Keep in mind none of these districts need open their grounds to religious organizations. They could simply cite the Separation of Church and State and be done with it.
The first clause in the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” This has been interpreted to mean that the government shall neither support nor prohibit religious expression.
Districts apparently CAN ignore the Church/State conundrum – BUT – if a district is going to violate this tenant for one organization, it has to be willing to do so for all.
And that is why TST is making this point.
Unlike the Church of Satan, a religious institution founded in the 1960s that literally worships the Biblical devil, TST is a non-theistic organization which uses hyperbole and humor to protest the Religious Right and authoritarianism. The organization says it strives to “provide a safe and inclusive alternative” to Christian-based groups that may seek to “convert school children to their belief system.”
All it took was a police investigation and the threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to make it happen.
The Saucon Valley School District in the Lehigh Valley already allows explicitly religious organizations to hold meetings on school grounds like the Good News Club run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, a Christian fundamentalist organization that seeks to influence schoolchildren as young as five.
So TST requested permission to start a new club on district property with the slogan “Educatin’ with Satan.”
“Proselytization is not our goal, and we’re not interested in converting children to Satanism,” writes TST. “We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”
The response was immediate with messages from concerned citizens flooding into the district.
The point went over many people’s heads. “What’s next, the after-school heroin club?” asked someone in an email.
Others seemed to understand the district’s hypocrisy in blurring the lines between Church and State: “Please shut down all religious after-school clubs if that’s what needs to be done to keep Satan out of that building,” read another email.
And then there was this: “I’m gonna’ come in there and shoot everybody,” said a recorded voice.
The caller wasn’t some hooded devil worshipper. He allegedly was a 20-year-old North Carolina man who was worried, “the After-School Satan Club is trying to turn kids into devils,” according to law enforcement.
Shortly after, the suspect, Ceu “Van” Uk, was arrested by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. He was arraigned on a charge of Terroristic Threats and sent to jail in lieu of $75,000 bail. He is expected to be extradited to Pennsylvania, according to a news release.
Though violence was averted, the school board and administrators denied the club’s request. They even blamed the After-School Satan Club for the controversy despite it being the target of Uk’s violence.
“Our community has experienced chaos. Our students, staff, and teachers have had to endure a threat to their safety and welfare,” Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty wrote.
“The gravity of feelings of instability, anxiety, and fear have been profound.”
Both the national and Pennsylvania chapter of the ACLU sent a letter to the Saucon Valley School District demanding that it allow the After-School Satan Club access to school facilities just as it allows other clubs. The district eventually agreed.
The club, which has six student members and is the first of its kind in the Commonwealth, New Jersey or Delaware, is expected to have its first meeting today in the district middle school.
Sadly, the Pennsylvania incident is just the most recent one in which religious people have resorted to threats of violence to stop others from the same religious expression they take for granted.
Another After-School Satan Club, which was allowed to meet in February at an elementary school in the Chesapeake School District in Virginia, followed a similar path.
Parents protested outside B.M. Williams Primary School, but the first meeting was held on February 16 anyway and reportedly attended by nine students.
Less than a week later, the elementary school was forced to evacuate following a bomb threat from an email saying the school promoted “devil worship,” according to local media.
The email mentioned threats toward three people: a Chesapeake school board member, the superintendent and the organizer of the After-School Satan Club. “You are evil, there is no other way to put it,” the email reads. “You promote devil worship and unIslamic values.”
It’s ironic how so-called religious values like tolerance and non-violence are more frequently found with Satan than adherents of faiths that are supposed to be espousing those beliefs.
There’s also something glaringly disingenuous when schools complain about these issues – they could avoid clubs of a religious nature entirely.
By contrast, there are more than 4,000 Good News Clubs in public schools (often elementary schools) in America. Their stated purpose is:
“to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the Word of God and in a local church for Christian living.”
The lessons taught in these Evangelical and similar clubs are far more destructive than anything you’ll find in an irreverent “Satan” club. Good News Clubs and others like them stress Old Testament narratives of a retributive God who punishes sin, warns children that they will suffer an eternity in Hell if they refuse to believe, and stresses complete obedience as the supreme value. They tell children as young as preschoolers that they have “dark” and “sinful” hearts, were born that way, and “deserve to die” and “go to Hell.” Such messages rob children of the innocence and enjoyment of childhood, replacing them with a negative self-image, preoccupation with sin, fear of Hell, and an aversion to critical thinking.
This is because most religious clubs are Biblically based and interpret that text literally. Meanwhile, The Satanic Temple’s more than 700,000 members don’t worship Satan. They take their central figure as a literary character, a symbol for the “Eternal Rebel,” according to their website. They are against “tyrannical authority” and support “individual sovereignty,” as well as empathy, compassion, and defiance.
TST has waged public battles against the religious and GOP right on issues involving First Amendment freedoms, LGBTQ rights, and abortion access.
Their approach has been often irreverent. In keeping with their belief in bodily autonomy, one of the temple members’ latest projects is an online clinic which aims to provide abortion medication by mail. They call it the Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.
Last October, a Dallas-area Satanic Temple held an “Unbaptism” event. According to its website, an “Unbaptism” is an activity in which “participants renounce superstitions that were imposed upon them without their consent as a child” — essentially, religious beliefs from which adults want to be disentangled. After all, most religions indoctrinate children into their beliefs before they are old enough to understand them or choose the beliefs for themselves. Why not offer them a chance to reject them once they’re mature enough to make a free choice?
The fliers for the Saucon Valley program promised kids ages 5 to 12 science and community service projects, puzzles, games, nature activities, arts and crafts, snacks “& tons of fun.”
This may scare some people, but I say thank goodness for Satan!
They need to prove their moral worth – and one way to do that would be to stop threatening people who have different beliefs.
Moreover, administrators and school directors need to rediscover their reverence for the Separation of Church and State.
This is one of the bedrock principles on which our nation was founded.
Find your courage to stand up to religious organizations demanding you shred your morals and responsibilities to everyone in the community.
If you value religious freedom, practice what you preach.
Or get ready for an After-School Satan Club in your neighborhood.
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But occasionally an invitation, a chance encounter or an article in the local news gives a glimpse of who they are or where they end up.
For example, a few months ago I was invited to a ceremony where one of my former students was being awarded the rank of Eagle Scout. He was getting ready to graduate high school now, and in the picture on the invitation he looked about ready to burst out of his scouting uniform – but he had the same smile, the same glimmer of mischief in the eye.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I should attend – if after four years the student – let’s call him Doug – really wanted me to be there. But then he stopped by my classroom after school one day. He must have remembered that I’d still be there grading papers, rewriting lessons, making myself available if needed.
