOONG time. These kids aren’t like the kids in them books. This is real school.”

None of her claims are wrong, exactly – not entirely, at least – but she’s begun luring poor Ms. Hope into a damnable swamp of cynicism and shattered ideals. Her words are sympathetic on the surface, but what she’s really saying is that Ms. Hope needs to

lower

her

expectations

and

dial

back

her

ideals.

Forsake

her primary purpose –

at least mostly.

Mrs. Mulligan offers her a crossword puzzle (with a word bank) to keep the kids busy the rest of the day and promises to bring her entire stash of VHS tapes tomorrow – a year’s worth of documentaries and mini-series recorded from network TV all the way back to the 70s.

Folks, if we do this to our baby teachers – of if we stand aside and let it happen – I assure you, on the day our scantrons are finally run through that Great Grading Machine in the Sky, we will go to a very special level of Teacher Hell.

What could you have done instead?

Let’s rewind the tape to before Mrs. Mulligan stepped in. Before the torn jeans and stained t-shirt.

Let’s instead envision you dropping by briefly a couple of times a week to check in on your new colleague. She may or may not be entirely honest or open at first; no one wants to start a new job by looking incompetent. But you’re all about the open-ended questions and you smoothly rise to the occasion…

“What was that thing you were doing in class today? It looked interesting.”

Should she express frustration or confess failure, you resist the urge to simply tell her what you’d do instead. Suave like a beast, you take another approach:

“So, what was your primary goal? What were you hoping would happen?”

It’s especially important that this sounds as open-ended as it’s intended to be. No matter what the answer, you will of course maintain your best deeply-reflective-but-never-judgmental face. Give Ms. Hope some room to try stuff – that’s how greatness happens.

Eventually.

“What went well?”

As teachers, it’s natural to fixate on the handful of kids being difficult, or tuning out, or otherwise throwing off the plan. They matter, but how often are 25 students playing along, mostly cooperating, maybe even learning, while 3 or 4 shape our entire perception of the day?

“I wonder if there’s a better way to set that up so that more of them understand…”
“What do you think might make it more effective with those two classes you mentioned?”

Or even just…

“What have you tried?”

It’s possible Ms. Hope’s first lesson was too ambitious. Maybe she simply lacked the experience to pull it off. Some of her other strategies might work eventually, or she’ll stumble across new ideas to try.

What she should never feel is alone. Helpless. Stupid. Like she’s failed at the most important thing she’s tried so far.

I’m not against venting our frustrations to one another. Be real with one another and get it out. But if that’s the defining element of our peer interaction, we’re doing it wrong. Way, way wrong.

No one else is going to prop us up. A few administrators try, and are appreciated, but they’re not in our world – not exactly. There are well-intentioned parents who’ll say something kind from time to time. But by and large we’re on our own. Ms. Hope and her ilk are anathema to entrenched political authority, to principalities and powers and wickedness in high places – not because of her politics (we have no idea how she votes, nor do we care), but because she tries to teach children. Because she loves them all in spite of themselves. Because she believes in them even when no one else does, including themselves.

And she’s 23. Or 31. Or 56.

Let’s give her some backup. Let’s make it a point to be honest, to be real, to speak our minds behind closed doors, but to always always ALWAYS follow that up with “What COULD we try? What CAN we do? What IS worth rolling in tomorrow for?”

And perhaps, within a few short seasons, she’ll wander in your room one day and do the same for you.

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By Any Means Necessary (Repost)

June 27, 2018June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

The below is a slightly edited version of something I wrote and posted almost four years ago. I stumbled across it again this morning and realized it might be pretty good advice – for me, four years later.

Like many of you, I’ve had difficulty not losing my #$&%^ over the atrocities and sophistry being spewed at us endlessly from the highest echelons of power recently. More discouraging than that – for me, at least – has been the zombie-like acceptance of the most convoluted justifications coming from people in my world who know better and for whatever reason choose not to see it.

