Romanticizing Anxiety

I'm working my way through Judson Brewer's book Unwinding Anxiety, and at one point he addresses the ways in which we justify and even seek out anxiety.

The sciency basis is a paper from 1908 by Yerkes and Dodson that has become enshrined as the Yerkes-Dodson Curve or even the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Yerkes-Dodson posit a sort of bell curve for stress, where more stress and anxiety and pressure drive better performance, until they don't and instead start to make things worse. This seems like it makes sense. But does it? 

These are not human people

Bewer says no. In fact, he says that decades later when papers supporting the Yerkes-Dodson curve were actually subjected to review and replication (that replication thing continues to be an issue in social science papers--see also the marshmallow test) and found that only 4% of the papers held up. Instead, the data mostly shows a linear negative correlation between stress and performance. The more stressed you are, the worse you do. Period.

Talking to his book editor about this research, Brewer heard a striking observation from her:

People romanticize their anxiety and/or stress. They wear it like a badge of honor, without which they would be a lesser person, or worse, lose a sense of purpose. To many, stress equals success. As she put it, "If you are stressed, you are making a contribution. If you're not stressed, you're a loser."

We can count the many, many ways this plays out in our lives ("If I'm not stressed, I'm not doing as much as I could be doing"), and what is someone who's overly addicted to drama is not a person who's convinced that stress and anxiety are signs that life is going well? But part of what struck me about these observations is how it all plays out in a classroom. 

Because boy can I relate to the ways in which we think our job is to "push" students, to inflict stress and anxiety upon them the better to spur their growth. Pressure is needed to make diamonds, or some such sentiment. And so we'd set out to put students through a pressure cooker.

Well, some of them. The pressure cookers are usually just for the honors students, the high achievers, partly because "they can take it" and also because their high-achieving parents shared the romanticized notion of anxiety. We knew better than to try putting the lower-achieving students through the pressure cooker because we knew (or we found out the hard way) that they'd buckle or just quit. And that should have spurred insights. I wrote years ago that every teacher should be bad at something, because there is no stress like the stress of knowing that you're going to be required to do something that you can't do well. And your brain goes through all sorts of contortions to deal with that. 

I got smarter as I went. Some of it was simple procedural tricks, like teasing coming attractions well ahead of time ("There's a paper about this topic coming up in a week or so") so that things didn't come as a surprise or shock. Some of it involved changing tone and approach, from "This is going to really separate the wheat from the chaff" to "This may look scary, but you are capable people, I'm not going to give you more than you can handle, and I am going to get you through this successfully." 

Some of it I couldn't control. Some of my colleagues used me as the Boogie Man ("You just wait till you get in his class!") and my juniors loved to try to scare sophomores ("Oh, man, this will be the hardest class ever!"), but by halfway through the year, we would inevitably have the "This really isn't so bad" conversation. And high school students have learned from adults how to humblebrag about how much stress they're carrying. 

But teachers don't have to romanticize anxiety, don't have to buy into the notion that their job is to pressurize students, don't have to jump on the "We build grit by putting them through the pressure cooker" train. 

As we know from a hundred different pieces, when it comes to pressure and stress and anxiety, schools are cranked up to 11 right now. So this may be an excellent time to shed any remaining romantic notions about how anxiety is good for you and makes you better at whatever it is you do. 

I'm not arguing that schools would be better if we never asked students to do anything hard, ever, and we reduced their stress levels by requiring them to do nothing, ever (nor am I convinced that doing so would actually reduce stress, but that's another conversation). Pursuing the mission of education--to help students grow and learn and better understand themselves and figure out how to be fully human in the world--that comes with some stress and anxiety built in. But if your classroom approach is based on the notion that you need to crank up the stress and anxiety in order to make your students "better," maybe don't. If you're a policy person and your whole raft of policy ideas is built on the premise that schools are all about applying pressure and creating stress in order to promote learning, the research is not on your side.

I'm pretty sure an anxiety-free school is not possible (just as anxiety-free life is unlikely), but there is no need to deliberately pile on more. Instead, focus on building strength and providing support. I'm a firm believer that the solution to the problem of Hard Things In Life is not to try to avoid all hard things, but to develop strength and confidence in dealing with those things when they come. That's where classroom focus should be.

