I want one kid who was on the Covington Catholic HS trip to speak up.
I want one kid to say, “We knew what we were doing.”
I want one kid to break the code of silence and say, “That statement my classmate put out is nonsense.”
I want one kid to say, “I haven’t slept since this happened because I am ashamed at how I got caught up in a moment that ended up being way more than I ever thought it would be.”
I want one kid to say, “We knew we were making fun of Nathan Phillips.”
One kid out of 60.
And I know the social cost for that kid would be astronomical. His parents would probably have to remove him from that school. But I want one kid to stand up and do the right thing.
I also know that the stakes are now incredibly high outside of his immediate community as well. I don’t know if he did speak up how he would be received. I don’t know if the harassment would abate or increase or just shift valence. And there’s no question that the incredibly charged political theater that has taken place as a result of this moment makes speaking up and telling the truth even harder.
But it is also what the moment demands. Because it’s the truth. Because it is maybe the only step toward restoration and healing that any of those kids could actually do. Because it might quiet all the noise.
“Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than 80 students in the high school and middle school and no more than 20 in the elementary school.To capitalize on this personalization, decisions about the details of the course of study, the use of students’ and teachers’ time and the choice of teaching materials and specific pedagogies must be unreservedly placed in the hands of the principal and staff.”
If you have 45 students per class, and you teach four sections a day, you have 180 kids on your academic roster. There’s no way to authentically give feedback on student work or drill down into student passion and interest. And it’s even hard to keep all 180 names right at the forefront of mind, and you certainly cannot remember the faces of 180 parents when they come in two or three times a year. And by the way, four courses a day is probably a low estimate for many teachers. In many urban high schools, teachers have five and sometimes six full courses to teach a day.
This creates a crushing workload outside of class, especially if you try to do any kind of authentic assessment or project-based learning. Let’s take a typical English classroom, for example. If you assign that most classic of English assignments, the five paragraph essay, and you spend 10 minutes grading each one (and English teachers everywhere just laughed at the idea that they can give meaningful feedback on an essay in 10 minutes) that’s 30 hours of grading for *one* assignment – and that’s not counting when teachers give feedback on rough drafts or thesis statements or any of the other scaffolding techniques teachers use to build student facility in the writing process.
(Full Disclosure – the Philly budget means I can’t get to 80 kids for teachers at SLA either. Most core academic teachers have 120-125 kids on their caseload (plus 20 Advisees, which is a TON of work, too), and even that is much lower than many SDP schools.)
It’s important that class size at the high school level isn’t just about the singular class – it’s about how that contributes to the overall teacher load. At 180 kids or more on an academic load, teachers are making Faustian bargains about how to do the job, and they know it, and so do the kids. Even the most deeply caring, efficient teacher has kids are falling through the cracks in that model, and what that does to the psyche of kids and teachers in those schools is absolutely toxic.
When society creates systems like that and then tells students that school is the societal mechanism to economic independence and fully actualized citizenship, we lie to them because kids can see for themselves how under-resourced that mechanism – their school – really is, and teachers are on the front-line of the anger that results. When we starve our schools, we set teachers and students up to fail. And that’s cruel for every reason you can think, and cynically, it forces teachers – who went into the work to make a difference – to engage in martyrdom to even try to mitigate the system-level failure.
I guarantee you that there is not a teacher in LA who – if you cut their student caseload in half – would suddenly work half as long.
Not one.
Teachers put in the hours. They just want the right to feel like those hours are making a difference for the kids they teach. That’s what #UTLAStrong is about.
P.S. – I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how the CES definition of personalization is so much more humane and powerful and real than any technocratic, Khan Academy “playlist” vision of personalization can ever be. But that’s a post for another time.
This song has been on my mind a lot lately — not just the verses they teach in elementary school, but all the verses. It strikes me that this song, in many ways, speaks to the heart of the divide in this country. If you believe that America is for all — that the promise and dream and hope of what this country can be is meant for all who live here, then I don’t know how you aren’t horrified by the actions of America’s current government. If you don’t believe that the dream of America is for everyone, then you probably want to make sure that you and your family get yours and that the easiest way to do that is to make sure that the door slams shut in front of anyone who isn’t already here or who already hasn’t gotten their piece of the pie — and if those folks happen to be black or brown or Muslim or Jewish, well, they aren’t the folks America was built for anyway.
To say that this country is flawed is to state the obvious. To say that we started this country with a beautiful dream and then immediately defined who would have access to that dream and who would not is to simply acknowledge history.
But this country’s history is also filled with those who have fought to make the best parts of America’s dream a reality for a greater number of people. A nation born of promise has seen generation after generation of activists fight to make that promise a reality — to hold America to its best ideals, not the worst of its sins.
Today is a difficult day for a lot of folks in America. For while we can celebrate the best of what we are, it is important for us to also recognize all the work we have left to do — and how hard that work feels in this particular moment in time.
But the legacy of activism and struggle for equal rights, for equal opportunity, for the very recognition of shared humanity is as much a part of our country’s history as anything you may find in the history books. And today is a great day to remind ourselves that this is the nation of Woody Guthrie and Upton Sinclair, of Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner, and of the activists of today who believe in the idea that we can be a more far more perfect union than we are today.
I believe in that more perfect union. I believe that is what Woody Guthrie wrote about when he penned This Land is Your Land. And I hope – because I still hope – that we can understand that everyone deserves a chance to walk that freedom highway.
Happy 4th of July. May we live up to the best ideals of our nation.
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.