This Is Not News

As we hurtle toward the end of the summer amid a continued standoff between the Philadelphia School District’s administration (along with Governor Corbett, the Pennsylvania legislature, and to a lesser extent Mayor Nutter) and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (of which I am a member), I’d like to to try to discuss some of the work rules and contract provisions that are causing so much friction. In these blog posts I am speaking solely for myself. So even if I say a certain provision is absolutely essential, or something I’d be willing to negotiate about, I have no real authority to implement my opinion. But this is the thought process that every member of the union, and indeed every resident of the city, is going to have to go through to some extent or another, so I figure it is worth it to put it out here for others to read and discuss.

One proposal by the district, which is supported by certain conservative reform groups, is to eliminate “step raises,” the pay scale in which teachers receive an increase in salary every year from the second to the eleventh year that they work for the district. The argument that these advocates make is that the district should have the power to reward the teachers who do well and not be forced to reward those who are not doing so well. “Pay teachers for how well they do,” the argument goes, “not how long they have worked.”

There are actually at least two separate issues here. One is the “merit pay” question of whether teacher salaries should be tied to some kind of performance metric. The second is how to establish a base teacher pay scale. On the merit pay issue, there are several obstacles that need to be overcome before such a system would make sense. One, frankly, is the issue of trust between the teachers who are being evaluated and the administrators who are doing the evaluation. If there is a chance that the administrators might play favorites, that is going to be a problem. If a teacher is worried about voicing a disagreement with a principal because it could affect an evaluation that can affect his or her paycheck, that poses a problem. You might be able to create a system of due process in which the evaluations could be appealed, or validated by an external source, or something similar. But then you have to ask yourself, is the time and money devoted to that process worth it? Will whatever performance gains you expect to come from this merit system be the best use of the resources you devote to implementing it?

Another issue is how exactly you will establish performance. Usually standardized tests such as Pennsylvania’s Keystone exams are a large part of the equation. Quite frankly I think this is a terrible idea. We already have too many incentives in the system pushing to increase test scores even though there are many reasons to believe that standardized tests are a poor way to evaluate what a student really understands. Standardized tests don’t really assess deeper critical thinking skills. Standardized tests often tend to rely on background knowledge that is possessed by members of some demographic groups but not others, making the tests discriminatory. Standardized tests feed into the test prep industry, so that families who can pay for test prep can boost their children’s scores but not necessarily boost what they understand.

And so much of what teachers do does not show up directly on a standardized test. I am a social studies teacher, so right now there is no standardized test in my subject in Pennsylvania. So when it comes to my school’s test results, I am expected to contribute to our students’ results in reading and literacy based exams, which right now is the English 2 Keystone. (We’ll talk about the fact that Pennsylvania apparently wants to create standardized-test-based accountability but hasn’t funded the creation of any of the tests beyond 9th grader math and 10th grade English and science another time.) Now, I happen to place a lot of emphasis on vocabulary, critical reading, and writing skills as they are essential for understanding history. But how can anyone tell how much of an impact I have had on my students’ reading and writing ability in comparison with their English teacher? Up until last year, I taught World History to every single Parkway Center City 9th grader. Last year I taught 2/3 of the 9th graders. This year it might turn out to be somewhere closer to half. So at best, you might be able to compare the way that my World History 9th graders do on the English 2 Keystone in 10th grade to the way that the other World History teacher’s students do on the same test. And that’s how you’re supposed to tell which one of us is doing a good job?

Even if there were a standardized test in World History, I do not believe that my students’ performance on that test would be sufficient to judge whether or not I am doing a good job as a teacher. I have been the adviser for Parkway Center City’s student government for the least four years. I have helped students organize fundraising drives, develop proposals for school improvement, and create programs to increase school spirit and student engagement. If you ask me to prove that I am a good teacher, I am going to point to those things along with my students’ academic performance. But you rarely hear about such things from the merit pay boosters.

OK, so let’s put aside the merit pay question. What’s the justification for the step raises? Here’s what I think is the proper way to look at it. Teaching is a field that, like many, requires experience to do well. I had been a college teacher for ten years before I started as a high school teacher. I studied education theory in order to get my Ph.D. and then studied more in order to get my M.Ed. and get certified. But there is a lot about the job that you can only really understand by doing the job. That means that, in essence, the school district has to pay me while I get my on the job training. I think it makes sense to pay me less than the experienced teachers in the same school who have already learned those lessons and, in fact, are helping to pass them along to me. That’s the principle behind step raises – not that every teacher gets automatic raises just for staying on the job, but that teachers gradually reach the full salary for their position through years of experience.