“Are you going to come to the ceremony, Mr. Singer?” he asked in a way that left no doubt how important this was to him.
I remembered Doug in class. He was always such a prankster. He was the first person to crack a joke – even reciting some classic but inappropriate standup routines as if they were his own. I’d shared with him some old Doctor Demento tapes and we’d had a few laughs.
“I asked Mr. Kimble to come, too, but he said he was busy. He’s dead to me now,” he said with a smirk.
He wanted me to see how far he’d come – that as dedicated to humor and jollity as he was, Doug could be serious as stone when need be. He had led his fellow scouts in refurbishing a local veterans memorial and showed himself to be a real leader. If he wanted the world to laugh, it was only in service of making it a better place.
Several weeks later I found myself in a similar situation with another former student.
Unlike the scenario with Doug, I wasn’t expecting anything. In fact, it took me a few moments to even recognize the boy through the man he had become.
I was at a local movie theater with a section of my school’s Dungeons and Dragons club. I started the extracurricular club and am lead sponsor. During the week, we get together and play the tabletop role playing game. I try to have them both organize the adventures and play through them. Some kids function as Dungeon Masters and others have characters like warriors, wizards, elves, orcs and dragon-borns.
On this weekend, one of our local families had paid for the group to see the “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” movie. I was herding the kids together in front of the movie poster to take a picture of the event when this full-grown man walks up to me and says, “Hey! Mr. Singer!”
I squinted at him, but he had a huge grin on his face and seemed happy to see me. Then I noticed that one of my club members was at his waist pulling on his sleeve asking for some popcorn.
We shook hands and he introduced himself as Jamal’s big brother. Then he asked if his brother was good in class or bad like he had been.
That’s when it came together. I saw through the adult and to the kid he had been – a kid pretty similar to his brother Jamal.
It must have been 10 years ago. He had been a diminutive boy in a class of kids who had hit puberty a few months before him. He had been shy and often got picked on. He tried hard on his assignments – at least the ones he turned in.
The adult version chatted with me as his brother went to the concessions stand with the money he had given him. Though he lived a few neighborhoods away these days, he tried his best to come back to the district to look out for his brother.
He didn’t go into many details, but it was obvious he had gone through a lot in the intervening years. He had a limp and smelled of musty pine trees. But he was clearly there for Jamal when no one else was.
Jamal’s big brother was still smiling, proud that his little brother knew who this brave woman is before the film had explained it.
If you saw him on the street, you might not think him a success story. He seemed an average person just doing what he could to get by. But I knew (at least some) of the journey he had taken to get there. I knew how hard won his peace was. And I recognized that smile still on his face – so rare when he had been in class but now a permanent feature. I think that is success, too.
But the last former student I want to talk about is Marquis.
He was in one of my first classes. I remember him as a gawky middle schooler with string bean arms and legs below a sullen face.
When I started, if there was one student sent to the office that day – it was him. If there was one kid shouting out a swear word or picking a fight, it was Marquis. This was an angry kid who demanded attention – positive, negative, it didn’t matter.
I used to make badly behaved students stay 15 minutes after school for detention. It’s not something I do so much these days but I was a new teacher then – strict and consumed with reciprocal justice. In fact, students had to WORK during my detentions. No sleeping or even doing homework. They had to copy definitions out of the dictionary for the full time. If they slacked off, I added more time. Some days a 15-minute detention could last an hour, because if I reported that they hadn’t satisfied me, the principal would keep them on the weekend or in a longer detention during the week with an administrator.
I remember Marquis whining and complaining as he copied definitions. He’d spend more time whining than working – but eventually he learned.
Eventually he’d come in, sit up straight in his seat and copy those definitions from start to finish like a machine. He did it so well, his scores on my vocabulary quizzes started to improve. But he still ended up getting detentions – at least twice a week.
One day he finished the definitions and I told him he could go. “Can I stay?” he said.
“What?”
“Can I stay and copy definitions a little longer?”
I almost started to cry – right then and there.
So THAT’S why he always got detentions. He wanted somewhere to go after school. He wanted someone to talk to, someplace safe to wait so he could walk home unmolested by the other kids.
He never got detention again because I told him he could stay with me any day he wanted after school for as long as he wanted. And he did. Sometimes we’d talk. Sometimes he’d do work. It didn’t matter, but his behavior in my class improved.
He continued building on that success, too. He went up to the high school and got better and better grades. He kept out of trouble and became one of those kids everyone seems to know and most people seem to like. He was the kind of kid that every teacher had an anecdote about.
I hadn’t thought about him in some time, but then an item appeared in the local news.
Drive-by Shooting Kills Area Man. It was Marquis.
He had just been walking along the street helping some younger kids to the basketball courts. By all accounts he has straightened up his life, got a college degree and was just starting on a career as a social worker in the same community where he grew up.
I turned to my files and I saw I still had a folder with his name on it – back when I used to collect such things. Inside were a few old write ups, and pages and pages of vocabulary words in his childish handwriting.
We never know what will happen to the kids in our classrooms.
We never know who will be successful, who will be happy, who will live fulfilling lives.
But we try – we try SO HARD – to give our kids everything we can.
Doug had a straight path, and so far he’s walked it without incident.
Jamal’s brother had a lot of bumps on the road, but he’s still walking it.
“Count no man happy until the end is known,” wrote the ancient Greek story-teller Herodotus.
Known as the father of history, he meant that you never know if someone is truly happy until their death, because even a seemingly happy person today could have a tragedy befall them tomorrow taking away everything that made them happy.
I think about that sometimes when considering the fate of my former students.
The non-profit chain of 13 schools based in Pittsburgh, Pa, boasts high academics, safe campuses and certified teachers.
At least, that’s what its advertising blitz proclaims from every grocery store cart, newspaper page, radio announcement and billboard. Which just goes to show that anyone will tout your virtues if you pay them enough money – taxpayer money, that is.
Take Propel McKeesport – the franchise located in my own neighborhood.
“…ranked as ONE OF THE BEST charter schools in the nation by U.S. News World Report” (Emphasis mine).
One of the best is not THE best. But it’s still good. Let’s call it embellishing the school’s resume.
According to Propel’s Website, in 2021, the McKeesport location was #11 in the state’s charter elementary schools and #7 in the state’s charter middle schools.
I suppose that is impressive, too, though being one of the best CHARTER SCHOOLS isn’t the same as being one of the best SCHOOLS.
