Why We Teach

I’m cleaning.

Yesterday was the first day of my sabbatical. In a move that is 100% on brand for me, I spent the morning cleaning my office (I’m on team “organized space, organized brain). That’s when I dusted off the picture above. That’s my dear friend and University of Oregon colleague Joanna Goode, a much younger me, and Mike Rose. I think the universe was interceding at that moment, as I needed a shot of reinvigoration as to why I teach. And in that picture, I found it.

A story for you.

For folks new to Mike Rose, he was/is an absolute legend at UCLA. An expert in writing, Mike taught doc students how to get their words on paper. He was widely published and wrote the now classic books Possible Lives and Lives on the Boundary. He wore a standard uniform of jeans and cowboy boots, had a seriously salty mouth, and loved, loved his students. When I was a young doc student, I enrolled in Mike Rose’s writing course. On the first day of class, I walked into his office a few hours before we started. Our conversation went something like this:

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Kerri: Mike, I’m going to drop your course. I can’t write.

Mike: What’s up kiddo?

Kerri: I am over my head. I know it already. I am just going to drop the course and save myself the embarrassment.

He asked me some questions about my worries and past experiences with writing.

Mike: Ok. I understand if you need to. Let’s give it a go though, like a test drive. Why don’t you come to the class, check it out, and decide how to proceed after? *

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I went to class. I stayed. My first publications came from his courses. I enrolled in a second course with Mike later in my doc program. And when I left UCLA, I continued to write articles and then publish a book. Fast forward to today, and I am on sabbatical. To write a second book.

It is not hyperbole to say that I am a writer because of Mike. I was 100% sure as a grad student that I couldn’t write myself out of a paper bag. And at that moment in his office, Mike didn’t know either. I was a new student to him. I wonder what he saw.

In his courses, Mike taught me techniques to build interest, to explain myself plainly, and to guide a reader through my logic. I still actively use those strategies today. But more than anything he crafted my sense that I could be a writer. That I was a writer.

That, dear reader, is the reason we teach. We take the wobbly, the unsure, the just beginning and help set them on their paths. We help them see what they can’t yet imagine. In my case, Mike changed how I understood myself and my abilities. Both impacted my career trajectory and how I proceeded as a professor.

So, in the most remarkable of ways, educators help people to be.

Colleagues, as you begin your school year or semester in what is arguably the most chaotic stretch of my professional life, ground yourself in this: you are in the people building business. You are literally changing paths and mindsets. Provide all the test drives to all the young folks you can. You never know where they will land.

Perhaps in their office, cleaning, while they get ready to write book #2.

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* note to readers. This move is genius. I use it with my own students. The “I hear what you are saying but let’s not omit yourself proactively” technique conveys “I get you” and “I got you, take the risk” simultaneously. Thanks, Mike, for this strategy.

A short story

A story for you.

I was part of the generation of female faculty who were told to not mention your kids if you had ‘em, lest you jeopardize tenure. At my former post, I never brought my children to work. Ever.

Today, at an all-day retreat, a colleague brought her newborn. For the whole day. Not only was the wee peapod with us all day, his bad-ass mom nursed wee peapod while standing and giving a power point presentation. For those of us who have nursed babies, we’re all clapping at the focus and dexterity that goes into such an event. For those of us who raised kids in a different generation, it also inspires awe.

I can hear all the naysayers now. The baby will disrupt the meeting! The baby is a distraction! Absolutely none of that happened. Instead, the baby made the meeting better. Baby was passed around while Mom worked and ate. We bounced him in our laps and walked him around in his carriage. We all shared the load. It made us pay better attention to one another. Colleague A was holding Baby while Mom presented. But then it was Colleague A’s turn to lead, and Colleague B stepped in seamlessly to take Baby for a minute, so Mom could get settled. We all had a shared task, keeping an eye on the peapod.

