WHEN LIES ARE WHAT’S TAUGHT

by Ruth Sheets

Teachers are amazing.  Every day during the school year and often for summer school too, they get up, travel some distance (it varies), arrive at school, try to catch up on communications that came to them overnight, and set up their classrooms for the day.  That’s all before the students arrive.  Once that happens, the race is on to give students their very best, sharing information, facilitating discussion, evaluating understanding and progress for their many students, maintaining some level of order, and making the students’ learning experience valuable.  Then, for secondary and some elementary teachers, the process begins again when the next class comes in, then the next and the next to the end of the day. 

Most teachers are competent and knowledgeable about their subject(s), and invested in their own learning.  In most districts, to earn tenure, teachers must have a Master’s degree in education or their subject area before 5 years have passed.  Teachers are watched, evaluated, thrown into challenging situations for which they are not fully prepared, supplied with inadequate resources, working in rooms that are too hot, too cold, too small for the number of students.  They work with students who have inadequate access to technology, but are evaluated as to student success despite the obstacles.  These mostly well-trained, creative, caring, kid-loving professionals are now the target of scared uninformed, mostly white parents and politicians.  These folks in more than a few of our states are now expecting teachers to regularly lie by commission and omission.

Over the past year, Republicans have taken aim at our public education system, well, more than usual.  Teachers have weathered such attacks in the past by doing their jobs even better.  Many teachers left the profession, though, because they decided that they no longer wanted to accept the stress and abuse.  We are now seeing that the people in the field are those seriously committed to our kids, their learning, and their future.

The problem now, Republican school boards and politicians are doubling down on techniques used all over the world by authoritarian governments to make education everywhere in their realms uniformly dedicated to the business of indoctrinating children to just what the government wants kids to know.  That is not the way in a democracy but it does not seem to matter to the perpetrators of the attacks on our schools and libraries

In this iteration of going after our schools, The Trump cult has passed laws in several states that forbid teachers from telling the truth about a lot of subjects to their students.  They can’t share the “1619 Project” on racism in America or teach the Holocaust without presenting “the other side” or mention LGBTQ rights or talk about racism and slavery as anything but a personal choice by practitioners.  No controversial topics are to be discussed.  In some places, evolution (a fact) and climate change (also a fact) are not to be included in the curriculum or even discussed.  No sex education either just in case same-sex relations are mentioned or inspire questions by students.

The goal is to keep white children from feeling guilty or uncomfortable or as if they might want to positively change things.  These fragile white kids, their parents, and just about anyone else can now report any teacher who covers any of the above topics, and the financial penalties can be substantial.  Yay!  vigilantism!  Thanks, Texas, for getting things started with that! 

In our own state, Pennsylvania, there is a bill pending that would allow anyone in the state to report a teacher who has discussed any difficult topic.  In other states, mostly in the former Confederacy, there are proposals to live stream classrooms so anyone can watch and report.  Tennessee, Oklahoma, Florida, and South Dakota right now are among the worst, but Texas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and others are following right behind.  In at least one state, teachers must report to the parent if a child asks a “challenging question,” whatever that is. 

The reporter I first heard fully discuss this had to do the “balance” thing and equated the above with colleges prohibiting abusive speech and bullying toward other students.  Sorry, but it’s not the same, not even close

The legalized lying about what teachers are teaching and forbidden to teach is so egregious every citizen of this country should be screaming.  The process is reminiscent of the Communist and Fascist crushing of speech that doesn’t fully support their propaganda, going on now in Russia, China, and other countries, and which consumed the Nazis throughout Europe, Franco’s rule in Spain, and the many Communist regimes in the last century.    

I partially blame the Supreme Court for magnifying this anti-democratic insanity.  I believe the approved lying got traction with the Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013.  The decision was based on the lie that the former Confederate states and a few others no longer should need to check in with the Department of Justice to make voting rules changes; they had learned their lesson and would no longer discriminate.  This allowed states to target voters and put into place all kinds of voter suppression policies, lying that they were necessary to stop fraud (practically non-existent).  This action by the Court led to disenfranchisement of people of color, students, and poor citizens who couldn’t get past all the new obstacles quickly placed in their way.  When people can’t vote, a whole lot of people who shouldn’t be in office get elected.

The media was a major force in permitting or even promoting the lying.  You’ve got to present “both sides” of every issue even if there are not 2 legitimate sides.  The media knew, for example, that Donald Trump as candidate and president lied a good part of the time (more than 30,000 times in public in his 4 years in office).  The best the media could do was say or imply that what he said might not be exactly fair or was an exaggeration.  They were lies!!  The word “lie” is rarely used even now.  Reporters will sometimes say falsehood or incorrect.  The word should have been “lie.”  It could have helped people who were only listening in passing to know that Trump is a serial liar, but the opportunity to stop it passed. 

