Hole in the Wall Education

August 24, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m a bad person.

I’m an idealist with little use for idealists. It’s not personal. I like those I actually know. But their articles, and books, and speeches make me want to break things and yell school-inappropriate things.

I resent speakers and writers who build their reputations on explaining how amazing children are and could be if these damn teachers would just get out of the way. I’m sure they’re nice people, smarter and probably better traveled than myself. It’s just that what starts as a neat isolated experience becomes a TED Talk, then a doctrine, then a Pink Floyd cover band.

“Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!”

Don’t get me wrong – it’s just peachy keen swell that throwing a few computers in the middle of an impoverished village and making sure no teachers interfere practically guarantees a bunch of eight-year olds will master calculus, cure cancer, and reverse climate change. Here’s to the success of every one of those dusty darlings and even newer, bigger opportunities for them to challenge themselves AND the dominant paradigm. Seriously.

Variations of this theme abound on Twitter, the blogosphere, and administrators’ bookshelves. Hand any teenager an iPad and stop crushing his little spirit with your outdated ways and he’ll learn like the wind. Enough, you fiend – let them love learning!

But I don’t buy it. Not even a little.

I can’t point to research or books with provocative edu-titles. If you really want me to, I’ll try it – I’ll lock my students in my classroom with the two relatively outdated computers available there and come back in May to release them.

Maybe it would be better to do the entire building… eleven hundred freshmen set free to learn with a bank of Dells and no silly adults with their stifling expectations. Imagine the money saved on staff – and computers never take personal days or violate professional dress code!

Forgive me if I don’t anticipate an education revolution as a result.

My bet is something more akin to Lord of the Flies, although I could be WAY off – it could be more Hunger Games or Clockwork Orange-y. I’m not prescient, I’ve just met teenagers.

It probably doesn’t help that my students have so much else they could do instead of take a self-directed learning journey of personal discovery. The kids in the inspirational anecdotes don’t tend to have an Xboxes, smart phones, cable TV, malls, or meals which include protein.

Remember how entertained you now think you were as a kid with just a cardboard box and some Cheez Whiz for a whole afternoon? That was great, mostly because you had ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Teeter totters are awesome compared to staring at dirt; they lose some magic compared to Halo: The Arousing. It’s just all so relative. In the land of rotary dialers, he with the Atari is king.

But only there.

I’m not unsympathetic. I get what these writers and speakers are going for. Most are trying to make the very valid point that when we try to cram kids’ heads full of 87-pages of curriculum standards compiled by committees and approved by states to be tested by bubbles, we are unlikely to either fill their buckets OR light their fires.

Our American spawn resist being cajoled into dronehood – which is largely what public ed does and is designed to do. We do try these days to at least beat them into more CURRENT drone models… it’s just that things in the real world keep changing so fast…

But… technology! ALL LEARNING CAN BE GRAND MATH AUTO!

I’m not against online coursework. I know for a fact that it serves a useful function for certain kinds of students in specific situations. But let’s keep a little perspective.

We’re swept up in the promise of ‘individualized pacing’, intense engagement, and infinite branches of exploration – like the Holodeck or those Divergent serums. One would think educational software must be on the verge of surpassing the major video gaming companies in terms of graphics, storylines, and immersion. (Watch out Elder Scrolls VII – here comes Bioshock Civics: How the Powers of the Executive Branch Have Evolved Commensurate to Expansions in Mass Media!)

It’s not. Remember that Oregon Trail game we were all so excited about a few decades ago? That’s still about as cutting edge as educational games have managed, and that’s not even what most virtual learning is attempting.

The vast majority of online coursework consists of reading short passages, watching videos, following a few links, then answering multiple choice questions. There may be a little writing. You work alone, and guess at the multiple choice questions as often as necessary to hit 75% or whatever before you move on.

