November 14, 2024 - We have work to do

On election day, I volunteered at the polling place in my neighborhood. On my walk home at about 8:00 pm, it was already clear that Trump would win the election. I was so depressed I didn’t listen to any news for the rest of the week, partly because I didn’t want to hear people blaming and shaming and finding fault. I gave myself through the weekend to mourn the loss of possibility. Now it’s a new week and time for me to wake up and face reality.

We – my country – have elected a man whose campaign was based entirely on division and hate, who has no moral compass, who has been convicted of major crimes, both personal and financial, whose name-calling and vitriol reveal an insecure tyrant, who has threatened to use the military against our own citizens, who vows to imprison those who have disagreed with him,

who has spread blatant lies about immigrants, encouraging violence and hatred, who has shown disrespect for military veterans and their families, and who, when he lost the last election, incited a violent insurrection at the US capital. Yet, I don’t know one person, personally or professionally, who would want such a leader for themselves or as a role model of leadership for the children and youth in their lives.

So how did this happen? How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigrants? In a country where most adults have a basic education, how is it that half the people who voted chose this person? In what ways has the country so failed so many people that even he seems better than what we have? The highest level of income inequality in our history has left millions of people out of the opportunity structure. Our systems of education have been woefully inadequate in preparing voters to be thoughtful, informed citizens. Misinformation and disinformation pervade social media, sources from which millions of people get their “news.”

As educators at all levels, I think we should take these results as a call to action. Beginning in pre-school (every child should have access to high-quality pre-school), we need to teach children how to think, how to decipher fact from fiction, develop informed opinions and observations and be able to share them with others with civility and mutual respect. Ideally, every classroom would have maximum diversity of teachers and students based on all aspects of identity – sex, age, race/ethnicity, family background, socioeconomic status, physical and cognitive ability, etc. For all children, youth, and young adults, learning and development would be experienced in communities in which all voices were equally valued, where listening was as important as talking, where the norm was compromise in the interest of the common good. Can you imagine a government made up of people who had the skill and propensity to work together in harmony and cooperation?

If we have hope in a democracy in which everyone has a place and in which everyone can thrive, we need to get busy in schools across the country. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children…

Connecting is essential

If you’re like me and everyone I talk with these days, you’re feeling worn out and discouraged about…well, lots of things. We’re out of the big pandemic, but the fear of contagion and some angst about being in close spaces with many people linger. War and violence in the world are in the news daily and the political and social schisms around the world seem to be at all-time highs. I bought one of those “funny” frig magnets recently that said, “I only worry about two things: The past and the future. Also, right now is troubling.” That’s me for sure.

What gives me hope on a good day are human relationships. I just spent a week in a Summer institute with colleagues at Kansas State University. It was a national, virtual, conference but we had several sessions of “team time” in person on our campus. These young professionals are taking up the mantel of leadership, with all its challenges, and connecting with them and developing deeper relationships was an honor and a privilege. Day to day, I think we need to be intentional about building community with our colleagues, our students, and people in our communities – all the people who will have to come together to solve the critical problems of our country and world. Many people in education at all levels have realized the importance of human connection and have made it a vital part of their practice. Dr. Marjaneh Gilpatrick, a clinical professor in the College of Education at the University of Northern Arizona, shared this with me about the way she fosters connection in her work:

Reading Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Racism, and Social Marginalization affirmed many of the concepts that I incorporated in my P-12th grade and post-secondary teaching practices. As a chair of academic programs and now as the associate vice president at Northern Arizona University, I am able to apply the themes in the book as I lead a team of professionals from diverse backgrounds and experiences who all have families of their own. So, I am very mindful about their emotional well-being. When we have our one on one meetings, I ask about their partners, their children, their parents, and anything else that is going on. In many cases, they are happy to share about their children’s accomplishments: volleyball tournaments; acceptance into college; or their own progress in their professional development. As our relationship has become stronger, they even share some challenges.

I attribute the phenomenon to how I am vulnerable with them. For example, recently, I had to be out of the office in order to take care of my Mom who had fallen and fractured her femur and needed to have surgery. So, at a team meeting, I shared some of the challenges that I was experiencing in addressing her needs. In modeling my vulnerability with them, my direct reports feel safe to do the same with me and with one another. In doing so, it feels like we are a very cohesive unit. For example, one of the regional directors on the team completed a graduate program this Spring, and everyone on the team attended the commencement ceremony to celebrate her accomplishment. Additionally, we are strengthening our own as well as each other’s bandwidths which prompts us to better meet and/or exceed our unit’s goals and objectives.

Thanks, Marjaneh, for these practical applications of your wisdom. We can all learn from you and each other and continue to build the kinds of relationships within which we can have conversations that lead to transformational change.

New book edition and audiobook Bandwidth for Schools

For the last several months, I’ve been working on a second edition to my Bandwidth Recovery book and learning lots about asset-focused thinking, neurodiversity, trauma, economic inequality, the after-effects of the pandemic, uncertainty, and how critical human connection is for learning and thriving. I’ve incorporated the wisdom I received from so many people at the 100+ schools where I’ve spoken over the past six years. Look for the new edition this Fall.

On the public school front, book bans and anti-diversity legislation reached new highs in 2023. According to PEN America, over 4,000 books were banned during the Fall semester, mostly books focused on LGBTQ topics, especially trans identity, and books about race and racism. Books by women and non-binary authors are disproportionately targets of bans. Add to that continuing struggles with funding, deteriorating infrastructures in some areas, attendance still down from pandemic days, and teacher shortages, this education sector is under lots of pressure. Our children, the future of our democracy, are the ones getting short-changed in the process. Teachers, counselors, coaches, paraprofessionals, and other school leaders are valiantly trying to do their best with the available resources. Thanks!

