I have been thinking this year about a major problem and have been unsure how to approach it. As a new administrator, you are on the receiving end of a whole new side of teaching and what I've noticed more and more is the state of teachers. Specifically, where their states of mind are. Obviously there is a huge range, varied as teachers are varied in their lives and experiences. But I think I've finally figured out my question:

How do we train teachers to hate learning?

In all manner of circumstances I have encountered this year, a continual roadblock has been a teacher's desire to learn. Whether they needed to learn more about a student, or a method, or about what was going on, or the law, this issue has continuously reared its ugly head. But realistically, this is clearly a learned trait. I've known far too many new teachers to ever assume anyone got into this profession with a true disgust of learning. Yet time and time again, I've met teachers who have spent a long time in the profession with just this stated feeling. "I just don't get _______ tech", "He/She just needs to be respectful", "They don't have to like me, they just need to learn", "I don't know what happened, ask the students." The list could continue.

From my own experience as a teacher, I know that it starts with professional development. Or as was once coined by a department head I used to have as a "professional waste of my f***ing time." That and staff meetings. It's something I've definitely focused on improving as an admin, but what sits in my head is how can we actively build a culture of learning, starting with admin and teachers...

Just thoughts in my head right now.

SEEDS Restorative Justice Training Day 1

Lots of considerations and take-aways from the day training. Mostly that my fundamental understanding of restorative justice is correct- repair the community, help it grow, help it deal with similar conflicts in the future.

One major take-away was in listening- listening specifically to the emotions, not just the details. Confirm the emotions, not just the details. I might have done that in my time, but never purposefully.

The community involved is varied and focused, all on seeing what restorative justice can do for their respective communities, much like I am here.

Another take-away: the focus cannot just be the students. You need to bring the practices into effect with staff and community. This strikes me as type 2 change currently. Not sure how many people, by their own classroom practices, embrace this system, or will actively fight against it (just one more thing).

Thoughts:
1. Leadership class as possible RJ class? Would Joann and Laurel be interested? How would it go down?

2. How to bring RJ ethos and systems to the faculty to get implemented in a permanent way? What steps can be done? What rules can we break?

3. How to deal with those whose only desire is punitive? How to support them in a transition? How do you coach them up?

Long time absence, first time administrator

Hey Everyone,

It's been quite an absence. I had this and my podcast up until around the start of 2017, but then a baby, admin class, applications and eventually getting a new job as a vice principal at a middle school has kept me from updating.

Some obvious observations:
- Whereas before I was able to know about politics, but ignore it when I wanted, I am thrust into the full game of politics and ignorance can lead to me losing a job.
- It is odd not being 100% immediately embraced by new staff (like new teachers generally are).
- Difficult conversations are difficult.
- Communication is something everyone appreciates.
- Fighting to find the positive is absolutely necessary as a vice principal, lest you be overwhelmed by the negative.

More thoughts and discussions to come. Just give me time.

- Tony

Class Reflections Part 2

An interesting internet meme has been showing up on my Facebook thread over the past week. In it, a black female writer (I cannot find the post currently) observes that people who decry violence at protests and tell protesters to harken back to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of nonviolence, have missed his message entirely. She points out that Dr. King refused to harass or denounce those who committed violence at protests, even if they were at one of the protests he participated in. He did not denounce them because he understood their pain, but he also understood the importance of a threat to those in power: deal with me or you deal with them.

Reading this analysis on top of the stories of cyclical oppression both in class discussions and in 13th make me wonder about the appropriate approach to education. Not to whether we must resort to violence on our end as educators, I do not believe that is the most effective option currently, but whether we may face that violence soon if the system is not corrected. Honestly, all of our discussions, while we talk about how we will lead it and if the system is right or wrong, all focus on the effects our system has on our children. And at what point, with access to technology and the world and the myriad of experiences that they can connect to now, at what point will they reconsider their roles in this system and see the inequity and violence that are inherent in our current system? How long until they rise in rebellion, as students at university and high school have done several times in our nation’s torrid past?