How does this impact our public education system?  Well, it has normalized lying among many Republican and conservative groups.  Claim teachers are brainwashing their kids, it must be happening.  Claim the 1619 Project is filled with lies and they don’t even have to read it.  Ban books that promote sex or being gay or Black supremacy, they don’t have to read the books before lying about them either.  

Let’s face it, the reality is, a lot of white people are scared that somehow the increases in the number of people of color living in our nation will take away their white privilege that they don’t even admit they have.  They don’t want their privileged kids to be confronted by the fact that white people have committed all kinds of atrocities throughout history.  They want their sheltered kids to think that they have earned all the privilege they have and that it is those horrible others who are trying to take it away.  Those others include African-Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, LGBTQ persons, Muslims, historians, teachers, writers, and anyone who is not them and wants those white kids to learn about people other than whites.

Teachers have always been targets for whatever flavor of lying and mythmaking Americans are indulging in at the time:  Remember the Alamo, the honorable nature of the Confederacy and the good treatment of slaves, the necessity of interning Japanese-Americans and invading Iraq, and so much more, sometimes out of ignorance and sometimes because teaching the “lies/myths” was ordered (as propaganda).

We know better now but my guess is this current limiting of what teachers can say and what students can discuss will expand before common sense takes over, if it does.  We have lived a pandemic and are still in it and many of those same scared legislators and parents have ignored medical advice and have preferred lies about ineffective drugs and the suggestion that mask mandates infringe on their freedom.  Clearly the truth is just too hard for some adults to manage even if it is easier to digest and will keep them healthier and alive. 

I can’t help but wonder if any of those white legislators and parents have even considered the trauma their kids’ classmates of color have experienced from the bullying, false history, segregation, harassment by police, poverty, and more.  Nah! 

With these new restrictions on education, will students of color and LGBTQ students ever feel safe enough to share their feelings with their white classmates and if that sharing happens unbidden, will the teacher be blamed, prosecuted?  What happens to the students then?

Let’s face it, little white kids are not fragile.  They can read the books the former Confederacy wants to ban and expand their understanding.  They can hear about LGBTQ persons without suddenly becoming gay, but learning about it could save their life when they are trying to figure out who they are. 

It seems to me in this case, parents are the problem.  They worry their sons and daughters may get to know and appreciate the challenges faced by our nation and want to ask their parents what they have done to make things better.  Perhaps the parents have nothing to contribute and they don’t like it.

Clearly, we can’t count on the current Supreme Court, but we should be able to count on the non-right-wing media to keep what is happening in the states in people’s faces.  Political candidates who truly support democracy need to find clever, honest ways to get the word out to citizens about how voters are being used to keep others down by Republicans who are OK with taking away their rights in power.

Above all, teachers, don’t quit. That is just what Republicans are hoping for.  If you quit, they can break our schools and our unions, then dump anyone in classrooms feeding kids the BS that right-wing lies are really truth.  Already there is a teacher shortage and all kinds of inexperienced people are being allowed to be unsupervised in classrooms with vulnerable kids.  Hey, who cares what the kids are being fed as long as they are in person in school.  Parents have to work, you know. 

It is really hard when lying becomes the law of the land or at least in certain states.  We need teachers to find creative ways around these appalling laws/lies and we need to find ways to keep any of the bills now in state legislatures from passing.  We also need to fight these laws with everything we have – are you listening media?  We owe this to our kids, all our kids, even the “fragile” white ones.

OPEN LETTER TO REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS

by Ruth A. Sheets

Dear 2020 era Republicans,

Wow!  There seem to be no depths to which many of you will not go these days.  Even in the midst of a pandemic, you worry more about coddling huge corporations than taking care of the PPE (protective gear) needs of front-line workers.  You cover for every misstep Mr. Trump makes as he fumbles his way through challenges that he neither understands nor really cares about.  You in the Senate of the United States continue to approve nominees from partisan operatives to stack our courts with people you are pretty sure will be unfair to most of the people of this country, you know, the ones that are not rich, white, straight “Christian” males.  You are OK with the Senate being neutered by Mr. McConnell for his own purposes, possibly yours too, that isn’t entirely clear yet.