If you have a commute to school (or listen to books while you exercise or clean the house), my Bandwidth for Schools audiobook is now available at https://www.audiobooks.com/promotions/promotedBook/756252/bandwidth-recovery-for-schools-helping-pre-k-12-students-regain-cognitive-resources-lost-to-poverty-trauma-racism-and-social-marginalization?refId=129625 It’s about the ways in which poverty and economic inequality, trauma, racism, and other “differentisms” rob students (and parents and teachers and school leaders) of the mental bandwidth they need to learn and live. Thanks for listening. I’d love to hear if the concepts and ideas make sense and what you’re doing to create learning environments in which we can all thrive.

Scholastic Book Fairs – not all books are equal

It’s October 18th and the news is awful: an ongoing war in Ukraine, emerging violence and humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza, almost daily reports of climate disasters around the world that result in death and destruction, more deaths in the US from drug overdose and suicide. News that is unspeakably sad and tragic in its everydayness. But the story that brought me to tears this morning was a piece in the New York Times covering the decision by Scholastic Books to create for book fairs in elementary schools a “…separate section for titles that deal with race, gender and sexuality – a response to dozens of state laws that restrict how those subjects are discussed in schools.” These books are in the category named, “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice.” “Those organizing book fairs can include — or exclude — that set of books.”

I was the Scholastic Book Mom for many years as my three youngest children went through our neighborhood elementary school. The Book Fair was one of the highlights of the year for my kids and for many kids and families. For my husband and me, white parents raising two white girls and two black boys, the books about “different” kids and families and about people who had stood up for human rights were critical resources for us. We went straight for the “Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice” section at the Fair. I know that was true for many families because I was the Mom who ordered books throughout the year; parents very much appreciated books that helped them educate – and get educated – about all kinds of people and families written in language that was age-appropriate and at emotional/cognitive levels that matched children’s grade levels. Scholastic books were affordable, too, so most children and families could participate in the learning and fun. I recently went to a Fair with my grandson in a neighborhood school in Ohio and the excitement was still in the air.

These books are so critical to opening the eyes of kids and parents to people and experiences outside of their own lived realities. The idea that they will now be separated and possibly just not ordered for the Fair makes me very sad. I know it is so cliché, but the children really are our future. In elementary school, children are open to so many ideas and are willing to embrace the excitement of stories well-told, empathizing with the struggles and triumphs of people who otherwise have little in common with them. That empathy, planted early in the hearts and minds of young and eager students, may later translate into ways of being as adults that can transform our world in lots of positive ways. This scheme to withhold those opportunities for learning and growth, in knowledge, understanding, and compassion, from elementary school students is, to me, the saddest news of the day.

Back to school

On Monday, I went to my regular salon to get a haircut and had to wait two hours; the fault of the back-to-school rush, apparently. Having no kids in school, this exciting time is not on my calendar anymore. As I stopped in a few shops, I began to notice the kids and parents buying backpacks and shoes and clothes. Lovely memories of my and my kids’ first days of each new school year.

In national and state news over the Summer, debates go on about what to teach and what books are appropriate for kids to read. I just want to send out some positive energy to all the teachers and school leaders who signed up for their jobs because they love kids and think they can contribute to their growth and development. Thanks for all you do and for the incredible impact you have on our young learners. Good luck in walking that precarious balance in which you try to do what you think is the best for kids while respecting that the grown-ups in their lives feel strongly about some things. Best wishes to the school leaders who, on the good days, are able to keep the interest of students at the forefront of the work. Thanks for taking on the pressures and still standing up for kids.

Peace and love to students of all ages as you start a new school year. Many of you will come to your classrooms carrying the fear, pain, loneliness, and worry of a life full of trauma, hoping you will find the support you need to learn and thrive. Many of you are just trying to figure out who you are, what you believe and value, and where you fit in the country and the world. All of you and contributions and make and joy to find and share. Your teachers and fellow students can help you with that if you give them a chance.

Education is such a blessing to all of us and I hope, for the good of every child and of the future of the country and planet, we can focus this year on the needs of each individual student, teacher, and school leader so they can do their best work. We have an education system that, on the good days, is full of amazing potential. Kids are naturally curious and growth-oriented. Thanks to all the teachers, staff, and school leaders who will devote the next nine months to affirming that promise in every child and young person. We are very grateful for all you do.

(Same all around for my colleagues in higher education. Thanks for keeping student learning and well-being at the center of your work!)

Rethinking learning in schools

One of my kids’ favorite Dr. Suess books was If I Ran the Zoo. It’s the story of a boy, Gerald McGrew, who has lots of ideas about improving on the ordinary boring group of animals in the local zoo. Things would be different if he were in charge! As a professional educator and somewhat competent grown-up, I often think, “If I ran the zoo…!” The reality is that I’m mostly glad to not be in charge. Education and life are difficult and I try not to blame people for not getting it right. Given that, I’ve been thinking about a couple of things…

Just in the last couple of months, I’ve encountered two important conversations about student learning in primary and middle schools that have concluded that we need to get back to basics, including relationship-building. As an educator interested in closing gaps in access and outcomes, I welcome these movements to improve the teaching and learning in classrooms for the benefit of all students. What I found very interesting is that experts today are describing classroom practice that is uncannily similar to what my children experienced from the mid-1980’s to about 2000. They went to a neighborhood public school where they were in multi-aged classrooms co-taught by enthusiastic, engaged teachers and paraprofessionals with, for the most part, no textbooks. Phonics - flashcards, “sounding out,” word recognition, and spelling - was a daily part of school and homework. But what we called “whole learning” was the ethic in the classroom. Kids learned about science by doing science, reading about research, building things, testing things using math skills and critical thinking. They worked individually, in small groups, and as a whole class. They had their struggles, but school was interesting and they learned! My oldest daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade and got excellent “special education” services through which she learned strategies to read and spell and, most importantly, to believe in her own capacity to learn.