It seems wrong to confine ourselves to the calmest and most patient of attitudes when responding to some atrocities – “Golly, Boss, I respect our different points of view, but I kinda wish you’d free these here hostages. But I don’t want to seem rude, so I’ll step outside while they’re raped and beheaded, because I’m told both sides do this ALL the time.” At the same time, outrage is a difficult thing to focus effectively and long-term towards courses of action most likely to effect positive change. It’s much easier to simply vent and walk away.

In any case, I’m reposting this in hopes it may help someone besides me refocus and regroup. Many warm fuzzies, my #11FF – you are treasured, always.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity…
(“The Second Coming”, W.B. Yeats)

My historical heroes are all pretty standard – Joan of Arc, Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln. All three were murdered as a result of their convictions, but they were more than simply creatures of ‘passionate intensity’. They were strange animals in their day who rejected easy answers for the possibility of better ones. None were content to merely overcome those in their way – they sought something richer… they pursued mutual enlightenment. Maybe mutual respect.

Even if they killed you while doing it.

Joan demonstrated repeated personal mercies and grace even for her enemies, all while leading the French army to slaughter those filthy English. Post-Mecca Malcolm sought collaboration – or at least detente – from those he with whom he disagreed – even some he found culpable in existing wrongs. Lincoln was a man of great conviction as well, but regarding people and their viewpoints, values, and druthers, he was quite broad-minded for his time. Consider this bit from his Second Inaugural, given a few months before his death:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes…
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Not as rousing as “We’ve almost got ‘em, now let’s CRUSH the Motherf*ckers!” but it served his purposes.

See, Lincoln was always looking past the current strife to the solution, the next step, the reconciliation or improvement. He did not wish to confuse the struggle with the goal. It was how he practiced law, how he navigated interpersonal conflict, and certainly how he approached the Civil War.

Of course he wanted to win – believing profoundly that his cause was just – but he kept his larger purpose in view. He wanted the Union preserved, the nation whole. When the opportunity came to free slaves as part of that, all the better – the Maker thus working out the parts we cannot while demanding of us all that we can.

I want my students to emulate this. I want them to strive to understand why the hell people believe and do the weird, stupid stuff they believe and do. Most of it, of course, isn’t actually weird and stupid to the people doing it, and even when it is, it’s still worth a little analysis before we attack. It’s too easy to mock, vilify, or dismiss those who stray too far from our socio-political comfort zones. It’s too easy to reduce important complexities to ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Complicating my idealistic little group hug is the fact that in any field of dispute – science, ethics, education reform, etc. – there are unjust players. Someone’s always trying to rig the game, beat the system, manipulate the field for personal payoff. It’s naïve to pretend all voices are genuine. Sometimes the man behind the curtain is a pretty good wizard, but a very bad man.

Further complicating my utopian dreamland is the reality that not all ideas or understandings are equally true or even equally valid. They’re definitely not all equally useful. Just because I understand the skepticism about climate change by my friends further right doesn’t mean they’re correct. It doesn’t even mean the truth is “somewhere in the middle.” They may be dangerously, delusionally wrong – but it’s still better if I ‘get’ where they’re coming from. Show a little respect.

I humbly suggest that energy spent trying to understand the potential validity of viewpoints, belief systems, or courses of action we find distasteful, rather than spent ranting against them, has at least three advantages:

(1) They might have a point. If they’re not entirely right, they may not be entirely wrong, either. Likely they see something you’ve missed, or see it differently in a useful way. People who surround themselves only with supporters end up weird at best and corrupt at worst (think Justin Bieber or Kim Jong-il).

I’m a big fan of asserting antagonistic things to smart people and taking notes as they eviscerate me. I don’t keep many friends this way, but I learn a great deal.

(2) The better to persuade you with, my dear. If the goal is to implement policy you find most correct, or promote beliefs you consider important, you’re unlikely to win over opponents through your clever use of Willy Wonka memes to mock their most fundamental values. The sort of ‘red meat’ we throw one another when in likeminded groups can be emotionally satisfying, but it’s not particularly useful in building consensus.

(3) The Universe punishes vanity. Whether you put your faith in the Bible, history, science, or James Cameron movies, the fall which pride cometh before is a cantankerous b*tch, and neither you nor I are excluded from her twisted mockery.