As you Republicans all well know, Mr. Trump is not fit to hold the office of president, but you just love him because you can manipulate him into doing the damage to this nation you have wanted to do for a long time.  Among the damage:

-destroy the post office even though it is provided for in the Constitution, to benefit rich corporations who will donate to your future campaigns
-Destroy public lands on behalf of hugely wealthy  donors
-force through judgeships for people who are neither qualified nor ethically suited to be a judge of anything
-slow and impede the response to COVID19 at the expense of many lives.  Your president is OK with it since they are mostly old people and people of color who are dying, and in blue states too, win-win-win!
-You give most of the money in stimulus to the huge corporations who, by rights, should be able to fend for themselves with all the other corporate welfare you have blessed them with over the years.
-You are trying to reinstate the “Patriot Act” which was wrong when it was passed by the frightened white guys in Congress who couldn’t think of anything else but to take away people’s rights and supports in a time of crisis, unfortunately shaming and lying colleagues into going along with you.
-You allow our Justice Department to become Mr. Trump’s lapdogs, instating and dismissing cases at the president’s whim
-You dismiss climate change (global warming) as a hoax, which of course you know it isn’t, and that it’s serious.  What does that make you, hypocrites?
-You are OK with gerrymandering, voter suppression in its many forms, and forcing voters to go in crowds to vote and risk their lives or give up the vote.

I could go on because there is so much I didn’t get to, but alas, you wouldn't read it anyway.  You all are deeply under the spell of a man who thinks and acts like an 8-year-old school yard bully and you all know that about him.  He is moving into the beginnings of dementia.  You all know that too and still cling to him because Republicans, you know, are ethically bankrupt.  You knew Mr. Trump committed the crimes he was impeached for, and more.  To prove you knew, you made it so there could be no witnesses in his trial.  That says nothing about Mr. Trump's innocence, only your guilt.

As a teacher, during Teacher Appreciation Week, I am alas, saddened to see the lack of critical thinking employed by Republicans for the past 70 years or so, from McCarthy to Trump-McConnell.  Thank goodness there have been a few bright lights among your party’s members, but ah, , too few.  I can’t help but wonder if we teachers are just not teaching critical thinking sufficient for people to make better decisions or if something else is at play.

And then, there are the ethics.  I can’t help but wonder if you are all OK with the lying and cheating that many of your party are using to obtain and maintain office:  gerrymandering, voter suppression, purging the voting roles.  You know the purpose of all these things is to deny voting rights to your fellow citizens.  You do it under the guise of protection from voter fraud, but in recent years, nearly all the voter fraud in the extremely rare cases where there was any, was done by Republican voters.

I can only hope you all will do better in the future for the sake of all of us, but the nearly certain thing, change is really hard, especially if you are getting the changes to our country you want for your own benefit.  You might start to think a bit about why you want so many to have fewer rights than you have, why you continue to blame poor people for their poverty, why you think rich people deserve more than everyone else and keep pumping money into their pockets.  Why do you despise young people so much (except your own kids, of course) that you dismiss their demands for a strong positive response to climate change (global warming), voting rights, poverty, human rights, sensible gun control, and their other issues.

Your party hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory this past quarter century.  Don’t you think it’s about time you stage your own rebellion and occasionally, put the needs of others who perhaps don’t look, think, or believe like you, ahead of your party’s destructive agenda?  Sadly, I don’t see that happening.

If you were ready to rebel at all, you would be telling McConnell, “no more nominee approvals until the nation is back on its feet, and no more incompetents approved.”  You’d tell Mr. Trump to listen to the experts, and he himself is not an expert on this.  You’d be 100% behind laws to insure every American citizen has the right and ability to vote unimpeded in every election.  You’d see the pain Americans are experiencing now and you’d be standing with them doing everything in your power to get those frontline workers everything they need to care for themselves and the people they encounter.

I know, I hear you laughing or, some of you, tossing a curse in my direction.  Oh well, another fault of us teachers.  We haven’t taught you to take and learn from a critique. 

GO TEACHERS !

Teachers have been maligned in many ways over the past 2 decades.  We have been blamed for our students' poverty, their inability to focus, their negative behavior (when they exhibit such), students' lack of progress, and so many other things.  We are given more and more work every year.  Our ability to teach is infringed every day by administrators and politicians who could not do what we do.  And, we are told "You have off every summer, what are you complaining about!" 

Funding for our schools is cut over and over.  Important programs like libraries, music, and art are cut.  Those who do the cutting do not send their children to the schools without these programs.  But, they do institute charter schools in the poorest communities.  charter schools and their private owners are paid top dollar for doing less with more, while public schools must constantly do more with less. 

Adversarial relationships are developed between parents and community members and teachers by conservative media that would love all public schools to be taken over by dogmatic thought-control institutions that can steer our children's minds to a place where they will question nothing. 

