civil liberties – Blue Cereal Education

Don’t get excited – I’m not diving into current events or anything. (I’m far too demure for such things.) In fact, I’m intentionally avoiding the subject at the moment because any effort I make to write rationally about what we’ve become ends up as a spittle-spewing, obscenity-laden rant and, worse, totally off-brand. Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook, where I’ve lost even the veneer of professionalism or decency towards my fellow man, can no doubt verify this assertion.

Instead, I’d like to share two very simple things you may find useful. Or, you may not. You may find yourself a little bit sad for me if these are my best new cutting-edge distance learning ideas at the moment. Either way, I’m giddy enough for both of us.

“Is That A Right?” is the name of an activity I’ve done with American Government and American History classes for years, and which I’m considering trying “virtually” this fall if circumstances lead us down that path.

It’s not even an overly innovative lesson. It’s really just a PowerPoint presentation with a series of descriptions of potential “rights” as per the U.S. Constitution. Students vote ‘Yes’ if they believe whatever’s on the slide is a protected right and ‘No’ if they don’t, and we discuss it a bit (“Tasha, why do you think so?” or “So, Garrett… would you still say that’s a right if we change the wording to what Tasha said?” You guys know how discussions work.) The next slide tells us the “right” answer, often with disclaimers about how it’s actually a bit more complicated than that – because it’s almost always a bit more complicated than that. Then we go to the next one.

I recently converted the most recent version of this presentation into Google Slides. You can access it in its entirety right here. If it’s something you’d like to use, all you have to do is make a copy (File, Make a Copy…) and it’s yours. Once you’ve copied it, you can change prompts, explanations, images, etc., just like with PowerPoint.

So how could we do this if we’re not in the same place?

I’ve had the privilege of co-teaching several workshops with an amazing history teacher from the Houston area named Barrett Doke. He’s one of those guys that loves technology, but always as a tool for putting more of the learning into the hands of the students and never as an end in and of itself. We all say that’s how we want to use technology – but he actually does it that way. (Now, the rest of you don’t get all defensive – I’m sure MANY of you are just as wonderful. I’m just sharing my personal warm fuzzies.)

Doke is partial to Google Slides and gets rather… enthusiastic when given the chance to share the many simple things you can do with them to make your lessons more flexible and your technology more useful without investing endless hours or – and this is a biggie – relying on your district to purchase and maintain subscriptions to specific apps or equipment. He showed me something he liked to do in Slides that would never have occurred to me. (As I said at the outset, it’s entirely possible this is obvious to everyone else in the world besides me. I can live with that.)

If you adjust the ‘View/Zoom’ for your slideshow while NOT in ‘Presentation’ mode, you’ll discover there’s all sorts of unused space around each slide. You may have stumbled across this in the past when moving around graphics or setting up animation. As it turns out, you can put stuff in these margins and it will be saved and accessible along with everything else, even though it’s not part of the slide.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

Doke often uses this space for what I think of as ‘tokens’ which students can access. These can be numbered or customized to include their names (although the tokens have to be slightly larger that way). Whether they’re all in class together or meeting virtually (but synchronously), he’ll pose a question or prompt and offer the same sorts of options you’d see with multiple choice. Students move their tokens to the part of the slide which best reflects their response, then Doke calls on a few to explain why they chose what they did. Because they’re all on the same document, everyone sees what everyone else is answering – just like in class.

Yes, this is very similar to what Pear Deck does. I’ve not used Pear Deck extensively, but I hear great things. It might actually do this particular type of activity a bit better. I don’t have it, however, so it’s not a factor.

Here’s the long distance version of the same activity. I’ve used it with teachers successfully, but haven’t yet had the chance to do it this way with students. You’ll have to make your own copy (File, Make a Copy…) if you’d like to use it.

I like several things about this lesson in this format:

The discussions are still the discussions. They’re the key to the lesson being meaningful and the information sticky. Without good discussions, it’s just another quiz.

Anytime you can have synchronous (i.e., “live”) student responses in a form other than asking them to speak up in class, you change the dynamics and who’s likely to participate. That’s not to say it magically guarantees full engagement, but students who may not take initiative in class will often drag their token to the answer they like best.

If you have particularly shy or fragile students, the alpha-numeric system allows a degree of anonymity. One of my priorities is usually creating a dynamic in which everyone learns to speak up, and in which disagreement is healthy and means you respect the other person enough to challenge them, so anonymity is not a priority to me. Plus, it’s difficult to have discussions, even online, anonymously.