It’s important to note here that the step raises do not last throughout a teacher’s career – a teacher with fifteen years of experience makes the same salary as a teacher with twenty-five years. Once you reach what’s considered the full salary for a qualified teacher, you’re no longer getting paid for those incremental gains. Your salary only goes up based on the negotiations between the union and the district. So, just to repeat, many teachers are not getting paid more “just for sticking around another year.” To eliminate step raises, you have to justify that a rookie teacher should be paid the same as someone with a decade of experience. And then you have to figure out where to set that initial salary. A starting teacher with a bachelor’s degree makes $45,360. A teacher starting his or her eleventh year in the district makes $67,705. If you bring the initial salary up to the experienced teacher’s base, now you’re spending a lot more money. If you bring the experienced teacher down to the starting teacher’s base, you will create a huge gap between what an experienced teacher can earn in Philadelphia versus another district. So how would you retain experienced teachers? In many cases, you wouldn’t.

Finally, you may think that it’s unfair to assume that any teacher who stays in the district for ten years has improved and is a good teacher. Well, there’s an answer to that: get rid of bad teachers before they reach that point, and raise the bar for what makes a good teacher based on the teacher’s experience. There is a procedure spelled out in the Pennsylvania Public School Code for removing a teacher because of incompetence and a host of other reasons. There is a due process system spelled out in the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers contract through which a principal can establish said incompetence, and through which a teacher can try to defend himself or herself. So if a teacher is genuinely doing a bad job, and a principal thinks that there is probably a better person available for the job, then that principal can gather the evidence, complete the evaluations, and go through the proper channels to remove that teacher.

Now, maybe there are some changes that should be made to that process. Maybe principals currently don’t have the time or resources to properly document what “everybody knows.” Maybe there are some other flaws that I do not see because fortunately I have never gone through the disciplinary process. But that’s not an argument to scrap the system and come up with some other system that punishes all of the effective teachers. That’s an argument to build up the trust and cooperation between all the players in the district so that these systems can be improved through a process of good faith negotiation. And that’s exactly the opposite of what we have now.

When I discussed the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s actions last week, I mentioned that I felt like the superintendent had staged an exercise in kabuki theater. By creating deadlines, threatening to close schools, and setting dollar figures for what the schools required, he created both a sense of crisis and an impression that he could resolve the crisis if certain steps were taken. I believe that this helped him create an atmosphere of support for the radical steps that he took last Thursday.

Not only have subsequent events reinforced that suspicion, they lead me to believe that the radical steps, and not a safe and orderly opening for schools, were really the main goal all along. First, the big Friday deadline wasn’t really an urgent deadline. Mayor Michael Nutter and City Council President Darrell Clarke both said that the city would find some way to get $50 million to the district, but they could not agree on how. They just said that they would work it out eventually. So after all of the dueling press conferences, nothing had actually changed. Superintendent Hite said that was good enough, they didn’t need the money by Friday. Why bother giving an ultimatum if all that it took to solve the problem was a vague IOU? Because it created a week of media stories about how the schools might not open at all. That makes many parents and members of the community feel desperate, so they’re willing to support drastic actions. Look at Ronnie Polaneczky’s column from the weekend, that argued that the school code suspension was “good for kids” this year, but that it should be reexamined when the crisis is over.

Second, the $50 million figure was essentially random and bore no relation to what would be required to open schools with the staffing required. Even as the district now says that everything is set for all Philadelphia schools to open on time, many of those schools are getting staff and materials back on a piecemeal basis. Many schools are not getting any counselors back at all. Most schools are not getting the number of aides that they had last year back. Some schools are using temporary employees instead of experienced full-time secretaries to handle registration and other responsibilities. As a teacher and a parent, I have to laugh so that I don’t cry at the thought of sending my daughter to school in that situation. I work with some incredible student leaders who are going to be getting ready to apply for college, but because my school has fewer than 600 students I don’t know if there will be a counselor to give them any guidance. How is that giving the students the education that they deserve? If the ultimatum had really been about making sure that the schools had what they needed to open safely, the demand should have been for a much higher number and it should have been made much sooner.

