Category: care

30 Jan 21 – Trauma

I’m worried my kids will have teachers who haven’t done or refuse to do the work of becoming trauma-informed in their practice.

I’m worried the actions that come from survival instincts of flight, fight, freeze, and submit will be mistaken for their true and beautiful personalities.

I’m worried this will mean my kids won’t be seen for the amazing people they are.

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, “More than 25% of American youth experience a serious traumatic event by their 16th birthday, and many children suffer multiple and repeated traumas.”

Acknowledging trauma and acting in trauma-informed ways are not the same things. Without the latter, we will only find success by accident and happenstance. That’s unacceptable.

If you are an educator who hasn’t yet started this work, start. If you work with children, you work with children in trauma. They need you to do this work.

Some places to start:

24 Jan 21 – Did you offer to help?

My son was closing the medicine cabinet, toothbrush in hand, and smeared toothpaste all over the mirror. He then tried to wash it off by splashing water from the faucet to the mirror. This did not help.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he told me as I walked into the bathroom.

“He got toothpaste all over the mirror, then he got water on the mirror, then he started to smear it all over the mirror, then he got it in my sink. Everything he’s doing is making it worse,” his sister said in the tone of voice reserved for older siblings exasperated at their younger siblings.

“Did you offer to help?” I replied.

“I told him he was doing it wrong, and he kept doing it even more wrong!”

“Did you offer to help?”

“No.”

“Next time, will you offer to help?”

“…yes…”

Now, thinking it over, I need that tattooed on the back of my eyelids. I need it as an out-of-office message. I need it in every moment I’m working with someone learning something new, and I need it in any conversation where an adult complains about a child.

If the answer is “yes,” then we are halfway there.

In What on Earth Have I Done? Robert Fulghum writes “I have more than enough. They do not. And here were are, face-to-face.” Fulghum’s words are in an essay tackling the moral and practical question of whether to give money to those asking for it in intersections and on street corners.

It comes down do, “Did you offer to help?”

It is not my job to judge them. It is my job to judge me.

Sure, if I give something to each and all of them, I may in the process give to someone who do not really deserve help. That’s the chance I take, but I will have not missed anyone whose need is real.”

– Robert Fulghum, What on Earth Have I Done?

Teachers will often talk about the real world and withholding assistance or the benefit of the doubt to students because such second chances will not be afforded students in the real world. Most of these conversations concern issues of great import in the fiefdoms of their classrooms. In the grand schemes of students’ lives, they are little, insignificant things. Late work, a missed citation, not showing how you got to your answer. The real world. Ugh. Even the IRS will give you an extension.

Our classrooms are the real world, certainly to the students compelled to be there each day. They are the laboratories of civic and social interactions, imparting implicit and explicit norms of what they should do when life’s training wheels are off. Withholding the offer of help and the benefit of the doubt models behavior our students will surely remember, and mimic, when they reach that mythical real world.

They will not remember the late homework assignment, but they will remember whether we helped when they asked.

What if we were to give to all whom ask? Yes, some will game the system, but that’s the system’s lot to contend with. Ours is to contend with who we’ve shown the world we are each day. Or, as teachers, what we’ve shown our students the world could be each day. “It’s my job to judge me.”

The photo below is of a card now taped to the lamp on my bedside table. I can think of few better questions of accountability to end my day with.

22 Jan 21 – I need to write more

Sure, a blog post every day feels like a personal return to form. And, geez, I’m loving it. That last post? I wrote, deleted, and re-wrote it three times before I found what I actually wanted to say. So, yes, I’m very much enjoying a return to writing.

low angle view of spiral staircase
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

And yet.

This is only the public writing I’m used to doing. When it went away, it was accompanied by other forms of writing that brought me great joy. In the Before Times, I would make a point each week of writing thank you notes to a few people across the district with whom I’d interacted that week or who were on my mind as being wonderful human with whom to work.

It is the grown-up version of making sure the last thing I did before leaving school was writing one positive note home for at least two students on my rolls. Knowing the last thing I’d done with my day was putting pen to paper to express my joy in teaching my students helped turn some pretty crap days around.

