A Painful Search for Common Ground

As I lay in the dark very early Wednesday morning, this was who I pictured first: Maria, my former student, without documents, wondering now whether she will be able to finish college; Sam, a high school transgender student who wants to shower after running cross-country; Frank, my African-American colleague who worries for his young children. I could touch their fear. I could not sleep.

Later, as the sun rose, I heard from my brother who voted for Trump because he didn’t trust Hillary Clinton. I heard from Bill, a former student who believed Clinton was too closely tied to big banks and Wall Street, and Diane, who lives in a small town left behind in the new economy. These are people I like, trust and respect. I did not agree with them, but I do not doubt their sincerity.

I believe in my heart that there is common ground in America, and we must find that common ground. I do not believe that half of our nation endorses the platform of animosity that underlaid Trump’s campaign. Many of us fear for our futures. Will we have a job? Will we be able to pay for health care? Will there be respect for the practice of our faith, and for our values of family and hard work? These questions led many voters to Donald Trump.

Still, it is a simple fact that Trump’s campaign has wakened our nation’s slumbering beast of anger and hatred, targeting minorities, immigrants, gays and lesbians. We have already seen, in just these past few days, a rise in attacks and bullying in playgrounds and on the streets.

We cannot leave anyone alone to face violence and bigotry. We will be called upon to stand with one another, with the most vulnerable people in our society.

I badly need to be joined by my family and friends who supported Trump, proving with their presence that they were not voting for racism and discrimination. I don’t expect us to come together in this way, however. For the most part these same friends and relatives live in small towns scattered around the country. Or they live one block away yet seem to rarely cross paths with those who will be hurt most - just as I rarely cross paths with those who have lost manufacturing jobs and see no options in their future.

It is going to be a while before I can take my own steps towards reconciliation. Right now, I wake up in the night with a knot in my stomach. My fear for our future includes speeding our slide toward global warming, a failure to protect our environment, diminished health care, and escalation rather than negotiation of international conflicts.

It would not have taken many votes for me to be sleeping better, for Democrats to be proclaiming a “mandate,” but the math would have been the same. We are a nation split apart, in many ways invisible to each other. Somehow, we have to build a bigger political majority that, I believe, reflects the true values and hopes of our nation.

I plan to listen to the voices across the great divide, to learn from my friends and family about their hopes and fears. I know that I will disagree with much that I will hear, but I need to know their stories.

I also plan to speak back across that same divide, not with a political platform but to share the stories of the very real people who will be directly affected by what I fear is  coming tsunami - my former students, my friends and neighbors. I want their names, and their lives, known.

We fight fear with hope. We find hope with action. I intend to act loudly, standing with the vulnerable. And I intend to act quietly, trying to learn and to share and to seek a broader common ground.

First published Nov. 27, 2016 in the Durham Herald Sun

Voice of the Angels: Rhiannon Giddens

The intelligence of a self-described nerd, the voice of an angel, the conscience of a saint. Rhiannon Giddens sang last night at Duke. Stunning and fabulous.

Founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, now on a solo tour (but still backed by a newly reconstituted and amazing Chocolate Drops), Giddens ranged from Patsy Cline to Sister Rosetta Tharpe ("Up Above My Head"), from blues to reclaimed ministrel tunes.

Check her out. Amazing.
http://rhiannongiddens.com/
http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/

Listening to the Police

It has to be pretty much the hardest job in America - making split-second life-and-death decisions, working day after day with people who are either in trouble or victims of trouble, never knowing when violence will explode.

I have written about my own challenges with profiling, and I am not under anything like the pressure of an officer on the scene. Read my column here. 

We have been hearing about what happens when the police get it wrong. We have not heard much about what police themselves think, and how hard many work to get it right, time after time. This American Life has done two excellent podcasts that try to let police speak for themselves. Check it out - "Cops Think Differently" (episodes 547 and 548)

Longevity Matters

The News and Observer hit the nail on the head: legislators pay their own employees longevity pay because they value their expertise; the expertise of veteran teachers is discounted.

Here is the story, written by Dan Kane, as good a reporter as I have ever met:
NC Teachers Lose Bonus Pay, But Others Still Cash In

Their photographer, Harry Lynch, let me talk for a while on this video:

There is no magic to good schools. Put good teachers in classrooms and give them support; help families help their children. It is pretty simple, and it is pretty hard to do. Experienced teachers are going to be better teachers than new teachers, and experienced teachers are the ones who help new teachers become good teachers. Also simple, and also ignored.

Suspending Judgment

It was a panel of students, at our before-school meeting, that drove home the point: students want classrooms that are under control. The students - boys, girls, Hispanic, African-American, white, older, younger - were unanimous: get kids out of our classroom who keep us from learning.

Immediately after the student panel, we looked at school data showing the numbers of students who failed English I (100) and Algebra I (90), and the number of students suspended from school long-term (104). Of those 104 students, 39 were suspended for the rest of the year; the remaining 65 returned to school. These suspension numbers do not include students suspended for short periods of time.

The first, obvious although I believe incorrect, conclusion to draw from the data is that if we do not suspend students then they will be more likely to pass their classes. An alternative conclusion, drawing on the stories recounted by the student panel, is that too many disruptive students are placed back in classrooms where they prevent other students from learning.

Certainly, any of us who have taught these classes know that one or two students can take down an entire class. Sure, we can see on tv teacher-heroes who turn belligerent teen-agers into self-disciplined agents of learning. And, in fact, each of us who has taught these classes can tell our own story of the student we reached who turned his or her life around. Those are the stories that keep us teaching.

Still, the reality is that the best of teachers work hard to control the classroom, and that when a disruptive student is placed back into the room without an agreement of behavior-change, it is virtually impossible to teach successfully.

We seem to have many advocates for reducing suspensions and keeping kids in school. Those advocates are important. But, we seem to have few advocates for children who are quietly trying to go about their education only to see their learning obstructed by other students.

I do not believe in throwing children out on the streets. No teacher believes that. I do believe, however, that a school, and school system, needs alternatives to traditional classrooms for children who disrupt learning for others.

It is not only the suspended students who fail. It is also the students who are prevented from learning who go down with them. That is a tragedy.

Counting What Counts

When we test the minimum expectations (e.g. Alg I and English I), then we organize our schools around those minimal standards. To raise the expectations for our schools, we need to be accountable for higher standards - students taking advanced coursework; students performing in the arts; students active physically; students prepared for citizenship.
See "Counting What Counts," my column in the Herald-Sun, for a critique of our current approach to school assessment.

Smart Phones, Dumb Schools?

It is a conundrum: we want students to use technology, and yet we ban cell phones.

Indeed, we will bring an antique cart of laptops to a classroom, wait 15 minutes for them to boot, while students sit with instant-internet access phones in their backpacks.

Well, truth be told, the phones are not in their bags. The students have the phones in their laps, sending texts to each other, while waiting for the laptops to boot.

The problem is that students pay more attention to their phones than to their teachers (that would be me). The myth is that in the old days they were locked into everything I said.

I suspect we would be better off by welcoming students' phones, and then teaching the students appropriate use. While they are multi-tasking, maybe we can show them why multi-tasking is a bad idea. Impossible, actually, according to brain researchers. (Watch a video on multi-tasking).

P.S. Open question (meaning, I don't know the answer): Schools are required by federal law to restrict access to certain types of internet access - does this apply to a student's own phone or computer, used on school grounds?