This pedagogy is everything we’ve been fighting against since Horace Mann. Nothing wrong with utilizing textbooks or lectures or video, but a teacher whose class is driven by such things is unlikely to win a Bammy.

To be fair, the more cutting-edge programs let you email your teacher or make a few lame required posts to a ‘discussion group’ from time to time. Truly this is leaps and bounds beyond my foldables or a good Socratic circle, but Fallout: Populism it is not.

Most learning happens because teachers in rooms keep trying to figure out how to inspire, motivate, cajole, or trick their darlings into learning things the teacher thinks are important even though the 11-year old may not realize it just yet.

There are glaring problems with this system, some within the school’s control and many more without. The biggest problem with the current model is also the most substantial barrier to all this self-directed learning we keep hearing will save us all – state legislatures dictate most of what’s supposed to be “important” and decide how these things will be assessed.

But the absurdity of rigid state mandates doesn’t mean the logical solution is to eliminate all adult guidance regarding essential knowledge or skills. Crazy as it may sound, many good teachers are perfectly capable of finding balances based on the abilities and interests of their kids – some non-negotiables, because hopefully the certified professional knows a few things the pre-teen does not, and some choice for the child regarding what they pursue and how they pursue it.

And if that doesn’t work, we can go back to your plan. But I’m not cleaning up after the pig head on a stick.

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If I Were A Conspiracy Guy

July 1, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m not much of a conspiracy guy. I’m confident that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK, and that the ‘magic bullet’ behaved unpredictably because that’s what bullets do. I don’t think 9/11 was an inside job, and I’m 99.3% certain Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969 no matter what the shadows prove or how wavy the flag might be. Ronald Reagan did not invent AIDS to kill black people, and Obama is not a sleeper cell Muslim from Kenya with a nefarious plan he just keeps… not unfolding.

I always wince when Fox Mulder or Buffy Summers or any Marvel character enters the ginormous underground facility where thousands of people work in TOP SECRET. In a world where Kim Kardashian can’t fart without a week of coverage over the implications and 24/7 news is desperate for breaking scandal in every political stumble, I just find most large-scale paranoia implausible.

But if I WERE a conspiracy theorist… here are a few things I’d wonder about in relation to our public schools and the current buzz surrounding ‘reform’ and ‘higher standards’ and whatever other rhetoric we’re throwing around at the moment. And I wouldn’t just wonder about these – I’d worry about them with a very serious, concerned look on my face.

(1) Are we actually trying to break the current cycle of poverty, failure, crime, and dysfunction plaguing large segments of our pre-adult population? Are those in political power both locally and nationally – and those who vote for them – genuinely interested in what happens to a bunch of poor kids who look, you know, black? Or Mexican? Or dirty? Or otherwise unpleasant?

A paranoid, unreasonable person might think our current approach looks very much like what we’re really wanting is political and moral cover – some sound and fury about raising standards, a supposed focus on teacher quality, and a pretty good rhetorical dog’n’pony show, but without substantive institutional change or funded application of stuff that might actually work. Yeah, communities tend to resist change, but so do teachers. And governors. And legislatures. And white people.

Not judging, just speaking in general historical terms.

(2) Do we really believe the root problems are systemic? Socio-economic? Maybe some lingering form of institutional racism? If I were a conspiracy guy I’d suspect instead that there’s a subliminal thread running through many current ‘reform’ debates that includes terms like ‘those people’ and suspicions that – while we’re not really allowed to come out and say it – a lot of it’s kinda “their” own fault. If they’d just X, Y, or Z… it’s not like the opportunity isn’t there. It’s not like I haven’t had a few struggles myself. Have they tried, you know… trying?

A cynical person might think we’re actually fine with failure as long as we can keep assigning blame to those most deeply mired in the cycle.

(3) Is most of what we do in the name of “higher standards” and “reform” just a cynical ploy to channel public funds and more power to a handful of textbook companies and corporate entities? This one, sadly, isn’t even all that conspiratorial anymore. It’s been addressed by so many people so much better than I could that it would be redundant to elaborate on that part of the equation here. There’s a second layer to it, though, that I don’t see discussed often, and which to me is just as horrifying.