Finally, the slideshow is easily shared with students. It’s forever available should they choose to review anything or question anything after having time to think about it.

There are, of course, several downsides:

It’s tricky to keep track of who’s who on Slides. On Google Docs or Google Sheets, students logged in to their school Gmail show up on my screen as a cursor with their name next to it. I can also check version histories and edits in case there are shenanigans. I’m not sure Slides has a similar feature, and even if it does, it won’t help you if your students don’t have school Gmail accounts. That means in theory, anyone can move any number. (Then again, is there ANYTHING in class – virtual or otherwise – that’s completely bozo-proof?)

In order for students to have access to move their tokens around, I have to give them access to ‘Edit’ the Slideshow. That means in theory, they can add or delete slides or change other elements of the activity. I’ve made messing with the slides (accidentally or otherwise) a bit more difficult by ‘locking in’ everything except the tokens themselves. If you’ve made your own copy of the “Long Distance” version of the activity, you may have noticed that while you can move the tokens around, you can’t move around shapes or text on the slides like you normally could. It’s still possible – for you or anyone with ‘Edit’ access – but it’s more laborious and would require both knowledge and focused intent. This is thanks to another cool thing Doke showed me that is gradually changing my online instructional world. (Again, keep in mind that I’m nearly a thousand years old and still both startled and impressed by things like lava lamps or instant music downloads.)

If anyone’s interested, I’ll try to talk about ‘locking in’ elements of various slides next time. I’m learning to get better at doing it, but I’m not yet adept at explaining it. For now, you’re welcome to play with “Is That A Right?” and let me know how it works out. Keep in mind that you’ll have to make your own copy before it will let you edit anything or even move those little tokens around. Obviously, once you’ve made your own copy, you can add far more antagonistic, current event-related slides of your own and blame it on that guy who posted it on the internet to begin with.

You absolutey have that right.

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The class after lunch is always a colorful time. Students have just had a rowdy half-hour of the most freedom they’ll experience during the school day, and most are loaded up on sugar, caffeine, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

It’s in that hour that I have Dalton, a fascinating young man who’s often dressed more professionally than I am and who I adore. I assume he’s somewhere on “the spectrum” – a little Asperger’s and a dash of OCD, maybe? Whatever, it’s all good – he’s genuinely warm and friendly, despite an ongoing, irresistible itch to provoke. It keeps the day interesting.

Also in that hour is Tiandra, a theatrical young lady who will likely change the world, but who in the meantime occasionally falls prey to melodrama and emotional exhaustion. Her random outbursts in the name of social justice are technically dead-on, but her timing and presentation lack… refinement. She and her circle periodically break into explosive laughter over things no one else understands. But the joy – who can resent that?

Both of these young people are antagonists in their own ways – hence my particular affection for each. And they drive one another crazy in the most volatile ways. What starts with muttered comments or provocative grunts easily escalates into locked eyes across the room. Emotions escalate and volume rises. It can get ugly if I don’t find some way to redirect or quash it – Every. Flipping. Time.

The conversations I’ve had with them individually in an effort to avoid actual disciplinary action (which I prefer to reserve for overt defiance or repeated, intentional disruption) are built on the same non-negotiable premise: your choices – your behavior – is not about them. It’s about you. We are not gracious or patient because someone else deserves it; we strive to walk with character and style because of who we want to be. Because of our values.

It’s not about them; it’s about us.

I don’t hold the door for someone because I sense they’re a good person with pithy wit and underutilized intelligence. I do it because it’s the decent thing to do, and I want to emulate that decency as often as reasonably possible. You’re not polite to your in-laws because they’ve always tried to understand your point of view or support your career choices; you do it because that’s the right way to be, and the type of character you want to model for your spawn.

I worry we’ve lost sight of this in larger society. In politics and policies, certainly, but even in our underlying ideals and values. I worry we’re letting go of something fundamental to who we claim to be as a people.

Several years ago, Oklahoma officials botched an execution and put Clayton Lockett through 45 minutes of excruciating pain before his heart stopped. While there have been some calls to improve the system (turns out asking Siri about various chemicals halfway through the thrashing and suffering isn’t universally accepted protocol), others were quick to point out that Lockett was a very bad man who probably deserved to suffer. Some students wondered aloud why we cared how he died if he’d done horrible things to other people, and far too many adults suggested that death by lethal injection was “too good” for his sort.

But it’s not about Lockett and what he did or didn’t deserve. Vengeance isn’t the basis for the system of laws we claim to value so highly. The Eighth Amendment doesn’t ban cruel and unusual punishment solely to protect the convicted; it makes a statement about who the rest of us want to be. About what we value. About what we’re willing to endure to hold ourselves to a higher standard than most cultures or nations throughout history.

