Hindsight

Hindsight is the understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed.  Interestingly, it is possible to both anticipate and understand scenarios, especially if 1) you're older and 2) you've been paying attention.  If your resulting decision-making culminates in better choices and more satisfactory outcomes, you end up being credited with demonstrating common sense.

In so many aspects of life, common sense often partners with compromise, especially when mitigating factors make it near impossible to follow your plan as originally imagined. When faced with a forced, unanticipated readjustment, you experience shock, denial, anger and/or frustration, and you try to bargain with whatever the opposing element may be to see if you can't work a compromise to get back what you're terribly anxious to not lose, even if the loss is temporary. You may wallow in despair when a compromise can't be reached, finding no point in the idea of trying to carry on. You refuse to accept the simple truths laid before you as you repeat the cycle of anger, bargaining (even begging) and depression over and over again.

You grieve, which is normal for all of us. 

Some educators have been grieving since mid-March, while others, likely administrators, haven't been able to grieve fully since they first caught wind of the directives that were going to come from their governor's offices.  They had to experience a much-abbreviated moment of shock before being leapfrogged into acceptance and action, being problem-solvers first, keeping their students, teachers, colleagues and staff safe before steering the ship to turn on a dime while advocating that the need for schooling, the establishment of new learning routines and environments and the building of even stronger parent-teacher partnerships were necessary for the emotional and academic well-being of all of our students.  They reminded us that we'd all be in the business of granting and receiving grace and that our own self-care was critical.  They led and gave us direction.

Families grieved while having to take back many of the responsibilities that they've ceded to schools over the years. Some succeeded, some struggled, and some failed.  Some parents, who previously demonstrated little appreciation for their child's teachers experienced cathartic revelations of having seen the light, pledging to purchase any and all future class supplies and offering to subscribe teachers and staff to wine-of-the-month clubs and advocate for higher pay if we'd "just take my kids back."  Humorous bargaining, but bargaining just the same. "I don't know how ya'll do it" and "no one will ever take you for granted again" were some of the affirmations showered upon us.  March to May was doable for some families, a blessing for others.  Some families, for whatever reasons, never rose to the occasion.

My grief cycle has been dictated by my self-and-family-preservation button remaining engaged causing me to hurdle back and forth through and/or over the usual stages. Schools are now closed: shock, d-e-n-i... acceptance. You have thirty minutes to grab necessities from your classroom: shock, acceptance. You'll be using tools that you've never used before in your classroom beginning next week: s-h-o... acceptance. No, you can't use appropriate content even though you know how to run it through filters and have been for years: anger, acceptance, depression. You'll be teaching your teenager curriculum content along with digital resource navigation while you teach from home: bargaining, acceptance, anger.  You can have fifteen-minute Zoom meetings once a week for your seventeen students and their families: bargaining, anger, acceptance, bargaining, depression. Time to come back to the building to pack up for the summer: acceptance, depression. 

All of these emotions have continued to be in play for me this summer as I've watched and reflected upon the civil unrest, racism, inequality and frankly bad behavior of rather entitled members of our society.  My husband and I continue to discover COVID19 infiltrating our circle of friends near and far, and we see that the numbers haven't dropped, the curve hasn't flattened, realizing now that it likely won't thanks to so many Americans placing their wants before their neighbors' needs.  Taking part in PD and regularly crocheting between visits to my greenhouse and tending my gardening spaces has provided me with pockets of peace and glimmers of hope, but they're not as enduring as I'd like them to be.  As I navigate suggested solutions via social media ranging from homeschooling or digital academy options, pool-noodle hats, temperature checks that don't identify asymptomatic carriers, seven or eight students per classroom, ten online with the acknowledgment that it's likely to be all seventeen or eighteen online a month later, optional mask-wearing partnered with masks worn incorrectly, and at least four times more cleaning and disinfecting that will increase the likelihood of poisoning which is still preferable to dying from "the 'rona," my mind remembers the already present avalanche of other germy, illness-producing normalcies that still occur in classrooms during the best of years.  Twitter users and those posting on Facebook are being polite by not mentioning the urine and feces that accompany the snot, saliva and barf.  I'm thinking this isn't the time to adhere to decorum and professional mystery.

Like many other educators, I'm having a great deal of difficulty believing that the lives of my students, myself and my colleagues are of much value as people granted more decision-making power who want to get back to their own sense of normalcy push us into environments that are now deadlier than they were in March.  They are dancing every version of the sidestep possible in order to justify avoiding common sense and simple truths, and they are willfully, stubbornly committed to the present, not the future.  They're acting as if they'll never have to look back and measure the costs of the decisions they've made. 

