DPS Sickout: In Defense of Teacher Sick Days

Lately, Detroit Public Schools has had sickouts.

For those who have never heard of those, it's when a large number of teachers call in sick on the same day, resulting in school being cancelled due to an inability or refusal to fill all of the spots with subs.

I can't say that I'm privy to any backroom discussions, so I don't know if these are coordinated, though it seems likely that they are. And though I don't find school being closed ideal, here's some real talk:

Teachers go to school sick all. the. time.

Lately, probably even more than they used to, because Michigan is experiencing a substitute teacher shortage on top of a full-time teacher shortage. Class sizes have risen. Some districts are forcing teachers to teach on their prep period to cover classes without subs. I've even seen places that combined two elementary classes, putting 40-50 children in one classroom, because they didn't have a sub. If teachers actually stayed home when they're sick, as undoubtedly some of those calling in to the sickout are, schools couldn't or wouldn't run. Schools, like almost every other business (yeah, schools are a business now, I went there) run with no slack. So many teachers go to work while they're sick.

Some more real talk: Teachers have been blamed for their students' lack of success, despite the amount of money, time (recent studies show that the average full-time public school teacher works 60 hours a week), and energy they put in. Legislators don't show up every day to take care and teach of 25-50 human beings at a time. Emergency financial managers don't take multiple developmental stages into consideration on a moment-by-moment basis. Legislators and emergency financial managers can call in when sick without feeling that they're letting people down. Heck, they can go to the bathroom without feeling that they're letting people down.

Not to mention that legislators and emergency financial managers haven't been given more work to do with less pay and worse benefits. (Darnell Earley, the new DPS emergency manager, makes about $221,000 per year while telling teachers they deserve less than a quarter of that.)

Somehow, emergency financial managers and legislators aren't blamed when the things they're in charge of go badly. (In fact, if you're Darnell Earley, as the emergency manager of a large city, you can poison the children with toxic water, and the consequence is getting promoted to managing the largest school district in the state.)

Nope, financial managers and legislators aren't blamed for things.

Things like making sure there's enough money to maintain school buildings so that schools don't have electrical outages on random days.

(Oh, you didn't know that DPS has also been having school closures from power outages when there hasn't been a storm?)

Things like making sure teachers have enough supplies for every student.
Things like keeping track of how many students are in each classroom so they don't exceed the legal maximum.
Things like making sure it's impossible for principals to steal money (oh, sorry, it was EAA, not DPS, being indicted for that) that was supposed to fund instructional time for students.

 Sickouts aren't ideal, but no one has listened or made positive changes when teachers have voiced their concerns through typical channels. If you have a suggestion that doesn't involve teachers working for free, abysmal working conditions, larger class sizes, or other poor outcomes, I'm sure they'd love to hear it.

Coming Out: I'm a Feminist, & Here's Why

This started as an e-mail response to the writer of a Christian non-profit that focuses on women's safety primarily in the developing world. As usual for this blog, I won't disclose specific names, as the goal of this post is to address the underlying belief, not to guilt or shame a particular entity. Also as usual, I've been thinking about these concepts for a while but this post responds to something of a catalyst in the form of a newsletter from the aforementioned non-profit.

Dear Writer,

You say that your daughter's generation falsely believes that your organization is feminist and that they state wrongly that feminism is a belief system in accordance with Christianity. You assert that your generation correctly believes that feminism is problematic, bashes men, and has fascist tendencies.

I am of your daughter's generation, I suppose, if we must sort people by age, and gender, and country, and all of these other artificial divisions, and in that artificial division you have created, it is not "us" who have feminism wrong. You have mischaracterized feminism and even implied that feminism is a profane word we should avoid using.

The following is a description of my logic for supporting Christian feminism. Those not adhering to Christianity have a completely different process for arriving at feminism. Because you identify as a follower of Christ, I hope that you will find it clarifying.
 
Given that all good things come from God
Given that humans are created in the image of God
then the Christian God must have all of the positive characteristics culturally attributed to both genders
and from that it follows that as we become more like Christ, we will attain more of the positive qualities ascribed to both genders
And
Given that God created humans in the image of God
Given that God sent Jesus to save all humankind
Given that God calls all humans into a relationship with the Trinity
Given that Christians are called to proclaim the Gospel and use the talents God has endowed them with to advance a world of peace, justice,  and unconditional love
then it follows that Christians of every gender must advocate for humans of every gender to be treated as having inherent value and thus afforded all rights and opportunities associated with such value.