(4) Public education needs major changes. Systemic changes. Dramatic changes. We’re trapped in a 19th century factory model that we know to be dysfunctional and doomed, but can’t seem to find the solution using current resources, or apply it in some homogenously massive scale if we could. Real innovation is required – risk and radicalism, minus the Damoclesian testing and fatuous evals so joyfully legislated over every teacher’s comfy chair.

If I were a conspiracy guy, I’d think the very concepts of ‘charters’ or ‘choice’ or even ‘reform’ itself has been consciously co-opted by moneyed interests who use their powers for short-term evil rather than long-term good. How brilliantly profitable – exploit the status quo by laying claim to vast portions of limited public resources in the name of change. It’s like mobsters selling ‘insurance’ to local merchants to protect them from ‘accidents’ – complete and total betrayal, while none dare call it treason. Forget Marzano – we should have been reading Crane Brinton.

If something like this were remotely plausible, those of us most interested in improvement might have found ourselves expending our energies resisting the ‘worse’ at the expense of all potential ‘betters’. We could have lost the ‘forward’ path altogether as we burned ourselves out holding ground we don’t even want – the current model. I’m particularly glad THIS vile scenario is just TOO CRAZY to consider.

(5) Finally, as long as we’re talking crazy talk, do those in power have any real interest in an educated populace? What, exactly, would be their motivation for such? Allotting time, energy, and resources to public education of any quality is generally a short-term loser politically. It’s expensive, and the results are long-deferred if they happen at all. There’s little consensus, and great political cost. Plus, there’s a very real danger that committed focus and resources and leadership on this subject could lead to… a much more educated, enlightened voting pool.

I realize this sounds particularly cynical, and I’m thus super extra thankful I’m not, you know… paranoid. If I were, though, I’d push the issue of what political leadership gains from a population which is harder to persuade with platitudes or emotionalism, or which demands a higher level of discussion in the decision-making process.

Why would the oligarchy want to sacrifice their power, their purses, and their children’s hegemony when it’s so very easy to simply maintain the facade of vigorous debate and struggle with one another? The major players are already quite gifted at maintaining the illusion they’re locked in passionate battles of principle, reality-TV levels of emotionalism, quality demagoguery, and rhetoric that sounds very founding-documentsy.

But what if they’re like the shampoo aisle at the drugstore – packed with dozens of brands, each of which is broken into a half-dozen hair-types, fragrances, sizes, etc.? It’s almost overwhelming, all the different products available; what a miracle of American capitalism – too damn many shampoos.

Except that entire aisle represents maybe two actual corporations making every one of those shampoos – most of which aren’t all that different. The varieties are there to make you feel better, and to push aside real competitors. If there must be competition, compete with yourself – it works for fast food, bottled beverages, media outlets, and education movements. If you were a conspiracy theorist, you might start to feel a bit manipulated – like you’re being played, and not actually making informed choices at all.

You might even consider that perhaps those in power economically and politically would actually benefit from an even less-enlightened populace. Educated enough for the demands of the economy, of course, but not so much they question the nature of that economy – or its corresponding social and political structures. Educated enough to enjoy the circus – not so much they start wanting different bread.

That would be silly, of course. Probably a bit over-the-top. It’s at least completely unrealistic, and SO easy to rebut. I’m not sure why I even brought all of this up – I’m not a big conspiracy guy or anything.

Where Can I Find This Rooster?