Slamming Teachers

Here's something that just popped up on my Twitter feed. Honestly, I could have picked any of a few dozen others, but I went with this one because it was fresh, and yet widely loved.

Another good cause that schools might take up is the teaching of reading and math.

— Caitlin Flanagan (@CaitlinPacific) November 23, 2021

I have a hard time envisioning the worldview that these kind of cracks rest upon. The assumptions here. Does she imagine that in this world, schools are entirely staffed with people who simply don't give a shit about teaching but went to school for it and took the job because it's so easy? In this world in which nobody working in education cares about education, how did anyone ever get educated? I know some of these folks like to throw around claims about huge percentages of people graduating from school while being illiterate and innumerate, but  really-- all the people you know who can read and write and figure were just some kind of fluke? They taught themselves, somehow, while their terrible lazy incompetent teachers were taking a nap?

The pandemic hammering of teachers and schools just goes on and on. Some of it is fed by people saying Truly Dumb Things, like Terry McAuliffe (himself no real friend of public education) saying that parents should have no say in their kids' education. Some of it is fed by people not saying the smart things, something along the lines of, "I hear your concern, and while 'critical race theory' isn't really the right name for what you're concerned about, let me talk with you about why we try to address issues of equity and race, how we try to do it, and how we are trying to get better at it." 

I get that parents are ragged after the pandemic-so-far, back when schools had nothing but bad choices so there would always be a vocally enraged minority. And I really get that the batch of last-minute cancellations happening is a PITA. 

But the incessant hammering on teachers teachers teachers. It's teacher's fault that schools were closed (not parents or policy makers or legitimate concerns about health during a frickin' pandemic that has, in fact, killed a really huge number of people). Teachers aren't properly embracing the One True Way to teach reading because they are all lazy and stupid and just suck. Also, if you cross our vaguely drawn line in the curricular sand, we will fire you!

Honestly, there are lots of reasons to believe that many people, even the majority of people, support educators and public schools. But for any teacher who spends any time on social media or taking in traditional media, it's impossible not to feel waves and waves of hatred directed at you.

Yes, everybody's angry these days. But it's worth remembering that the states that have forbidden teachers unions are, in fact, the bottom of the educational heap. That most of the states that have enacted some sort of teacher gag laws so that they'll "just teach reading and math" are not particularly awesome in the education department. That teachers chose to get the training, chose to enter this profession, choose to do the best they can for their students. And they can choose to do something else.

I don't know what the point of crap like the above tweet is supposed to be. Well, no--in some cases I do. Some of these folks are the same old crowd of folks who want to see public education shut down, so that the market can be opened and so that they don't have to pay taxes to educate Those Peoples' Children. Mind you, there are plenty of people out there with a sincere belief in the power of the free market and a sincere belief that education should be part of that marketeering approach. But it is possible to belief that without holding and expressing a raw hatred and contempt for people who are trying to work in and with the public system that serves the vast majority of students in this country. No, the people who keep hammering teachers are on a different level.

Maybe the hatred is the point? Maybe they're blowing off angry steam? Maybe, like many folks who have fallen too far down a Righteous Crusade tunnel, they believe that at some point the public ed teachers will crack and cry out, "Okay, you got us! It's all a giant scam!" Or maybe they just want public school teachers to break down and go away (in which case, they appear to be having some success). 

I truly don't know. But it's all tiring and tiresome. I've written before about facing the public's indifference to public education, but facing this level of hostility, from elected leaders, from education "experts," from people who have enough of a following to shape the conversation in useful ways--it's a tough lift, and a waste of energy that could be put to better use. 

The fact is, teachers and schools took up the cause of teaching reading and writing (and history and science and art and music and a whole other parts of human experience) years and years and years ago, and will continue to take up that cause years after the current mob moves on to its next target. But it would be great if a few other people decided to take up that cause with them, or at least stop throwing stones at those who are actually trying to do the work.

Room To Grow

One of the odd, bad assumptions of much discussion and policy of school staff is the premise that people emerge from teacher or administrator school fully formed, all their virtues and flaws set in cement. Somehow that 22 year old newby will be essentially then same person at age 55.

An item in this morning's newspaper reminded me of one of my earliest bosses. He was hired, as administrators often are, to correct for the failings of his predecessor. In this case, his predecessor was seen as a little--well, a lot--lax. And so he hit the ground with boots on, whip ready to crack. 