Many things stirring passions today are more complicated than they seem. The ‘War on Terror’ is an easy example – the President all but admitted going in to this most recent bombing campaign against ISIS or ISIL (or whatever they are this week) that we can’t win this way, we can’t win other ways, and we sure as hell can’t not try at least some of the ways. All roads lead to WTF – we’re just trying to prognosticate the least-worst details.

Anything involving social mores and legal precepts is subjected to the worst sort of grandstanding on all sides – “I don’t believe government should legislate morality!” Yes you do. You just have different things that make you go ‘ick’ than whoever you’re mad at this time. “I want to see America return to the values on which it was founded!” No you don’t. We had some great ideals but made horrible compromises with the norms of the day. You’d be miserable, and quite possibly burned at the stake.

“Well I just don’t see how anyone could think -“

Exactly. Therein lies the problem. Because you really should.

Dear Involved Parents: Chill the $%&# Out!

June 17, 2018June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Dear Engaged, Sincere, Loving, Active Parent(s):

I just finished my twentieth year in the classroom. In that time, I’ve had a decent variety of kids from a wide range of circumstances. Every one of them has his or her own issues, own strengths, own styles, and own reasons for doing what they do however they do it.

It’s true what you fear – there are too many young people who lack serious motivation to do well in school. They may not see the purpose, or perhaps they lack the emotional maturity or personal stability to focus the necessary time and energy. Some come from messy backgrounds, others have that sense of “entitlement” you’ve read about, and a number of them simply choose to be vagrants and take their chances.

I’m so thankful that you don’t want your child on that path.

Having teenagers of your own, it will probably come as no surprise to you that even the best of them can sometimes be a bit lazy. They whine, they argue, they feign helplessness, and sometimes they even self-destruct a bit despite the fact that their lives are really not THAT difficult. Left to their own devices, many would spend too much time goofing off with friends, playing video games or watching stupid videos, or otherwise simply wasting untold time and potential.

Thank you for expecting better of them than that. Sincerely.

You’ve figured out, too, that the version of events they give you at home is not always as closely tethered to objective reality as we might hope. I appreciate that your first instinct is not to bail your kid out every time they’re irresponsible. To automatically blame the teacher. To coddle, spoil, or otherwise feed the beast of teen melodrama.

In short, engaged, sincere, loving, active parent, I genuinely appreciate what seem to be your overarching goals for your child. And I in no way intend to challenge your heart or your purpose with what I’m about to say.

But you need to chill the $#&@! out.

Seriously.

Your daughter is in band and swimming and multiple advanced classes and rarely gets more than five hours of sleep. It needs to be OK for her to occasionally have a ‘B’ in something – especially if it’s a hard-won ‘B’. She’s 16 and not exactly an expert in managing stress. When was the last time you told her you were proud of her and that she was doing well?

Your son is fully immersed in speech and debate and still has a trace of genuine excitement about that engineering elective, but he’s still trying to survive Honors English because that’s what the ‘Distinguished Graduate’ path requires. You insist he participate in everything your church does no matter what the time commitment, which is your right and your decision. Couldn’t he skip that summer program you’re convinced will help him get into some particular college or other? Let the boy recover… he’s 15. When was the last time you let him sleep in, then took him to a late breakfast somewhere just to talk?

I realize teenagers are prone to drama, but they come by it honestly. They’re adolescents, full of adolescent hormones and spilling over with adolescent concerns. I know plenty of folks twice their age who struggle with organization and time management and unhealthy coping mechanisms – but “grown-ups” have some control over how much they take on and what they do to handle it. We constantly expect teenagers to “act like adults” while giving them almost no actual control over their lives.

What we really mean is “do everything we say the way we want, but handle it as if it’s all entirely intrinsically valuable to you.” I’m not suggesting we go to the opposite extreme and let them fly free and foolish, but let’s at least be honest about the dynamics.

You don’t inculcate internal motivation through extrinsic haranguing. You don’t build stamina by keeping them broken and resentful. It’s hard enough to engage them in the complexities of world history or the subtleties of a well-crafted novella when they’re relatively happy and secure; you’re not increasing their chances of success in life by badgering them into seething resentment or insisting that nothing they ever do is anywhere close to good enough.