June 18, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

“Who is the best marshal they have?’
The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, ‘I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.’
I said, ‘Where can I find this Rooster?”
― ‘Mattie Ross’, True Grit (Charles Portis)
“If you don’t have no schooling you are up against it in this country, sis. That is the way of it. No sir, that man has no chance any more. No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home.”
― ‘Rooster Cogburn, True Grit (Charles Portis)

Educators love false dichotomies, especially if they’re rather dramatic. For some, Common Core arrived as Moses, ready to raise its #2 Staff and part the Red Sea of Low Expectations. For others, it was clearly Pharaoh, seeking to drag the Hebrew descendants of Horace Mann back into the Egypt of Standardized Testing and building Pyramids with Bloom’s Taxonomy in bas-relief on each side. We fall into equally passionate camps if you bring up Teach For America, Charter Schools, Literacy First, or pretty much anything with the word ‘Initiative’ tacked on to the end.

Most recently, the subject of ‘grit’ has become a hot topic on Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media we old folks still use while feeling rather cutting edge about being online at all.

‘Grit’, of course, isn’t an entirely new concept. You can’t read anything useful about developing talent, attaining goals, or improving student mindsets without running into the research Carol Dweck did on this a few years ago, and of course we all remember British Prime Minister Winston “Eddie Lawrence” Churchill with that thing about never giving up on ships, which was apparently a pretty inspiring thing to say to British graduates in 1611.

But ‘grit’ is a thing again lately, and producing all sorts of interesting snark. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of snark, but if Twitter were your only guide, you’d believe there are only two basic ways to approach students in terms of overcomage:

(1) Students must be taught ‘grit’, and grit comes from enduring. Therefore, we must prioritize the brutal drill’n’kill-type instruction they apparently love on PD days in Chicago. Determination means overcoming suffering, and suffering we must therefore inflict. Joy must die and hope must wither, for only thusly shall they learn to blindly, numbly press on. No pain, no gain.

OR…

(2) Students must be perpetually free, invigorated, encouraged, loved, and understood. If we simply prance through the classroom flinging Inspiration Daisies, students will climb over one another for opportunities to pursue all essential knowledge and unleash their natural hunger for personal excellence. Any hesitation, momentary confusion, or weariness, is a failure of the teacher to properly shoot rainbows from his or her pedagogical orifice. Struggle means you’re doing it wrong. Stop breaking the future!

I’m not sure either are useful extremes.

I love my kids, but I haven’t found them to be particularly self-driven about anything tied to this week’s state standards. There are important discussions to be had about whether we’ve trained them from an early age that under no circumstances will we allow them to fail at anything, ever – especially in school. “Throw your limp drooling bodies into the Slough of Apathy if you wish, but by god we’ll keep remediating you and lowering that bar until you ooze over it whether you want to or not!” But those sound hard, and I don’t feel like it.

Instead, I’d like to share a few clips I post on the “Required Viewing” section of our class website and refer to throughout the year. They all involve finding solutions rather than simply offering more vehement expressions of one’s difficulties. I will of course editorialize endlessly for each.

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Go. Around. The. Leaf. I show this the first week of school and it’s a mantra throughout the year. I am not unsympathetic about life’s complications – but bring me alternatives. Solutions. Make it work and I’ll almost always accept your means of getting there, or of going somewhere else with it.

This is not nearly as touchy-feely as it sounds, and most of the time it saves me time and energy, while teaching my darlings some modicum of responsibility – without merely dropping the piano of inflexible expectations on their heads. (That’s the state’s job.)

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Come on, this one’s easy – looking at problems a different way, etc.? Yeah, I knew you’d get that one.

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No, the moral is not “shoot them.” I prefer something more along the lines of “don’t overlook the obvious,” or “sometimes you gotta cut through the drama to see the solution clearly.

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This one is a classic. The lesson is rather obvious if you’re not the people on the escalator. But of course we often are, more than we realize. Not you and me, of course, but everyone else on our Facebook wall. Those people are a mess. Why can’t they just see it?

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“The fences aren’t just ’round the farm…” Need I say more?

I don’t know if a few video clips will prove paradigm-altering for my darling students, but it’s a place to start. The hard part is helping them practice it throughout the year. Teaching students to persevere really makes you want to give up, sometimes daily.