We force students to take standardized, "gotcha" tests that don't measure what they know, but the level of stress and frustration they will tolerate while "proving" they are ignorant fools. 

In many states, teacher salaries are insufficient to cover daily expenses while financial guys who don't work nearly as hard are paid millions.  How is this right?

Enough!

We teachers are sick of it.  Sometimes, striking is the only weapon we have when the situation becomes so bad we can no longer function in any meaningful way.  It is interesting the states where teachers face the harshest conditions and lowest salaries are the most conservative?  Hmmm!  These are also the states that have vilified unions, which in most places are the only protection teachers have.  It's time the public learns that unions are the only force in our country that has truly championed workers over time. 

I am 100% behind the teachers all over the country who are walking out for their rights and the rights of their students to have the resources they need to succeed!  This is a start, but we have a long way to go to bring our schools to a place where schools are seen as essential, charter schools are held accountable, teachers are respected as professionals, and students are given more options related to their education.  Schools must have sufficient resources to select and teach a curriculum that emphasizes critical and creative thinking and problem-solving.

This is asking a lot, but it can be done.  In 1957 when the Russian satellite Sputnik was launched, America stepped up and enhanced its educational programs to prepare students for a challenging science-centered future.  We need another similar program to develop well-informed, thoughtful, creative citizens prepared to face a changing world where global warming will impact everything. 

So, pay teachers a professional salary.  Evaluate curricula and select those that are strongest related to truth, critical and creative thinking, and problem-solving in the real world.  Re-instate music, the arts in general, and libraries in the schools.  Incorporate technology in ways that will allow students to broadly explore their world through guided inquiry.  Truly embrace diversity and provide resources to shape each students education to actual needs.  Employ sufficient staff to support the work of the teachers. 

Then, here is the inexpensive part.  Encourage media outlets to promote the teaching profession as exciting, challenging, and essential for the future of our country. 

TEACHER SHORTAGE

By Ruth A. Sheets

There is a national teacher shortage.  In many states, we are told, this shortage has been going on for some time.  It is a critical problem.  I had a friend who had no degree, but was teaching in a school in New Mexico.  She was a dedicated person, but had no substantial training to be in a classroom as its teacher.

Why is there a shortage?  Forty years ago when I came out of college with an Education degree, I couldn't get a job because there were so many teachers looking for work.  Teaching was seen as an honorable profession and although pay was low, teachers were respected.

I am now a teacher.  I just completed my 22nd year in public school teaching.  I love my students and work many extra hours each week and during the summer.  Like so many veteran teachers, I work hard because I believe what I do matters.

Why is there a teacher shortage?  There are a lot of reasons.  Here are a few that I see in my district. 

Teachers are often treated like incompetents.  Our ideas are dismissed in favor of "I feel this would be better for our children" stated by administrators whose experience is not adequate to the needs of the students.  For example, we are told we must have "bell to bell instruction" which means some kind of reading or written work all day long.  As if this were not enough, all classes in a particular grade are to be teaching the same thing at the same time every day.  When we ask where the evidence is for these practices, we are shown none, but told we MUST do this or lose our jobs.

Despite strong evidence that recess, physical activity during the day, and the arts are essential for happy, healthy, well-educated children, our schools have less than 15 minutes per day of recess, limited exposure to the arts, and sitting all day is the norm.

Every couple of years, new curricula are purchased, never the whole curriculum  for any subject, and we are given inadequate training in it.  But, we are expected to raise student achievement with it, while we are trying to learn its nuances.  We are told that unless we follow every single step of the procedure, we are responsible if our students don't get "Proficient" scores or higher on the state exams.

We must daily, perform miracles with students whose living conditions are in some cases 3rd world with limited resources, while governments discuss cutting funding to every program that helps people in poverty.  My students' families struggle to make ends meet, holding down 2 or more jobs at a time. The stress students experience can be dramatic.

In most states, all teachers have at least a Master's degree by the time they have taught 5 years.  That is a substantial education requirement that many occupations do not have, yet teachers' knowledge and experience are ignored as though what has been learned and experienced counts for nothing. 

Then, administrators are in a "gotcha" mode.  Every time they enter a classroom or do a "walk through," of a school, it is not about encouragement for either teachers or students.  It is about pointing out how the teachers are doing things wrong and are incompetent, but "allowed" to teach in the district's precious classrooms out of the goodness of the administrators'  hearts.  Teachers are often threatened with loss of job if they don't measure up to some arbitrary standards, impossible to meet with real children who live in challenging conditions. 