Let me pause my list to emphasize that point. As things stand right now, Philadelphia public schools will not have an adequate number of counselors, secretaries, and school aides to provide the education our students need. For all of the ultimatums, we are still behind the eight ball.

Which leads to the third bit of support for the idea that last week’s deadline was never really about guaranteeing that our schools would be ready for opening in September. The ultimatum was delivered to the city government, which has already passed bills that would have provided the funding that the district requested from them, and not the state. Not only has the state not provided the funding that the district requested from them, they wouldn’t even pass the bills that would have let the city implement its plan to raise its share. The city has stepped up with tax increases for the last two years to provide the district with more funds, while the state has not. So why was Superintendent Hite asking Mayor Nutter to deliver a vague IOU that wouldn’t solve the problem anyway, instead of Governor Corbett? Why isn’t the superintendent trying to direct more Philadelphia parents’ attention to the responsibility that the state government bears for funding education? We do know that the governor has been urged to use this situation as a way to score political points by going after the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, of which I am a member. And the suspension of the school code targets measures that directly affect the job status and compensation of PFT members. It does not take me very much effort to connect the dots of the two agendas.

So that’s why I’m not sold on the idea that last Friday was actually a meaningful deadline in any way, but instead a manufactured crisis whose timing came remarkably close to the SRC vote to suspend the school code. And if you’ll indulge me, let’s take a second to consider that suspension. One of the major selling points of this suspension is that it would give the district flexibility to put staff where they were needed. Let me repeat that if the district had the funds to avoid the layoffs or recall everyone who was laid off, positions would already be filled by people who were familiar with the jobs and the schools. It’s only this half-measures move to put counselors only in larger schools that creates the need for flexibility in the first place.

A possible exception might be the cases where a school was closed, and so some counselors, teachers and aides would be forced to transfer to other schools. This is why Polaneczsky is willing to support the SRC action, for example. Now, I admit I am not familiar with the rules for site-selection and right-to-follow as they apply to counselors. But if it had not been for the staff cuts, then presumably all of those employees would still be employed by the district. If the existing placement rules would have made it difficult for those employees to go where their students were going, it may have been possible to negotiate something with the union to allow for that. But that move was never tried and the crisis atmosphere gave the superintendent an opening to go after the rules that govern not just the particular schools employees would be assigned, but whether a laid off employee gets his or her job back in the first place.

Why does this matter? Because it means that our students are being used as bargaining chips. To an extent that is inevitable and all sides can justify to themselves that they’re doing it for the students’ best interest. But this goes beyond the normal jockeying of a contract negotiation. It’s poisoning an already strained group of relationships and killing the trust required to address the challenges of urban public education. If the game is going to be rigged this severely, then the only smart move is not to play along.

Yesterday on Twitter the word starting getting around that Philadelphia superintendent William Hite had asked the School Reform Commission to suspend certain elements of the Pennsylvania School Code. Many of these suspended elements cover staffing-related areas that are covered by the district’s contract with unions such as the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, of which I am a member. Among the rules that Hite wanted to suspend are a requirement that teachers be recalled from layoffs by order of seniority and a provision that employees receive a pay raise every year for the first 11 years or so that they are employed by the district. Hite says that following these rules will make it harder for the district to open all of Philadelphia’s schools on time on September 9.

I am opposed to these changes, for a variety of reasons, some of which are obviously self-interested. I was briefly laid off, and while my layoff was rescinded this time I am clearly in a position where the layoff rules can affect me directly. With four years of experience, I would normally have step raises coming for the next seven years. So I am not a neutral observer in this. I think you can make a good case for using seniority in layoffs, in order to create a fair system that isn’t vulnerable to subjective biases. I think it makes sense to pay an inexperienced teacher less than an experiences teacher because this is a job where experience counts. But other people disagree, and in a normal situation these disagreements would be resolved at the negotiating table.

But that’s not what happened here. The news of Hite’s request hit the media 24 hours before the SRC met today to vote on that request. The text of the proposed changes was not easily available. And all of this is taking place against the backdrop of negotiations between the district and PFT and the ongoing funding crisis. So, along with many other PFT members, I went to the school district headquarters this afternoon to see the meeting.