The percentage of students achieving proficiency in math was 7% (which is lower than the Pennsylvania state average of 38%) for the 2020-21 school year. The percentage of students achieving proficiency in reading was 34% (which is lower than the Pennsylvania state average of 55%) for the 2020-21 school year.
Moreover, test scores in both subjects were higher at the McKeesport Area School District, the local authentic public school – 17% higher in math and 3.5% higher in reading at the elementary level and 6% higher in math and 2% higher in reading at the middle school level. Propel McKeesport does not teach beyond 8th grade.
So what exactly is Propel celebrating?
Maybe it’s the fact that its McKeesport location achieved these standardized test scores while teaching an intensely racially segregated student body – 86% minority (mostly Black). By comparison, the authentic public schools range from 52-71% minority students (mostly Black).
I’m not sure that’s much of a victory. Wasn’t one of the major tenants of the civil rights movement having racially integrated schools – that doing so would help students of color achieve academically because resources couldn’t be horded away from them?
In 2015, two teenagers at Propel Braddock Hills High School were arrested after one allegedly tried to sell guns to another in a bathroom during the school day. Two guns were recovered by police and the students were taken into custody on campus. The rest of the students were placed on lockdown until police cleared the area.
In 2019, police arrested four people in connection with a scheme to steal nearly $23,000 from Propel Schools by forging checks in the charter school operator’s name. The Propel Schools Foundation filed a report with police after discovering nearly two dozen fraudulent checks in Propel’s name had been cashed at various places, a Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman said. At least 28 checks drawn against the school’s bank account were counterfeit, the complaint said. The fake checks were cashed using the forged signature of the school’s co-founder, Jeremy Resnick.
So does Propel provide a safe learning environment? Maybe. But not more so than any other district.
Individual Attention and Small Class Size
The problem here is verification.
Charter schools are not nearly as transparent as authentic public schools. They are not required by law to provide as much information about their operations as neighborhood public schools. For instance, nearly every authentic public school district is run by an elected school board which has open meetings and open records.
For Propel it is unclear exactly how members are chosen for its corporate board, but it is difficult for parents and community members to be appointed.
According to an article in Public Source, individuals can only become board members if they are already members of the “Friends of Propel,” but the charter chain did not provide information on this group or how its members are selected.
When it comes to class size, most Propel schools report having student-to-teacher ratios slightly smaller or the same as at neighborhood authentic public schools. But who knows? There’s no way to tell whether classes may actually be larger.
However, individual attention is even harder to verify.
Most schools focus on more individual attention these days.
Unfortunately, the network provides very little detailed information about its curriculum.
So this claim by Propel is a way of bragging that the network doesn’t have to have certified and qualified teachers, but it does so anyway.
Unfortunately, it is definitively false.
According to those US News and World Report spotlights that the charter school network likes to highlight, several Propel schools do not have all certified teachers. For instance, Propel McKeesport only has 92% full-time certified teachers, Propel Homestead only has 94%, Propel Pitcairn only has 96%, etc.
So does Propel have 100% Certified and Qualified Teachers? Absolutely not.
Award Winning Arts Programs
Kudos to Propel for recognizing that arts are an important part of the curriculum. Or at least using it as a selling point on its advertisements. However, without details of its curriculum submitted to the state and verifiable by audit, there is nothing to back this claim up factually.
In fact, on Propel’s own Website, the only reference I see to awards for art is a brief mention in its after-school program which they label as “award-winning.”
What award did it win? The ‘Propel Presents Itself with an Award’ Award? Is there anything more substantial to this claim?
Certainly every school should have a dress code, but can’t students express themselves freely anymore? I just don’t see why emulating the worst qualities of private schools is a great thing – especially when it adds an unnecessary cost for parents.
-Tuition Free
Charter schools are funded with public tax dollars. So, yes, you don’t have to pay a tuition to attend. However, you do have to pay for extras like school uniforms.
In fact, overcoming the unpopularity of charter schools because of the increased expense for taxpayers is cited by Droz Marketing – the company that made all those glossy Propel advertisements – on its Website portfolio as an obstacle the company had to overcome to sell Propel to the masses.
Which brings us back to the beginning.
Does Propel go beyond the facts in its claims for itself?
Certainly.
Many businesses do that these days. And make no mistake – Propel IS a business. If it can cut a corner or find a loophole to put more money in operators’ pockets, it will.
Technically, this is not illegal. But it certainly doesn’t help educate children. It just goes to enrich the charter school operators.
Non-profit? Yeah, in name only.
However, let me end with what may be the most telling indicator of what it is like at Propel’s charter schools.
indeed.com is a Website workers use to decide if they should apply at a given job site. Employees anonymously review their current place of employment to let prospective job applicants know what it is like there and if they should consider seeking a job there.
The site has many entries on schools in the Propel network. Some are positive. Some are glowing. But most are incredibly negative.
Here in their own words is what it’s like inside the Propel network from the people who work (or worked) there.
Para Educator (Former Employee) – Propel East, Turtle Creek – July 19, 2020
Pandering to the cultural climate and using all the right talking points still doesn’t provide a quality education because of the many behavior problems.
Educator (Current Employee) – Pittsburgh, PA – August 4, 2022
Management verbalizes a desire, but does not actively seek to improve diversity within the ranks of educators. The lack of diversity directly impacts how the student body is educated.
First Grade Teacher (Former Employee) – McKeesport, PA – April 15, 2022 I worked at Propel McKeesport for 9 days before I realized it would negatively affect my mental health greatly if I stayed. Everything about the school was chaotic and unorganized. There is so much asked of the teachers, and they are given little to no support in the process. The people that are put in place to act as supports are spread so thin, that you aren’t able to receive the support necessary. I would have to get to work early and stay late in order to get all of my tasks done. I had no time for my personal life, and I was constantly overwhelmed. Leaving was the best decision I could’ve made for myself and my well being. Pros Higher than average starting pay for new teachers, healthcare benefits Cons Unorganized, consuming, little support/structure
Elementary School Teacher (Former Employee) – Hazelwood, PA – February 3, 2022 My time at Propel Hazelwood was the worst experience I have ever had in a professional setting. The principal, at the time, had all sorts of big ideas, and no clue how to make them actionable. Behavior was managed through a failed token economy… so I’m sure you can imagine what behavior looked like. But good news, they’ll just fire you before you qualify for benefits, and trick the next poor sap. For reference, I was the 3rd of 5 teachers to go through that position in 2 years.