In truth, the Christian feminism your daughter's generation holds is the belief that many women may be called to more than cleaning house and being sexually available to a male partner - a belief I know that your nonprofit shares. It is the belief that current constructions of masculinity prize aggression, hypersexuality, and stoicism, and that hurts men and women both.

Christian feminism calls for vulnerability for all, protection (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) for all, and says that men too, are harmed by an artificial binary wherein men are strong and women are sensitive.

You know that many of your women are physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually very strong. You know that many men are compassionate, sensitive, nurturing. 

I don't see how acknowledging the soft side of men or the strong side of women or the coexistence of both of this is twisting what humans - male and female - were created for, as you imply it does. We don't need a new word to use instead of this supposedly profane "f" word, though some have been using "equalism," if you are still in search (problems with framing the issue as equalism will be deferred to a later post). We don't need a new word. Those who have distorted and denigrated the concept of feminism need new insight. I hope that this message provides a little, as the word itself is viable and vibrant and not going away.




In fact, the feminist movement is the reason that my generation generally has been able to take for granted that we will attend university and get the training to pursue our callings. It is the reason we have a voice for the women you serve who have no voice. It is probably even the reason you are able to head an influential nonprofit. It is the reason we have female legislators to pass laws to protect women. It is the reason that you and your women in the United States can hold your own paychecks and bank accounts instead of giving their income to a father or husband. It is the reason that you and the women you protect who become US citizens can vote. In short, it is the reason that women in the United States are (mostly) no longer viewed as property, a belief your organization hopes to spread to the developing world.

This is why "my" generation says that your nonprofit is feminist. We value the dignity that your organization gives to all people. We see your team as helping all whom they help to move closer to God and closer to their God-given callings. I don't know what would be profane or fascist about that.

 

In short, you are a feminist, whether you believe it or not.

Blessings,

Erin

Call Me Muslim Today - Here's Why

This post has been in draft form for weeks, because I didn't think anyone would much care what I have to say on the subject - until the media lit up of the violence in Paris yesterday. There's a lot I could say about this. A lot. But I'm going to say what I've been thinking about saying.

I grew up in a church that emphasized missions. We got apologetics training (basically an education in how to proselytize effectively) that included, of course, how to defend Christianity against those who would attempt to discredit it, but also some training in why other religions and atheism are wrong.

In some ways, I am grateful for the global perspective and comparative religions training this gave me at a young age. I read biographies of missionaries and began to realize that not everywhere is like my home. My sister is currently a missionary with the Wycliffe Bible Translators partly because of this.

On the other hand, some of this training resulted in glossing over possible flaws in Christian history and doctrine and then exaggerating similar flaws in other religions. As a major world religion, Islam was included in this mischaracterization. I'd like to touch on a few of those criticisms, because I'm sure I'm not alone in having heard them.

In terms of theology, one of the biggest critiques I've heard is of the doctrine of abrogation, which basically means that to resolve inconsistencies in the holy writings, the policy is that the one written later is correct. The speaker (I couldn't tell you his name now) ridiculed Islam by choosing part of the text very early, contrasting it with a later-written portion, and then stating that the doctrine of abrogation was inconsistent or foolish.

EXCEPT Christianity basically does that too, to resolve conflicts between the Old and New Testament. If there's a law in the Old Testament that we don't follow, it's typically explained that Jesus came to fulfill the law and has given us different instructions, more recently. I don't see how that's substantially different that the doctrine of abrogation. I just don't. I'm sure someone with a degree in religion could explain the exact theological difference, but for purposes of this discussion, it's not enough to discredit an entire religion.

I have also heard people refer to Islam as a cult, given that it focuses on a single leader and supposedly follows an adapted version of another religion. It's a long complicated thing, and you can read about it more elsewhere - except by that logic, Christians would be a cult too, given our focus on Jesus and the fact that we're sort of claiming to be Jewish but not really.

Another criticism: Islam doesn't treat women fairly. EXCEPT how many denominations of Christianity still don't allow women to become ministers, regulate their dress, tell them to be dominated by their husbands, say that a woman's place is in the home, blame victims of sexual violence for their own abuse, and regulate female sexuality? Kind of a lot. And how many Muslim women are accomplished, liberated, strong, independent? Both religions have successes and failures on this front. So pot, meet kettle here.

And lastly, though this is the one most relevant to this post's timing: the criticism that Islam encourages violence. Yes, a few people who claim to follow Islam do terrible things and blame it on their religion.

EXCEPT what religion does Westboro Baptist Church claim to follow when they picket military funerals, churches, clinics, etc? What religion would most KKK members claim? What religion prompted the rape and pillage of the Americas in the name of its deity? The Crusades? The bombing of abortion clinics? Hint: it wasn't Islam.