He was harsh. He demanded compliance, that everyone fall in line. He was a prick. For the strong teachers, he simply puffed his chest bigger and tried to roll over them. For teachers who were struggling or dealing with issues, he worked on the theory that they needed a good, swift kick in the ass. Or maybe several. He was not loved; one of my colleagues said that if the boss was dead, they wouldn't cross the street to piss on his grave. 

But things happened. He dealt with a physical problem and learned what it was like to be weak. He tried his hand at community theater and learned what it was like to be someone who needed tp take direction from someone with a greater applicable skill set than your own. He found new, better, ways to do his job and work with people. He's the only boss I ever had who involved staff in hiring interviews and actually listened to them. By the time he was a superintendent, he was hosting twenty-some staff members in his home while they served as the search committee for a new principal. 

Does his work in his later years make up for the swath of destruction of his early years? I don't know that it's possible to make that kind of computation. Would it have been better for the universe if he'd been fired two years in and gone down some other path? I don't think we can know that, either. I just know that one of my fundamental beliefs is that growth is good. 

This should not be a radical notion in education, a field that is predicated on the notion of growth and change. The whole point and purpose is to aid small humans in growth and learning. So why would that not be part of the model for staff?

Yet numerous reforms and disruptions and management approaches are built around the idea that teachers are in a permanent state, their virtues and failings locked in amber. Give them a strict curriculum, scope and sequence, with materials that are tight, even scripted, so that their flaws can be kept away from students! But this just substitutes the flaws of the program developers for the flaws of the teachers--and those flaws in the material will never grow. 

We suffered for years under policies aimed to weed out Bad Teachers, a hopeless task. For one thing, it's not a solid metric--there's no doubt that I was a great teacher for some students, and a lousy one for others. Meanwhile, I may have disagreed with the approach of the guy next door, but he was undeniably the right guy at the right time for certain students. For another thing, it changes daily. There were times in my career that I was definitely not great; that's true of every teacher because teachers Go Through Stuff, too. 

We ought to have systems built around helping teachers learn and grow and strengthen as teachers; instead we get dump professional development sessions selected to help meet some state mandate or to satisfy the notions of administrators. The entire evaluation system ought to be built around helping teachers identify areas for growth and finding ways to help that; instead we get punitive cookie-cutter checklists. 

Ans instead of schools organized around a supportive community of educators, we get buildings where you're thrown into your own room, and your personal professional growth hangs on the luck of the draw-- which other teachers happen to have the same planning period or lunch shift that you do? There have been hundreds of proposals of the Let's Do It Like Doctors variety, where part of the job of master teachers becomes the nurturing and assistance of younger teachers. It's how it should be--but it would involve time and that means money, and when it comes to spending money in ways that quickly make schools work better (e.g. increase staff size in order to reduce class size), we just can't manage it somehow. 

Would a focus on growth help everyone? Doubtful. The worst boss I ever had was not only bad at his job, but steadfastly refused to learn and grow at all. The refusal or inability to learn and grow is top of my list of Reasons To Fire someone. 

And to be fair, teachers themselves can be resistant to all of this. It's hard to embrace new stuff, particularly if it means looking back over your shoulder and thinking, "Well, I certainly could have done a better job for those students." It's also hard if you're at your limit, juggling two dozen balls and someone says, "Let me just switch this tennis ball for a cantaloupe." Part of giving teachers room to grow also means giving them room to breathe (see above discussion of $$).

Learning and growing and changing is the most natural, most human process, and yet somehow we organize schools around the premise that teachers and administrators don't do that. Certainly not in any deliberate or mindful way. I've read several pleas that we make post-pandemic schooling more human. Leaving room to grow would be one way to do that. 

Why Are We Still Listening To EdReports

 Feathers were ruffled recently with the news that both Fountas & Pinnell and Lucy Calkins both got "failing marks" for reading programs from EdReports. Some flappery broke out on Twitter, and there was wringing of hands around and about, but any time an EdReports rating comes out, I think we have to answer one important question.

Who cares?