Where did we lose our way? It’s easy to look back and see the ways in which things that seemed to make sense at the time were just wrong. For instance, at some point in the 1990’s, to address the reading deficits of many children, reading experts decided there should be less emphasis on phonics and grammar and that the most important thing was for kids to love to read and write; we shouldn’t limit them by focusing on sentence structure, the sounds of letters, and how words are formed. We should let them write freely and help them to use context clues to figure out words in reading. Listen to the podcast, Sold a Story (https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/). (Here’s a rebuttal of sorts from the Reading Recovery people: https://readingrecovery.org/fact-check-three-things-hanford-got-wrong-about-dr-marie-clay/#:~:text=Marie%20Clay%20defined%20reading%20as,that%20meaning%20is%20the%20goal.)

I’ll leave you to sort through the controversy, but the fact is that, according to a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in 2022, about two-thirds of 4th and 8th grade students in the US were not reading proficiently (https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/achievement/?grade=4). (Levels of proficiency were even lower for Native American, Hispanic, and Black students.) Back to my reflections about my kids’ classrooms, learning phonics and language mechanics AND learning to love reading and writing – and learning – can all co-exist!

Outside of specifically reading and writing, when I talk with teachers, including those who used to teach my kids, the No Child Left Behind legislation and its punitive standardized-test-based assessments were the major culprits in the ending of many effective, community-building, and engaging strategies for teaching and learning. Now the emphasis was on teaching so that individual students could get acceptable scores on standardized exams given in certain grades and the future of schools and teachers depended on getting every child to a specific standard. As a result, much of the fun went out of teaching and the pressures on schools and kids increased, exacerbated by the decrease in or total elimination of the kinds of activities that gave kids a break and exercised their creative, physical, and playful selves, like art, music, gym, and, in some cases, recess. (In addition to being fun, these “breaks” from academic work give kids, especially those who struggle, a chance to recover bandwidth, freeing up cognitive capacity for the next lessons.)

In Making Schools Work: Bringing the Science of Learning to Joyful Classroom Practice, the authors (https://www.tcpress.com/making-schools-work-9780807767382)

describe and give examples of teaching that cooperates with how human brains learn. In a webinar by several of the authors, the discussion was of practices and a classroom environment that was just like the ones my kids had 20-30 years ago.

Many of you are much more informed than I am about this research and the challenges of recovering learning viability in our preK-12 schools. Where I have experienced the results of what I have observed as a breakdown in education (however well-meaning as in the case of “leaving no child behind”) has been in the college classroom where so many students, especially those from marginalized groups and those who grew up in poverty, arrive with inadequate basic skills to learn and thrive in college-level work. What I have always believed – and what these recent conversations have affirmed – is that the underpreparedness of these students is often a result of choices we have made as a society related to acceptable levels of inequality in access to educational opportunity and schools that fail children and youth, not the individual deficits of students.

Even if universal educational reforms transformed every elementary school classroom immediately, we will still have many more years of students who have come through the current system arriving at college underprepared. Our approaches to teaching and learning should acknowledge our collective responsibility and we should recommit every day to making good on the promise of “education for all” by providing the supports to try to mitigate the negative consequences of ineffective school practices. It’s still true that no single one of us is in charge of the whole thing – thankfully, we don’t “run the zoo” – but we all have our spheres of influence, inside and outside the classroom, in which we can contribute to affirming practices that support student success.

Let Children Play

Children are learning every moment of every day. We can’t stop them. They learn the best when they are playing with each other, mostly free of adult interference. This is the overall message of a book I have recently read called Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, by Peter Gray (2013). His claims are well-researched and, better yet for me, just make sense from my experience as a parent and teacher.

One of the most important things I learned from the book was the importance of multi-age group play. Like most things in the book, Dr. Gray explains the value of multi-age groups in a way that made me think, “Well, of course, that makes perfect sense.” There are many advantages of multi-age group play. The younger kids: “… can engage in and learn from activities that would be too complex, difficult, or dangerous for them to do on their own or only with others their own age. They can also learn simply from watching the more sophisticated activities of older children and overhearing their conversations. And they can receive emotional support and care beyond what age-mates could provide” (p. 185).

The older children can “… practice leadership and nurturance, and they gain the experience of being the mature one in relationships… Older children also gain deeper understanding of concepts by teaching younger ones, which forces them to think about what they do or do not know. And just as older children inspire younger ones to engage in more complex or sophisticated activities than they otherwise would, younger children inspire older one to engage in more creative activities than they otherwise would” (p. 197). Older children strengthen their skills when they practice them, for instance in reading out loud to younger children, so everyone’s learning benefits from the exchange.

As Dr. Gray points out, multi-age playing used to happen for many children in their everyday life because they had several siblings (I was one of seven) and because kids played outside in neighborhoods, in open spaces and in front and back yards, mostly unsupervised by adults. Today, many parents, concerned about safety, are less likely to allow their children free run of their neighborhood or town, programming their kids waking hours with adult-supervised activities or requiring that they stay indoors. We need to work on building capacity in communities for safe multi-age group play, and, in the meantime, we could increase free play time in schools.