Some members were outside the building picketing when I arrived. Inside, the first floor lobby was turned into an overflow room, with rows of folding chairs and a screen on which the meeting was projected. The chairs were all occupied and there was a large crowd standing when I got into the room while Hite was making his opening remarks. I didn’t get a chance to see how full the conference room was – there were definitely some spectators, but there must have been room for more because many of the people standing outside were chanting, “It’s our meeting, let us in!” Eventually I think some of these people got into the room. Based on the audio, the audience in the room did not have many fans of the proposal.

Several parents, teachers, and activists spoke at the meeting, almost unanimous in their opposition to the suspension. A couple of speakers did want to change the seniority rules with regard to hiring, but they wanted this to be done as part of the negotiating process. One speaker did support the suspension, saying that in these extraordinary circumstances the district needed to do whatever it could possibly do to have schools ready. In the end, the SRC unanimously voted to grant Hite’s request. Only one member of the commission made any kind of statement, and I admit that I could not understand how she was justifying her vote or if she was even trying to do so.

So after about 90 minutes, the building emptied. Some PFT members congregated in front of the building, but many others left. I left as well; my wife and daughter had come to the meeting with me, and my daughter – about to start the sixth grade in the Philadelphia public schools – was stressed out by the situation. I don’t think continued standing and chanting outside of the building would have done much anyway. People who support the union are going to support the union; people who don’t aren’t going to change their minds.

The next steps, I would assume, will be taken in the courtroom. If the district’s moves hold up in court, the ball will be back in the PFT’s court at the end of the month, when we will have to decide how to deal with our expiring contract. I can say that at the moment, I feel like a strike needs to be on the table. If Hite and the district were negotiating in good faith, I wouldn’t say that. But I can’t help but feel that there was a certain amount of kabuki theater involved.

Hite has said he has the power to decide not to open the schools if they do not have what they need. So why didn’t he use that power in May when he proposed the doomsday budget? We would be having a different conversation if he had said, “We simply can not run the schools under these conditions,” rather than acting like he would open schools even with all of the layoffs.

Hite has said that the $50 million in funding that he needs to be assured of by tomorrow are only enough to recall some of the laid off staff, which is one reason why he needs to suspend parts of the school code. So why didn’t he set his drop-dead figure at the amount that would allow him to bring back enough people under the terms of the existing contract? Why is he setting his minimum point at a level that is still going to be a terrible situation for many schools?

We are no doubt going to hear about how Philadelphia schools and staff are going to have to do more with less. Well, we’ve already been having to do that in comparison to many suburban districts. I’ve contributed to fundraisers to stage drama productions, buy new computers, keep sports teams running, and more. I’ve volunteered my time to help keep extracurricular activities going because there was no money available to pay me for it. Many of my colleagues have stepped up in similar ways. But we’re now facing the start of a school year where we need to work with a district administration that has refused to negotiate with us as partners and which has made it clear that they do not feel required to live up to deals and responsibilities that they have agreed to in the past. How is that supposed to produce the kind of morale that is required to work together and overcome challenges?

As a teacher, as a parent, and as a citizen, I can not support this. If we can’t resolve these issues at the negotiating table, we may have to do so on the picket line. If we can’t resolve them there, then we need to address them at the voting booth in 2014 and defeat the people in government who have pursued this agenda.

If we can’t do that, then this city and state will be sending a clear message to anyone who cares about justice in education: Go away, you’re not our priority.

And I think I’ll have to start taking that advice.

Item 7: Reformers must operate at the local level.

At first glace this might seem like another obvious item. A particular school is almost by definition local, certainly in comparison with a national movement. But it is worth thinking about exactly how a reform movement school would connect to its local community.

One possible answer is the use of local information as a focus for subject matter. Math classes could analyze things like population trends or budget numbers, with teachers helping guide students through the mathematical skills necessary to understand the data. Social studies classes could focus on the historical development of elements of the local culture, and connect them to national or global events and trends. (I live in Philadelphia, and I still have no idea how the heck the Mummers got started.) They could also focus on the process through which city officials are elected and pass laws. (Why did we need two different courts in the city, anyway?) Science classes could try to explain health and environmental trends. Why has it seemed like we have had more extreme weather events in this area over the last few years? English classes could discuss work by local artists or analyze speeches made by local figures. In this way, the school would not just be local because of its location. It would be local because of the work that it does.