In summary, I hope you line up a therapist before you sign your soul away to Propel. I know I needed one. Pros There were no pros. I can’t even make one up. Cons Pitiful everything. People, leadership, attitudes, slogans, curriculum (or lack there of). Run away… fast.
Teacher (Former Employee) – McKeesport, PA – September 3, 2021 Propel McKeesport cannot keep their staff members. They have so many open positions because their lesson plan template is 6 pages long, and the work pile-up is more than loving your scholars. The wonderful scholars don’t get a chance to love who you are because you (if you are not a favorite) are swamped with work. The job is a nightmare. Pros There is not one pro I can think of. Cons Flooded with work. Lies and says it is “Propel-Wide”
Janitor (Current Employee) – Pittsburgh, PA – January 3, 2022
Hr treats you bad Teachers treat you bad You are less then nothing to everyone even your bosses Never work for Braddock propel worst school I’ve seen Pros Nothing Cons You will be treated like you are worthless
Teacher (Former Employee) – Braddock Hills, PA – September 27, 2021 Wow. It sounds good from the outside but is terrible in the inside. High school students were out of control. Administration offered little help. The parents were just as aggressive as their children. The teachers will throw anyone under the bus as soon as possible. Pros Great pay. Amazing benefits. Stellar retirement and health insurance. Cons Terribly behaved students, aggressive parents, woke and offended staff
Educator (Current Employee) – Pittsburgh, PA – May 21, 2021 Even though I went in knowing the hours would be long and the school year would be longer, I was not prepared for the lack of work life balance. I have worked with Propel for 3 years and I will say that it is all consuming. I have been expected to not only do my job during building hours, but outside of work as well. This would be fine if it was occasional, but especially during COVID, it has become constant. Not only is the work never ending, but in my buildng we are not given adequate time to eat (25 minutes) or plan (50 minutes, but this time is often taken up by meetings almost daily). On top of limited planning time and expectations that never seem to stop coming, many of us have been forced into taking on additional, unpaid roles that we did not ask or agree to, and “no thank you” is not accepted as an answer. The district struggles to employee substitutes, so teachers are often expected to split classes when other grade level members are out. This has resulted in 30+ students in classrooms during non-COVID times, with one educator. Pros Good benefits, reasonable pay for the area, great curriculum Cons Short breaks, underqualified building administration, limited support
Teacher (Current Employee) – Pittsburgh, PA – January 13, 2021 Propel staff does care a lot about the students, but it doesn’t feel like those who are higher up care as much about them. Having a CEO/Superintendent may be the reason for this. Pros Dedicated cohorts Cons Work-life balance off
teacher (Former Employee) – Montour, PA – July 24, 2020 There was always a feeling of being watched in a critical way throughout the day. Administration was constantly evaluating teacher performance in the classroom which created a negative work environment. When a student became disruptive in the classroom administrators were difficult to locate. If an administrator did come to the classroom he/she would coddle the student with candy or a fun activity before returning him/her to the classroom. Needless to say the disruptive behavior would continue within an hour. Positive effective leadership was nonexistent.
Accounting Manager (Former Employee) – Pittsburgh, PA – March 4, 2020 Did not get the job I was hired to do. Turnover was high. Cannot speak to majority of the the issues that I had due to a clause in my severance package.
Educator (Former Employee) – Pitcairn, PA – February 3, 2020 Challenging work environment, burn out is high, little support from administration. Propel varies from building to building, but overall its sounds great in theory and in their “plans”, but they’re not able to carry out what they promise to students or staff.
Pros: Let me start by saying, the students are amazing! The parents can be challenging but they truly want what’s best for their children. Cons: If you aren’t LIKED by the superintendent and assistant superintendent your days with Propel are numbered. From the onset, I was deceived by this organization. I spent 4-months interviewing for a High School principal position. I was offered the position of high school principal only to find out I would be a K-8 principal. This was the first red flag of many. Unfortunately, I wasn’t well liked therefore I received very little of what I needed to effectively lead the school. Instead, I got the unhelpful support they thought I needed and none of which I requested. By Feb. I had lost both my APs – one by choice and the other by force. In March I was given a replacement AP that wasn’t a good fit. Work-life balance does NOT exist at Propel Charter Schools. On average, I worked 12 -14-hour days. Sadly, this is the norm for principals in this network. If you are considering Propel for a position as a school administrator, I would not recommend it.
Teacher (Former Employee) – Hazelwood, PA – September 18, 2019
The staff is wonderful and very supportive. However, the students there are very disrespectful, rude, and have major problems with authority. As a teacher walking into the classroom, they refuse to listen, talk over you, cuss you, and not a lot is done about it.
Propel is not ran like a school, it is ran like a business. They do not give the students a fighting chance for a bright future. They are more worried about the name ‘propel’ than anything. The work-life balance is awful. They expect way too much of your own time and when they don’t get it, you are looked down on for it. They create cliques and if you are not in the clique, consider yourself gone. They place you wherever they want, certified or not, and will watch you fail. There is lack of help and support from the administration. The only decent people around are your co-workers. I would never recommend this as a work environment nor for parents to send their kids there. No learning takes place. You constantly deal with behavior problems while the children who want to learn are put on the back burner. They change rules half way into the school year and fudge their data. At the rate they are going, they will never compare to peers across the state for PSSAs due to behavior issues and poor management. Not to mention, your lunch is 20 minutes so I hope you can eat fast and 9X out of 10, your planning time to taken away from you for meetings! Be prepared for meetings!!!
There was little time to be able to practice individualized teaching practices and spend time working with students. Leaders were only focused on enrollment and test scores, and did not focus on the important needs of the child. Work/Home life balance did not exist, as emails and texts were sent at 9:00 PM at night. Money is the number one focus, and for a school system, it was not what was expected.
Pros
Teaching children, benefits and compensation
Cons
Bad work/home life balance
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“Teachers, we are operating on a lockdown. Please keep your doors locked until we tell you it has been lifted.”
Before me a sea of wide eyes and scared faces.
I slowly walked toward the door continuing the lesson I had been giving before the announcement. The door was already shut and secured but I nonchalantly turned the extra deadbolt.
“Click!” it sounded like a gunshot across the suddenly silent room.
I continued talking while making my way back to the blackboard pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
That’s just life in the classroom these days.
According to Eduction Week, there have been 38 school shootings in the US this year resulting in injuries or deaths. That’s up from 34 last year and the highest it’s been since the media source began tracking such things in 2018.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were only 10 such shootings in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.
That comes to a total of 130 school shootings in the last five years.