My understanding is that one of the most devastating costs of the well-intentioned No Child Left Behind legislation has been the severe decrease in school time devoted to the arts and physical education and, generally, to play. Teachers and school leaders, in response to punitive consequences for lower-than-acceptable standardized test scores, have emphasized reading and math and other academic subjects at the sacrifice of recess and similar activity times where children across several grade levels can engage together in physical, imaginative, and group interaction in free, unstructured play.

I know there are many places across the US where school systems, lead by teachers, parents, and school leaders, are de-emphasizing standardized testing and trying to bring whole learning - and joy? - back to school. There needn’t be a conflict between more play time and academic learning. Well-structured and completely unstructured play environments - including perfectly-structured nature - have been and can again be settings for the best kind of learning. The kind that kids do on their own and that lasts a lifetime.

Go kids! And thanks to all the teachers, school leaders, and support staff who take care of and love our children everyday!

Read More - Together

When my daughter was in 9th grade, we started, with one of her teachers, a mother-daughter book club. With five other girls and their Moms, we met every month to discuss a book chosen by a mother-daughter pair. We read many books that were outside of my regular lists, like White Oleander by Janet Fitch, which the girls loved and most of the Moms found way too disturbing. We read The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, the first book that I remember reading featuring an autistic person as the main character. We read some Jane Austen and, of course, Jane Eyre, which I had read before and have read a couple of times since. I remember some great fantasy fare, like the wonderful dragons and wizards in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea world.

I read things that I otherwise would not have read, or even heard of, because they were of interest to someone else. I could attempt to understand unfathomable concepts by listening to how they made sense to the girls and their Moms. We talked about right and wrong, struggled with difficult social realities related to difference and with what we all have in common as humans, and had a lot of fun and laughs, too. The book club continued for four years until the girls graduated; our time together is a lasting positive memory of my daughter’s high school years, for her and for me.

I started reflecting on that book club as I read this New York Times article a few days ago, “Attempts to Ban Books Doubled in 2022” (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/books/book-ban-2022.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230326&instance_id=88682&nl=the-morning&regi_id=133155851&segment_id=128789&te=1&user_id=28fcea388e0552900a93ea0857b4b7ee). Many of the banned books are about gender identity, sexual orientation, race relations, and other current issues of social relationships and difference. Keeping young people from reading books on these topics seems like exactly the wrong thing to do. Access to a full array of reading material at school and public libraries is, to me, one of the most valuable freedoms of an open democracy, and critical to the growth and development of young minds.

 

What we need is more reading and more conversations and more grown-ups involved with young people as they tackle new ideas and concepts and ways of seeing the world. We need more school librarians and counselors and parent volunteers to meet with students and talk about what they are reading, what it means to them, and how it matters in their lives. We need to encourage students to read about topics that weren’t even talked about when we were in school. How do we make progress in a society if young people are limited to the things that made sense to us when we were young and trying to understand the world 20 or 30 or 40 years ago? Everything from new scientific understandings of the universe to insights about what kinds of human relationships are viable need to be thought about, processed, and discussed among students, hopefully with the guidance and authentic participation of caring adults. (When my son was in college, we read, together, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene, about string theory. Only one of us understood the book, but I tried. The concepts were mostly over my head but what a lovely experience to learn with and from my son.)

 

Instead of limiting the reading material of young people, let’s all read it together. For us, the grown-ups, let’s open ourselves to the idea that maybe we don’t understand everything and that the things that were real for us when we were in school are no longer relevant or at least have changed in many aspects. Our children will benefit from our openness and we will likely learn as much as they will in the process.

Lonely People

Yesterday morning, I left my home in Kansas at 5:00 to drive nine hours to Indianapolis for a meeting. I listened to 60’s and 70’s music on Pandora to keep me company on the long trek. When the America song, Lonely People, began… “This is for all the lonely people…,” I thought of the text I got two days ago from a graduate student: “Worried about the future. Worried about immediate crippling loneliness.”

Are we experiencing a “loneliness epidemic,” a term I’ve read recently in several articles focusing on adolescents and young adults? This is an issue that predated the pandemic but the isolation of COVID exacerbated the situation and brought it more out in the open. As educators, most of us are aware that some of our students are lonely and that the feeling of friendlessness and not belonging can manifest itself in a variety of behaviors, from super clinginess, especially in small children, to almost complete social withdrawal. We also know that students seldom talk about their loneliness and that some of the most outwardly gregarious ones may be the loneliest, covering up their deep feelings of disconnectedness with lots of words and activity.

Because I’m fairly certain that a few people in my classes each semester are feeling lonely at least part of the time, I am more and more intentional about building community in my classroom (both in-person and virtual). To have a truly affirming community, in which everyone belongs and everyone can thrive, each person must feel supported in all their identities and able to bring their whole beings into the group. A community is only as strong as its loneliest member.

How do we build community? By greeting each student and asking how they’re doing (or having a brief time for students to check in with each other in small groups at the beginning of class if the group is too numerous for meaningful one-to-one interaction with the teacher/professor). By focusing on what each student is bringing into the learning environment; what they know from previous schooling, work experience, family traditions or activities, skills they have acquired through sports or music or hobbies or service work. By giving timely and honest feedback on student work, affirming the successes and offering constructive ideas for improvement where appropriate. By establishing a learning environment characterized by curiosity, cooperation, collaboration, mutual support and respect, and collective fulfillment.

Even if students have lives that are or have been full of trauma and challenge, my goal is that for the time they’re in my classroom, they can take a deep breath and relax, knowing they are safe and loved and that they can take risks, be confused, ask questions, be vulnerable, along with all the other students in the class – a mutual experience that is the opposite of loneliness.

People learn in relationship with other people. Loneliness can keep people out of relationship and, therefore, out of the opportunity to learn and thrive. When we are in settings – like our classrooms – in which we have a bit of control, we can help replace loneliness with connection, which is good for everyone.