If we are going to judge religions by the worst people who claim to follow them, if we are going to let those who perpetuate violence and hate define said religion, then Christianity isn't looking good. 

I haven't read the Quran in full, though it is on my lifetime list of things to achieve. I don't have the pillars memorized, but here is a list I Googled, for those even less familiar than I am: faith, prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. I find the first four in the Bible as well, and I know many Christians who do travel to the Middle East to learn more about their faith, share fellowship, and experience the history more deeply, also.

There is a reason that Muslims refer to Jews, Christians, and themselves as People of the Book. Yes, there are differences. Yes, some people who adhere to these religions do horrible, evil things. But I hope you're getting by now, readers, that extending one characteristic, one description, especially a negative one, to an entire group is a dangerous line to walk. I hope you're seeing that while I believe strongly in the importance of the Gospel, I cannot claim that the Christian church has always been perfect.

 The Bible would refer to Christians vilifying all Muslims because of this one incident as calling out a neighbor for a speck in their eye when we have a huge plank in our own eye (see Matthew 7).

So if you would still like to criticize Islam on this one incident, criticize me too. Criticize me for valuing faith, prayer, charity, and self denial. Criticize me for the days that I don't adhere to Christianity, don't love my neighbor as myself, don't love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, criticize me for believing that one person can change the narrative and the way we relate to God, criticize me for believing Jesus when he says that we shouldn't stone women for infidelity even though the Old Testament says that we should. Blame me for Westboro's transgressions.

I stand in solidarity with Muslims around the world when I condemn this violence. I stand to say that we should not malign Muslims or Islam because of this incident. I know many Muslims are afraid, justifiably, for their safety.  For the Christians who still aren't convinced, let me end with a line from the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10):

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

Christina Stands with PP: Preemie's Mom Shares

Edit: This post is a follow-up to Confessions: I'm Not Pro-Life Anymore and  Dr. Rebecca Talks Abortion .

Two and a half years ago, I had a baby, and that changed my stance on abortion for good. While most people would not think of giving birth as a reason to desire to advocate for the ability to terminate pregnancy, my case was different. My sweet daughter was born early, very early--14 weeks early to be exact-- and for that, I had to spend 90 days in the highest level of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or NICU at Texas Children’s Hospital. I saw what is required to keep a 26 week old baby alive. Seeing the extensive medical care that many children with various complications from birth required was a key moment in my decision to be pro-women’s health rights, pro-proper sex education, and ultimately pro-choice. Recent photos of “aborted fetuses” posted by pro-life people on Facebook have been emotional triggers to me, in that most of them aren’t actual aborted fetuses, but premature babies. 

Hazel, as a tiny preemie - you should see her now!

That, and some introspection inspired me to share my feelings about how we, as a nation of people who should want to care for our women and children, could realistically handle the issue of abortion.

Abortion will never go away. There is no way to outlaw all abortions; we can only outlaw safe abortions. The only way to reduce the amount of abortions that happen is to give women proper education, affordable contraception, and other screening tools. Even as someone who is pro-choice, I support reducing any amount of medical intervention, such as abortion, by providing ways to mitigate the need for it. It is important that we are able to provide the least invasive medical intervention while still providing the bodily autonomy that all people deserve. Do you know who provides these things and other life-saving services? Planned Parenthood. It is imperative that we reflect and take a realistic view of the world. The only way to reduce the quantity of abortions is to give people quality tools to do so. That I why stand with Planned Parenthood.

I Taught an Ahmed: Please Don't Detain Them

I need you to hear this. I have taught students just like the Ahmed in Texas who was detained for building a clock and bringing it to school.

They are from South Asia, or Southwest Asia, or other parts of the world. Their skin was not White. They had names that you may have never heard before (though their names were not really Ahmed - apologies for the click-bait headline). Their first languages are not English.

And my Ahmeds are brilliant. They are on their school robotics teams. They want to be business people, doctors, pharmacist, engineers, and they are everything right with the United States. They demonstrate innovation, creativity, integrity, perseverance, and resourcefulness. Whether their robotics teams are well-resourced or running on shoestrings, they are showing up after or before school hours to work on projects involving math and science. Some of them would come to my office hours or e-mail me between class sessions for extra help.

In a time of a much hand-wringing about students who cannot do math and science, or students who don't care about school, my Ahmeds prove to me that at least to some students are being served by the United States school system and some Millenials have society's interests at heart (see my post In Defense of Millenials for more on that). They prove that our labor force can and will fill the skilled positions that we've had difficulty staffing.