I love this event because it takes what is “normal” (no kids at work!) and blows it up. Maybe it is more normal for us to be in community. Maybe it is more normal to be whole people. Maybe it is more humane to know and appreciate our colleagues’ families. Maybe babies make people happy, or comforted, or nostalgic. Maybe we should take the risk of doing more things differently, and see how much better they can be.

Smoke and mirrors

I’m reading a book that is hurting my heart.

Written by the former director of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Christine Carter (2020) has been charting the mental health crisis inundating our youth. Dr. Carter starkly, and in no uncertain terms, explains how levels of depression and anxiety in youth right now represent the most serious mental health crisis seen “since we began measuring these things” (p xvi). These are not your run of the mill, all-adolescents-go-through-them issues; these are issues specific to this generation. Mental illness among youth has exploded since 2011, way before the pandemic hit (the book isn’t even factoring in that reality). One particular example: 40% of high school girls said they were so sad they stopped doing usual activities; 25% of these girls considered suicide. We are in a particularly fraught, dangerous, and unprecedented time.

I’m also reading reports that are hurting my heart.

We have wave upon wave of data coming out about the damage COVID wrought on students. We know kids are lagging academically and have been impacted by months of online learning and isolation. Data from the Brooking Institute shows math and reading score drops across grades that are widening over the years. Education Week research shows this same “compounding debt,” with youth needing “4.1 additional months of instruction in reading  and 4.5 additional months in math to meet pre-pandemic levels of achievement” (Schwartz, 2023).

School folks are in a difficult and unchartered place. We have a generation of youth raised on screens and with social media in the midst of an overwhelming mental health crisis. We have youth who not only have psychological needs, but also academic ones created by the pandemic. These are real issues, identified by researchers and scholars the country over, based on robust data collection over many years. These are the issues districts and schools should be focusing their energies on.

Instead, schools are caught up in manufactured outrage over trans youth in schools, Black books in schools, and whether to teach African American history. In the face of so many significant, life-impacting difficulties, we can’t allow a small handful of people to fabricate non-issues that take away from the actual needs of kids. We don’t have research that shows that learning Black history harms youth. We don’t have research that shows that having books about trans youth in school libraries harms children. We can’t let people focus on non-problems, when we have real ones that require our attention and care. Children’s wellness is supported by creating systems of mental health supports in schools, not by removing books with gay characters. Teens’ success in school is supported by providing interventions that allow them read successfully, not by removing African-American studies. These anti-DEI initiatives are smoke and mirrors. They distract attention and resources away from actual efforts that will help youth. We need to collectively focus on steps to keep youth whole, well, and moving forward. Finding another way to harm them, by discrediting their identity, histories or families, will do the opposite.

Carter, C. (2020). The new adolescence: Raising happy and successful teens in an age of anxiety and distraction. BenBella Books, Inc.

Kuhfeld, M.,  Soland, J.,  Lewis, K.,  & Morton, E. (2022, March 3) The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up? The Brooking Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-pandemic-has-had-devastating-impacts-on-learning-what-will-it-take-to-help-students-catch-up/

Schwartz, S. (2023, July 11). Students aren’t rebounding from the academic effects of the pandemic. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/students-arent-rebounding-from-the-academic-effects-of-the-pandemic/2023/07

DEI is Dead?

I’m online this morning when I see the heading “DEI is dead.” I’m wondering who killed DEI? Who thinks it’s dead? And why is DEI the enemy?

DEI is evidently dead because Virginia’s chief diversity officer says it is (I’m going to leave all of that alone. Too much for this post).

There is no doubt that DEI work is under attack. This is the worst I’ve seen in my 20 years in the field. DEI programming in colleges is being dismantled (Texas, for example). Trans youth are under attack (Alabama, we see you). Ethnic studies is being challenged (Florida, Florida, Florida). Book bans limit representation in literature, omitting Black and Brown children, queer youth and trans folks (in so many states). So yes, we are unquestionably living in a moment where people who do DEI work are seeing their jobs evaporate, and students are seeing their worlds shrink as history and literature are narrowed. It is indeed soul-crushing and infuriating and stunning that this is still where we are. But we’ve been here before. Ignorance has a long lineage. Racism continues, but so too does resistance. DEI is still alive. Don’t let them say otherwise. Good people are doing good work. Check out this and this and this.