The rub of it is these are exactly the times when I need to be writing more notes to colleagues. When we are necessarily separated and prohibited from running into each other in the halls on the way to meetings, that’s the time to stop at the end of the week and write.

Maybe you want to get in on the action? Maybe there are some colleagues or students who could do with reading your words of encouragement and gratitude? I’ve just added a calendar event for next Friday and every Friday after. It’s 30 minutes and simply called, “Write Notes.”

Who will you write to first?

21 Jan 21 – Morning Meeting

We have a family morning meeting. The boy suggested it a few weeks ago. There are three standing questions:

  1. How do you feel?
  2. How are you feeling about your day?
  3. What do you want to get done today?

I struggle every morning trying to find a difference between my answers to #1 and #2, but I find a way to make it work. Yesterday, I got to explain optimistic.

white clouds under orange sky during daytime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

More than any of it, I look forward to their answers. Happy is the most often shared feeling in the morning. It’s when we get to #3 that I get a sense of where their brains and priorities are. It bounces around. Sometimes, its seeing friends. Sometimes, it’s a specific friend. It could be as general as “get my work done” or as specific as “tell my teacher you beat the Spider-Man game”. (I did, and I’m equally proud.)

My moments of self-control happen when their responses are vague. It’s all I can do not to ask for more detail to “get my work done.” I hold back because I know that will come. I hold back, and I model that detail in my own response. I know they are listening because we share our progress when I pick them up from school. “Did you write that thing you wanted to write and send the message to your friends at work?” (I did.)

They are playing with goal setting, and I want it to be just that. Our morning meetings are space for them to mess about with checking in on their own feelings in the moment and experiment with setting a course for the day. There are so many parts of their lives when I and other adults ask them to do it differently or better or again or never again. Our morning meetings are a place where I want them to know none of that will happen. It’s a space where whatever answer is the correct answer.

It’s also a space where I try not to say happy all the time. It’s a little tough, because I usually am. When it’s true, though, I’ll say I’m frustrated or anxious or any other more negative emotion. I do it, one, because it’s what I’m feeling, and, two, because I want them to see I or they can feel those things and the world will not end.

“I am feeling anxious because we got out the door late today, and I’m worried we won’t get to school today. I’m feeling hopeful that feeling will pass and the rest of my day will be better.” Something like that.

All of this has also been a little jarring for me. More accommodating than I’d like to admit, I’m much more likely to put my own emotions on the back burner so as not to get in others’ way. It’s a trait I’m actively working not to pass on to my kids. It’s also personal growth I’m trying to make transparent to them. Grown ups learn too.

I hope the other grown ups to whom I entrust them each day are making similar spaces for them. In between math and reading, I hope they have moments surrounded by peers and teachers where the community checks in with itself to see what it needs to support its members.

Mine aren’t the only kids hungry for these spaces. I’m not the only adult who needs to learn how to answer these questions honestly. I hope our schools and classrooms recognize the value and extent to which doing this work can make the academic work so much better.

14 Jan 21 – I’ll Let You Know When We Get to the Opportunity

It has been suggested by several folx in education – most working outside the classroom – that we may be missing an opportunity to dramatically re-think, re-imagine, re-design, re-create learning, schools, and public education during the pandemic. We are not missing this opportunity, and hearing people say this makes me want to box their ears.

In a conversation with some teachers a couple days ago, one commented prepping for yet another return of students felt like she was in her fourth September this school year. Imagine, had I suggested in that moment that she was missing the opportunity to dramatically re-think her teaching practice.

It would not only have been tone deaf, it would have been uncaring.

We will get to the opportunity phase of all this, but we are not there yet. Right now, we are still in the survival, compassion, and empathy stage of this. We are in the place where everyone who is going to work is showing up with the knowledge they could unwittingly become infected by those in their care and pass that contagion on to those they love.

In one of the most deeply human professions, people are still required to be physically distanced and masked when interacting.

My attempt to re-imagine public education right now would start and end with me imagining it without the fear of catching a plague.