I get it. But it's not good enough.

This is tough and it's going to remain difficult.  We don't have all of the answers we need... yet.  They're coming, but not on our fall-through-spring/early summer school schedule.  We're wasting time pretending that they will.

It's also a waste of time trying to ease people into the idea that it will only take some adjustments to get students back to a traditional-ish school setting, and once that setting closes again (which it likely will... ~hindsight~), we're back to square one.  To quote a tweet I stumbled across, "rip the bandaid off, already." Commit to remote learning, and ease back into shared spaces.  We could start making tangible, real plans and preparing, acknowledging that it's a difficult precedent, and sharing the common goal of being back together when it's the right time.  It will only be right when it's more, not less safe for us all, no matter what the budget ledger looks like.

Calling this pandemic a hoax doesn't make what we're experiencing any less deadly.  Not everyone believes what they should, but educators, child advocates and mandated reporters don't get the luxury of being passive spectators. We must err on the side of safety even if it's not perfectly defined and we have no guarantees.  Our solutions can be imperfect, but they must not be dangerously so. 

Setting a precedent happened in March.  It can happen again in August.  It's easier to do difficult things when we can reassure ourselves that the price is worth it.  My son's life is worth it. Your life, my life, our lives are worth it.  Simple.

Inconvenienced is better than suffering and dying.

Grief is normal.

Unpopular is better than guilt-ridden. 

Hindsight is 20/20.

(found on Facebook- contact me if you're the creator so I can credit you, and thank you for the common sense)

An Educator's Code of Conduct

I've spent my summer participating in and learning a lot from an online teaching workshop (about online teaching and remote learning, of course), growing cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and bell peppers in my greenhouse (melons, cantaloupes and pumpkins are just starting to take off), keeping up with household chores, crocheting and reading.  As I surf social media, I find myself intending to sift through but often drowning in updates, news, and opinions expressing not only how we might safely open schools this summer, but IF we should even try until winter, or spring...or next fall.

Watching and listening to the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Education, none of whom could teach their way out of a paper bag (if they even know what a paper bag is) insisting upon our schools opening sooner rather than later at full capacity, just-throw-them-into-the-deep-end-of-the-pool-without-floaties-and-they'll-either-sink-or-swim style is something I find maddening.  I consider this an incredibly appropriate response because it means I'm neither numb nor indifferent to the responsibilities of my job: I am a kindergarten teacher.  I am a mentor.  I am a colleague.  I am part of a district team, and our shared goals are to educate children, guide them, and support them in the hope that they develop a love of learning and many talents that will help them live what we all hope will be long, happy, illuminated, creative, purposeful, giving, inspiring, joyful, healthy lives.

I'm an early childhood advocate and I'll be starting my twenty-fifth year of teaching this fall which should make it fairly clear that I'm committed to much more than my paycheck.  I love teaching.  I love coaxing unsure children and families into larger learning communities and watching them blossom and grow as they make friends, broaden their understanding of the world, all while being safe, kind and helpful along the way.  I love doing the voices of characters during storytime.  I was an anxious and insecure child, which is perhaps why I cannot contain my pleasure and awe as I watch my Super Stars explore and share freely, considering it a success when their use of me evolves from wanting me as their training wheels to simply going about their business with confidence and purpose while still considering me good company. Parents' heartstrings are pulled when they realize their children don't need them as much as they used to, while I revel in seeing how far my students go after our time together.  I've reported parents to Child Protective Services and I've encouraged families to seek out counseling and help, all as an advocate of children. "My kids" aren't mine because I'm some sort of surrogate parent, they're mine because of the affirming relationships and experiences we had during our time together, even if some of them weren't fun.  I have been and continue to be invested in not only their academic success but their well-being.

This morning, after reading through tweets and posts volleying back and forth debating teacher responsibilities, parent needs, and the disparities between state and national agencies that can't seem to get their stories straight regarding school openings, I thought it might be interesting to check back in on my state's Educator Code of Conduct.  Have you read your state's guiding educator document?  Mine is divided into three components, beginning not with responsibilities to my district or the profession itself, but to my students. I cannot help but believe that this is by design: children, our students, must come first.  Responsibilities to students include:

"Make reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions detrimental to learning, health, or safety." 

"Nurturing the intellectual, physical, emotional, social and civic potential of all students."

"Fulfilling all mandatory reporting requirements for child abuse."

"Fulfilling the roles of mentor and advocate for students in a professional relationship."


Inappropriate conduct includes "committing any act of child abuse."

Recall that "child abuse" is defined as physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential harm to a child, and can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with.


