For more years than I can count, I found it odd that for all the amazing things special effects could do, snow in movies and TV shows looked so fake. Maybe it was one of those things like making gunshots sound richer and fuller than they often do in real life or allowing actresses to wake up in the morning with perfect hair and makeup. Maybe it served some purpose I didn’t fully grasp, and was intentional. It’s not like I spent a great deal of time thinking about it or writing angry letters to Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard – it was just something that bugged me… even when I wasn’t consciously aware of it.

Then my wife and I moved to Northern Indiana and I experienced a whole new flavor of winter. It turns out that filmmakers do a perfectly wonderful job of imitating fluffy, flakey stuff (or at least some forms of it). You’re probably familiar with the urban legend about Eskimos having dozens of different words for “snow.” It’s not true (at least, not in the way it’s usually told), but winters here have given me a whole new appreciation for the sticking power of this particular myth. There are ALL KINDS OF SNOW here – often, different varieties throughout the same day. 

My assumptions were wrong. In retrospect, they were ridiculous. Whatever else you can say about Oklahoma, it’s rarely cited as a reliable example of “the norm” for ANYTHING, least of all weather. I had absolutely no reason to believe my limited experiences were typical of others. That a handful of proper winters in and around Tulsa proved dozens of renowned filmmakers incompetent was a presumption beyond excuse. 

European audiences at rock concerts tend to clap along on all four beats, or on the one and the three. This is terribly awkward to the American ear, where good sense and musical ethics demand we clap on the two and the four, like Jesus would have. 

I’ve heard various explanations for this, but the most reasonable hypothesis is that it stems from the blues and gospel music which spawned modern rock’n’roll right here in the U.S. of A. Europeans may like rock and pop now, but their cultural roots are, I dunno… marches and polkas or whatever.

You know, stuff where you clap wrong. 

And yet, there’s no ethical component to clapping, and no harm done by clapping on the one and three, the one-two-three-four, or completely missing the beat altogether and just sort of randomly smacking your hands together in blissful cluelessness. It’s just percussion. But we’ve done it that way for so long, and it feels so natural, that it’s not something most of us would ever think to question. Anyone clapping differently is, at the very least, not as musically gifted as ourselves. It’s kinda sad, really.  

History is replete with overturned paradigms. Doctors eventually gave in to the idea of washing their hands between delivering babies. The earth turned out NOT to be the center of the universe. People don’t always make financial or political decisions in their own best interests. Professional wrestling became more popular once we stopped pretending it was “real.” 

Most educators know by now the dangers of making assumptions about students or their behavior without doing our best to consider cultural, economic, or other factors. We may not always be successful at recognizing our biases (some are no doubt in much deeper denial than others), but it’s not for a lack of training, workshops, book clubs, and other discussions. 

We at least know it’s a thing. Er… right?

What we don’t always recognize are the assumptions or biases we’re not even sufficiently aware of to question. What are the personal and pedagogical equivalents to fake movie snow and clapping on the wrong beats? The ones that haven’t specifically come up in workshops or enlightened reading assignments?

What am I missing?

At the same time, while we continue the struggle to bring more of our colleagues into the twenty-first century, some of those who got an early start on the process are crashing right through the bumpers in the opposite direction. In our quest to challenge Anglo-centric, cisgender, middle-class Protestant norms, it’s easy to veer into an obsessive sort of performative “wokeness.” Full of good intentions and thirsting for social justice, it’s tempting to categorize every student foible, every act of disruption or defiance, every shortcoming or struggle, as ongoing fallout from centuries of mistreatment and ignorance. Rather than address the problem, we celebrate our own enlightened descriptions and understanding – an ironically elitist and detached new twist on “other-izing.”