It does seem, as we settle into a very strange sense of routine, that we have gotten past the limitations of only solving those problems directly in front of us. Room is opening up for us to begin to think about the After Times. These will be the times of re-imagining.

I would posit, before we get there, we can carve out time for pausing and reflecting. Not time for planning, but time for asking as faculties and school communities, what we are learning and what’s working or not. Our schools and school systems have been in literal survival mode for nearly a year. One would hope school and district leaders are starting to hold space in meetings to return to listening to the people in the room.

Learning cannot happen unless people feel a sense of pyschosocial and physical safety. With all that has transpired this past year, we must build those senses of safety before we can hope to re-build learning and teaching.

The opportunity now is to listen. If we miss that opportunity now, when we arrive at the opportunity to re-create, we will miss it as well.

The one word I keep

It’s my first year returning to school as a parent. The new reality has me thinking about conversations of hybrid, distance, in-person, synchronous learning differently. While I can’t know how childless Zac would have thought through these options, single dad of fifth and third grader Zac keeps coming back to one word, listen.

It is my deepest hope for the adults into whose care I will be entrusting this little humans for the coming school year. Listen.

In the best case scenario, my kids would be coming to their new school in a new district as part of a new family. All that new would be enough. But that’s not all they and their peers across the country are starting back with. They are the first children of pandemic in generations. They have quarantined, teleconferenced, and fought loud battles over why they can’t go play with friends down the street, “WE SAW THEM YESTERDAY WHEN WE DROVE BY!”

My kids, like all kids, are walking into school this year carrying so much more than they should. Because I know some things about learning and human needs, I also know they need places to lay down all they are carrying before they can pick up the important work of reading, math, music, Spanish, science, PE, social studies, and the rest.

They cannot lay down what they carry unless they know someone will listen.

Both kids, but particularly the 8yo, have this habit of telling me something and ending the statement with, “Right?” I learned early on this “Right?” is not to be ignored. It is a check in to make sure I have registered what has been said, and that I can validate whatever fact or opinion has been shared. Did I hear them? Did what they said matter? Was I paying attention? Was I listening?

As I think about the listening we will need to do as adults, I also think about the listening we will need to do to adults. Few of any of us has had the time and space to grieve what we’ve lost in the last half of a year, and that’s just speaking of the routines of life. For those who have experienced losing someone they love from a distance, that grief must remain all the more raw.

I’m fairly good a creative solutions to complex problems. I love a good conundrum. And, I am terrified of how I will navigate these next months as I feel through the intellectual dark to find what will become normal. And, so, I hope those to whom I turn can listen. I hope all those who care for the adults who care for our children will listen. We have not been this way before.

I hope my kids’ teachers give them spaces to express. I hope journaling in words and pictures and questions is part of every student’s day in the coming weeks. I hope they have the time to get out what needs expressing before they’re asked to ingest standards and facts and the ideas of others.

I hope I remember this too. I hope I listen to those with whom I work, because I cannot be the only one who feels as though he’s got the world in that spot right between his shoulders. I hope I remember self care will do in a crisis, but that I can care for others and ask for their care as we work toward what’s next.

A Little Reminder of Mattering

Today, I was visiting classrooms in one of our elementary schools. In a grade 4 class, there was a little guy who was having trouble writing what he was thinking. It was his turn to share in his circle of six.

He didn’t want to read what he wrote.

He was a little embarrassed because he hadn’t quite written an answer to the prompt.

I asked if I could read it to the group. He nodded.

I read aloud wha he wrote and said, “So, it seems like he doesn’t think he should have to choose a most important piece because he thinks they are all important. That’s pretty cool to me.”

We moved on.

A bit later in class, he sat next to me to read a book about shark trivia. His fluency and decoding were amazing, by the way.

We chatted for a while and other kids came to talk to me.

When it was time for me to visit another class, I stood. I said, as I usually do, “Thank you for letting me learn with you today.”

He very quietly said, “Thank you for helping me.”

This was 15 minutes later.