“Mr. Singer, can I go to the bathroom?” DeVon asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re still under lockdown. I’ll write you a pass as soon as it’s lifted.”
It seems like nowhere is safe.
Three of this year’s shootings were in my home state of Pennsylvania.
A 14-year-old student was killed and four others wounded (ages 17, 15, 14, and 14) in a shooting near the high school athletic field after a football scrimmage.
“Mr. Singer, what’s happening?” Olivia asked.
I turned to her confused at first then I realized what she meant.
“The lockdown? Let me check my laptop. No…. Nothing. I really don’t know, Honey. But I’m sure whatever it is, it will be over soon. Why don’t you get back to the assignment?”
Every few years we do this. Teachers huddle in classrooms and try to react to a shooting scenario. We either barricade ourselves in our classrooms or try to find an escape route. We help train police and local medical personnel.
At this years training, teachers were given a talk by a law enforcement “expert” who regaled us with his time working as a Blackwater mercenary in Afghanistan. He told us how difficult it was to make decisions under fire but that sometimes you had to make the hard decisions.
“Some of you teachers have kids in wheelchairs in your classrooms. You think you’re going to get your whole class out of the building and to safety!? You have to ask yourself, how are you going to get that kid in the wheelchair out? What are you going to do if a child flips out or is too scared to move? I know it’s not nice to think about, but sometimes you have to make decisions that will save the most people – not necessarily everyone.”
It made me want to vomit. But he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
I like to believe I’d pick the child up out of his wheelchair, throw him over my shoulder and carry him to safety. I hope I could calm down a child having a panic attack and whisk her out of the building.
“Mr. Singer, I really have to go to the bathroom.”
“You can’t hold it just a little longer, DeVon?”
“No,” he said hoping from foot to foot.
“Number 1 or number 2?”
He giggled and held up one finger.
I reluctantly pointed to the trash can.
“Take it over there to the corner. I’ll stand in front of you so…”
“Attention teachers! The lockdown has now been lifted. You may continue as normal.”
I sighed, unlocked the door and wrote DeVon a bathroom pass.
We never did find out what triggered the lockdown. One time it was a gunshot in the surrounding neighborhood. Another time it was an unauthorized adult seeking access to the building.
Not just on the days when one of these tragedies strike – but every day.
It is not safe for students and teachers – it will NEVER be completely safe, but it can be safer.
That’s the point – how safe can we make it?
And why aren’t we doing anything to reach that goal other than preparing for the worst?
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I wonder if the parents of the two adults killed in the shooting gave a thought to their grown children during what may have seemed like just another busy day at the end of the academic year.
We’re all so preoccupied. We tend to forget that every goodbye could be our last.
After all, they aren’t unpredictable. They aren’t inevitable. They’re man-made.
There have been 119 school shootings since 2018, according to Education Week, a publication that has been tracking such events for the last four years.
This only includes incidents that happen on K-12 school property or on a school bus or during a school sponsored event when classes are in session.
If we broaden our definition, there is much more gun violence in our communities every day.
According to The Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, there have been 212 mass shootings so far this year.
There were 693 mass shootings last year, 611 the year before and 417 the year before that.
In Australia, following a 1996 mass shooting in which 35 people were killed in Tasmania, Australian states and territories banned several types of firearms and bought back hundreds of thousands of banned weapons from their owners. Gun homicides, suicides, and mass shootings are now much less common in the country.
There have been 2,032 school shootings in the US since 1970, and these incidents are increasing. We’ve had 948 school shootings since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
We’re told that gun control is useless because new laws will just be pieces of paper that criminals will ignore. However, by the same logic, why have any laws at all? Congress should just pack it in, the courts should close up. Criminals will do what they please.
We may never be able to stop all gun violence, but we can take steps to make it more unlikely. We can at least make it more difficult for people to die by firearm. And this doesn’t have to mean getting rid of all guns. Just regulate them.
According to the Pew Research Center, when you ask people about specific firearm regulations, the majority is in favor of most of them – both Republicans and Democrats.
We don’t want the mentally ill to be able to buy guns. We don’t want suspected terrorists to be able to purchase guns. We don’t want convicted criminals to be able to buy guns. We want mandatory background checks for private sales at gun shows.
Yet our lawmakers stand by helpless whenever these tragedies occur because they are at the mercy of their donors. The gun industry owns too many elected officials.
In short, we need lawmakers willing to make laws. We need legislators who will represent the overwhelming majority of the public and take sensible action to protect the people of this country.
What we need is real gun control legislation. We need an assault weapons ban. We need to close the gun show loophole. We need buyback programs to get the mountains of firearms off the streets and out of the arsenals of a handful of paranoid “survivalists”.
We don’t need anyone’s thoughts and prayers.
We need action.
And we need it yesterday.
At this point there is simply no excuse.
If you don’t support gun control, you support school shootings.
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There are black kids and white kids, Muslim kids and Christian kids, Latinos and Lithuanians, Italians and Iranians, girls, boys and all genders in between.
There are tall kids and short kids. Fat kids and thin kids. And, yes, some kids who like other kids in ways which all adults might not approve.
However, some people are too juvenile to deal with it – they can’t even say the word or can’t even endure someone else saying it!
That’s not so bad when you’re 13 and terrified of your own sexuality, anxious that anyone might question your cis privilege.
You still have time to grow out of such sophomoric hijinks.
Silencing the grown-ups in school won’t change who the kids are. It will just forbid us from mentioning reality. It will permit us to recognize only the tiniest fraction of who our students are and leave a de facto shroud over the rest.
I refuse to turn my classroom into a closet.
It might make the most bigoted adults feel better. It might relieve grown-up fears that just talking about other ways to live is enough to mold someone into something against their nature.
As if such a thing were possible.
But it won’t help the kids.
People don’t become their sexuality. They discover who they were all along – and ultimately no piece of legislation can stop that. It can make that search more difficult, painful and riddled with guilt. But you are who you are.
It’s regressive shame-based norms like these that encourage little boys to bash those who are different.
That make them feel the only safety lies in violence against the other so no one questions who they are, themselves.
That scares them enough to giggle at a three-letter word embedded in a poem.
And speaking of my giggle goose, eventually he got himself under control.
Before the end of the period he came back to the table.
Silently, swiftly, and soberly, he sat down with the rest of us ready to continue discussing “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight.”
Not a titter or laugh.
It wasn’t until a week later that he turned to me with a smile and asked:
“Mr. Singer, did you have a gay weekend?”
I did, Buddy. I did.