When I first started teaching 8 years ago, there was a story going around in some papers about a girl who simply refused to go to school. Her mother was SARB’ed, she was repeatedly picked up by police and brought to school, where inevitably she disappeared from and ended up at home time and time again. Her mother had removed all of her technology, taken her items, but none of it motivated her daughter to return. My teacher friends at the time spoke of it with amusement and some with condemnation, but behind it all was a thread of fear. Much like the Chicano walkouts, what could seriously be done the day students decide school is not for them? I worry that we are fast approaching that point of obsolescence.

How do you lead positive change from the inside? This class has focused on community engagement but 13th highlighted some issues with that line of inquiry. While any true change must address the community's needs and occur within and with a community, what happens when that community has bought into end goals that will ultimately harm them? As was pointed out in the documentary, black and African-American communities bought into Clinton’s tough on crime stance in the 90’s. They wanted less crime in their neighborhoods. Much like many parents in our communities want less violent kids in their schools, want us to be stricter on bullying and on drugs, how do our actions truly affect our community? How do you build collective trust, where the community feels you genuinely listen to their concerns and respond while also responding to your own concerns? How do you build this without becoming dominant or a savior?

Please don’t misunderstand my writing. I often write to the darker topics, because my background has always forced me to consider the worst scenarios and plans to move up from them. How would I truly build this relationship with a community? Truth and time. I’ve seen so many administrators and district personnel invite their own downfalls through lies and double-dealing. Whether to teachers, their peers or to the community at large. Once that trust is lost, it can never be regained, not in the same way. I feel that that is what is emphasized in the Dual Capacity model, where clarity and trust are mutually built during the establishment of viable, effective processes. One irony of the article is that an individual mentioned as a leader of the model, while they were able to establish that connection with younger students and families, lost their connection with older students and their families because of lack of clear processes and ultimately, a lack of honesty in their statements.

Time is necessary to consider, as it affects us in so many ways. Scheduling meetings at difficult times will discourage attendance and send a subtle message that while parents are welcome, we will not make the time for them. We want results and change immediately, but they take time to achieve. Finally, we give ourselves the time, but too much time allows us to lose our way. Working with the community to balance time effectively is one of the most difficult aspects of being an educational leader. My assumption here is based on how many districts I have seen that have been unable to budget time appropriately.

Much like my last reflection, I am left with many concerns moving forward, and time is always at the top of the list. If I were to observe all the signs and predict which cycle we are in politically when considering oppression, I would say we are swinging swiftly towards aggressive oppression. How many of my students, our families, our communities will be harmed in the coming days? As I move into a leadership position, what will I be asked to do that will fundamentally compromise my core beliefs? What will I refuse to do and what will be the consequences of those choices on my students, my family and my communities? What can I do within the system to truly motivate the change I want to be and see? What allies will appear to help fight against this cycle? Will educators and educational leaders be willing to take a stand against what is wrong, or move quickly for what is right? I do not know.

But I am always down for the struggle.