Educators should understand that these responsibilities have been articulated not as suggestions but as requirements. We must protect children from anyone or any situation that may hurt them.  I would like to believe that students are listed first in the Code of Conduct not for sentimentality's sake or to advance public relations, but because a commitment to them must be prioritized.  I don't see how we can allow ourselves and others to pretend that schooling, education and child protection should take place as usual with possibly insufficient modifications touted as "protection," ignoring that we're in the middle of a global pandemic. COVID-19 is a potentially life-altering, deadly virus that we're still learning about.  Trying to convince others that it's a hoax, pretending that if we just turn off the television and unsubscribe from news alerts that all of this will just go away is irresponsible. So too, are punting and not-so-blindly hoping that our gamble will pay off as we "act as if" we're able to safely maneuver around a virus that may be transmitted in aerosol form in classroom settings.  NASCAR won't even allow adult spectators who choose to observe social distancing into an open-air venue and many colleges and universities will spend the next semester or year only delivering content online.   Fake it 'til we make it isn't good enough, and hoping isn't an actual strategy.  Inventing "solutions" that from the outside appear creative, proactive and even entertaining, such as the pool noodle hats shouldn't actually convince anyone that schools will be safe enough.

This summer, like spring, has been overwhelming for us all. No matter how tempting, don't sit at home waiting for someone else to come up with a way forward that sounds doable to you.  Check your state's Code of Conduct for Educators, articulate your intentions and purposes as a teacher, and find a way or better yet, several, to contribute to the health, wellbeing, and safety of your students. Putting them first might require that we teach remotely even if our spring baptism wasn't all we had hoped it would be. Don't expect to have closure this weekend or at the end of the month.  We may not even get closure if we're back to brick and mortar, settling into a new routine when COVID-19 reminds us that we're on its timeline, not ours, and sends us all back into lockdown.  We're going to be uncomfortable, and frankly, we should be.  No one should be sleeping easily over the decisions we're trying to make, because we're the guinea pigs in the experiment that will create a data set from which future decisions will be made... unless we choose an experiment with a far less harmful and much less deadly possible outcome.

Sounds remarkably well aligned with my code of conduct, come to think of it.  How about yours?


*****

I did not specifically mention accessibility, home abuse/neglect or inequality in education issues in this post because I'm assuming educational professionals are already well-versed in how they weight either side of the scale of school and other societal responsibilities.

My Social Media Use Continues to Evolve as I Ask Myself: Is it the Truth or Confirmation Bias?

One might think that by being a kindergarten teacher, I wouldn't have any concerns regarding content shared via social media aside from protecting students' and colleagues' identities and avoiding posting unprofessional photos or tweets of myself.  But as social media algorithms continue to promote what's shared the most, and lies (*actual* fake news) continue to go unchallenged and are shared ad nauseam, the truth, of which I am a fan, becomes harder and harder to find.  Authentic, transparent, and occasionally painful, the truth helps us to become better navigators of our lives. As a teacher, the truths about children and how they develop, rather than the selling points of edu-brands and promises of education reform initiatives have guided and helped me to grow my pedagogy.

I've taught for a quarter of a century, so I can find the humor in teacher memes.  I have snickered, giggled, and admittedly guffawed at some of them, and have even created one or two myself. When I began to encounter some rather tasteless memes regarding teachers and our jobs, where the humor was being pushed toward titillation rather than truth, I incorrectly assumed that the masses wouldn't care, and would certainly recognize the rhetoric as entertainment rather than fact.  My humor didn't have to be their humor, to each his or her own, after all.  But as I watched the outrage that began to attach itself to these memes, and even the embracement of the naughtiness of the not-quite-true content, the thought began to nag at me: rather than fading, these misrepresentations were spreading like cancer, superimposing themselves upon the architecture of public education just as they would the cells inside a healthy human body, damaging, then destroying it.  Upon deeper reflection, I realized that my career and students have had to endure No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and now "failing government schools," all big-business initiatives, labels, and election-year rhetoric primarily created to manipulate how the public views this profession, while creating the appearance that the government sincerely cares about quality education and how children are taught in schools.  Voters consumed headlines about NCLB, the Common Core, and Race to the Top initiatives like they were Skittles.  How many will now eagerly gobble up "failing government schools" simply because they don't realize they are trapped by their own confirmation biases (and blind trust) masquerading as truth?