As I am getting this blog up and running, I want to lay out the building blocks that are central to my thinking, my approach to this work and how we will spend our time together. This DEI-is-dead-nonsense allows me to get at one of them.

DEI is currently being framed as the enemy. I’m going to literally spell it out: diversity, equity, and inclusion are perceived as the enemy. Enemy enough that entire districts and states are crafting laws to dismantle it. In doing so, governments and/or school people imply that homogeneity, inequity and exclusion are their actual goals. This normalization of injustice is breathtaking.

DEI work is not the enemy. To do DEI work is to bring attention to the gaps in how we treat each other, gaps that are built into our system and impact each of us. To do DEI work is to acknowledge racism is moral failure that harms our neighbors and ourselves. White children do.not.do.better because Brown and Black children are dis-included in the curriculum. This war against DEI is subterfuge that distracts folks from actual issues, like massive wealth inequality, global health disparities and a burning planet. So no, including people, respecting them, and aiming for fairness is not the enemy. The belief that equity and inclusion don’t matter is.

On Good models

I tell my grad students to imagine their best teacher, and then unpack what he/she did that made them exceptional. Without fail, the commonality semester-to-semester is a solid relationship with that person, based on warmth, patience and often, humor (although that is a different post). Where I want to pause here is the importance of intentionally modeling your teaching after folks you respect. This really is the magic of teaching. Educators who may have crossed your path half a lifetime ago linger. You get to call them up all these years later, no matter time or space or distance.

When I do this, I have clear memories, some more than 20 years old. Susan Ambrose was my professor as an undergrad. She taught me that White women can do equity work. She was my first role model in the field. I followed in her footsteps. Kisha Davis Caldwell was my mentor teacher way back in the day, when I was a mere sprout, student teaching in Pittsburgh. She taught me that I could do math, could explain it even, and that it was (gasp!) fun. I also learned the role of “other mother” from Kisha, that sweet-spot place in a relationship with students where they know you love them AND that there is no messing around. I had the GOATS at UCLA, Tyrone Howard and Mike Rose. Dr. Howard taught me the importance of checking in with students. Every class he taught, the first 10 minutes were about connection with individuals. I wrote that down in a notebook that I still have today: “make students know you see them.” And Mike Rose, what can one say about Mike Rose? Mike taught me humility, plain spoken-ness, and the value of a little bit of sass.

I literally think of these folks, to this day, when I am in the classroom. Little bits of their presence show up. I “dear reader” my grad students (thanks Mike), and goof around with my undergrads (ask them what you should binge watch, other faculty folks. Hilarious. This is where I learned of “Hot Ones”). Thanks Tyrone! I taught high school math three years ago (thanks Kisha!) And I am writing this post in my blog about equity (thanks Susan).

Who are you modeling yourself after? How do you channel that person in your classroom?

Intentions…

When Joi and I wrote our book, we tried to be really clear about why we were writing. It was a technique I learned from Joi, this really thinking about what one’s intent is. So that is where I will start here. With intentions.

My goal is to help teachers imagine what equity can look like in classrooms, and to help unravel some of the disinformation about DEI work in 2023. There is too much heat, and not enough understanding. I hope to clearly, calmly, and in the spirit of doing right by kids take steps to unpack these hard topics. So over the weeks, I’d like to talk about critical race theory, and book bans, and policies in schools around gender. One of those anchors I mentioned on the homepage, for me, is dignity. Youth should get to go to school and not have to give up their language, culture, race or gender in order to be successful. It’s really that basic. So my intent as I begin this blog, is that we create spaces for youth where they can just be….