So I am asking: do not detain my Ahmeds. Do not delay them. Do not hold them back from their dreams and their goals. Because my dream, my goal is to see my Ahmeds change the world.

In Defense of: Christianity's Irrationality

Christianity isn't rational. Believing in a Triune God isn't rational. The narrative told in the Bible requires suspended disbelief and background in different cultures and interpretation of history. I couldn't see that as a child, maybe because developmentally children can't see that, or maybe because I couldn't see anything other than what was in front of my face.

I was taught "apologetics," which is basically training in how to proselytize and defend the Bible, Jesus, Christianity, etc when people called them out as irrational or objected to agreeing with me that Christianity is the best belief system. And in the process of that training, I was also taught how to poke holes in other belief systems, how to show their irrationality front and center. These other beliefs seemed ridiculous to me. The doctrine of abrogation used in Islam appeared preposterous and untenable, for instance.

Until I started looking at the Bible and church teachings and stories I'd heard over and over and oversimplified and normalized since childhood. Until Rebecca (who didn't grow up in the church and hadn't heard some of the obscure Bible stories) and I started reading Genesis. Until people started applying Bible verses to my relationship with my helpmate to try to break us up or withhold our rights. Until I started seeing the divisions between branches and denominations of Christianity, even though all agreed that the Bible is infallible and could use apologetics to "prove" it. 

And at some point, gradually, like my creeping mint plant, the realization swept over me:

Believing in Jesus isn't rational. It's not supposed to be convenient. It's not supposed to be normal. Setting aside self interest is hard. Laying down our burdens and control is hard. Interpretation of a canon written across hundreds of years is hard. 

And that's why arguing people into it, as I was taught to do with my proselytization training, has never worked to bring anyone I know closer to Jesus. 

That's not to say it's impossible to bring people closer to Jesus. But every time I've seen someone step closer, it's because of the irrationality. It's the self sacrifice they see that's inconvenient and countercultural. It's in the mess and the joy during sorrow. It's not because of the safe Jesus or the tame domestic Jesus. A friend in high school who has since been following Jesus admitted, well after, that he got to know my sister and me because we smiled. All the time. Genuinely. And he didn't get why but he wanted to.

I've had better conversation and better love for people by seeing the mess. By asking questions and listening and looking for the image of God in the midst of brokenness. 

And in our current culture, maybe looking for beauty in brokenness is the most irrational of all.

In Definition of: Modesty

I've written on this topic a little in Eff Your Beauty Standards, a popular post about wearing a bikini.

It came up recently with a friend, and so here I am pontificating again (I'm still shocked anyone reads this). And there's the part of modesty I want to hit. Not as much the clothing issue - I think my last post tackled this well. The issue of self-deprecation, especially as women, and then the choice to hide rather than come forth, as well as the acceptance of unacceptable treatment based in part on that thought pattern.

I'm not saying that true modesty isn't a virtue. I'm saying that we've misdefined modesty and that there's a double standard when it comes to men, women, and modesty.

So here's what I see as the current definition/application of modesty: women should be covered up according to whatever standards society - including men, but just as much other women - decides. Their bodies should be covered with clothing. Again, see my previous post. Other parts of them should be covered in silence, shrinking, deference, and acceptance. They shouldn't preach, according to many churches, even when they have the gift of teaching and shepherding. They shouldn't show anger or aggression. They shouldn't look good at math and science if they want boys to like them. They shouldn't make too much money. A woman's place is in the home raising children full time.

ALL of these contribute to an environment where women hide their gifts, or in some cases never see them in the first place. They are dissuaded from solving the problems the world faces (in addition to intentional attempts to stop them of course). This twisted version of modesty is doing incredible harm.

And here's what it should be, in my own words, not pasted from Merriam Webster: modesty is a practical estimation of we can do, based our skills, talents, and practice, with the support of others and a higher power, in terms of bringing a better world about. It's focused on function, much like clothing should be chosen based on purpose. It lacks boasting, but also entirely excludes self-deprecation.

I'm still working on it - but thanks for reading, even if I'm still surprised. I appreciate you.

Confessions: I'll Probably Never Stop Calculating Price of Food per Pound

Most of us know a senior citizen or two with habits we think are a little eccentric that they attribute to life in the Great Depression or World War II. Adding salt to coffee. Swiping out the last of the egg residue with her index finger. Saving jars. Dealing with tiny soap nubbins. Most of them think it's normal, or don't even realize they're doing it. But of course, lots of people don't do these things.