Reflections on my Academic Leadership Class

Tuesday’s class left me with one enormous impression: though we have talked about the importance of race and racial discussions and equity in our classes so far, we haven’t really deeply engaged the topic more than once or twice. That and the lack of a summative discussions left us in an interesting space. It has always been an interesting thing in the United States that we never want to confront some of the harsh truths out there; the most blatant being that extreme success often is at the expense of others. This is not in relation to athletes, who often credit those around who motivated, coached and trained them and acknowledge that while their drive helped, they wouldn’t be there without the help of others. This is not about those who are moderately successful, those who have worked hard, helped others, and in turn have been helped or guided towards success, their own drives playing a large part. But those who are obscenely successful, their success often comes at the expense of others, or the expense of others during their parents or grand-parents (etc.) generations. We have this fantasy that as long as they do “good works” they are good people. But as I stated in class, Microsoft relies on minerals stolen or bought cheaply from African countries. Facebook started by excluding all those not in college, creating a elitist community ground that eventually allowed others in and as it did so, began to data-mine their every activity. Apple’s production company has Chinese workers locked into a factory where they see suicide as their only viable escape. It’s insane. It was also interesting to see what people remembered or learned from their partners. I tend to pick up details about people as we go along, but it was kind of shocking how little some knew about others. I’m curious if that’s tied to what I see as family building (I make my family from my friends) as opposed to acquaintances, as some see others in the room. I wonder what details find important about others… I think our class is torn in three parts: those who think the system can be repaired and made equitable, those unsure of what the solution is, and those like me who feel that the system may be irreparable. And race, equity, special education, poverty, all dance around that question. Every question we bring up in class all tie back to that one core question, which I am becoming grimmer and grimmer about: Is our education system in its current incarnation worth saving? And if not, what is next? I feel like that is definitely a leftover of my childhood. I mentioned in my cultural proficiency paper that I learned from a young age to abandon that which hurts me and to move on to find things that helps me. Education hurts. Actively, continually, and painfully, destroying the lives of percentage of students we have deemed “acceptable losses” but that we constantly target for work. Society plays a huge part, politics too, but education is the system in which we exist, and the system where we all interact. The question now, truly is, how can we justify allowing the education system as we know it to continue when so many children are lost?

Measurement vs Growth vs What Do We Want

What do we as a society want?

I feel like that is the question that has skirted the edges or been an integral part of my blogs and my podcasts. What do we expect of ourselves and others in our society?

More specifically, why do we often expect more of others than what we ourselves can produce or give?

I've seen this pretty consistently this year with my students, who have had a large number who enact the "demand respect without being able to give it" mentality.

But honestly, I realize that it is something that is endemic to much of our society. We expect "Jesus" of others when we ourselves are barely capable of "Judas". We expect a president to be perfect, our managers to be omniscient, and our employees to be ever enduring.

Why?

Listening to a podcast recently with and interview with Jordan Peterson (who many hate for their own reasons) and he said something very interesting. He is a clinical psychologists and he and his team have created a tested program known as self-authoring. During his talk with Joe Rogan, he said he felt a lot of our issues in society have been the development of our technology but not our morality. He thought, rightly or wrongly, that with our removal of religion we have done away with the official search for the self, the search for a true sense of who we are at our innermost core, and replaced it with labels, as in what labels can define us.

Now I cannot say whether he is correct or not, but it is an interesting idea. He also discussed the idea that with the fall of the religious hero, and the military hero, we have lost our guiding moral lights. We have our civil rights heroes, but those are hard for some to identify with. He continued by saying we've attempted to fill that void with book and movie heroes, like Harry Potter and Spider-Man.

This is what stuck in my head. I realized that I never really received the moral religious education growing up (despite my mother's best attempts), yet I still have a very strong sense of right and wrong.

I received that from the books I read. And oddly enough, those books gave me a better idea of the ideal moral person I want to be and should be than religion does for others. The Dark Is Rising, Ender's Game, Dealing with Dragons, the Hobbit and more gave me heroes who were flawed, reluctant, who grew, who overcame, who made sacrifices for others, who did what they felt was right, and either survived their experience or did not, but were deeply changed by them. And my ability to skim read and miss details (such as the fact that all of those heroes are white) allowed me to immerse myself in those stories.

I feel like we are really dealing with a society of three parts right now. Our religious aspect, who truly expect perfection from others but also realize that that is impossible and harbor a little resentment over that. Our apathetic aspect, who didn't read that much or get into religion that much, and really don't have a deeply ingrained moral compass. And our bookish aspect (which does overlay with the religious, but tends towards the contemplation of themes over the actual religion), which has a firmly ingrained sense of right or wrong, but it is tempered with the reality that we are all flawed on a fundamental level and that heroes are the ones who constantly struggle to overcome those flaws, whether successful or not.

Am I saying books are better than movies? Yes. Sorry. The time it takes to work through them, the depth of detail that exists, those allow you to slowly process information and integrate it, whereas in a movie it tends to come quickly and leave you with just emotion and very little processing.