We are no longer to display store bought materials and posters.  Teachers in our district are expected to produce all of our own room decorations and handwritten notes on what the class is working on every day.  These are to be displayed prominently in the classroom so anyone walking in the room can "see" what the class is working on.  This leaves little room for either flexibility or true adaptation for struggling students.  And, we are to provide our own materials if the school does not have them.  It feels like being a robot training robots.

It is hard to attract new teachers to this.  We veterans have come to love our children so much we will put up with all this nonsense.  The new teachers get burned out before they get to see just how great our kids are. 

How do we fix this?  We begin by acknowledging that "not everyone can teach."  The notion that everyone is already a teacher and with a little training can manage and equip a class has let governments, administrators, businesses, and so many others dismiss the complexities of teaching.  If you assume anyone can do the job, you put little or no value on it.  You come to expect that the children will be taught everything they need to know in the ways colleges and businesses want them to be  taught or else the teachers are just not doing their job correctly or are lazy.

I am sorry to have gone on in this way, but I love teaching and want things to change enough to encourage young people to enter the profession and come to love teaching and the children taught as much as I have.  I want young people to know the joy of watching children grow and learn and discover as they move through their childhood into the future. 

We as a nation need to stand up and claim our public schools.  Instead of trying to privatize and shut them down.  WE need to state loud and clear for all to hear that it is in public schools that our children learn diversity.  They come to value our democracy and want to pass it on.  Our children can learn to see and help those who are struggling.  It is where we have exceptional teachers who care deeply for the children, not because their parents have a lot of money to support the school, but because they are children for whom we as a community are responsible.

We count on you, the village that we are helping to raise our children.  Stand up for us teachers and our children. 

Anyone Can Teach

by Ruth A. Sheets

I must say “thank you” to the teachers of Chicago for standing for the kids and for themselves.  During the past few years, teachers and public schools have been the target of all kinds of folks who “know” about education and are sure they “know” exactly what to do about it.

According to standardized tests, our children are doing so poorly that it is amazing we are still a “first world country.”  We are in an education crisis, say those who claim to know. 

As so often happens when America faces difficult situations, we want to turn the problem over to private for-profit entities who, for a price, will make things all better.  There is a lot of money in education, and the for-profits want as big a chuck of it as they can get.

Do these folks know anything about education?  Does it matter?  Since everyone has been a student sometime in their lives, they are automatically experts on education.  That’s like saying “I’ve been a patient, therefore I know everything about medicine.”

Trained educators know that there must be some type of accountability and that there should be an effective system of evaluating teachers and how they are doing.  Subjectivity, not objectivity, however, reigns in the evaluation process.  Standardized testing is the tool of people who think that “one size fits all” in determining success.  It’s easier than actually trying to figure out how to help kids learn more effectively and teachers to teach more effectively.

So what do we do in the face of poor test scores?  We respond to anyone who comes in with the promise of making things better.  We Americans have always been vulnerable to snake oil salesmen.

“Give me a school and I’ll fix it.  Make sure you give me a lot of money too, tax-payer money that is.  We’ll make the school day longer, pay teachers less or better yet, make their pay tied to how well their kids do on tests.  Pay for the computers the students need and we need more money for trips and air conditioning for the school.  We’ll show you!

"Accountability, what’s that?  The students didn’t do well this first five years because we are trying to clean up after those awful public school teachers who ruined the kids and it will take at least another ten years to see any progress.  I know what I am doing."

The parents believe that this charter school is better than the regular public schools, so, OF COURSE, IT IS.

This nonsense is what the teachers in Chicago are fighting.  Everyone thinks they know what students need.  Everyone thinks they can teach and that when kids don’t score well, THERE must be a bad teacher INVOLVED SOMEWHERE. 

People like Mayor Emmanuel love standardized tests and are so sure that these tests tell EVERYTHING about the students tested, that they would tie a teacher’s salary to the scores.  They hand over “charter” schools to anyone who comes along promising miracles.  A few of these charter schools are doing better, but not many.

What does happen, though is union busting.  It is about trying to destroy one of the few unions with any power left in the United States TO STAND AGAINST CORPORATE GREED.  Usually, it is Republicans who run this racket, but lately, some Democrats have gotten on board.  That’s too bad because it leaves so few people out there standing for us teachers and our students.

If our nation really cared about our children and how well they do in school, we would be actively addressing the issues related to poverty.  It is no accident that the schools where children are performing poorly are in poverty-ridden areas. 

If our leaders were as well-educated as they would like us to think they are, they would have noted the connection between poor schools, poor performance, poor communities, and poor children.  Where were these leaders when their teachers were showing them how to make meaningful connections, back in the day?  They were probably daydreaming about all the money attendance at their exclusive private school would bring them.