Now that the Recession is ending and Rebecca has been a doctor for more than a year (see my post about what med-wife life is like),  we no longer hemorrhage money or burn up savings or wonder how we're going to pay for things as much as we used to. The financial stability of her having a regular salary and me being on a decent hourly-wage paycheck has allowed me to reflect on habits I formed during the Recession.

One habit I have been teased about (and yes, I often still do this) is calculating price per pound on food - as in, "well, our vegetable this week will be cabbage and onions, since it's winter and they're the only thing under $1/pound." Of course, now I sometimes splurge, but one consideration is still amount of nutrition, price, volume/weight in terms of the whole meal. Sun-dried tomatoes seem expensive per pound, for instance, but they're very high in nutrients, and given that it takes something like 6 pounds of fresh tomatoes to make 1 pound of dried, divide the dry price by 6 to compare to fresh. As a bonus, they keep longer, reducing my food waste. I've done this to varying degrees, but I probably reached my peak when we were living in Wyandotte, couldn't go to Horrock's anymore, and had to fall back on food stamps for about a year (as I describe in my post about being a welfare queen). To many, this practice seems strange coming from someone who didn't deal with food insecurity as a child and is now married to a physician, but I doubt I'll ever completely stop thinking of food like this.

Another habit from the Recession is putting off major purchases as long as possible. Rebecca and I finally got a new printer in the last couple months. The one we have has never worked well, and the software, hardware, interface, etc have only gone downhill. By the end, it could take up to a half hour to print or scan a one to two page document, and Rebecca couldn't use it from any of her devices, so she would print from work or borrow my computer. The new one has saved so much time and frustration - part of me can't believe we lived like that for so long. I hope we don't have to again. But I don't know where we would have gotten money for a new printer before recently. We have no intentions of getting a new TV before what we're currently using dies (and I think it was a hand-me-down, and might actually be a computer monitor - it doesn't have a remote, and to change it between input sources requires physically unplugging things). In the end, I guess I don't know why I would pay more money for something unnecessary, though I suppose I might be surprised in the same way I'm still delighted when the printer actually works.

All of these were survival techniques for a while. I've been asked if we ate a lot of ramen. We didn't. I think some of that came from knowing this isn't ending anytime soon, so temporary nutrition fixes like ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and hot dogs, that could ultimately jeopardize our long term health if we persisted, seemed more dangerous than it would have been if we were just dealing with a couple summers during college. This wasn't time limited. If it was going to last indefinitely - and remember that we didn't know the Recession would ever end - we had to look past foods that would be cheap short term but could come with serious health implications. And so our grocery carts were filled with lots of dry beans, tofu, rice, and fruits and veggies carefully calculated at $1/pound or less. My meal planning list started to include homemade whole grain focaccia, rice pilaf, remnant paella stew with the cheapest canned tomatoes and canned white beans and frozen veggies I could find. I saved pasta jars to avoid buying Tupperware. We sharpened our thrifting skills.

Most of my Recession habits will be ultimately beneficial. Resources on this planet are finite, and remembering that and acting accordingly is not only thrifty, it's the moral path I choose to take. Delaying gratification can have great payoffs in the end, sometimes.

Some other Recession habits I'm working to break, though, because I'm finding them detrimental. For instance - believing I'm just fortunate to have a job, any job, fortunate to be paid anything, anything at all, and don't deserve a raise or bonus or autonomy. During the Recession, I was fortunate never to experience long-term unemployment, but I was underemployed, underpaid, and even uninsured at one point. Believing I had little worth and had to just be a pawn or commodity deeply affected how much agency I believed I had, how talented I thought I was, or how impactful my life could be. I also internalized my difficulty paying our bills as meaning that I was a bad person for not having money saved and for Rebecca having to take out debt (see post Gays didn't break marriage: we found it like this).

Combine these beliefs, and I've ended up in a lot of workaholism benders in the past year, fearing that I will fall back into my previous circumstances. I've also put off buying items that, unlike a new TV or printer, drastically affect the quality of everyday life. During the Recession, my weight fluctuated a lot for a variety of reasons. That started to bother me less at some point, as I discuss in Eff Your Beauty Standards and My Philosophy of Food, but at some point, there really wasn't money to keep buying clothes that actually fit me, and weight fluctuations were another reminder of our limited resources. Some fixes were to buy dresses that were A-line or flowier in the areas where I tended to carry my weight - and I have to admit that I really love wearing dresses as much as I do now, so I'm grateful it was kind of a necessity (see this post about looking like a lesbian - or not). But I've chosen to wear other things that were really uncomfortable - slacks, undergarments, shoes, etc - longer than I should have because I didn't really have much of an alternative. Or I avoided buying trendy clothing with the thought that I didn't know when I could buy something new or when things would go out of style. Even thrifting was kind of out some months.