Transitions

Greetings from a lovely day in Kansas. Since I last posted I’ve been traveling just about non-stop, most recently a drive to San Francisco for a meeting (driving so I could visit my daughter who works for the Indian Public Health Service in Arizona and because of a canceled train reservation due to the incessant rain in California). Wow! The beauty of the varied landscapes through New Mexico, Arizona, and California is indescribable. Mountains, desert, amazing rock formations, miles of green hills and fruit orchards, … Beautiful!

Returning to Kansas for a bit of a hiatus from travel, I’m experiencing another transition. Last week marked the end of a two-year appointment with the American Association of Colleges and Universities, a special projects advisor assignment. I learned a great deal from and with wonderful colleagues and had the opportunity to interact with thought leaders across higher education. I’m looking forward to continuing to contribute to the mission of AAC&U to support equity and justice in education and society. I’m very grateful to everyone who supported by work there.

In the next phase of my career and life, I will continue working within higher education and increase my attention to the perK-12 sector. The best way to transform the student experience in colleges and universities is to address equity of access and opportunity beginning in early learning environments. What if the brain of every child, beginning in infancy, were nurtured and fed like it was the most valuable resource we have in our country and world – which it is! We neglect small children – millions of them every day due to economic and social inequality – and we pay for that neglect for the rest of their lives. Children enter preschool with depleted bandwidth because they’re hungry, fearful, tired, already experiencing childhood trauma, etc. Children in elementary school are unable to learn and thrive for these reasons and many others related to the resources (or lack of) of the school, the conditions of the neighborhood, and the social realities of society.

I try to maintain a sense of hope and want to contribute to solutions. There are many schools where students are nurtured, respected, and supported to learn well and thrive. In the next months and years, I want to help make those conditions a reality for more young students. I welcome any ideas about how we can work together for positive change.

To end on a joyful note…My 7-year-old grandson goes to an excellent elementary school in Ohio. They must be working on gratitude; his Dad sent me a picture he drew - a stick figure with a broom sweeping bits of dirt headed, “Dear custodians, Thanks for all your cleaning.” There is hope after all!

Reflections from the road

By air, car, and train, I spent most of the month of August on the road, giving workshops and talks in Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, and Michigan to over 1,000 people, most faculty and academic leaders at 2- and 4-year colleges in very urban and very rural areas. At every school, there were instructors and instructional leaders who wanted to create learning environments in which all students can learn and thrive and they were open to learning and professional growth. Based on various aspects of their identities, their academic backgrounds, their life experiences, their exposure to diverse students (or not), these colleagues had various levels of knowledgeable about the things that rob bandwidth from students so they don’t have access to all their cognitive capacity. The critical thing, though, is that most of the people I met wanted to be engaged in solutions. That’s the start of change.

For most of us, change is hard and enlightenment can be painful. Some of us have to learn how much we don’t know, like a man who, after an exercise about childhood trauma said, “I was clueless.” Especially for highly-educated people, realizing that we’re clueless is jarring, but it’s the necessary beginning for transformational learning and resultant behavior change. Others of us know from experience the trauma that comes with a childhood of poverty, violence, and uncertainty. Some of us have lived with the negative effects of racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and other “differentisms” that have stolen our bandwidth over a lifetime. And focusing on those areas of pain, especially in a room full of colleagues, can feel awful. Still, I find that most people want to bring their full selves to the task of figuring out how to be better teachers and learners, even when it makes them very vulnerable.

If you pay attention to the news - and who can help it if you work on the internet - it’s easy to think that all news is bad news and that most people are troubled, violent, and greedy. The reality is that for every bad thing reported by the media, there are thousands of everyday kindnesses and bits of generosity that go mostly unnoticed. In my travels, I encountered people who were helpful, caring, gracious, and patient. In Chicago, some men jumped my car for me when my battery was dead. In Georgia, I was accidentally dropped off at the wrong hotel and the clerk found out where I had a reservation and gave me directions to get there. In Texas, my son, daughter-in-law, and baby granddaughter unexpectedly showed up at my workshop and were immediately embraced by my new colleagues there, just as if they were part of their families. When a staff person had car trouble, a provost dropped what he was doing to fetch me at the airport. People on campuses treated me with kindness and respect, even when the semester was about to start amid continued pandemic-affected uncertainty.

What I want to say is this…At a time when I’ve been feeling the least hopeful about the future of our country and the world, my travels in the heart of the US helped restore my faith in humankind. We have so much work to do to help create a world for our children, from infants to college students, in which they can flourish as individuals and as part of a society that still believes that education is a common good. I am so grateful for all educators who work tirelessly everyday to make it happen and for the people in our cities and communities who give us their support.

Best wishes for a growthful and peaceful school year for all of us.

The gifts of online learning

Early in the COVID move-everything-online time, I apologized to a group of people in a Zoom presentation, suggesting that they were getting a second-rate product compared an in-person interaction. In response, one of the attendees sent me a message that said, paraphrased: “Don’t apologize. I love this. I’m sitting in my living room with no distractions from the other hundred people and it’s just like you’ve come into my home to for a private conversation.” Since then, although I still prefer in-person speaking, I feel much more assured that, from the user end, it probably feels better than I think. There are, for many people, lots of advantages to engaging learning at home.