EdReports was launched in early 2014. Politico actually covered the event, dubbing EdReports "Consumer Reports for the Common Core." Which is a good hint at where we're headed. EdReports was launched with a hefty $3 million in funding from the Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Trust. Education First, a thinky tank/consulting firm that had teamed up with the Fordham Institute to promote the core, "incubated" them (Education First's website even has a big thank you from EdReports' executive director). The executive director is Eric Hirsch, previously a big wig at the New Teacher Center (they sell teacher induction) and the Center for Teaching Quality (spoiler alert-- quality comes with the Core). Their board chair is still Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College and one of the ten board members of Microsoft.

EduReports uses a gated review system-- you have to get past Gateway 1 before they'll even look at your Gateway 2 stuff, and so on. To their credit, they use a lot of teachers as reviewers of materials, but less to their credit, they lean heavily on a rubric system, which is the kind of system that negates the expertise of whoever you're using to do the reviewing. But there are scores and numbers and specifics and it's all far more rigorous than some of the "research" we see pitched into the education arena..

However, there's a major problem. Everything keeps coming back to the phrase "alignment to the standards." Which standards? Well, EdReports is pretty coy about that these days, but their history makes it plenty clear that the standards they've always held dear are the Common Core. 

This was supposed to be one of the benefits of nationally adopted standards--the marketplace of textbooks could be organized around those standards and some nice group could rate texts on how well they were aligned so that shopping would be a breeze and the market would favor the Core-aligned materials. The idea behind EdReports was to help boost alignment to the Core, and not to provide more fodder for the reading wars. And asking "Is it aligned to a set of standards that have been widely disavowed by everyone" is not the same as asking "Is it any good?"

Yet here we are. A dozen outlets have run "Fountas and Pinnell publish bad reading books" while nobody has run a "Why are we still checking to see if textbooks are aligned to the Standards That Dare Not Speak Their Name?"

I'm not going to jump into the reading wars today. I'm in no mood to fling my body between the Science of Reading army and the fans of F&P at the moment. But I am going to suggest that that discussion needs to be held on its own merits and not an EdReports Common Core check. 

Write A Note To Your Hero

h/t to @theJLV, who reminded me this morning of something I've long advocated, but haven't brought up around here since 2014. And this year seems like the perfect time.

I write a weekly column in our local newspaper, and since I started, I've made it a tradition, every year as we head into Thanksgiving, to encourage readers to write a note to a hero.

I mean get out a piece of paper and a pen, and write a short note to a person who is a hero to you.

Now that we're swimming in negativity, and teachers and other essential workers are being clobbered by plunging morale, it's a perfect time to inject something positive into the world. If you value certain qualities, certain actions, then reinforce them. If you think the world is a better place because a certain person makes certain choices, write them a note to say so.

Yes, I know people are a complex mess, and that a person you admire for doing A might also be a person who you believe really needs to stop doing Y. We often let that hold us back because we don't want to seem to encourage Y, but that's backwards. If you want more A, praise the A.

And do it for yourself, because you don't have forever. When my long-time teaching partner retired, I almost didn't send a note. "I can just include it with a present at her retirement party in August." But the party never happened, because she did not make it through the summer. I had sent the note; on my phone, I still have my last text message from her, responding to that note I sent. 

Emails and phone calls are nice, but there is nothing like a solid physical note, a piece of paper that your hero can take out and hold, a note that they can happen across by accident and be reminded that they made a positive impression on someone in the world. Which in turn strengthens the good parts of the world. 

We are swimming in toxic negativity, in criticism of everyone and everything, and I am not arguing for trying to counter that with toxic positivity or toxic ignoring-unpleasant-realities, but man-- can't we just make it a point to tell someone something nice about themselves? Can't we just surprise someone with an indication that we noticed them making a positive contribution to the world?

And if it seems like I'm pushing this a bit hard, it's because you can't imagine how many people argue, "Well, I can't do that because---"

So here's the deal. Just write a short note. Start is "Dear [name]; You are my hero because--" then say why. Don't try to qualify it with an "even though" or a "but." A sentence or two is plenty. 

Since we're here talking about education, I'd suggest sending it to a teacher who is a hero of yours, because teachers have gone from heroes to  "evil creatures who singlehandedly screwed up everyone's education" in about six months, and if there's a teacher who mattered to you, I guarantee they'd love to hear about it right now. 

Telling people they Did Good is not something you ever regret--certainly not as often as you end up regretting NOT telling somebody until its too late. Let them know. Lift them up. We don't all get to be Adele, but we can all send someone a note. 