Memes and other content don't magically appear out of thin air. When I created the one above several years ago, I had to log onto the eCard site, choose a suitable illustration, figure out how to make my text fit, and hit "publish." People apparently liked it a lot, recognizing and sharing the humor of my sigh-of-relief declaration that there are no photos of me holding the clammy hands of a boy during PE in the 1970's.  Fine... maybe MY hands were the ones that were clammy.  But more and more often, rather than illuminating the art and hilarity of teaching, or commiserating with other teachers about the ups, downs, laughter and tears of our profession, the memes I was encountering were becoming the newest weapon for those who would continue the attack on teachers for their own economic benefit. Other professions and groups of people are regularly targeted as well, which made for an onslaught (ugh!) in all of my feeds because of how diverse (yay!) my friends and those I follow are in reality as well as digital-land.  In trying to find a compromise so that I wouldn't end up tossing the baby out with the bathwater regarding social media (there's so much that I do want to see and share, despite the content I find misleading and unsavory), I first chose to unfollow a whole bunch of folks. On FB it was friends, colleagues, families of former students, strangers, and even family members, though they all remained contacts. On Instagram and Twitter, it was acquaintances and strangers alike. Unfollowing people on Instagram and Twitter yielded almost immediate relief, frankly because I wasn't closely connected to most of them, and because unfollowing removed them and their content entirely.

The hard work came a few months later when I had to challenge my ideas on how I wanted to use FB, rather than how FB wanted to use me (thank you grad school and Digital Minimalism). Was I okay with clothing and cute shoe businesses knowing what I like and don't?  Sure. Have I become a member of a kindergarten curriculum, baking, or crochet-related group on Facebook based on its suggestions?  Yep, and I love what I've encountered there. Did I like the content that was being suggested to me by what some of my friends appreciated? No, not all of the time. But even after fiddling with all of the account settings, I had to re-acknowledge a truth about myself that I've articulated in different ways over the years: I am triggered by very obvious bovine fecal matter. My jaw sets, my cheeks flush, my body tenses, and I feel anything but relaxed, pleasant, or safe.  Despite my own confirmation bias (who doesn't like to be right?), having to repeatedly acknowledge others' truths and mindsets by their continued and often excessive spreading of some of the most unsophisticated memes, pages/groups and clickbait left a bad taste in my mouth, making me feel more fight-or-flight than engaged or entertained.  That's right, unsophisticated. The clickbait posing as investigative journalism claiming to be able to prove that all immigrants are rapists and "articles" about how drinking seventeen cups of coffee per day is healthy are shams and should be easily recognized as such by most of us.  While photos of flowered headbands resting upon the heads of pit bulls are products of the same technique utilized by those who manipulate images for political gain, and though the dogs are certainly deserving to be seen in a more flattering light, shouldn't most people by now have caught on to the ploy? The tugging of the heartstrings?  The triggering of patriotic rage?

Call me a truth snob. Stereotypes, prejudices, misrepresentations, lies, and other marketing ploys really aren't hard to spot for adults.  "Girls aren't good at science." "Those Chinese kids always excel at math." "A woman can't be president because she'd be too emotional." Bovine. Fecal. Matter.  Consumers just want to feel something, and fear, anger, jealousy, and hate are easy sells.  Within our schools, students rely upon us to be good stewards of accurate information as we teach them to navigate all of the content that is available.  This makes it necessary in my opinion, to weed, guard, protect and continue to educate ourselves as teachers, even when we're outside of the classroom getting our social media groove on. Being vigilant about information and knowledge we impart is a significant part of our profession.  CommonSense.org has resources for challenging confirmation bias here. 

Eventually, I unfriended almost three-quarters of my contacts on Facebook and experienced the visceral gut-punch of having a much smaller audience.  I, the person who for years has sought out affirmation from others as a gauge to measure whether or not I'm actually deserving of anything, doing my job correctly, or creating content that helps others, did something that immediately shattered a significant conduit by which I had been feeding myself the idea that who I am and what I do matters. And I survived. Not unlike other addictions, there have certainly been some withdrawal symptoms to work through, but without the mob, there's much less BFM through which I have to sift, making it easier to ground myself and identify any new evolutionary change that might be occurring in my life and pedagogy. As it turns out, I'd like to move from the classroom into the library.  Until then, I'm still a kindergarten teacher, ranter, and sharer of good news. And the good news remains this: knowledge is power. Know how to find the truth, and be brave if and when it challenges your own confirmation biases. 

Though you may need to take some Dramamine (good grief, he never puts the camera down) this video from Veritasium, "Why Facts Don't Matter Anymore," is a great opener for those needing or wanting to learn more about confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.  Initially interested because of the negative effect my own social media use was having on my mood and optimism, I quickly came to realize that other educators and our students would also benefit from the following point being made explicitly: our biases aren't the truth.