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Players from Steel Valley School District contend that during a November playoff game at their home field, rivals South Side Area School District called them the N-word and “monkeys” as well as purposefully incapacitated their star player.
WPIAL Executive Director Amy Scheuneman said her organization is refusing to take sides and students, coaches and administrators for both districts will have to undergo racial sensitivity training.
It is absurd. Imagine making a gunman and the person he shot go through firearms training.
Talk about false equivalency!
“We don’t want to walk away saying you’re right and you’re wrong, but we need to learn from this,” Scheuneman said. “We need to all work together to make that happen.”
Calls for unity are great but justice needs to come first. It’s nearly impossible for everyone to just get along when you don’t hold wrongdoers accountable for their actions – especially when the victims are mostly black and the perpetrators are mostly white.
Though Steel Valley went on to win the game, their star senior running back and linebacker Nijhay Burt suffered a season ending ankle injury which his family alleges was caused by South Side Players on purpose.
Burt’s mother Shunta Parms says, “…The two players that tackled him, they were pushing off his ankle. They were twisting it as they got up. After they got up they cheered in his face and said ‘Yeah! We got you now!’”
WPIAL board of directors and Diversity and Inclusion Council heard testimony for more than four hours on Wednesday.
The meeting was closed to the public at the request of the South Side District from Beaver County, and WPIAL officials have refused to give specific details of what was said behind closed doors.
However, Scheuneman was adamant that the board did not find any evidence the official used racial taunts.
“…The board did not find that to be accurate,” Scheuneman said.
I would love to know what evidence there was to so unequivocally clear the referee.
Especially since she noted the other allegations came down to a matter of he said-she said.
There were “conflicting reports” about what happened and “direct testimony against” the claims of Burt and the Steel Valley School District, Scheuneman said.
“Based on what we heard, I would say that, while there may be tendencies to lean one way or another, it was inconclusive, specifically, one way, as opposed to another.”
Ma’am, isn’t it your job to lean one way or another?
You need to be impartial at first but then you listen to the evidence and decide who was at fault.
Either South Side Beaver players used hate speech against Steel Valley players or not. Either they intentionally injured Steel Valley’s star player or not.
And if they did not, that means Steel Valley players made the whole thing up.
Do you really find that possibility credible?
“There was testimony on both sides, and there were missed opportunities by adults from both schools, so we do feel that it’s important for everybody to learn from the events that happened and take something positive from it,” Scheuneman said.
And Steel Valley’s coach did not report his player’s accusations to the head referee.
Therefore, they’re both to blame!?
What the heck are you smoking!?
Steel Valley Superintendent Ed Wehrer issued a statement that shed some light on the previous incident at South Side Beaver:
“The testimony by South Side Area confirmed that a month prior to the playoff game at issue a member of their team had behaved the same way in a game against Carlynton High School, as witnessed by the Athletic Director at Carlynton. Combined with our statements, that admission established a pattern of racist behavior by our opponent, which should have reinforced the trustworthiness of our complaint.”
The only specific mention of wrongdoing on Steel Valley’s part is neglecting to alert the head referee. But the district’s actions make perfect sense in context. Why would the district go to the referees after allegations that one of them was also guilty of making racial taunts!? Isn’t it logical that Steel Valley and Burt waited to file a report against the Beaver County District!?
South Side Beaver district is 96% white. There are so few black students, 2019 Census data puts the number at 0%.
Meanwhile, Steel Valley is 72% white and 23% black with a higher percentage of children of color on the football team than in the district as a whole.
Are you telling me it’s likely that a mostly black team who is already crushing their rivals (they won 20-12) would make up being the target of racism? Are you saying Burt would make up how his leg was manhandled by the opposing team?
And then we have the issue of socioeconomics.
South Side Beaver is a wealthier district than Steel Valley.
Median household income at the South Side district is $69,905. At Steel Valley it’s $42,661.
At the South Side, 7.7% of residents live below the poverty line. At Steel Valley it’s 17.4%.
These make a difference.
More privileged students are way more likely to think they deserve to win just because of who they are. Underprivileged kids have to work for everything they have.
And officials are way more likely to ignore poorer black kids in favor of richer white ones.
Scheuneman said, “Regardless if one side was more wrong than the other, it takes both parties to mend that bridge and get through anything. So we want those schools to work together in moving forward in cultural competency.”
This is a bad idea.
It won’t do anything to stem the increasing tide of racism from whiter, wealthier districts directed at poorer blacker ones.
These sorts of trainings are not in themselves enough to stop hate speech.
It’s true that having South Side Beaver and Steel Valley go through racial sensitivity training won’t hurt anyone.
Steel Valley students won’t suffer being forced to undergo this measure.
But the fact that they HAVE TO do this will underscore the injustice of the systems they have to live under.
They were the victims, and they got the same punishment as the oppressor.
And at South Side Beaver we can HOPE the training will do some good.
But let’s be honest – this sort of thing is only effective when those attending the training are receptive to its message.
The fact that South Side got away with this will poison everything being taught.
WPIAL is supposed to be about fair play.
They got it really wrong here.
If anyone needs this training, it’s them.
Steel Valley’s Statement:
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Even Canada follows this practice with hockey. Young athletes don’t play for their high schools; they play for one of three national hockey leagues – the Ontario Hockey League, the Western Hockey League or the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
The way we do things in the US – combining athletics and academics under one roof – ends up making each undertaking enemies.
Kids are unnecessarily injured in the games and indoctrinated in an ethic of dominance. In addition, sports programs gobble up limited resources meant for the classroom, and incentivize bad decisions that prize athletics over everything else.
Let’s look at each in turn:
1) Injuries
School sports began as a way to keep kids safe.
About 120 years ago, schools were not involved in organized athletics.
Perhaps the most dangerous are concussions. These are especially frequent in contact sports like football where athletes bump or smash their heads or bodies into each other. Even with protective equipment like helmets and pads, such collisions can cause traumatic brain injuries that can alter the way brains function for a lifetime.
During the 2005-06 season, high school football players sustained more than half a million injuries nationally, according to the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children’s Hospital. While football easily incurs the highest risk, even sports like soccer and baseball are responsible for thousands of injuries to adolescents between the ages of 10 to 14 every year.
And that’s only the most obvious danger. It doesn’t even include increased steroid use, fighting during games, hazing violence, excessive training, verbal abuse, and failure to provide proper care during important matches.
Competitive extracurricular sports can be dangerous to young people’s health. It is certainly valid to question whether schools should be involved in such practices incurring liability and potentially harming their own students.