In the last year, I've tried to be careful about purchasing new items, but I've had to replace a lot. And some of the things I'm buying, if I'm honest, are still hedging against the possibility that my body might change, that style will change, that money might be tight. I've had to learn that being comfortable enough to live my life is worth something, and that buying a new pair of jeans is okay.

I'm glad the Recession is over. I wish I could have learned these lessons some other way, or that I hadn't had to learn some of them (mostly just the one about being underpaid and a commodity) at all. We've been blessed, as I've mentioned before, to have had our educations, and each other, and access to credit. Things could have been much worse. In any case, I'm glad that I have learned most of these lessons, and I hope that I'll remember them, whether or not I choose to continue living that way.

Confessions: I Can't Handle Regular Public School Teaching, SO In Defense of: K-12 Teachers and Teaching

Teachers and educational policy have been in the news quite frequently lately. I'm sure I see more of it than the average person because I have so many friends who are teachers, but the rest of you must be hearing too about the impending teacher shortage, shrinking wages and benefits, and often deplorable working conditions. Some of you have already spoken about your concerns about Common Core. 

Some of you may still believe that teachers unions are deeply problematic - and I'm not claiming they're perfect. Some of you may believe that teachers are overpaid, that their summer breaks justify near-poverty wages, that charter schools should continue paying hourly wages instead of salaries and finding loopholes to deny benefits.

I flat out disagree. And here's why:

I can't do it. I've gotten feedback from many people at this point that I'm a gifted teacher, and I've been fortunate to go through quite a bit of rigorous training, between my BAs, MA, and employer-based training. I've been educating people for more than 15 years now in some capacity or another, with ages ranging from 3 to grad school. 

And I can't handle public school teaching. I think about returning, about finding an alternative path to certification, about getting my hands into an urban classroom. My heart hurts to admit that, as there were parts of public education I deeply love, and part of me will always miss it. 

But I like clean facilities. I like bathroom breaks. I like manageable class sizes that don't make my throat raw and ears hurt from ambient noise. I like enough space for all my students, having supplies, making my own schedule. I like some autonomy as long as I keep getting results and act as a professional. I like generally being paid what I'm worth. I hate being micromanaged. And every time I think about returning to full-time work in a public school, I know that I will face these problems. Especially in the schools that are currently hiring (because the shortages will stay in high-need, high-poverty districts). 

I don't see any end in sight to these working conditions - in fact, I expect they'll get worse before they get better. I haven't ruled out a return - I'm monitoring the situation and hope someday I'll feel safe applying for positions. I found deep joy in forming relationships with my students - still do. But as I've written before, teaching and loving involve a great risk, and I can't separate the two and still do the good work I take pride in. So I wait. I hope. I pray.

In the meantime, I support pay raises and contracts for teachers (maybe not tenure for life, but at least multi-year agreements with their districts). I support funding to public schools that reduces instead of exacerbating disparities. I encourage proper working conditions and staffing levels for support staff, too.


I have utmost respect for teachers. I wouldn't be who I am without them. I don't blame them for leaving the field in record numbers for a variety of reasons. I will re-assert, though, that I cannot rejoin their ranks right now in the capacity that I feel would do the most good. So I'm doing the second-most good and defending those who do what I can't.

I hope my readers will do the same.

Confessions: I Didn't Always Support Affirmative Action

I am not Black.

You know that, or at least all of you that are long time readers or have ever met me. I'm very White. Very, very White. I've had every privilege that comes with that (I discuss some of that in a recent post about Sandra Bland). And while I have lacked other things, like straight privilege, or the upper echelons of wealthy privilege, because intersectionality exists, I have had a lot of advantages.

Many of them have been in terms of my education. And I am now an educator, and I have studied education, in a lot of cases through some unusual lenses. Those experiences and studies, while not granting me to speak as though I have experience life as a Black person - nothing could ever do that - have taught me much.

And so I am confessing something: 

when I hadn't learned, hadn't experienced, didn't know as much as I have and do now,

I didn't like affirmative action. 

I thought that since I had read voraciously and studied hard and done well on my standardized tests and followed the rules and been a good girl, I should have every opportunity, be admitted where I wanted, get any scholarship (if I'm honest, I didn't even like the idea of need-based aid at the time). It's still hard for me to imagine people not getting into their first choice school, or not getting into any decent school, because my privilege and so forth set me up to get in almost anywhere I would have wanted to go. I was understandably uncomfortable admitting that maybe things weren't as fair as I thought, or that maybe others just as talented as I had been passed over, not once, not twice, but every day in a series of tiny outcomes that snowballed into a totally different life experience and set of opportunities.