Another possible answer comes in the connections that the school’s students and staff form with their local community. If there are strong community groups in the area, perhaps the organizers could come to the school and do workshops for the students and staff on local issues. The students could be organized to gather information and help prepare research and other materials that the community organizations could use to advance discussion of the issues. Or the staff could take on the role of community organizers themselves and use the school as a hub for getting local residents more informed about the way that local concerns connect to affairs in the city, the state, the nation, and the world. Staff could hold workshops after class hours are over for local residents, making the school a center of education for more than just the young people who fill the halls during “normal” hours.

This is an ambitious set of projects, reminiscent of the settlement house projects of the early 20th century. Ideally the reform movement school would be planned with this purpose in mind. Teacher might be hired with the expectation that they teach fewer classes than a traditional workload, but take on added responsibilities in the community. Aides, librarians, and other staff might be hired to staff late afternoon and evening hours when the school resources would be open to the public. Students might have a block of time allocated for independent research as opposed to a designated class.

I am deliberately being pie-in-the-sky here, because a school like this would demand significant resources. Right now Philadelphia is talking about cutting all of its aides and counselors, so for me to talk about adding lots more staff to handle an increased workload beyond traditional classroom instruction may sound ridiculous. But it’s important to put the vision out there in its pure form, so people don’t take for granted that we have made deliberate choices to make our schools the way that they are. We could make different choices and make them different places.

On Friday, June 7, the School District of Philadelphia mailed layoff notices to 3,783 employees. That afternoon, one of my colleagues used our school email list to suggest that teachers offer to freeze wages next year in order to provide money to save some of these jobs. I replied to the list that I did not think that was a good idea. My primary logic was that there would be nothing to stop the district from coming to us again next year and making the same threat, but I did not want to get into a detailed discussion on a school district email list. I figured I would take the weekend, write up my thoughts on the blog, and then share them with my colleagues.

On Saturday, June 8, this became a moot point when I went to my mailbox and found out that I was one of the 3.783.

I am fortunate in that my layoff has since been rescinded, although the story’s not over yet. And I don’t want to overdramatize my situation. Thousands of employees, students, and families are going to be affected by the resolution of this funding crisis, and in the big picture that is far more significant than one person’s on-again off-again job status. But that big picture is made up of all of the individual stories, which the website Faces of the Layoffs is doing such an effective job of showing. So I figure it is worth it to share my story and think about where we go next.

I will say I am proud of myself that I did not change my mind about the idea of a wage-freeze petition. I did not want my colleagues, who already make so many sacrifices in the course of doing their jobs, to have to bear the responsibility for saving my job. They are professionals, who do an essential job and deserve to be compensated accordingly. My colleagues are not the state legislators who cut hundreds of millions of dollars from education funding over the last two years. My colleagues are not the city officials who have proven unable to collect delinquent property taxes that should have been supporting the district. My colleagues are not the school board members who failed to exercise oversight and awarded lavish contracts to district administrators. So why should they be the people responsible for cleaning up the mess made by those decisions?

That does not mean I do not think teachers should be willing to make a sacrifice to improve conditions. I just have a different idea of what that sacrifice should be. Before, during, and after my layoff, I believed that if the city and state government did not fix the situation, then the teachers of the district should go on strike when the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers’ contract expires this summer. Without secretaries, counselors, and support staff, our schools simply can not provide our students with the environment and the resources that they need. The district and the PFT have recognized this in the past by, for example, requiring a certain number of counselors in the buildings.

If the district can not or will not provide this basic minimum level of support, then I think that teachers should refuse to cooperate. We should not help the district try to limp along. We should not validate the idea that we can somehow do “more with less,” as though we had been withholding something that we can now pull out of reserve. We should stand up for and with our students, and demand that they have the opportunity to get the education that they deserve.

I hope it doesn’t actually come to that. I hope that we are in the process of seeing the budget theater play out over the next week or two, and that many of these layoffs and cuts will be reversed before we get too far into July. But even if they are, damage has been done, and that damage needs to be repaired.