But I can’t, because, um… the videos.

Curriculum Guru Ayn Grubb taught me a phrase that’s stuck with me ever since, and which has evolved into an entire teaching philosophy. I combined it several years ago with a nifty graphic I found online and haven’t been able to locate since, but I’m hoping it’s like peanut butter and chocolate in those old Reese’s commercials and that I now have something both legal and appealing to wrinkly aliens if condensed into pellet form:

Our darlings come to us at a variety of “Point A’s”, and we’re trying to get them as close as we can to “Point B” – some combination of skills, content knowledge, etc. The skills matter, a great deal. And the content matters, despite periodic trends suggesting that anything worth knowing is just a Google away, so why bother?

But what is too easily forgotten is the value of the struggle in between – the value of getting confused, or frustrated, or getting stuff wrong, or even failing from time to time. And then figuring it out. And then getting back up. And then finding a way to succeed. And then doing it again.

So, I’m not sure which dramatic extreme to join in the arguments about ‘grit’, but I hope my kids develop at least a little of it while in my care. I certainly learn enough about endurance and problem-solving from being with them, so it seems only fair. Why should I be the only one to suffer?

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Pedagogical Time Loop Hell

June 12, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

One of my personal goals for this blog and this website is that I offset my various rants and carryings on that no one cares about with positive thoughts and potentially useful resources that no one cares about. I like to think of this as “being balanced.”

That balance will not be helped by this post.

BUT PLEASE: Stop telling us to quit doing stuff we’re not doing, and stop acting like it’s the first time anyone even thought to mention it.

I realize not every teacher in every district of every state is in the same place pedagogically. I get that we collectively have far to go before we can claim to have moved public education – particularly in the social sciences – much past the 19th Century. But I swear to Horace Mann, if I read one more article encouraging me to ditch my mimeographed fill-in-the-blank worksheets and Ferris Bueller-style lectures for some cutting edge “interaction” with students, I’m going to hurl my McGuffey’s reader through someone’s chalk slate.

In the military this is known as “always fighting the last war.” In the movies, it’s something far worse – the notorious plot device known as the “Time Loop.”

Most of you remember Groundhog Day, a movie I felt like I’d seen a dozen times before I was even through my first box of Milk Duds. The basic premise – that something is causing a person, group, or starship, to repeatedly jump back in time to relive a set of experiences with only minor variations – was sci-fi trope long before Bill Murray had those extra pancakes.

The thing is, whether you’re in sci-fi or romantic comedy, it sucks to be the character gradually becoming aware you’re stuck in this season’s time loop.

Don’t misunderstand – there’s nothing wrong with revisiting the fundamentals of effective teaching. It’s when we repeatedly present the same few platitudes as epiphanies and brave new truths that I get a bit… hostile.

(1) Worksheets aren’t exciting kids about learning.

Make sure Watson writes that one down. “The worksheet did nothing in third period – that was the curious incident!”

Workshop leaders or edu-bloggers rarely “open” with this grand bit of modern wisdom – it’s saved for the ‘impact’ moment of the autobiographical anecdote demonstrating both connection with the audience and touching vulnerability – the kind that makes you trust someone enough to buy their book.

It’s always the same anecdote – “I taught for 72 years and couldn’t figure out why my kids didn’t love history [or literature, or math, etc.] as much as I did, although I lectured every day and assigned thousands of vocabulary words and only used one book – the textbook – for everything. One day, I had [insert epiphany experience] and suddenly I understood! This crap was boring! Who knew? Now I’m on the lecture circuit pointing very serious, passionate-for-the-children fingers at any of you who don’t applaud or at least nod enthusiastically when I reveal this magnificent bromide.