There is no more important job than this.

If I Were Your Principal Today (10/365)

Storm Clouds

Earlier today, I posted the following tweet:

I’m struggling to come up with something that makes me feel like I’m responding to the most current rash of hurtful, ignorant, racist rhetoric coming out of the President. Following my anger is not how I choose to use my minutes. I started thinking about what I’d do if I were a principal in a school today. Whatever I come up with is imperfect. It is better, I hope, than nothing.

First, all of this is predicated on the existence of positive, non-threatening, mutually-respectful relationships with adults and children. If you’re not doing that work, then we’ll have that conversation soon.

Presupposing those relationships, I’d do the following:

  1. Send/post a school-wide message letting the adults in the building know I realize some of the most recent national news has been difficult to take and let them know my door is open for anyone who needs some time and space to process. I’d also ask for the same understanding for our students.
  2. I’d have a prioritized set of students with whom I check in. Given the last 24 hours, this would pay special attention to immigrant and migrant students – specifically those from Haiti and African nations. Checking in wouldn’t be, “So, you scared?” Instead, something along the lines of, “Hi X, I’m really happy you’re here. How are you?” Then, I’d listen – really listen. In students where these students are the majority, we still know those most vulnerable to this rhetoric. Those would be my priorities. For students with whom I had less solid relationships, I’d make sure the adults within the building with whom those students are closest have a chance to check in.
  3. Realizing checking in is necessary but not sufficient, I’d reach out to the head of my school’s parent and family organization and ask how I can help set up workshops for parents and families on how to help students process living in the age of Trump. To do less than this would normalize this behavior.

Our students are watching. They are listening. Our inaction and silence are statements as powerful as any other.

What if we learned about our students differently?

When I started teaching at SLA, there was a standing assignment for 9th grade students. It had begun with the inaugural class and had continued into the second year when I picked up my teaching load. Me Magazineswere a way for students in their English classes to get to know and share about one another as they started a new year in a new school. As SLA draws from myriad middle schools around Philadelphia, it made sense for this new cohort to have a chance to share and get to know one another.

I don’t share this with any illusions that Me Magazines were avant garde or broke any molds of creativity. I’ve been around enough to know the Me Magazine was of a family of activities teachers ask of their students at the start of the school year. There’s the Where I’m From poem, the I Am poem and any number of derivations. Instead, I’m sharing about Me Magazines because I wish I hadn’t assigned them.

They started my year off on the wrong foot. It was in that gray area that looks like augmented student agency. It tiptoes around authenticity. “The students are writing about themselves, their lives, and their experiences,” you might say, “How is that not agency and authenticity?”

Well, for one, their doing it in a way that says, “This is how you share about yourself in this space. I want you to talk about yourself and consider where you’re from, but I want you to do it in the way I tell you to.” While the content may be specific to the student, such assignments are often a more creative version of telling students they need to make a PowerPoint presentation and it needs to have N slides with X on Slide Y, etc.

To redesign the assignment, my question is always to return to the purpose of the task and experience. What, at its core, are we attempting to do when we assign these get-to-know-you openers to the school year?

  1. We, as teachers, want to know who these fresh faces are and how they talk about themselves.
  2. We want to students to have a forum to share pieces of their histories with their peers.
  3. We want to see what they can do as a baseline in writing when give familiar content.
  4. We want to create a sense that this space is one where it is safe to share.
  5. We want to position the class as one where agency, voice, and authenticity matter.

So, let’s take a turn at opening up the assignment so that we are adding structure to the experience, but not necessarily the final product.