From the moment I got my layoff letter, some of my energy had to be diverted into thinking about my immediate future. My family relies on my job for our health insurance, so even if I had money saved up for the summer, I would need to figure out how to replace that insurance. (It’s one thing to go without health insurance when you’re a single 22-year-old doctoral student. At 37 with a wife and daughter, it’s not an option.) I had to start looking at other jobs and other districts, even thinking about moving. Meanwhile, students would talk to me about next year, and I had to be as noncommittal as I could, because I did not want to make a fuss if I could get back, but I did not want to lie either.

I had to spend time working through the paperwork to make sure the district knew about my second certification in English. I had made the mistake of thinking that when the state approved my certification, it would also be reflected in the district’s records. Fortunately, with a lot of help from people in the district office, I got that paperwork sorted out, but that took time. Once the paperwork was processed and my second certification was on record, my layoff was rescinded. My overwhelming feeling was relief, but I also tried to feel empathy for the people who are still waiting to hear that news. I hope that there is not a teacher somewhere in the district who got a layoff letter this week to take my place on the list, and if there is I hope that person finds a path to security quickly. And as all of this was going on, I had to read newspaper editorials and cartoons arguing that the teachers had to find a way to solve this mess, which seemed so backward I wanted to scream. I still gave my best every day, but teaching is a job that requires concentration and energy. Anything that pulls you in a different direction makes the job harder.

And I am one of the lucky ones. I still have a job, although as I write this it is unclear whether or not I will be able to return to Parkway Center City, where I have taught for four years. At my daughter’s school, at least one English teacher has had to give up his position, at least temporarily, in spite of all that he does in and out of the classroom. My daughter’s music teacher, who has conducted the school choir for years, chose to retire in the hope of saving someone else’s job. And while that is noble and laudable, how many future students have now lost the opportunity to benefit from his years of experience? How many other teachers have decided to leave a district that seems not to value them? How many of us will come back in September and spend the year waiting for the shoe to drop once again? How many young adults will spend the summer checking out real estate listings in suburban districts because they can not take the uncertainty?

This can not go on, and yet, unless we the citizens reflect and chance, it will go on. And then where will we end up?

So it’s late at night, the rain woke me up, and instead of going back to bed I’m trying to cull from a bunch of resources to find a way to present information about the culture and religion of the Roman Empire to my students. These are the moments that really test my decision to move away from a textbook. I can’t figure out if the approach I’m taking is an improvement over the textbook or not. I feel like it’s good to have more control over the pacing and sequence of topics, and have the ability to sacrifice a little breadth to get depth. I think I’m presenting materials that are, overall, a better fit for my students than the district-assigned textbooks. But there are times when I feel like I’m exhausting myself to make a slightly better wheel. I’m really looking forward to having the chance this summer to reflect on all the things I’ve put together this year and figure out how to build on it, and feed into some more independent investigation and authorship for the students.

Three weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a poetry slam organized by one of my colleagues at Parkway Center City High School, a public high school that draws students from all over the city. I doubt that my English-teacher colleagues missed the irony that while dozens of students stayed after school to watch their peers take the microphone and share their stories of love, triumph, and teenage turmoil, the School Reform Commission was preparing to discuss a budget for the next school year that would wipe out funding for extracurricular activities.

I have watched so many of our students find their voice and a sense of accomplishment through extracurricular activities, including our drama club, our robotics team, and our sports teams. Some of our students have literally run marathons, and many others have figuratively done so to program bots, build sets, memorize lines, or organize a prom. They have helped create the glue that binds us together so that our school is more than a building. It is a community.

My fellow teachers have done a lot to contribute to that success, but as teachers we do not do our work alone. We rely on school counselors, who help our seniors navigate the college admissions and financial aid processes and help all of our students when the pressures of their lives become a little (or a lot) too much to bear. They help our students find programs and mentors to build their skills outside of school, and intervene when they see trouble brewing.

Our students also rely on the aides and staff who walk the halls and keep the school running smoothly. They are ready to step in and defuse a situation before it gets out of hand or provide a supportive nudge to a student who needs it. And that is on top of the often-thankless work that they do to keep the proverbial trains running on time.
So many of these vital resources are gone in the budget that the SRC is currently contemplating. The public school students of Philadelphia face the very real possibility of coming back this September to buildings that are mere shells of the schools they left in June.