I don't like admitting this now, for the same reason that some people were VERY upset with my post Speaking the Truth in Love, about beliefs that people who would not admit to bigotry/homophobia have that do make them, at least currently, bigots and homophobes. Seriously. People said I was being hateful basically for saying that anyone, anywhere, regardless of the fact that they DO believe sweeping, negative generalizations about a specific group and DO think it's okay for people to have fewer rights based on an unchangeable trait, is a bigot/homophobe. No. I am not hateful for calling you out. You are hateful for refusing to change your harmful beliefs, or for insisting upon imposing them upon people who don't share them and shouldn't have to.

Enter #Blacklivesmatter, enter #sandrabland, enter Dylann Roof, the refusal to take down the Confederate flag, a dredging up of Fisher v. University of Texas, #notallwhitepeople, and just a general insistence that White people in the U.S. are colorblind, that racism is done, that the African American Civil Rights Movement was a resounding success, that we have a Black president so Black people can do anything. I don't know what it's like to be Black and hear this. I don't. I can't.

But I know what it was like to be in a same sex marriage and hear people say the stuff I quoted in Speaking the Truth in Love. People said that stuff and expected me to be okay with it or even to agree, and it sucked. It sucked to play respectability politics and have to try to maneuver through a discussion like that. And I don't have to be out all the time. I pass for straight (though no, that's not a compliment either, as I discuss in a different post), so I can at least sometimes avoid these issues.

So I am concerned, White people who still believe the things I used to believe that

yes, definitely made me a racist. 

They definitely meant I was participating in White privilege and White supremacy. I am concerned when you say that a Person of Color has "taken" your child's spot at college or grad school. I am concerned when you imply that someone of Color who has graduated from college must have only been accepted because of affirmative action and is incompetent now or you don't like them and that somehow reflects on all Black (just Black, not all other graduates of the same program) people or students. You wouldn't say that a White person who had an unfair advantage in being admitted to a program and now is not as good as some other graduates is a poor reflection on other White people. You'd say that person was an individual, a special case.

My views on affirmative action have changed. I hope within my lifetime we'll see proportionate numbers of every group represented at high quality educational institutions, even if that means that applying for my next graduate degree might be more competitive. I hope that if I ever have children, they will never sit in a classroom where everyone looks like them. I'm not sure affirmative action is really even enough to get us there, but it's what we have for now. Goodness, it might be the reason I was able to have a seat at a research one Big 10 university with an amazing scholarship that drastically shaped my life outcomes - 100 years ago, as a woman, who knows if my application would have been considered? (More intersectionality there for you.)

I'm still working on me. I try to check my privilege, but I sometimes fail. I try to ask myself whether something is simply different from how I do things or prefer them, or if it's really worse. If you're not doing the same, as a White person, you should start. Ask yourself if there's anything morally wrong with African American English Vernacular (AAEV/BEV/Ebonics), or if it's just hard for you because you don't understand it. Ask yourself why dreads seem less professional to you than man buns. Ask yourself how many books/movies/articles you've read/seen in the last few weeks (or if you have school age children, they've read/seen) with people that aren't White. I was shocked the first time I counted my picture book library and discovered that none had a Person of Color on the cover. I know some of my readers are more on top of this than I am. Some are maybe around the same point in the journey. It's rough, sometimes, but it's a journey we need to make. Not just to make the world better for Black people, though acknowledging #Blacklivesmatter is important, but because a world of equality, equity, justice, diversity, civility, and love is a world that's better for all of us.

In Defense of: The Humanities

Edit: a reader requested links/examples to support the central theme of this post, so I've added connections to previous posts.

Given what I do for a living, I often hear parents assure me that a liberal arts university would not be appropriate for their child. Some of this stems from a misunderstanding of what liberal arts means - students may study almost any major in a liberal arts program, but they will do so in a more interdisciplinary fashion, with coursework in a broader spectrum of programs than they might have in a technically focused program.

For those who already know this about liberal arts universities and still believe their child should avoid them, the attitude is that since their child will be studying engineering or a pre-med emphasis ("pre-med" isn't a major, contrary to popular belief) or business, coursework in the social sciences and humanities is not only unnecessary, but a waste of time and money.

I was fortunate enough to end up with dual degrees in education and Spanish, and then I did a master's in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), a blend of pedagogy and applied linguistics, so I definitely studied in a liberal arts format. During the Recession, I sometimes asked myself if that had been a mistake - after all, I liked economics and biology in high school. Maybe business or a science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) program would have made more sense.