A Tale Of Research And Social Distancing

A recent article in Wired is both fascinating and scary if you are in a school with lousy ventilation and a modicum of social distancing.

The fascinating part may be fascinating only to those of us who find research stuff fascinating. But "The sixty-year-old scientific screwup that helped COVID kill" is about one of those little things that worms its way into acceptance as conventional wisdom in a particular field, but nobody really knows why, exactly. 

In this case, the item in question was "5 microns," the supposed dividing line that marks the difference between an airborne illness (one that can float about for large distances) and droplets, which are supposed to succumb rapidly to gravity. The 6 feet of social distance are in our pandemic repertoire because COVID is supposed to be droplet-spread.

I'll give you the bad news here-- that dividing line doesn't actually hold up upon inspection, and therefor  in a place that's not aggressively ventilated, six feet of social distancing aren't necessarily enough. Of course, if you've got your vaccination and your booster shot, you're in good shape. Go get your shots, if you can.

The story of how a couple of researchers worked out where "5 microns" comes for is a great tale of how research can be a challenge, unpeeling not just layers of research and writing, but shifting attitudes about the scholars who created them. 

ICYMI: New Pandemic High Edition (11/21)

Well, my county has hit its highest COVID numbers since the whole thing started. Now, for us that's still under 200 with rare mortality, but it's still not encouraging. And still plenty of people with their "well, it's my choice" crap about vaccination. Thanksgiving's looking great. For no particular reason, there's a long list this week, just in case you need more reading to tide you through the holiday. 

The book bans will continue until patriotism improves

Don Moynihan runs a pretty good little substack. This post connects a lot of the current culture war panic dots.

Burning Books is Un-American

Paul Thomas offered this op-ed to newspaper across South Carolina; one more good reminder of how wrong book bans are.

Parents coming for mental health programs next

NBC looks at the emerging trend on the list of educational programs that certain parents would like to see the manager about

The teachers here are not okay

A first-person piece at Chalkbeat looks at the many crises that Louisiana teachers have been hit with.

What rational parents must do to combat education conspiracies

Andre Perry at the Hechinger Report looks at how to push back against the culture war attacks on schools

Why there hasn't been a mass exodus of teachers

Has the Great Resignation extended to teaching? There are plenty of anecdotes and stories, but I've been wondering if we aren't just seeing a version of shark attack summer, where something is going on as it always has, but we're just paying more attention? I'm still not sure, but Rebecca Klein has a good story to address the question.

Want to rethink education? It's time to take back kindergarten!

Nancy Bailey points out that now would be a great time to make kindergarten kindergarten again.

4 Reasons to ditch academic preschools

Janet Lansbury offers four great reasons to avoid this assault on littles

Unmasking Moms for Liberty

Olivia Little at Media Matters has a good look at where, exactly, the Moms are coming from.

Toward a more inclusive Williamson County

The good news is that Moms For Liberty is not the only group organizing in Williamson County, Tennessee. Andy Spears has the story.

Authentic Voices

Dad Gone Wild gets all radical and actually listens to what teachers have to say about the current state of affairs.

Lessons of youth activism, climate change, and climate justice

Jose Luis Vilson has some reflections on all three, from a summit he attended.

The art of twisting good things into monsters

Teacher Totter looks at some current vocabulary-- equity, fidelity, critical race theory, etc--and shows how school districts turn them into disaster. One of those painfully funny kind of posts.

I'm a Teacher, and I can't live like this

Ellen Dahlke has a piece that isn't just one more "I Give Up" post, but a look at the toll on teachers that comes from making them act as ad hoc mental health professionals.

How teaching is like blowing leaves and snow

Blue Cereal Education has a two-fer; how is teaching like blowing leaves, and how is it like blowing snow? 

Presidential Timber

Grumpy Old Teacher offers some observations about Ron "Gonna Run For The White House" DeSantis and some of his great ideas in Florida.

Appreciating the Public Schools we take for granted

Jan Resseger offers a Thanksgiving-ready reflection on the many ways in which we should be appreciative of our public schools.

That Old Time Religion Saves The World

Nancy Flanagan offers some meditation about the natures and uses of religion in troubled times. 

And finally-- I didn't post anything to Forbes.com this week, but I did turn up over at the Progressive, responding to Arne Duncan's ideas about how we can bring everybody together over education.