2) Warrior Mindset
And then there’s the question of whether school sports are healthy for our minds as well as our bodies.
At the turn of the 20th Century, schools started organizing their own teams because they wanted to not just keep kids physically safe, but provide a healthy alternative to the kinds of activities they might be lured into on the streets. Based on the Victorian ideal of “Muscular Christianity,” sports was considered something wholesome that would district American children (especially boys) from social ills like gambling and prostitution.
However, even then it was a manifestation of the period’s xenophobia.
In the early 1900s, the US had just admitted a surge of European immigrants. Some people were worried that immigrant children would overrun the kids already here. Physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described this class of American-born kids as “stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth.” It was suggested that organized sports would help them become as brawny as those just coming to our shores.
So the driving motives behind the creation of school sports were bigotry and fear.
Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years.
Sports culture creates understandings of the world and self that are not entirely healthy in a democratic society.
For instance, an emphasis on competition instills the ethic that it is the outcome – winning or losing – that is most important. As kids become adults, this informs the way they frame ethical choices. Moreover, it dampens empathy. You’re discouraged from caring about members of the other team and encouraged to be hostile to anyone considered an other. Even teammates are only worthy of care in so much as they help you win. There is always latent competition because there is a constant danger that one of your teammates could take your place.
Moreover, sports do not value critical thinking or individuality. You listen to your coach or team captain or whoever in the hierarchy is above you. Questioning authority is discouraged. Instead, you’re impressed with the duty to follow and accept the decisions of those in charge.
These values would be more helpful in the development of warriors or soldiers – not democratic citizens. We need people who value tolerance, discussion, justice, caring, and diversity of ideals – exactly the opposite of what organized sports instills.
The world view promoted by organized athletic competition is not healthy for our students.
3) Expense
However, even if school sports didn’t hurt kids physically and mentally, they cost a ridiculous amount of money!
However, this is actually a minority of students, only about 42%. That’s because it often costs parents an additional fee for their kids to play on school teams – between $670 – $1,000 a year. This includes sporting registration fees, uniforms, coaching, and lessons.
Costs to districts are hard to quantify but significant.
Football is easily the most expensive high school sport. Consider that many football teams have half a dozen or more coaches, all of whom usually receive a stipend. And some schools go even further hiring professional coaches at full salaries or designate a teacher as the full-time athletic director. The cost of new bleachers can top half a million dollars – about the same as artificial turf. Even maintaining a grass field can cost more than $20,000 a year. Not to mention annual expenses like reconditioning helmets, which can cost more than $1,500 for a large team. To help offset these costs, some communities collect private donations or levy a special tax for initiatives like new gyms or sports facilities.
There are so many costs people rarely consider. For example, when teachers who also serve as coaches travel for game days, schools need to hire substitute teachers. They also need to pay for buses for the team, the band, and the cheerleaders. And that’s before you even take into account meals and hotels during away games. Even when events are at home, schools typically cover the cost of hiring officials, providing security, painting the lines on the field, and cleaning up afterward.
They often end up spending more per student athlete than they do per pupil in the classroom.
Marguerite Roza, the author of Educational Economics, analyzed the finances of one public high school in the Pacific Northwest. She and her colleagues found that the school was spending $328 a student for math instruction and more than four times that much for cheerleading—$1,348 a cheerleader.
One wonders – can we afford school athletics? Wouldn’t it be better to spend school budgets on learning – something all students participate in – rather than something that only benefits a fraction of the student body?
4) Decision Making
The cost of school sports isn’t measured just in dollars and cents but in the kinds of decisions administrators and school board members make for the sake of athletics – regardless of how it impacts academics.
People are often hired for important school positions based on their sports credentials even when their jobs are supposed to be mainly focused on improving student learning.
This is especially true where I live in Western Pennsylvania.
In my home district of McKeesport, when our superintendent, Dr. Mark Holtzman, was hired, he did not have any proven track record of scholastic success but had been a football star when he was a student here.
Likewise, the district where I work as a teacher, Steel Valley, hired Eddie Wehrer as superintendent without any degree in education but experience as a football coach.
The same goes for principals recommending new staff.
Sometimes administrators will lower their standards and recommend a less qualified applicant if he or she has experience as an athletic coach.
Whether they’ll admit it or not, the prospect of a winning season for the football team is often prioritized over new textbooks, smaller class sizes or other improvements.
The act of running for school board is often seen as a way to have greater control over district athletics. Go to most local school board meetings and you’ll hear much more discussion of various teams and extracurricular activities than academic programs.
National organizations like the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball recruit most of their players from colleges who recruit most of their players from K-12 schools. It’s a lucrative system with billions of dollars in profit on the line.
If students get an excellent education, that’s seen as a personal benefit to them, alone. But if a student athlete gets signed to a sports contract, that enriches the team and the corporation orders of magnitude more than the athlete.
Schools bask in the reflected glory of successful athletes, teams and programs. Grown adults who are too old to participate, themselves, take vicarious pleasure in these successes.
I understand that this is a very controversial topic.
There is a small minority of students who benefits from school athletics and even come to school primarily just to participate in sports.
However, the negatives far outweigh the benefits.
I think it’s time we begin considering separating sports and schools.
Students who want to participate in such activities can do so through private athletic clubs just like kids all over the world.
And before I’m criticized as being anti-sports, consider that such a separation would benefit both endeavors. Students would have more time and resources to focus on learning, while athletes could concentrate more on their chosen sport and train all year long instead of just during a certain season.
I have no illusions that anyone will take my advice. Sports are way too entrenched in American schools and our elected officials can’t even seem to find the courage to enact obvious reforms like gun control, repealing charter schools, ending standardized testing and funding schools equitably.
However, if we really want the best for US children, we should give them what kids the world over already have – schools separate from organized sports.
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We can’t offer you equitable resources. We can’t stop judging you with biased standardized tests. We can’t desegregate your schools. We can’t protect you from gun violence. We can’t even give you in-person classes because of a global pandemic the government has given up even trying to control!
And now I’m supposed to say that even the semblance of our democracy is up for grabs?
I started clicking on their names.
I only had a few moments before I had to speak.
I cleared my throat and began welcoming them, one-by-one as always.
And then it was time.
I stared at all these empty black boxes, and began.
“We’ve got to talk about yesterday,” I said.
“Not yesterday in class. That was fine. Everyone did an outstanding job on yesterday’s assignment.
“We have to talk about what happened yesterday in Washington, DC. Does anyone know what that was?”
And I waited.
Eventually I saw a few messages that individuals had their hands raised.