It’s not about them; it’s about us.

When Terence Crutcher was killed by police last year, there was heated debate over whether he was behaving in a threatening manner, or potentially reaching through a closed window to retrieve a weapon. Valid debates to have, I suppose.

But a larger discussion, unfortunately, developed over what kind of person he was. A student, a father, a common-law husband? Or a drug addict? A “bad dude”? Another drain on society?

It shouldn’t matter for purposes of due process what someone’s grades are, or whether or not they pay their child support on time. Our legal rights aren’t about merely making sure good people are protected from bad power – they’re about what we want power to mean in the first place, and how we want it to be used. It’s about being a nation of laws and not men.

It’s not about them; it’s about us.

The Trump Administration is currently trying to iron out specifics for how to best round up undocumented immigrants who’ve supposedly committed crimes beyond being in the country to begin with. Despite this President’s early track record, this is not necessarily a completely insane or transparently evil policy to consider. The Obama Administration was surprisingly energetic about deportations themselves, albeit with less white-supremacy-flavored rhetoric and a better track record of knowing what a “Bill of Rights” is and thinking maybe it matters in some situations. But the idea is at least defensible, even if I don’t like it personally.

Like all things Trump, news of this impending round-up has prompted rhetorical outrage from all sides. Some are understandably worried about “ICE Raids” in their neighborhoods while others question the logistics of deporting tens of thousands of people based on a sliding scale of unclear factors. Many are concerned about what this looks and feels like in practice. I get it.

The rhetoric which concerns me most, however, involves variations of “but they don’t deserve such and such protections,” or “we don’t have to protect these or those rights because these people aren’t citizens.”

Technically there may be some truth to this. The legalities of undocumentation (if that’s not a word, it should be) are often blurry. And it may not make sense to grant full legal protections to folks who aren’t citizens – who on paper aren’t even supposed to be here. Maybe.

But our national birth certificate argues that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Even Oklahomans can cite what follows – “that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” According to our Declaration of Independence, it’s in order to secure these rights that government even exists.

These rights which are unalienable – which cannot be justly denied or separated from the individual, even by their own choice.

These rights given by the Creator to ALL men. All of them.

Not just citizens – that wasn’t a thing yet. America didn’t have its own government or constitution when these words were written. Our Founders insisted on the undeniable reality of God-given rights for ALL.

That claim is followed by a list of complaints against the King of England, most of them based on the premise that unlike themselves, he did NOT believe all men were entitled to the same natural rights. He believed, as had his progenitors for many centuries and across many borders, that some people were by design born into superior positions and power and that things ran much more smoothly if we simply accepted this and kept it that way.

The policies the American colonies found so offensive were built on assumptions that some people deserved a voice in how they were treated, while others – well, we can’t make everyone happy. Besides, we’re doing enough for you as it is!

I’m not going to argue immigration policy, despite my belief that we’d be far better off with more open borders than less. I’m not suggesting that every last member of the human race can comfortably move to Oklahoma and we’ll somehow accommodate them. I realize there are realities to consider, and that laws are laws, and that sometimes we have to do unpleasant things for the larger good.

I’m not making my usual case about holding police accountable for the choices they make, despite deeply appreciating what they do to keep us safe.

I’m not even going after the death penalty, loathsome though I find it. I accept as general principle that sometimes we have to do unpleasant things to maintain a society in which most people can remain free and do good.

But while we wrestle with such complications, let’s keep in mind that how we choose to approach this or that situation shouldn’t be about which people are good people or hard workers or drug addicts or criminals or educated or orphans – not primarily.

It’s about what kind of people we want to be. Who we claim to be. What we actually believe. We can have borders without basing them predominantly on fear, and we can have restrictions without shaping and applying them via stereotypes and accusations. We can incarcerate or punish without dividing the world into “us” and “them.” We can make hard choices without becoming hard people.

At least that’s what our Founders believed was possible… IF we’re willing to maintain certain values and limits no matter how emotional or unpleasant the circumstances. IF we’re able to seek what’s better instead of simply hating and fearing what might be worse. IF we insist that our ideals take precedence over our comfort, our biases, or at times even our safety.

Doing otherwise hurts all the wrong people. That’s messed up, but it’s not the primary reason we should do better.

We need to do better because it’s not about them; it’s about us.

Or have I mentioned that already?

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Tag: civil liberties

Is That A Right?

It’s Not About Them (It’s About Us)