No one who needs to be told that worksheets are boring and largely useless is going to read your book, Cassandra. No one uses the damn things believing they’re good for anything other than shutting the kids up for a period or filling some of the required number of grades to be given each week. It’s far more likely they just don’t care – in which case we have a problem, but a very different problem than you’ve assumed. We may be lazy, bitter, and apathetic, but we’re not stupid. You should move on to a more current, relevant problem in public ed, like kids staying home once planting season starts, or cholera.

(2) Lectures are obsolete, boring, and destroying the future.

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb and tell the PD world and the “Education”-tagged section of the Blogosphere that, while amusing in the occasional sitcom or 80’s movie, NO ONE DOES THIS ANYMORE, so you can STOP TELLING US NOT TO DO THIS.

I’m sorry you had that one boring teacher in high school all those years ago, I really am. I got sick on chocolate chip pancakes when I was 17 and projectile-vomited all over the hall bathroom, but I’m 47 now and don’t carefully construct each week’s menu around the dangers of Bisquick. Get over it.

Yes, too much lecture can lose its effectiveness, and some people suck at it all the time. I feel the same way about foldables, but no one’s damning them with impunity every time two or more are gathered. My students love most of my lectures, and this is true of more history teachers than not. They remember the stuff we cover that way, and ask me to do it more often.

I’ve dialed back the straightforward ‘teaching’ stuff in recent years because of my department’s focus on skills and transitioning students into being able to learn on their own. As a result they learn less history over the course of my year and have less excitement about it, because they’ve heard fewer stories and I’m far less Sesame-Street-On-Crack than I was a decade ago. I don’t regret pushing them to wear their big-student panties, but I do miss the joys of so much content flowing freely and without guilt.

It’s a trade-off between good and better, not repentance from a life of sin and direct instruction.

(3) Names, dates, places, and other facts don’t matter anymore – kids can Google that stuff.

Like lecture, this is a special favorite of non-history people explaining to us simple social studies folks about how things work here in the post-moon-landing world. They don’t seem as quick to tell the math people that kids don’t need to know numbers or what those funny signs (+ ÷ ≥ ¾ ≠) are because math is about the process and they can look up this ‘pi’ so often discussed by those trapped in the dark times. And we actually encourage building vocabulary in English class in order to help kids become better readers, rather than casting ‘words’ aside as quaint relics of days past.

The funny thing about history is that most of it cannot, in fact, be effectively understood without some knowledge of specifics. Yeah, it’s the big picture stuff that often matters most, and connects us to the past, and teaches us those grand lessons and such, but it’s all built out of particulars. History generally happens to people in places at certain times.

You can Google just about anything, but the important answers are often long and complicated and assume you have a precursory body of knowledge for them to make any sense. Eventually in order to learn anything of value you have to know something on which to build.

Give our teachers a little credit for knowing what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And if there are a smattering stuck in the 19th century and unwilling to at least throw on some elbow patches and join us in the 1970’s, the problem is most likely something OTHER than not having read your blog.

What Are We FOR?

March 25, 2014July 31, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

This was the post that prompted me to set up an actual blog, shortly before the #OKEdRally in OKC on March 31st, 2014. It was also the first thing to get a response I liked better than my actual post. Both are reproduced in full here:

What exactly are we for?

I think this is worth considering anyway, but particularly so for Oklahoma educators planning on storming the Capitol in a few weeks. You never know, after all, who might ask.

History shows clearly how much easier it is to unite against things than to agree on the best alternatives. Anyone keeping up with events in Egypt, Syria, or dozens of other places in recent years knows this is still so. Even my students are quick to rally in opposition to my periodic efforts to play a little Coltrane or even Cannonball Adderley in class, but have yet to reach a convincing plurality regarding other musical options.