So two weeks ago high school students from several schools in the city met after school in front of the school district’s headquarters to rally support for their cause. Students at the school where I did my student teaching, Constitution High School, staged a walkout before classes were over for the day, citing their right to peacefully assemble and air their grievances. They found the budget plan for next year to be unacceptable, and they demanded their voices be heard.

Indeed, this should be unacceptable to every citizen of the city and of the commonwealth, and we should all be making our voices heard. We must demand accountability from the SRC, and ask how they are spending the resources that they have. The district has already signaled that it wants large concessions from its employees. While I hope and believe that the district will move beyond its extreme opening offer to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, I will be surprised if the next contract maintains the status quo. But it is worth remembering that the District pays its employees less, and provides its students with fewer resources, than many neighboring suburban districts. Unless we believe that districts like Lower Merion and Council Rock are throwing their taxpayers’ money away, we should wonder why Philadelphia is not able to provide its students with a similar level of resources.

We constantly hear that we need to be doing more with less. I realize that necessity is often the mother of invention, but isn’t it just a bit insulting to suggest that Philadelphia educators have been deliberately being inefficient, and now that we’re truly desperate we will somehow find ways to do more of the things we are already trying to do?

Of course, I do not want to sell the creativity and drive of Philadelphia’s students short. One week ago I was once again in the auditorium after school. The officers of Parkway’s student government had taken on the responsibility of organizing our annual multicultural day talent show. As their adviser, I was with them to help out and offer what support I could. But this is their show. It has to be. As I said to the students, I can not carry a tune in a bucket, so it was up to them to organize the tryouts and figure out what they wanted the show to be. It would be nice if we had some music teachers to help out, but the students are getting something done with less.

Today my students have the day off because of election day. I am still wondering how I should vote. The leaders of this city and this commonwealth are entrusted with the responsibility for so many people’s lives, including the students who have worked so hard these past Tuesdays. I am looking for the leaders who are worthy of that responsibility, waiting for them to prove themselves. The clock is ticking; we can not wait until next year to solve these challenges. When another May rolls around, I hope my Tuesdays are just as full as they have been this year.

It’s the last day of a spring break that wasn’t nearly as productive or as restorative as I wanted it to be. I spent a big chunk of it working with my daughter on a science experiment project. It’s a good, ambitious project that unfolds over a long period of time. But it is also a lot of stress because my daughter has to figure out exactly how to design and carry out the experiment, and there’s a lot that can go awry. It was good to experience that from the other side of the classroom; it’s a good reminder that when I design a project I have to provide support structures to help students overcome any concerns about failing or not being sure what to do.

And while we were at it, we got to experiment a little bit with dyeing T-shirts, so in the end I’ll call that a win.

Yesterday I asked the question, “What is it that makes trying to learn about and understand the world so unappealing to so many people?”

While I was writing the post I thought about a lot of things. For example, I thought about what I’ve learned about human beings’ tendency to value the present over the future. The benefits of learning aren’t always obvious. I’ve talked before about how things I learned in high school would come back to me ten or twenty years later when I had had some new experience that gave those things I learned a new relevance. I treasure those moments of rediscovery, but that’s a long time to wait for a payoff. I can understand why someone might not choose to make the effort required to get information into the safe deposit box in hopes that it will become valuable later.

I also thought about our resistance to change and our fear of the risk that comes from entering the unknown and embracing it. When the new things that we learn can not easily be assimilated into the beliefs we had before, we have to make some tough choices. We may have to admit we were wrong or give up beliefs and habits that have provided us security and enjoyment. I know about the links between meat consumption and climate change, for example, but it is really hard for me to incorporate that knowledge into my daily activities. So instead I often get into arguments with myself or expend effort trying to rationalize behavior I don’t complete support. If I didn’t know any better, I could avoid that.

Of all the things I thought about, though, there was one idea that hit me such that I had to write it down, because I don’t think I had ever put the thought quite this way to myself before:

Knowledge requires trust.

I think we all know this, but it can be so obvious that I think sometimes we gloss over it. The pragmatist philosophers like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey talked about the social nature of human knowledge. No one person personally experiences and verifies everything, so we rely on other people to do it. I have never been outside of the country, so when I talk to my students about Japan’s geographical relationship to Hawaii and China, I am trusting the mapmakers and authors whom I have read. My students have to trust the people who make our educational resources. They have to trust me. We all have to trust ourselves and our ability to make good decisions about where to place that trust.