As I develop into my career, though, and especially given that the Recession has finally ended, I'm grateful to have been in a program that built "soft skills" like writing cogently  (and actually, a large complaint from many employers is that their college grads don't write well), genre analysis (useful in technical writing), and anthropology. I'm grateful to have read and analyzed story structure, because it has allowed to see the stories in my own life, such as the thread of my relationship with Detroit. I'm glad that not only do I speak a second language, I understand another culture to some degree. My education program focused greatly on designing lessons around objectives, which helps me evaluate activities, both within and without classrooms, for purpose and efficacy. I believe this background has allowed me to be more empathetic and structure arguments better, and to identify solutions to problems.

And I think in the long run, it will stand me in good stead as the job market changes. Technical skills, after all, are based in current procedures, and therefore may become obsolete. And though STEM has been in fashion, certain majors within it have not been guaranteeing graduates jobs at any higher rates than those with my form of academic work.

Even if I'm wrong on that, though, I've found a great deal of my humanity in the humanities. Seeing stories, relating to people's pain, knowing about social structures and history, such as this post on narrative that has helped me understand the civil rights issues of the day, in addition to a deep understanding of pedagogy, all of these have enriched my life (this link shares one realization of this) in ways that extend far, far beyond my employment situation. So I will not stop mentioning the liberal arts to families as an option. I hope that a few students find the joy there that I have (see a link to all of my posts labeled "joy").

In Defense of: Millenials

Full disclosure: I identify as a member of the Millenial generation. 9/11 was probably the single biggest impact on my adolescence, and while I remember life before the internet, I'm a digital native. I'm highly educated, concerned with social justice, and disillusioned with the current political system, which are qualities also associated with Millenials. This post, however, is less about my block of that group and more about my high school aged students who would also count as Millenials.

I know many people feel that my students are vapid narcissists who can't go a minute without checking social media. I know that many people feel that they seem entitled, shy away from hard work, and don't know the value of a dollar. Some people might say that these students are obsessed with shortcuts.

Maybe some are these things, just as members of other generations are. But let me tell you what I see.

My students - in most cases, regardless of their economic background -

are spread like butter over too much bread 

 (to quote Bilbo from Lord of the Rings). Many fight to take the challenging courses they know they will need to prepare for life after high school and then come home to piles of homework that they do well into the night, leaving them running on less sleep, in some cases, than my wife who is a medical resident. On top of this, they volunteer, participate in extracurriculars (yes, usually plural), and/or work part-time jobs (also sometimes at hours that make my head foggy in sympathetic sleep deprivation).

They are pushed to pick universities and careers at younger and younger ages. They understand so deeply that they must get postsecondary training in order to succeed that I sometimes can palpably feel their panic when something threatens that. Many also stare down the monster of a pile of student debt unless they find scholarships from what seems like an ever-shrinking pool requiring ever higher feats of strength or genius.

On top of that, their numbers - GPA and ACT - become an ingrained part of their identity. They judge, from these numbers, whether they are smart, worthy, competent. They judge whether their dreams have merit from these numbers. Many pile test prep on top of these already full schedules when what is really impeding them is the anxiety stemming from them. I wish I could tell every 16-year-old in the country that he/she is so much more than these numbers.

In response to the concern about shortcuts - I've seen these students come up with elegantly creative solutions using their graphing calculators and other forms of technology. They think differently. If we can leverage that, they will solve problems using methods that would never occur to me. They will collaborate to degrees that we cannot imagine. But sometimes they cannot solve the problems so elegantly, it's true. They're young, and the weight on them is great. It breaks my heart to tell you that I have been asked by more than one student what I think of students (without an attention deficit diagnosis or legal prescription) taking Ritalin or Adderall to improve their scores. Most know someone who has done this successfully. My answer is that these medications without the supervision of a doctor are extremely dangerous, and no matter how important the tests seem now, they aren't worth potentially dying for. Once a student told me, half joking, that I was wrong about that. Without getting into my life history, I looked into his eyes and quietly told him that suicide is not a punchline for me.

I love talking to my students about what they intend to write in their admissions essays. This is where I get to hear about their stories and dreams, where their eyes light up with hope instead of clouding with worry, where they realize that someone sees them as more than these numbers. I try not to tell them what they should do, instead asking them what they like to do, what they've considered, where they've visited, what makes them happy. I hope that I am not the only person who tells them that they should do what makes them want to get up in the morning, that they should attend the university that will support their dreams, that it's okay to admit that they don't want to work 100 hours a week for the rest of their lives.

I don't know what the answer is, but I know that my heart aches to see them.