I thought about that interaction because I just read an excellent article by Karen Powell Sears in Inside Higher Ed, “5 ways online learning benefited some students,” in which she reports on the ways online learning was a real gift for many students. I’m thinking about ways I can improve my in-person classroom environment based on the wisdom she has shared. Please read: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/07/14/five-ways-online-learning-benefited-some-students-opinion?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=06e0e4295f-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-06e0e4295f-236871646&mc_cid=06e0e4295f&mc_eid=f7abfc8ad2

Tripping hazards

Having turned 65 two years ago, I’m getting an orientation to the world of healthcare via Medicare. There are a series of seemingly automatic checks that begin to unfold beginning at the time you first sign up for Medicare, mostly based on the assumption that both your body and mind are suddenly heading down a gradual decline (not a completely unfair assumption in my case). As evidence, I can’t remember any details from the long list of questions the doctor asked me a year ago! Recently, I had my second-year-on-Medicare annual check. One of the areas that was emphasized was the importance of ridding my home of “tripping hazards” – like throw rugs, misaligned furniture, uneven floorboards, stairs without rails (small grandchildren? pets?). Before that check-up, I don’t think I had ever uttered the words “tripping hazard” and now I see them everywhere!

In my life up to this point, I didn’t see tripping hazards because I didn’t need to see them. As a fairly healthy person with full use of all my limbs, tripping was minor thing that happened from time to time with no serious consequences. As a more seasoned person, a fall might turn out very badly long-term, so now I’m much more aware of the threat. Something about this new level of awareness has given me a bit of insight into all the “hazards” that many of my students and colleagues and neighbors experience every day that I just don’t see because I don’t have to see them. For people who are minoritized based on race/ethnicity, who are differently-abled, neurodiverse, LGBTQ-identified, economically insecure, who experienced childhood trauma, and others who have other challenging life circumstances, there are hazards that inhabit their lives, ones that they can’t just not see.

Being constantly aware of hazard takes up some bandwidth, even on our best days. I’m thinking now of the many classrooms where I’ve met with students over the past couple of decades. My goal was to make those places as hazard-free as possible. Before they walked through the classroom door, I wanted my students to be able to take a deep breath and let it out slowly, leaving as many of the outside hazards outside. In order for students to learn and thrive in classrooms, they need to have access to all their bandwidth and to the extent that we can create safety and belonging, they can relax and open their minds to learning.

In response to the argument that we need to remember the limitations and demands of “the real world” when we’re interacting with students and evaluating their work and class performance, Joe Feldman, in Grading for Equity, says,

“Why wouldn’t we want to create a classroom that provides our students with a refuge from the unfair world? Doesn’t equitable teaching compel us to treat students more fairly, with more respect and more caring, and love, than the real world? If so, our grading system has to push against the aspects of the real world that are unjust and unfair, that judge people without opportunities for redemption, and that evaluate with harsh consequences rather than offering feedback, dialogue, and support.“ (p. 213)

bell hooks referred to the classroom as “…the most radical space of possibility…,” (1994, p. 12) the space in which we can “…open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions…,” That kind of mental activity is only possible when both the teacher and the students have access to most of their bandwidth. And this only happens when we create classroom learning environments within which the hazards of everyday life are temporarily set aside because everyone belongs in all their identities, everyone’s unique ways of seeing the world are valued, and everyone is invited and expected to contribute.

In my life, teaching has been such a privilege. As I age – and learn about things like tripping hazards – I have a deeper appreciation of the opportunities we have as teachers to transform the world for students, if only for those precious few hours they are with us in our classrooms.

Feldman, J. (2019). Grading for equity: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform

schools and classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY:

Routledge

Hospitality: a classroom where everyone can feel ok (and learn)

At a recent (virtual) professional development day at Ball State University, I attended a session with David Concepcion in which he posed inclusive teaching as hospitality. He invited us to make a list of the ten most important things we consider when we invite people to our house for a gathering. Here are the things on my list:

• Are there differences in the way I should greet/welcome people from various cultural or language backgrounds so each person will feel welcomed, valued, and affirmed?

• As I look around my home, trying to see it through the eyes of each of my guests, what are the messages they might get from my what is displayed on the walls and in other art, decoration, and furnishings? Will each of my guests feel comfortable and safe in my house?

• Did I invite people whose home language is not English (the only language in which I am fluent) and, if so, should I make sure to have someone who can interpret for me and them?

• Should I assume everyone knows what is expected of them or will some people need a bit of direction? Should I ask?

• Do I think this group of guests will just naturally connect with each other or should I plan some ice-breaker activities to help start conversations?

• How is the physical space arranged? Is there enough room and enough separate spaces to meet people’s needs for personal space and safety?

• Is my sense of the timing of the gathering sensitive to the work and life schedules of those I’ve invited?

• Should I think about whether or not everyone will be comfortable wearing whatever they choose or should I give some indication in the invitation about that?

• Do I have food that will be acceptable for everyone according to health, cultural, and religious requirements and preferences?

• If I will have background music, should I search for a variety that will reflect the diversity of my guests?

I so appreciated this exercise because it challenged me to not only think about each of these considerations but about what I wanted for my guests and why, and to acknowledge that they might need different things than I would. Of course, it was clear that Dr. Concepcion was drawing a parallel with the classroom; what are the necessary environmental conditions for learning? At a social gathering, I want each of my guests to feel safe, comfortable, confident, accepted, and able to be grounded and respected in all their identities. I want that so they can interact with each other, make human connections across difference, and, ultimately, feel good about the experience.

The bandwidth required for these kinds of interactions is very similar to that needed to effectively learn; it seems to me we should attend to all of these considerations in our classroom at all educational levels. As was the point of the presentation, all of these elements are part of deep hospitality, intentionally creating learning environments in which students (and teachers) can be their authentic selves, bringing all aspects of themselves securely into interactions, and thus have access to most of their cognitive capacity for learning. And, hopefully, they will feel good about the experience and will want to persist in their educational journey beyond our classroom.