  1. Instead of building in your questions for content, open up the assignment for students to share the aspects of classmates they think it’s important to know and share. Compile a brainstormed list as a class and then give students (maybe in groups) a chance to elect one question to priority status, so it’s built into the assignment. This is also an opportunity to work on building consensus.
  2. Open the format of the presentation of learning to student choice. “What’s the best way for you to share who you are with this class?” This not only opens up student agency and choice, but it will help you see whom among your students decides to perform and who decides to build or code.
  3. Explain your purpose as a teacher. The learning shouldn’t be a secret. Yes, you’ll open it up to students’ chosen presentation formats, and you’re looking for some specific understandings as well. If this is an assignment that is meant to help you understand students as writers, then tell perhaps whatever they design must include a written component. Or, if you want to keep the thrust of things open, say the one thing you’re going to require is a reflective piece of writing explaining why they made the choices they did and how they think those choices affected the outcome.
  4. Have options at the ready. As was the case in my classroom, you’re going to have students who are overwhelmed by choice. Have pathways at the ready to help these students work through selecting the right format for them. This is where you might drop in Diana’s speed learning activity. You might pair students who are stuck with parents who immediately stand out as wealths of ideas. And, in the rare moments all this doesn’t help, you’ve got those formats mentioned above at the ready to be modified to fit whatever the class has decided is important.

Making these tweaks to the traditional assignment moves us closer to our goals for the experience while also adding in elements of collaboration, student inquiry, and making the classroom a more transparent place.

Cross-posted on Medium.

What are you teaching the next Darren Wilson?

It was on the third page of the front section of the Sunday paper today. If Michael Brown’s parents hadn’t been in D.C. over the weekend, I wonder how much deeper an update on the events in Ferguson would have sunk into the news cycle.

This aligns with my concerns about what I imagine to be happening in classrooms around the country. In the first weeks of school, teacher friends around the country shifted their lessons to include some investigation and conversation around the shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO.

I can’t blame the newspapers for their reduced coverage. Until something happens worthy of an update, there is no new news.

In our classrooms, though, yesterday’s story must inform today’s lesson plans so that we can help to prevent tomorrow’s Michael Brown and Darren Wilson.

When tragedy strikes, we seek counselors, we make safe spaces for conversation, we hold vigils, we let out a collective, “This happened again” and utter the statement as either a shocked question or a saddened, unsurprised declaration.

Saturday will mark 8 weeks since Michael Brown was shot. Whatever units or lesson plans teachers developed so that they were “doing something” in response to the death of yet another child of color have likely run their course.

They were not enough.

Saturday will mark 8 weeks since Michael Brown was shot. Whatever units or lesson plans teachers developed so that they were “doing something” in response to the death of yet another child of color have likely run their course.

They were not enough.

However meaningful the classroom conversations, however poignant the reflective essays, however moving the student-produced PSAs and podcasts – they were not enough.

Because there will be another Michael Brown, another Eric Garner, another Kimani Gray, and another, and another, and another.

In the small town high school I attended, any conversation about race had to do with the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and possibly the March on Washington.

I should say any formal academic conversation about race included those topics. The informal conversations were fraught with the ugly contents of unexamined privilege, the exocticizing of the other, and the cultural appropriation of music relatable on an emotional level yet far removed where content was concerned.

My guess would be that Darren Wilson grew up in a similar system.

Cultural sensitivity trainings and body cams will make the difference they can make for the police officers attending them and wearing them, but that difference is nothing compared to the potential power of on-going mindfulness and conversations about race, class and privilege in our schools, classrooms, and hallways.

As much as we should worry about the next Michael Brown sitting in our algebra classes, we must worry about the next Darren Wilson being there as well.

We should feel guilt and shame that we were too weighed down by our own insecurities around these topics, that we dismissed them as too difficult or thorny to broach with students.

Perhaps we let ourselves off the hook by arguing students are discussing these topics at home with their families. That is laughable, dangerous, and irresponsible. And, were it even true, it would be no excuse to avoid adding a layer of complexity to helping our students inquire into the role they want to play in this country’s on-going identity crisis around race.

A lesson or a unit will not change the conversation. Hoping your colleagues in history and English classes are reading books with people of color as main characters will not change the conversation. Engaging in the conversation, again and again, will help to change the conversation.

The next Michael Brown and Darren Wilson are already sitting in our classrooms. What are we doing to make sure their story ends differently?

 

The following are a sampling of resources for teaching about the events in Ferguson and race in your classrooms. If you have other helpful materials, please add them to the comments: