Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Yoda, the Dark Path, and the High Ground of Education

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It is hard not to like Yoda quotes. The reversal of sentence order captures your attention as much as the pinched voice of the pointy-eared, green-toned little Jedi.  More importantly, the wisdom of Yoda cuts through much of the blather of oblong thinking. 

Yoda said, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.  Consume you, it will…”.  And, with those words, the threat the pandemic and pandemic politics poses for the future of public education is called out for what it is – a dark path.

While Yoda struggled against a dark path that led to an evil galactic empire, we struggle against a dark path that erodes our optimism and belief in a better future.  There is a narcissism down our threatening  dark path.  Its use of manipulation, distortion of information, and denial of criticism is anathema to public education.

The dark side is doom-sided thinking of negativity characterized by the following statements.

  • The future is bleak and will not be as good as the past.
  • Some people get all the breaks and some people get none.
  • Anger trumps all emotions and arguments.
  • Leaders at all levels fail to understand and meet the needs of the public.
  • All data but my data is suspect.
  • Self-interest is the only interest that matters.
  • Rules only are important when you want them to be.

As educators, our schools are at ground zero of much of the angst.  School boards are under attack for closing or opening schools for in-person learning, providing a remote learning that appeals to some children and is rejected by others, and masking or unmasking of students and staff in school.  On each of these three topics, boards face angry parents and community no matter what the board decides.  Adding to the difficulty of having any kind of school day, student achievement across all grades and subjects displays pandemic gapping.  Academic achievement has fallen.  Fine arts programs that require personal, in-person teaching are stymied by remote education, quarantining, and masking.  Theater and concerts are performed to empty houses and shared virtually.  Athletics are constantly interrupted by quarantines, positive tests of players and coaches, and cancelled contests.  Two years of pandemic and counting and the difficulty faced by teachers and school leaders only grows. 

The high ground of school that keeps the dark path at bay was, is, and will continue to be built upon the aggregate of these statements. 

  • Education is a human necessity.
  • Public education is a community’s obligation to its children.
  • Education opens opportunities and reveals future options.
  • Content knowledge, academic skills, critical thinking, collaboration, socialization, and intellectual curiosity are the six enduring outcomes of public education.
  • Teaching changes lives.
  • Public schools require the trust of parents and conversely parents require the stability of public schools.
  • Public education is the pillar of our society that stands the test of time.  When it fails, our society will fail.

The brightest image of our high ground is the face of a child.  Innately, children want to learn.  Every child has a curiosity to understand the sounds and sights of their world.  A brain never stops processing what a child experiences and school learning provides tools for understanding.  I once cringed at the person in a school meeting years ago who would throw down the conversation-ending line, “Well, I am here for the children.”  As if to say, no one else stood on the side of children.  Today, “I am here for the children, and we provide each and every child with an education for their future” are words we need to say over and over again.  These words do not end conversation.  They open discussion of new possibilities and future options.  I am here for the education of children is a high ground that defeats the adult-centered dark path. 

School Children In the Time of Polio

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In 1955 my classmates and I marched single file from our classroom to the school nurse’s office for an injection of the Salk polio vaccine.  For weeks we had known the vaccination day was coming.  That morning, we stood next to our desks in our classroom and marched out in that order.  I remember young girls in their dresses, white socks, and leather shoes and boys in plaid shirts and blue jeans and PF Flyers quietly walking out of the room and down the stairs to the first floor.  We were lined up along the wall on the left side of the main corridor with another classroom of kids in front of us and another classroom behind.  Teachers hushed the talk and in the quiet we could hear some children up ahead crying.  A poke with a needle was a scary thing, yet looking at the long line in front and behind me meant that every one of my friends was going to get a shot.  Scared, yep, but we knew why we were in a long line that day.  When it was my turn, I watched Carol, my friend in front of me, rub her arm as she got back into line outside the office, felt the prick of the needle, and was told to “Hurry on”.  I was vaccinated against polio.

The year before children in an elementary school on the other side of town participated in the national Salk vaccine field test.  Our Iowa school district had been selected to be part of a field test in which 50% of children would get the Salk vaccine and 50% would get a placebo.  Parents were provided with consent forms to sign for the field test and every parent consented.  The success of the national field study showed that infection with the polio virus, the pandemic of the early 1950s, could be prevented with a vaccination of Salk vaccine.  Within the year a nationwide campaign to vaccinate all school children was underway.

My friends and I knew that polio was real.  Beyond the headlines and stories in the daily newspaper reporting the growing number of children infected with polio, we knew.  One our classmates, Steve, lived in an iron lung in the living room of his home.  His head stuck out from the barrel-like breathing machine that used vacuum cleaner motors to raise and lower air pressure in the barrel to help him breathe.  When the time came, we would all choose a shot in the arm to prevent being in an iron lung.

Class reunions are communal strolls down memory lane.  Yearbooks and dog-eared photos are passed around and stories are told and retold.  Most tales are of our high school days with a few from junior high.  The Class of 1966 represented a pathway from two junior highs and fifteen elementary schools.  We had many memories along the path to graduation.  The one common story from our elementary school memories, however, is always the day we got the Salk shot.  The story goes like this. 

“The hallway was filled with kids inching their way along the wall toward a needle.  It was so quiet.  I cannot remember any classmate saying ‘No, not me’.  I cannot recall my parents even raising a ‘Should we…’.  Everyone was afraid of getting polio and if a vaccination put an end to polio, we were going to get vaccinated.  It’s funny now, but of all the shots in the arm (and other places) I have received, that is the shot I remember most clearly.  Remember when John said, ‘That didn’t hurt.  I’ll take another.’  Hey, we stopped polio, didn’t’ we.”  And they always add, “I remember when we were given the Sabin vaccine in 1960?  It was on a sugar cube!”

Many of my classmates now sleep in death.  Life is what it is.  I look at my elementary class photo of Mrs. Meyer’s home room and see each of their childhood faces and recall every name.  On those vaccination days in 1955 we did what we were supposed to do.  Steve’s face is not in that photo.  He was a polio victim.

Our Children’s Eyes Are On Us

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A fellow school board member reminds us frequently, “Our children are watching us”.  These words alone cut to the quick of every discussion and issue before a school board.  The board’s actions must reflect decisions that are in the best interest of the children attending our schools.  Noble words?  Yes.  Mission-based words?  Yes.  Easy words to enact?  Not always. 

In the politics of school government each constituency except children has leverage.  Parents hold the choice card.  If they disagree with board decisions, they can choose a different school.  Teachers and staff hold the employment card.  There is a statewide shortage in every category of school personnel and a school board knows it.  Decisions that cause an unexpected resignation or retirement may create an opening that cannot be filled or, if filled, with a less experienced and qualified person.  Community residents hold the voter card to be played at board elections and more importantly in the constant flow of district referenda.  A failed referendum denies school needs.  And, recall elections of school board members are at an all-time high in 2021.

What about the children?  Children do not choose their school.  Children do not provide a necessary employment to the school.  Children do not vote.  Yet, children loom constantly in every board action as their education and nurturing are the only things that really matter in public education. 

Two questions should haunt every board member’s mind in their discussion and voting on board motions.  How will this decision affect children?  What lesson of responsible adult behavior are we teaching our children?

Today, it may be that the second is the more important question.  Are adults, board members and constituents speaking and acting like role models for children?  If children said and did the things they are seeing and hearing in our behaviors, would we discipline them for their inappropriateness? 

I was always whipsawed as a child between adults who said “Do as I do” and “Do as I say”.  The lesson of growing up right was to take the best of what you are shown and the best of what you are told to create a model for your adult behavior. 

Yet, when I watch YouTube clips of adult behaviors in some school board and local government meetings this year, I wonder where the adults went.  What I see in too many stories are not the role models we want children to emulate.

Three concepts from ages past pertain.  Respect, civility, and common good.  Almost every school mission statement or list of student goals contains words about respect.  On an everyday demonstration, we want children to show a considerate regard for the feelings, wishes and wants, rights, and traditions of others.  Children tend toward outbursts of the moment, brashness, and acting and saying without a second thought. 

It is the second thought of consideration that reigns in disrespect. These are learned and practiced behaviors that help children over time to achieve the second word – civility.  Civil behavior, somewhat of an archaic term, is courteous, restrained,  responsible, and accountable.  Civility follows the Gold Rule of treating others as you wish to be treated.  Accountability is an essential part of civility.  An adult does not get to say whatever comes to mind without consequence.  Respect and civil behavior combine to shape discussions for the common good. 

Teaching children to consider what is best for others not just self advances their progress toward maturity.  The common good is not ethereal, it is tangible.  School boards face decisions in which special interests are apparent.  Any decision that gives advantage to some at the disadvantage of the many is not in the common good.  On the other hand, a decision that improves the condition or status of a small group and equally shares that improvement with all is in the common good.  The pandemic is providing school boards with a constant arena for considering their decisions in terms of the common good.  This is a test; are we up to this test.

The children are watching us, their school board, to observe and learn from us.  While they may not have material leverage, children have the moral leverage.  We adults know we are supposed to be adult-like in our interactions with each other in our board meetings.  Very often I would like to use instant replay mechanisms from televised sports.  “Time out!  We are going to review what these people said and how they acted toward each other.  We will break down this clip to identify respect, civil behavior, and working for the common good.  Let’s see what we can learn.”

At the end of the day, children will grade us using the same rubrics we use on them everyday in school.  They have been watching and they know us for what and who we are.

School Is The Constant Throughout All The Years

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James Earl Jones’ statement “… the one constant throughout all the years … has been baseball” (Field of Dreams, 1972) is even more properly said about public education.  The one constant throughout all the years, spanning prosperity, war, and crisis, has been a local public school.  This is an inarguable truth in our nation, state, and local communities.  As we labor into a third year of covid, school remains the  indispensable factor in the lives of children and adults in every community that it always has been and always will be.  Let us not forget this truth.

The experience of school, like beauty in the eye of the beholder, may be different for each person.  With appreciation we acknowledge the stories told by great-grandparents and grandparents of their schooling during the Depression and World War Two.  We hear stories from Baby Boomers’ experiences in the 50s and 60s and from Generation X and Millenials leading up the present.  The life and times of our nation during each generation is reflected in the life and times of their schooling.  World War, Cold War, Vietnam, civil rights, terrorism, school shootings, and pandemic permeate the culture of their times and the residuals of each and all affect how adults view their school experience.

At the heart of schooling though are commonalities that make every public school graduate more alike than different. 

We showed up and persisted.  Some walked in the school doors because they were drawn to reading, writing, and arithmetic.  Some were drawn to the gym and stage.  Others to the shops and special subjects.  First generation children strove to learn English and use school as a ladder to assure second generation success in the community.  And, some walked into school because attendance was mandatory.  Some attended because of compulsory attendance laws.  Whatever the reason, we attended thirteen years of school.  Employers tell educators they look at school attendance records as a predictor of persistence.  Employers want to hire those who can stay the distance.

We became literate.  Illiteracy in the US, like smallpox and polio, still exists but it is rare.  Reading is not a natural function for Homo Sapiens; the senses of hearing, seeing, touching, and smelling are.  Reading and writing are learned skills.  All children in school are taught to read, some more proficiently than others.  Across the years and all populations, schools maintain a literate United States. 

We have a 4K-12 liberal arts education.  Core subjects of language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and health are spiraled and scaffolded across thirteen years of schooling to cause every graduate to have generalized skills of communication; thinking quantitatively and solving mathematical problems; knowing our world through biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science; the history of  people, civics and government, and principles of economics; an appreciation of art and how to express ourselves through art; appreciation of music and enrich our lives musically; and, the elements of a healthy life.  This is a long and compounded sentence because that is the nature of a 4K-12 education.

We are socialized.  School commingles and socializes children.  School analogies of the past were that children in school were like ingredients in a salad tossed and taking flavor from each ingredient.  Or, school was a kitchen blender through which all children pass coming out as a society more alike than different.  Few children pass through thirteen years of school attendance without being influenced by their peers and influencing their peers.  We are social animals down deep and school attunes each student to the community around us.

We are readied if not prepared for life after public school.  The funneling of school curriculum aims the majority of children at post-high school education and work.  In our local school 95% of graduates over the past 30 years matriculated to a college or university.  A few sought trade schools or the military.  Every graduate had a self-proclaimed “next” for what they would do after graduation.  Today 75% of our graduates go directly to colleges or universities, about the same numbers enlist in the military, and more grads attend tech school or go to work immediately after high school.  Every graduate still has a “next” and the trending of next is changing.  School is all about “next”.

We learned about ourselves.  School is more than academics.  Our school experiences in athletics, the arts, and school activities allow us to explore who we are and who we want to be.  Each school child is unique and athletics, arts, and activities are pathways for uniqueness to be explored.  Whether a lead in the school play or musical, an extra or stage, a role on the stage crew, a musician in the pit, or the student who makes the posters publicizing performances makes no difference.  Exploring one’s talents and comfort level for involvement is one of the unspoken values of schooling.  And, learning who we are not and the talents we do not have is just as instructive.

We fulfilled our community and generational role.  Whether we recognize it or not, each graduating class meets need of the local and regional community for young adults moving into the world of work, community involvement, and next taxpayers.  Consider the graduate at one end of a continuum and retiring senior citizens at the other end.  The Class of 2021 begins engagement in the working life of a community and the Class of 1971 begins disengagement.  Healthy communities need this continual renewal.

We dispersed and cross-pollinated.  More than 700 classmates and I graduated in June 1966.  I knew many but not all.  We immediately dispersed to Vietnam, colleges and universities, and employments everywhere.  For graduates who left town stories would circulate over the years of classmates but before social media these were few and far between.  Social media has sewn classmates back together.  FaceBook et al allow us to say “I know about… who lives in …” though we may not be able to say “I know him or her well”.  Now, I am aware that my classmates live in every state and across many nations.  Graduating classes are meant to disperse; it creates cross-pollination of regional varieties throughout our society.

School is responsible for these things and keeps on doing them year in and year out.  School is the constant engine of our nation.  If you doubt this truth, consider how else 50.2 million children aged 4 though 18 and enrolled in public school today would be educated and prepared for adulthood.  A daunting task, eh! 

What Do I Need To Know To Feel Normal About School?

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Newton taught us for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Our science teachers demonstrated this by applying a force to a pendulum at rest.  The pendulum swung in the direction of the applied force, reached the apex of its arc and then swung back in the opposite direction of the applied force past its normal resting point on an opposite and equally long arc.  Inertia eventually caused the pendulum to return to rest in its normal, perpendicular resting position.

The pandemic defied Newton.  The new normal of the post-pandemic at rest will not be in the same position we observed as pre-pandemic normal.  To put it bluntly, schools of the future cannot be what schools were in the past.  The forces unleashed by the pandemic not only moved the pendulum of the school in a multitude of wildly swinging arcs but relocated the center point of where the post-pandemic pendulum of the school will come to rest.  Reactionary forces have not equaled initial forces of change.   The descriptors of school normalcy are being rewritten and we must understand the location and realities of our new normal.

We must find our ability to be normal with the following descriptors

Facts and evidence are propositional.  When the national leadership repeatedly declared facts to be false and falsities to be true, people questioned the truths they could trust.  Questioning is never wrong, but unquestioning acceptance of untruth is.  Fact bashing went beyond political banter when the rewriters of facts and truth carried this strategy from partisanship into declaring the pandemic a hoax.  Almost 900,000 dead Americans later, we are still arguing whether covid is a health crisis or a conspiracy.  New normalcy will not rely upon universally held and evidence-based facts.  In the new normal, more than ever before people will align self-selected facts with what they want to be truth.  Evidence will not matter to those who will not believe it; all facts are propositional to the purpose of the speaker.

The concept of leadership is frayed.  From President to principal, a first response to what leaders say is growing to be either distrust or rejection.  The first face of this growing public response is “Who is he/she to tell me?”.  The second response is to look to others for different ideas.  In both responses, the key issue is “what has the leader done to improve my condition in life, including school life?”.  Leaders, because they are central figures, are blamed for every lessening of daily conditions.  Whether measured in popularity polls or in voiced support and action aligned with a leader, most measures today disfavor our elected and appointed leaders.  Instead, anti-leaders with oppositional messages and proposals garner the support of adults and students who feel disconnected from daily decisions.  In the new normal, representative leadership will be more and more difficult.    

Distancing will be more than physical space and remoting will continue.  The air-born spread of a respiratory virus caused social distancing to be our protocol for keeping space between us and potential covid carriers.  Mentally we moved through the first two years of the pandemic within six-foot bubbles to diminish the possibility of catching covid from the breath of others.  Bubbling affected more than where we stood.  It put distance between family members and friendships, collaboration and collegiality at work, and children and their best friends.  It became a psychological and emotional distance as much as a physical distance.  When schools returned to in-person teaching and learning we enforced the protocol of social distancing.  We now observe a new normal that lacks the proximity and close sharing of the pre-pandemic.  In our new normal we are not close to one another in any facet of our interactions – we remain at arms length and will not achieve the same levels of personal connection we once held.  No touch.  No hugging.  No one in our personal space.  No closeness.

Children in remote education and adults in remote working learned that aspects of working independently of place and others are okay and preferable to being in-person.  In fact, some will never return to the school or office or workplace because they can work remotely and they enjoy being remote.  Coincidentally, Sunday church attendance increases when parishioners can attend remotely.  Go figure.  Educationally, introverted children prospered in remote education without worrying about the eyes and words of their peers.  In the new normal, we will remain distanced from one another.  It is more comfortable.  Demands for remote and independent teaching and learning will increase.  We will mange a hybrid of remote and in-person living.

Personal demands rise above social responsibility.  Greek philosophers discussed the relationship between freedom and responsibility and perhaps every generation must find its own balance of these two values.  We observe that the pandemic has deepened and widened the chasm between what many Americans accept as their role in the commonwealth of their community, state, and nation.  It may be that the threat of pandemic death only made the tear in our social fabric greater.  Or, it may be that the pandemic gave us excuses for a further erosion of community in favor of personal demands.  Or, it may be that pandemic fatigue wore down a sense of community and people are expressing personal wants that have been repressed for two years.  Whatever the reason, pandemic protocols for the good of the many are coming down.  Masks are off.  Travel is on. Large groups are gathering.  It is not because we think the danger of covid is past.  We no longer want to follow protocols that intrude into the life we want.  In the new normal, individuals will satisfy themselves more than they will honor behaviors recommended for the common good.  They will attack sponsors of community responsibility.

Anger is weaponized.  Peter Finch’s character in “Network” (1976) yelled “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore”.  He weaponized anger against his employer in seeking personal revenge and resolution.  Government at all levels today is confronted with angry constituents in the pandemic, some like Finch’s Howard Beale.  Board meetings have been disrupted and threats made.  By no means is this universal across the 430+ school districts of our state.  Yet, even civil board meetings experience seething anger in those who disagree with a school’s pandemic protocols.  Whether real or perceived, anger affects the people who are elected to govern when district residents are covert in their demands.  If Newtonian law holds, there will be equal angers rising to confront the force of voiced angers.  Our new normal will be measured and tested by how it responds to anger; angry people about something will seem an everyday experience.

Once waived, it is difficult to reinstate a rule or requirement.  An unenforced rule is not considered a rule.  In our state the length of a school year, hours of required instruction, truancy laws, definitions of school attendance, parameters for home schooling, requirement of homework, use of college admissions testing are among many long-standing school rules and standards that were were waived in the early pandemic.  Just turning on a computer at home qualified a student to be counted as present on a school day.  Does it matter?  In September and October 2021 regular student absenteeism and tardiness are real challenges.  Three days of school attendance out of five is as much as some students will commit.  Soft accountability told many parents that strict attendance and completion of assignments may not matter and in 2021-22 families extend weekends into three- and four-day weekends.  In the pandemic, school day and school year were determined by resistance factors not educational goals.  In the new normal, we will continue to struggle with apathy toward rules and standards, many of which were waived in the pandemic. 

Lowered bars of expectation set new levels of acceptance.  Remote education will haunt school expectations for some time.  At the start of remoting, we credited logging in, seeing a student’s face, some level of participation, and submission of some work on an assignment.  “Some” counted. Remoting led us to make assumptions about what children were learning and some were not learning.  Being remote, we did not really know.

The return to in-person teaching and learning displayed many children whose grade level and subject knowledge and skills were below to well below where they could have been if there were no pandemic.  No duh, eh!  Children in art, music, second language, technology ed, business and marketing, and computer science, to name a few, experienced remote learning on an individualized basis divorced from studio, rehearsal hall, laboratory, and community-based experiences.  They learned but not what they could have or what their next grade level or sequenced course or graduation diploma required.

Academic testing profiles slipped.  Some children in above the 75th percentile slipped to above the 50th.  More worrisome, the number of children below the 25th percentile increased.

Schools everywhere face the compensatory challenge of raising the level of each child’s education to non-pandemic levels.  “Thelma And Louise” (movie characters) taught us “you get what you settle for”.  In the new normal, we cannot settle for the level of educational achievement our students have gotten thus far in the pandemic.  In our normalizing, we must reinstate high expectations for each child’s education, and we must work diligently to raise the current level of each child’s learning achievements toward pre-pandemic standards.  This goes for reading levels, skill in playing the saxophone, throwing ceramics on a potter’s wheel, solving quadratics, and milling a tool on a lathe.

Decline of teaching as a career.  Nightly news tells us weekly that the unrelenting pandemic demand on medical responders, nurses, and hospital workers is causing a personnel shortage in their profession.  More are leaving and fewer are entering.  This also is true of schoolteachers.  The trend line of new teachers entering the profession has been in decline for more than two decades.  Pandemic demands topped off teacher struggles with increasing demands for educational accountability, partisan-divided support for public schools, increasing class sizes, and flattened salary compensation.  The result today is even more administrators and teachers leaving school and the classroom and even fewer entering.  State legislators try to increase teacher numbers by diminishing the educational preparation for a teaching license and approving alternative and easier ways to be licensed.  Districts posting for school administrator and classroom teacher positions for the 2021-22 will be pressed to find new applicants let alone highly qualified applicants.  Normal in the post-pandemic will be schools and classrooms with younger and less experienced administrators and teachers and a constantly revolving door of these.

The transition of the pandemic to endemic provides other challenges.  Each of these will also contribute to defining a new normal, that place where things will seem to come to rest and be less volatile.  That place will be nowhere close to the pre-pandemic normal.  It will, however, be our new reality.  Buckle up.  We have work to do.