How are you? and how can I support your learning?

This morning I read James Lang’s “The Healing Power of Learning” in which he describes quite movingly his experience of a recent life-threatening and life-changing health event and the months-long healing process. He described how his own trauma and that of his wife and children had helped him understand the importance of trauma-informed educational practice. At the end of many months of serious illness and close brushes with death, he began to read again and realized the healing power of learning.

I’ve been a follower of Dr. Lang’s work for a while, most recently reading his book, Small Teaching, in which he shares many excellent - and doable - ideas for making our teaching more effective and equitable. He has listened to students over the years and has been open to learning from them, resulting in his development as growth-oriented teacher and learner.

His reflection on his illness and recovery reminded me of the year during which I wrote my dissertation, a year filled with relationship struggles that nearly derailed my life and career. I remember thinking even at the time that writing the dissertation probably saved my sanity and my future. The need to focus on the research and the writing - learning, basically - provided me with a place of relative peace and healing for which I still feel gratitude several decades later.

All this has affirmed the ideas that I’ve been working on about student learning and thriving. Especially during these last couple of years, it’s been tempting to lower our standard in schools at all levels given what students - and parents and teachers and school leaders - have experienced of loss and uncertainty. Dr. Lang’s words have reminded me that lowering standards, or in any other way expecting less of students and of ourselves, is exactly what we don’t need. The message has got to remain, “I have very high standards and I know each of you can meet them and I’m here to support you all the way.” Students want our best and need us to expect the best of them. Most especially for students whose lives are full of uncertainty, our support and encouragement at school can help them benefit from the healing power of learning.

Thanks, as always, to teachers and school leaders, for all the work you do everyday on behalf of students and their families. I hope that even in the midst of exhaustion you have found moments when your own learning has provided you with strength and hope.

Thanks to all the equity champions

I used this image in a recent talk and was reminded of our ultimate goal in education of taking down barriers to learning and thriving. Teachers and school leaders at all levels are working daily to see that every student has access to the opportunities they need to reach their potential. I’ve often thought, in these pandemic times, that equity can be more complex than removing a fence. What seems equitable, positive, and reasonable to one set of students (and their parents) seems inequitable, dangerous, and irresponsible to another set.

It has been a stressful and tumultuous time for students, teachers, and school leaders in all sectors of education. I am confident that everyone has acted in what they thought was in the best interest of school, students, families, and communities. I want to say an affirming THANK YOU to teachers and school leaders, from pre-school to graduate school, for your courage and determination, for your efforts to apply your best judgment to challenges that have no absolute right answers.

When the pandemic is behind us, the educational enterprise in the US and around the globe will have lots of catching up to do. I hope we will do it with determination, patience, and grace, moving past the disagreements and looking to focus on the the well-being of students. It is imperative that we get back on track for the future of our societies. When all students can learn and achieve, we will have more able, educated minds to tackle serious local, national, and global challenges that must be addressed and resolved to make our collective future possible. THANK YOU to all who work every day to make that happen.

Kindness - sewing hope in the classroom

During this pandemic and global upheaval, I’ve been in a mind-blur for months; my bandwidth has been seriously depleted. Like many of you, I’m mostly holding on: doing my job, watering my garden, talking to my Mom on Fridays, walking several miles a day, worrying about my kids (and their kids), etc. The usual things. What I’ve been missing is radical hope and I’ve realized that at least part of the reason is that I’m not in a classroom like I’ve been every semester for almost all of my adult life. In my experience, teaching is, as Gannon says, “a radical act of hope.”

Our students, whatever their ages or whatever they are studying, will leave our classrooms and run the world. What we do in the classroom matters. In these times when it seems like all news is bad news, I count on small acts of kindness as the enduring evidence that, in fact, most people are good and just trying to live life well. Kindness to our students may be the most important gift we can give them AND if it calms their fear and uncertainty, it’s also a good way to help them recover the bandwidth they need to learn. Even better, when we are kind to students and they learn from us to be kind to others, these are gifts that will keep on giving to the world.

What does kindness look like in a classroom? Here are a few ideas:

·      Daily check-ins – Go around the room at the beginning of the school day or the beginning of a class and have everyone say just a few words about how they’re doing. Smile with those who report something happy and give support to those who talk about a struggle. (This can be done in small groups if your class is too big for each person to get a chance to talk.)

·      Celebrate successes, even small ones – We can support students’ sense of agency by letting them try new things, fail, and keep trying. During the process, a few high-fives or just a smile or a pat on the shoulder can feel like a kindness to a struggling student. Create a classroom atmosphere in which students regularly affirm each other’s work, encouraging a cooperative learning environment.

·      Hear every voice – If possible, pay attention to whose voices are heard and not. Use small group discussions or talk in dyads to assure that during each day or class, most students get a chance to contribute something, even if it’s just a few words.

·      Mix in affirmation with correction – As we know from research on mindsets, some students seem to welcome feedback and others find it very intimidating and immobilizing. For the latter group, finding something positive to say about their work before the details about their errors and “opportunities for improvement” may go a long way to assure them and help them use your feedback productively.

·      Take time to just take a breath – During our current global public health crisis and societal tensions in many places, students of all ages may be feeling the stress, even if the young ones may not be clear about the source. Pausing to just be quiet and take a few deep breaths can be a moment of recovery for many students (and teachers).

Even when my bandwidth is low, I can usually make a choice to be kind. It’s free and it mostly feels good. Some of our students, of course, get their full daily dose of kindness from family or friends, making our contribution trivial. For others, though, their lives may be filled with people who are themselves struggling so much that acts of kindness are rare luxuries. Like so many equity-minded practices, kindness in the classroom does no harm to students who don’t need it and can make all the difference for those who do.