Here’s a news flash – the kids who aren’t feeling loved and validated at home do some pretty sketchy things to scratch that itch in other ways. Many of the ‘bad things’ from which you’re trying to shield them are – not unironically – manifestations of their desperate need for approval, to feel good enough, to be SEEN and HEARD.

That’s why your daughter – yes, YOUR daughter – is sending those pics. That’s why your son – yes, YOURS – is mooching those prescriptions. You’d be surprised what they tell any adult who’ll listen without yelling at them.

Not all of them, of course – some just cry a lot and want to die. Which I don’t suppose is actually better.

That doesn’t even include the number of you punishing your kid for your personal shortcomings. Your relationship mistakes. Your financial difficulties. Your upbringing. They make a nice whipping post for all those things you can’t say or do in public, don’t they? They’ve reached an age at which they can offer just enough attitude and resistance for you to feel justified turning off the filters and letting it all out. Like you couldn’t with that boss – that ex-husband – that government – that illness – that childhood.

But let me get back to those of you who aren’t overtly abusing your child in easily documentable ways. Those of you who genuinely mean well, and who fear the paths they may take if you don’t “stay on them.” I know you sometimes try to find better ways but they just make you so crazy and you feel like a bad parent and you lose it sometimes. I know you’re terrified they’ll turn out like their brother, or their father, or like you.

I know it’s hard to raise a teenager. Harder than almost anything else.

Except maybe being a teenager.

Try something for me. It may sound crazy, and it’s certainly going to be harder to pull off in real life than to write about on some silly blog. But please – just try it. Maybe a few times.

Make a point today of telling your child you love them. Tell them you’re proud of them. Pick something specific they’ve accomplished – especially if they didn’t do it perfectly but worked really hard on it. That soccer game they lost by one goal, but busted their butts trying to stay in. That essay they actually started the day it was assigned (go figure!) but still didn’t get the grade they’d hoped. Kinda cleaning up without being asked. Being relatively patient with their sibling.

Maybe their biggest accomplishment lately has been just getting up and trying again when things don’t go well. That’s a big ol’ beaucoup bunch of the difference between success and failure over time – some people keep getting up and pushing forward, while others… don’t.

Here’s the really tricky part – DON’T FOLLOW EVERY EXPRESSION OF LOVE OR APPROVAL BY EXPLAINING WHY YOU GET SO FRUSTRATED OR WHAT YOU REALLY WISH THEY WERE DOING DIFFERENTLY. They already know, believe me. Just give them one weekend of unconditional acceptance. Give them one evening of unabashed love, harassment-free.

Consider a new philosophy in which it’s sometimes OK to do LESS, as long as what IS done is done well, and with genuine commitment. Ponder the possibility that ‘B’s and ‘C’s have their place, so long as they’re earned by legitimate effort. Sometimes the flip side of challenging yourself is that you’re not perfect at everything you do. I mean, if you can do it all perfectly, you’re clearly NOT challenging yourself, right? What’s more important?

I know you want them to get into a good college, hopefully with some scholarship action. I know you want them to have good lives, good careers, to hang out with the right people and make the best choices. I’m not being sarcastic when I thank you for this; I have far too many kids whose parents aren’t nearly so concerned.

But it can be a trap, letting high school become four years of joyless torture in order to secure four or more additional years of soulless suffering at some university in hopes of landing forty or so years of unending commitment and sacrifice – all chasing some fictional future moment in which they can be… happy? Secure? Relaxed? Fulfilled?

Love and approve of them NOW. As they are. With what they’re doing. Repeatedly.

Then, sometimes, you can nudge. You can question. And once you’ve reestablished your “unconditional acceptance” credentials, you can play the parent card from time to time to stave off the sorts of truly stupid decisions teenagers sometimes try to make.

But for now, you simply MUST chill the $#&@! out – for their sakes, as well as your own. I know you love them. Prove it to them in ways they can understand NOW.

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