A few kids said that people had charged the Capitol. But that they didn’t know why.
So I explained it to them.
I told them how Trump was refusing to accept the results of the election. That he had lost, but continued to challenge it in the courts. Both Republican and Democratic judges had turned him down saying that he had no proof. So Trump spoke outside of the White House yesterday telling his followers to march on the Capitol, which they did.
At this point I noticed something strange on my screen.
The rows of empty boxes had turned into windows. No more memes or messages or generic names. Most of my kids had turned on their cameras and were meeting my eyes – in some cases – for the first time.
So that’s what Kelsey looks like, I thought. Wow! Marquis is really built. Is that little kid in the grey hoodie really Caulin?
I got flustered and stopped talking, but the students took up the narrative for me.
Some of them mentioned watching videos on-line of the riot. They saw a guy with horns in the President’s chair?
“No, I said. “That was the Vice-President’s chair in the Senate.”
“Wasn’t there someone at someone’s desk?”
“Yes, that was Nancy Pelosi’s desk,” I said. “A rioter broke into her office and put his feet up. She’s the Speaker of the House.”
And so it went on for a few minutes. They brought up things they had seen and I either clarified or supported them.
As a whole, they were wealthy in details but poor in meaning.
Most of the white kids seemed to be taking it ironically. The black and brown kids were more quiet and subdued.
A white boy wrote in the chat that it was “Civil War 2: electric bugaloo.”
I said, “Yes, you’ve hit on an important point. Some of these folks may have been trying to start a new Civil War.”
I tried to put the event in historical context.
I told them how nothing like this had ever happened in my lifetime. That the last time people broke into the Capitol Building like this was during the War of 1812 when the British tried to force the US to become a colony again. However, that was a foreign power invading our country. Wednesday was our own citizens seeking to overturn the results of an election, trying to overwrite the will of the people.
That’s when the first black student spoke up.
“Mr. Singer, why were they waving Confederate flags?”
“Yes! That’s true, Jamal. Many of them DID have Confederate flags and that’s really important.”
Before I could say more I got a series of rapid-fire questions from the same group who had been silent up to this point.
“Why didn’t the police stop them?”
“Why’d they steal stuff? I saw some guy walking away with a podium.”
“Why they so mad?”
I smiled and said that these were all excellent questions.
I asked if any of them knew who George Floyd was.
No one responded.
I told them he was a black guy who was murdered by police when an officer knelt on his neck.
After that happened, there were protests by Black Lives Matter activists and others in several cities including Pittsburgh. The police showed up in riot gear. As these protestors demonstrated almost entirely peacefully – certainly more peacefully than what we saw in DC yesterday – more than 14,000 people were arrested.
“How many people do you think were arrested yesterday?” I asked.
“Didn’t someone die?”
“Yes, a woman was shot in the Capitol and three others died of medical emergencies. How many people were arrested?”
“None,” said a student of color who hadn’t participated before.
“Why none?” I asked.
“Because they was white.”
I told him that he right and wrong. Out of thousands of rioters who broke into the Capitol, thirteen people were arrested. And the reason there were only 13 was because they were white.
I told them that this whole affair needed to be investigated. That we needed to know how and why the police responded the way they did. That we needed to hold the rioters accountable. That we needed to make sure those who instigated this violence were made to pay for it, too.
“Is Trump still President?” Someone asked.
“Yes,” I said. “For about two more weeks. But there are a lot of people who think he should have to step down sooner.”
So we talked about how he could be removed from office. We talked about impeachment and the 25th Amendment. We even talked about how Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook – how he couldn’t post or tweet but still could send a nuclear missile anywhere he wanted.
And then it quieted down.
I asked them if there was anything more they wanted to know or if there was anything else they wanted to say.
They were still.
A few cameras clicked off.
I told them that I was there if anyone needed anything, that their teachers were here if they were feeling anything and wanted someone to talk to.
And then that was it.
I made one of the most abrupt and inelegant transitions in my career and we returned to our normally scheduled lesson.
Did it help any?
I don’t know, but I told them what I could. I told them the truth as I saw it.
There was a time when I would have been more reticent about it.
But the day after domestic terrorists try to steal our system of government isn’t the time to hold back.
As a teacher, sometimes I feel so helpless.
There’s so much I’d like to do for my students.
I want them to get the resources they need. I want to stop the unfair testing, integrate their schools, keep them safe from gun violence and control Covid-19 so we can return to the classroom.
I want to live in a country where majority rule is cherished and protected, where no one thinks the collective will should be trumped by white privilege.
But when all those things are out of reach, I still have one thing left to give.
The truth.
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Your parents dress you in your best new outfit – maybe a nice pink jumper with a unicorn on it.
They help you tie your new sneakers – that’s right, two loops and a knot.
Then they put a surgical mask snugly over your mouth and nose, adhere a clear plastic face shield from your forehead down and snap some latex gloves on your hands.
“Off to school, Honey!”
“Don’t forget your antibacterial soap and Clorox wipes!”
What do you suppose would be going through your mind?
Would you feel safe? Would you feel loved? Would you feel valued?
Or maybe they do care enough but have no other choice. They’re “essential workers” and have to go to a series of minimum wage jobs to keep you fed, clothed and sheltered.
How would you feel about the people who own those jobs? The society that prioritizes keeping those jobs going instead of paying your parents to stay home with you?
Isn’t it just a big game of Monopoly? Players keep rolling the dice and landing on each others’ properties and having to pay rent. Hoping this turn you’ll make it past GO and collect $200.
With the exception of food, there’s nothing you really need outside of your home. If your parents didn’t have to worry about rent or utilities, they wouldn’t have to work. Yes, they’d need to go out to get food but the government could pay them to do that, too.
After all, it’s just Monopoly money. It’s just decorated pieces of paper. It has no inherent value… not like human lives.
I mean we’re living through a pandemic here. Leaving the house means exposure to the virus, and the longer you have to go out, the more people you’re exposed to, the greater the chances that you’ll get sick and/or bring the thing back home with you.
How would you feel about the school board members who compromise and say you only have to be put at risk for half the day or just so many days a week? Would that make it all better?
How would you feel when time-after-time the grown ups show you exactly how they feel about you, how little you actually matter, how much everything else is worth and how little they really care about you?
How would you feel if you were a little school kid getting ready for her first day of class this morning?
Would you feel safe, valued, loved?
What lesson would you take from everything happening all around you?
Some people are very worried that you won’t learn anything much this school year.
I’m afraid you’ll learn far too much.
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