This three headed aspect of our society is playing out in our schools. What do we expect of our districts? Our principals? Our teachers? Our students? Our parents and guardians? We range from demanding perfection to believing massive incompetence to not caring to having a small understanding of what they go through. Do we measure them on the stick of perfection and fire those not there? Do we not care? Do we realize that they are all imperfect but struggling and support them as such?

I do have answers. But they are not perfect. And they will take time to process before I can share them. They are also just my answers. They may not work for all.

Why wait for change?

I would lie if I didn't say I post, discuss or have concerns about politics, both privately and publicly. As a teacher, especially of history, it is against codes of professionalism to bring my own leanings into the classroom, but as a purveyor of fact and critical analysis, this year has been difficult when discussing this election cycle.

But for a change, this post is not about teaching. It is a post motivated by a great speaker and researcher on the history of the world and of our politics, Dan Carlin, and his recent Common Sense episode "Or Else". If you don't listen to him, I highly recommended his measured, thoughtful ideas, and his definition of a radical.

As part of a larger statement about community, Rabbi Hillel the Elder once stated, "If not now, when?" That is what I felt during the Democratic primary, when I was often told by my Democratic friends that now was not the time for Sanders. That he would be divisive. That the United States in general was not ready for his "radical socialism." That change takes time.

Change takes time.

As I sit here, on my sick day, still thinking about education, checking on my emails to see if students emailed me about their work, still thinking about politics, this phrase has echoed in my mind.

Change takes time.

Does it? Define the time that change takes. Since I was born, we've gone from going to the library to check encyclopedias to talking to our phone and getting answers. Becoming media famous no longer requires the media, in fact, most of the time, the media is the one who catches up to those with fame.

Do they mean social and political change in this context? That I should allow the suffering of children because the change that can affect their lives will take time? That I should write off the injustices and the fear and pain that I see others suffer because change takes time?

How much time?

Africans and then black Americans protested their injustice for years, decades, centuries. Some white folks attempted to help, some placated them with "when you learn our ways" and others still oppressed them further through inaction or action. To this day, many are not free, literal victims of a war on "drugs".

Chinese Americans, some with ties back to the 1840s, are still viewed as foreigners, despite every investment. Despite wars fought for this country. More than a century here and still foreign.

Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Latinx/o/a, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Colombian, all foreign still. Still "illegal" even if their families have been in the California and Texas regions for centuries.

Decades of rural or urban poor white families subsistence living, dying for this country like all the others in their wars, working their asses off while simultaneously being called free-loaders and welfare families.

All the Native American/Indian nations that didn't have much of a choice. Who just want respect and land autonomy and some form of caring for what was done to them. The lies told to them. Clearly still waiting.

So again, the question. How much time? If not now, when?

You can feel free to shame those who look outside the system, who vote 3rd party, who refuse to vote, who get arrested protesting, who get shot, who question those who've been in the system for years, out there, exposed.

Only 60% of the United States votes, of those eligible. It excludes our non-violent felons, even should they reform. It excludes those who can't get the time off work, or who don't have transportation, or an address, or in some states, don't have proper IDs.

At what time, as proud US citizens, do we stand up and say, hey, this is ridiculous. THIS is not right, and it is not impossible to fix. We might not agree on all of the solutions, but we can agree on some solutions. We might not be able to save every industry, but we can make sure everyone stays employed. We might not be able to save everyone from hardship, but we can make sure we're not creating additional hardships for them.

In my podcast, I've talked about changes in education. Ideas, beliefs, practices that could be adjusted, kept or done away with. But here is the harsh truth: We are getting to a point where as a country and as an education system, we will be forced to change. You want to know what the biggest concern principals are supposed to have when they walk through a classroom? Student engagement, as a measure of learning. Engagement. Because teachers need to engage the students in the learning. But it doesn't address the real issue. What if what we are asking students to learn is crap? And they know it? What if our emphasis on non-urgent content, when so much real shit is going on around them, shows them that our system is broken? What if they can find hundreds of videos online outlining and explaining that same idea? How do you engage a student then?

So again. If not now, when? Our we as a country going to lead the change or be led by the change? Because right now, it seems to have us by our ear, and it's starting to pick up speed.