Hungry students (at any age) can't learn well - let's feed them

Good day. I read a wonderful, straightforward blog post by Matt Reed in Inside Higher Ed. His message was an affirmation of the decision by the state of California to give no-cost lunch to all students in K-12. He asserts that this would be an excellent idea for community and state colleges as well. Thanks, Matt.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/unambiguously-great-idea-we-can-steal

The right choices for our students and our collective future

Uncertainty – the biggest bandwidth-stealer – has been the only certain thing for a year and a half. Worry adds to bandwidth depletion. Given that, I’ve written these reflections on education using my available bandwidth…

About two weeks ago I read about the discovery of the bones of 751 people, Indigenous children almost certainly, at the site of a residential school in Saskatchewan, just weeks after the bones of 215 children were discovered at an old residential school in British Columbia. These schools operated from 1883 to 1996, funded by the federal government and run by Christian churches, mostly Roman Catholic and Anglican. I have read that over 4,000 children are still unaccounted for after they were removed from their families and taken away to residential schools where their way of life and language were untaught to them in what some call cultural genocide. I am saddened by this discovery, just the latest piece of evidence that we humans have a disturbing way of making some very bad decisions about our children’s education.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking about the current spate of state laws and school rules in the US that say teachers, in schools from elementary to college, are prohibited from teaching about slavery and systemic racism. The blanket condemnation of “critical race theory” as something that breeds ill-will and conflict and so should be kept from students is an excellent example of counterproductive education policy. Simply stated, critical race theory asserts that it is impossible to understand current US society without consideration of slavery and its lasting imprint on the social and economic realities of black people today. It is analogous to wiping out any teaching about the landing of the Mayflower or the British tea tax or the writing of the Declaration of Independence. These are all things that happened without which we would not be where we are in 2021.

Especially now as we continue to emerge from a global pandemic and a year of social unrest about violence against black citizens, effective education at all levels will be predicated on having authentic conversations, not closing them down. We need to relate with each other across all kinds of differences and capitalize on the strength that comes from a group of individuals who bring a variety of perspectives to an issue or problem. In fact, I can’t think of one major challenge facing humanity that will not require an interdisciplinary approach to finding solutions.

We need everyone at the table. We need the mind of every child to be nurtured and encouraged in community with their classmates and neighbors so that, together, we can find solutions to global crises related to, for example, governance, environmental sustainability, and a decent and secure standard of living for every person. In the US and Canada and in every other country, we need to be willing to face our histories - the good and the awful - and learn from them and decide together to make better choices today. Our collective future depends on our coming to terms with our past and we can only do that if we can look at it straight in the face, accept our missteps, and decide to make different choices in the future. Our children and youth are capable of this kind of honesty and they should not expect any less from the adults in their lives.

What does this have to do with bandwidth? It’s relevant at two levels. An organization has bandwidth, just like people do. Hiding things takes up bandwidth, if you’re a university or a public school system or an individual student. Honestly facing reality expands bandwidth in the long run because none is being expended avoiding unpleasant parts of our history, personal or national. (Although, admittedly, facing the truth about US history when you have not known it can take up bandwidth in the short-term.) It will take all of our collective cognitive resources to come to terms with our past and head into a more equitable – and better - future for all of us.

Diagnosis: Caste

A couple of years ago, I sat on my porch in Oklahoma reading Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, in which he chronicles the origins and thorough inculcation of the concept of race into the heart and soul of the United States. I taught Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in a social welfare history class for many years, so I was aware of the realities of a national identity fraught with division purposefully created for the advantage of the few. Kendi’s book, however, made me understand even more deeply the persistence and determination of the white power structure to assure that racism was foundational in the identity of our young country. In the past year, I’ve read many other books about race and class and how we have gotten to our current state of ever-increasing inequality and division.

Rothstein, Richard. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America.

Rothstein chronicles how the governments of cities and states not only did not stop the blatant practices of real estate companies and banks to discriminate against black citizens in housing, but actually promoted them, denying black families the opportunity to live in places where their children would be most likely to thrive and further driving a social and economic wedge between white and black people across the country.

Metzl, Jonathan. M. (2019). Dying of whiteness: How the politics of racial resentment is killing America’s heartland.

Metzl paints a searing picture of the desperation of certain groups of white people in three states that results in a consistent pattern of support of political decisions about taxes, gun ownership, and health care, that result in tragic disadvantage for the very white people who support them.

Ewing, Eve. L. (2018). Ghosts in the schoolyard: Racism and school closings on Chicago’s south side.

Closely related to housing, the availability of adequate schools is a determining factor for most families as they strive to create an environment in which their children can be safe, happy, and successful.

Murphy, Chris. (2020). The violence inside us: A brief history of an ongoing American tragedy.

Although he does not use the language of caste, Murphy reflects on the way that violence against enslaved black people, justified by their less-than-human status, set the stage in the United States for the development of the systemic violence that is evident today. “America became a nation anesthetized to physical harm because the entire country’s economic, political, and social structure was predicted on the brutal subjugation of black Americans.” (p. 61) 

Isobel Wilkerson, I. Caste: The origins of our discontents

Wilkerson brings together all the messages from the previous books about race and class in a compelling argument that what we have in the United States is a caste system, similar in design and effect as the ancient one in India and the one that was created in Nazi Germany. In the United States, the system, based on skin color, has effectively excluded black people from the benefits of citizenship and placed white people in a situation of superiority that can itself be oppressive, especially for those whose life experience of economic struggle results in further distancing from groups of people with whom they share similar economic interests, desperately hanging on to whiteness as the one part of their identity that they hope will save them from landing on the bottom.