Don’t misunderstand me –  these are important conversations to have. We MUST get (and remain) more comfortable with challenges to our own ways of thinking or doing. I was speaking this week to a (White) colleague of mine who’d run into some difficulties with a group of girls (who happened to all be Black). He’d been trying the “let’s talk this out” approach rather than treating their behaviors and attitudes as a purely disciplinary matter. In sharing his perceptions of the issue with them, he said something to the effect of “it just seems like you guys feel the need to challenge every little thing I try to–”

One of the girls jumped in. “You guys?! You mean, the Black kids?” As you might imagine, this didn’t have the calming, kumbaya effect he’d been hoping for. There was now a new fire to put out and the original point was lost. 

He spent the rest of the day probing at the possibility that he’d been justly called out for unconscious bias or some other inappropriate attitude or thinking on his part. Even if the motivation of the girl calling him out was suspect (like many teenagers, she’s an expert at derailing those sorts of conversations), he wanted to make sure there was nothing in it he’d overlooked. Was “you guys” a form of “you people”? Was referring to the girls in the collective a subtle offense he hadn’t properly recognized? Could there have been something in his tone or body language that–?

You get the idea.

At the risk of repeating myself, these are good discussions to have. He was right to ask those questions. What’s problematic is our human tendency to begin valuing our own “insight” and “wokeness” over honesty and doing whatever it takes to help kids learn, or when we reduce these challenges into handouts or animated videos explaining the causes and best responses for every possible iteration of human behavior. 

Here’s a simple truth which often gets lost in the rhetoric: teenagers are complicated. So is teaching. (I’m sure it’s true of many other professions and situations as well.) My personality, mood, and experiences meet their messy mix of issues and abilities inside an ever-shifting context of culture, politics, economics, and educational dynamics. I’m not saying it’s the most difficult job in the world, but it’s certainly in the running for “most platitudes and expert opinions from people who wouldn’t last a week if they tried actually doing this for a living.”

I’d love to offer my own enlightened guidelines for when to bend policies or adjust expectations based on students’ backgrounds, experiences, circumstances, or whatever, but I’m not sure I have any. I’d like to wax poetic about restorative justice (pro or con), classroom management, high standards, compassion before academics, or even the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Honestly, though, I can no longer maintain that level of conviction. 

The longer I teach, write, and observe, the less comfortable I am taking a hard stand about what anyone else should handle pretty much any issue related to grades, discipline, curriculum, etc. I certainly have my own ideas about what usually works better than other stuff, and a few convictions about decisions and attitudes which are pretty much always a terrible idea.

Then again, I had similar certainties several years ago when I changed districts and discovered some of the stuff that sounded horrible to me in other contexts made perfect sense here and has proven good for teachers and students alike. 

My assumptions turned out to be mistaken – even some of the ones I didn’t quite realize I had. 

We must continue to challenge outdated mindsets and harmful policies. We should absolutely strive to educate ourselves about racism, homophobia, poverty, learning issues, emotional challenges, or whatever else complicates the lives of our kids. I’m not suggesting some sort of ethical or pedagogical ambivalence or that anything goes professionally. I just think we’d all benefit from a little less certainty about our own perceptions, and a little less security in our high-ground “solutions.” I think we need to do a better job questioning our assumptions, and accepting that some people clap on the one and the three and it works out quite well for everyone involved. Sometimes that IS what snow looks like. Maybe it just doesn’t look like that where I live right now. 

I don’t mean to get all “swelling-music” and “podium-banging” on you. I’m speaking to myself more than anyone else. I suppose I’m just sick and tired of overly-simplified, self-righteous proclamations (including my own) of how things should or shouldn’t be in someone else’s classroom, someone else’s district, or even someone else’s grade book. Of course we can and should challenge questionable policies or decision-making. Of course we can and should keep fighting for what’s best for students. Of course we can and should continue to insist on better from ourselves and our peers.

Let’s just do so with a little less confidence that we, more than they, know what’s best in every situation, or that our absolutes are somehow better than all those outdated absolutes we had to reject to get as far as we have today. Maybe – just maybe – it’s more complicated than that.