Well, once again I will state the obvious: trust is hard. And when it comes to knowledge about the world, it is very difficult to establish where to place that trust. There is no one central authority on any subject; instead we are exposed to a cacophony of competing sources and we have to work our way through the noise. I often cite the old adage that you should never ascribe to malice what you can explain by incompetence, but the fact of the matter is that there is plenty of both in the world. And even the people who are competent and well-intentioned make mistakes. If you place the trust that is required to learn, you will get burned. If you try to learn a lot, you will probably get burned more often.

The reason I’ve been going over this in my head is that it opened up a way of thinking about the emotional aspect of learning and knowledge. We don’t just need to be intellectually ready to learn, we need to be emotionally ready. And there are people who, consciously or unconsciously, choose to limit the occasions in which they will make that leap and place their trust in something or someone outside of themselves. Those of us who believe in pragmatism or empiricism or whichever ism you want to call it need to keep that in mind and work on forming the bonds that will help our students and our neighbors go out on that limb with greater confidence and willingness.

At my school we have a couple of senior teachers whose job it is to help guide and direct us to make sure we’re all moving in the right direction. One is a math teacher, the other is an English teacher. I doubt that it is a coincidence that math and reading are the two subjects where standardized test scores substantially affect the way our school is rated and judged. When the time comes to talk about how we’re going to improve test scores, as a social studies teacher my job is pretty much to see where I can line things up with the English department.

Truth be told, this doesn’t bother me a great deal. I like finding ways that the history content that I teach can echo across what students think about in other classes. So if I can break out of the history silo a little bit by bringing in some tools from English (or even math), I’ll take the opportunity. And as much as people like to talk about different ways of learning and technology’s effect on spreading information, it’s hard to argue that you can get very far in understanding either the present or the past if you struggle to understand and interpret the written word. So I have always spent a good chunk of my classroom time on building literacy skills. (The variety and scope of what’s needed for 21st century literacy is a discussion I’m going to hold off on for now.) I spent a lot of time with my students this past marking period on the idea of thesis statements, both recognizing them and writing them. I checked off fewer “content boxes” in terms of the history topics I covered. But I hope that I helped the students think about what we did discuss a little more deeply.

It can be tough tradeoff to make, and it can get tougher all the time. As my English teacher mentor says, people keep writing new books; history keeps adding new events. (And quite frankly that is a problem I would like to continue having.) You kind of have to let go of the idea that you’re going to cover everything. Heck, you have to let go of the idea that you’re going to cover everything important. When I have to make these choices I try to think about the questions the students have asked, and the things that I wish I had known sooner. And I try to help my students prepare for the next leg of the relay, when I hope that they will take what we have done and add it to their base of experience.

I think about this a lot, but the reason I’m thinking about it and writing about it now is because of this Chris Lehmann post that touches on similar themes. Toward the end, he writes:

More than anything else, we need to recognize that too often school fails at the one thing we should endeavor to do more than anything else — instill a love of learning.

With that love of learning in place, the student will be an active and voracious learner even outside the school environment. Even then she will not learn everything that there is to be learned, but she will go far beyond the foundation she built from grades K-12. This is normally the point at which I would point to the Deweyan vision of education, and maybe start thinking about more ways that I could open my classes up to more student direction and more independent work that would allow students to pursue their own interests and their own questions. And all of those are important, and they’re all things that I will continue to strive to do.

But as I come back again and again to that phrase “instill a love of learning,” I pause. I’m going to overanalyze Chris’ words here, not because I’m finding any fault with what he said but because that’s where my own thought process is going. Can a teacher instill a love of anything? Is that something that can be put into someone from the outside? Or is it something that must, somehow, already be in the person, perhaps waiting to be developed or nurtured? If it’s the latter, how do we as teachers build the trust and rapport with our students to find it and fan it, especially if they see us as adversaries piling more chores on them?

Lurking behind these questions is another that poses a threat to the whole Deweyan/pragmatist project of an engaged, learning citizen as part of a democratic culture: What is it that makes trying to learn about and understand the world so unappealing to so many people?

I’m going to be thinking about that over the next day or two and writing more this week, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or elsewhere.