Browse Facebook or Twitter or the popular blogs, and the things we are against quickly become evident. Common Core is clearly the devil, as is standardized testing in general. Charter schools are the devil, usually hanging out with Vouchers – also the devil. Arne Duncan is the devil, along with Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, and occasionally even President Obama. Teach For America is the devil (this is one I particularly do not fathom, but that’s a discussion for another day), the new SAT is the devil, college admittance offices are the devil, and the two combined mean the College Board and that new fella in charge are the super extra devil. Pearson actually IS the devil, but nevertheless still clutters the list, and Janet Barresi, while NOT the devil, acts as a sort of PR agent on his behalf, showing a loathing of public schools and public school teachers you’d not automatically expect from a State Superintendent – although it does somehow illuminate this childhood favorite:

But were all these swept away tomorrow, what would we wish in their stead? What are we FOR?

Yes, yes – I know we’re for ‘the children’ and ‘the future’ and world peace and curing the common cold. I know the intangibles, but what SPECIFICALLY do we support? Do we sincerely trust a sort of “local control laissez-faire” approach to our schools? To everyone else’s schools? Is there a system of accountability or assessment we could live with? Or even design? A strategy we’d be willing to implement? Even a philosophy or set of priorities on which we generally agree?

We’re marching against many things, I assume, but the only one I’m aware we’re marching FOR is money. This is completely valid and important. We cannot starve ourselves into pedagogical and academic success. But I worry about the messaging – an unpleasant consideration, but a critical reality nonetheless.

If we rally and chant and hold up our signs (let’s watch our speling pleaze!) solely to kill accountability and demand money, maybe throwing in some cheap personal attacks on state leadership, I fear we will have difficulty persuading the average Oklahoma voter we bring something worth supporting… something worth paying for when no one seems to have much, and something that offers a digestible but optimistic direction we’d like to take their kids, their state, and their pocketbooks. Worse, I fear we perpetuate a rather unpleasant stereotype of teachers and our priorities – an image which, however unfair, has perhaps largely contributed to the presence and power of all those horrible things we’re against.

So before loading up the busses, finishing the signs, or even forwarding that next link, consider pondering what it is we want TO happen at least as vigorously as what it is we’re trying so intently to prevent or overthrow. Just in case anyone asks.

UPDATE: The best response that came to this post when it was on the other site came from Lisa Witcher. Lisa is a long-time educator and involved parent whose bio I suppose you can Google – or simply ask her about – if you simply must know more. In the meantime, follow her on Twitter – @MzWitch11

Recently, I read a blog that asked what is our education rally on March 31st for… Here are some thoughts –
Let’s fund education in the same spirit, philosophy or economic logic that permits tax breaks to the very wealthy and to the businesses that would drill here anyway. Let’s be for spending a ridiculous amount of money on our children and on our children’s children. Let’s be for funding education so that no principal has to decide between paper or a teacher’s aide.
Government officials have asked how much is enough. Enough occurs when there are not 38 kids in my son’s history class, when every computer can be updated, when every leak can be fixed, and when every teacher can raise two kids on his/her salary without applying for free/reduced lunch.
While I will refrain every day from littering Facebook with what I am against, I can banter for days about what I am for. I am for an educational system that reaches for the top of the bar instead of relinquishing its ambitions to being 49th. I am for a state that treats its teachers more like royalty and whose elected officials act more like servant leaders than members of an archaic feudal system. I am for your kid, your neighbor’s kid, my kid and every kid – because they are worth it. What am I for? I am for learning; I am for letting students and teachers discover how learning happens. When they are able to discover that scientific, artful moment together, the students’ pathways are infinite, spectacular, and life-promising. What am I for? I am for putting children at the center of every decision instead of politics. Those decisions do require funding – but they require so much more than just money.
There are those that will reduce the plight of public education to sound bites – but until you have heard a child emote because he/she finally understands – all you have heard is noise. Those that are trying to destroy public education see it as a billion dollar industry capitalism has yet to tap – they do not see the faces of four year olds who only need an equitable chance to learn and change our world.
What is March 31st for? It is for [insert your favorite child’s name here]. My favorite children deserve the best Oklahoma has to offer. Heaven help us if we settle for just the sound bites.