I’m a Public School Teacher. Hands Off My Trans Students! by Steven SInger

Originally posted at: https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/23/im-a-public-school-teacher-hands-off-my-trans-students/

I’m a public school teacher.

I have a lot of different girls and boys in my classes.

In fact, some of them are neither girls nor boys.

Does that mean they should be discriminated against? Does it mean we should judge them, tell them they’re somehow less valuable than the other kids? Tell them who they are by telling them where to pee?

Heck, No!

Some kids don’t feel comfortable with a traditional gender identity. And it’s more common than you’d think.

It’s certainly more widespread than I ever would have thought until a little girl taught me a lesson… well, not a little girl, really.

A few months ago, I would have said she’s the cutest little girl in the lunch line.

Bright, vivacious, always a friendly smile and a kind word.

But she’s not a little girl.

And I didn’t know until she told me.

As a teacher given the unenviable role of line monitor, I have to find the bright spots where I can.

Letting only two hungry 5th graders in to get their lunch at a time and making the rest wait does not make you popular.

“Aaaargh! Why you always stopping me!?” They often say.

“Because you were third,” I reply.

“But why?” They often insist.

“It’s not personal. It’s numerical.”

And I let them through to continue the game tomorrow.

It goes on like that for about a half hour with little variation – until she gets to the front of the line.

“Hey, Mr. Singer!” Big smile and a wave.

And we’d be off on a conversation. She’d ask me how my day was, what I was teaching my students, how my daughter was. I’d ask how her day was so far, about pets, homework.

She’s actually not in my class. I only see her at lunch, but she always brightens my day.

For months, it went like clockwork. Until a few weeks ago when she appeared at the front of the line with her long hair chopped off into a bob.

“Nice haircut,” I said encouragingly.

“Thanks,” she replied. “You want to know why I got it?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I’m agender.”

“Oh,” I responded cluelessly. “What’s that?”

And she proceeded to explain that she didn’t feel comfortable identifying as male or female.

I nodded and then it was time to let her get her lunch.

I’ll admit it was unsettling. Here was this cute little thing and I didn’t even know what to call her now.

But the next day things progressed as usual. Ze came through the line with the same big smile. We had the same innocuous conversation and ze went to eat.

It made me think.

I’ve been teaching for more than a decade. Ze was probably not the first transgender student I’ve met. And when I thought back to all the children who’ve come through my classes over the years, faces started to pop up and hit me.

Gender is not black and white. (Come to think of it, neither is race.) No one is 100% male or female. I mean, sure people have a fixed range of sexual parts, but gender identity is more than that.

We each feel comfortable acting and identifying certain ways, and if you think about it, some of those ways don’t always line up with our cultural gender designation.

For instance, I cry my eyes out at certain movies. My daughter – who’s 8 – heard the song “Boys Don’t Cry,” the other day and said, “Well that isn’t true. Daddy cries all the time.”

Moreover, my wife loves football, basketball and hockey. Me? I could take them or leave them. If she wants me to watch the game with her, she’s got to beg or promise or put out the right snacks.

Wouldn’t it just make sense that some people are much further to one side or other of the gender spectrum than others? Wouldn’t it just make sense that sometimes your identity and your physical parts don’t match? Or maybe you’re so in the middle that it makes no sense to take a side?

I say again, I teach in a public school. We don’t push any kids away. We take everyone. And that means taking those kids who aren’t so easy to label.

I teach middle school. Transgenderism doesn’t come up too often.

Last year when bathroom bills were all the rage, some of my 8th graders brought it up during our Socratic Seminar discussion groups. And I let them talk about it.

We talked about why some people might think this is a good idea, why some might oppose it, etc. There were some boys who were hysterically against trans students using the bathroom with them, but most of my kids had zero problem with it. In fact, they knew that it had already happened.

Trans students are everywhere. You just rarely hear about them.

I don’t know which bathroom my lunchline buddy uses. I wouldn’t presume to ask. But it hurts me that there are people out there who want to limit hir.

These children have rights. They are little sweethearts. They’re full of life and joy. We should respect their humanity.

And to those who say letting them use a bathroom that corresponds with their identity will lead to kids being molested, let me ask – has that ever really happened?

The way I see it, the problem is people – any people – molesting others, no matter what room they do it in, no matter if they’re transgender or not.

Frankly, it doesn’t happen a lot at school, nor is it more pronounced with trans kids.

This has nothing to do with children. It has to do with old men and women who refuse to broaden their views about the world. It’s about the ancient making the young do as they say regardless of how doing so may trample on their right to be themselves.

Well, I won’t be a part of it.

You want to attack my trans students? You’ll have to do it through me.

I’m a guardian of kid’s rights. I’m a defender of children from whoever wants to do them harm.

I’m a public school teacher. That’s just what we do.

The Metaphor of School as A Business & How It Has Narrowed Our View of Learning and Life by Cheryl Binkley

Originally posted at: http://3rdmillenniumteacher.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-metaphor-of-school-as-business-how.html

The metaphor of schools as businesses has become the dominant way of describing Education these days. It is difficult to find a conversation about schools in which business terminology and ideas do not pop up. Terms like emerging markets, global competitiveness, and monopoly are ever present in considerations about what our schools should be like and what they should do.  

The result of using business as The Metaphor (not just a metaphor) extends even beyond schools to most of the conversations about our society and culture in today’s academic and policy making circles. Our policymakers and policy advisers even see business in a particular light. Business in its contemporary neoliberal iteration is Competition, made up of winners and losers. Business is no longer a method whereby we share goods, develop products, or provide purpose and support for our communities, but is focused almost solely on making money for the investor class.

In other words, our leaders see life as business, and business as pure competition.

The fallout from that deeply embedded and distorted metaphor is heavily influencing every aspect of life in these early stages of the 21st century.

It has colored how we see others--Those around us are competitors to beat, whether they are family, friends, or newcomers.

It has defined how we structure increasing global connections-- creating global corporations that win power and money in a global competition where winner takes all. Nations and other societies are competitors to dominate and compete against.

It has influenced how we see God-- In this metaphor God is the ultimate winner who rewards followers with a piece of the winnings, making religion a competition, rating which is the most spiritual by who gets the most converts, the most airtime, and the most money.

And in schools, it has made grades more important than knowledge and school ranking and rating a cutthroat process.  

In this metaphor, schools must align to the business model of global competition and be measured and datafied to prove their level of competitiveness or die.

The level of embeddedness of this metaphor has become so pervasive that many see business and competitiveness as the quintessential human characteristic, holding that humans are almost completely motivated by the desire to win.

Most of us don’t question this way of looking at the world on a daily basis.  We let the message and the metaphor wash over us and we go on about our daily tasks, not asking how it is influencing what we do or what we believe.

Yet, those who do question what motivates us, and what metaphors work best as representations of our way of life and learning, tell us that competition or extrinsic motivation is only one side of the story, and not a very effective side when wielded as it has been of late. We know that Competition and Collaboration are two sides of a duality in which both sides of the polarity are needed, like breathing out and breathing in. We cannot do only one or the other.

We know that other values besides winning and having the most are just as powerful for us as wanting to be first, values like discovery, caring,  gratitude, and meaningful connection. We know that the desires to create and serve are just as necessary to innovation as the desire to be first and most.

In English classes, I teach students that when using a metaphor, it's important to recognize the ways in which the metaphor works, and the ways in which it fails. At this point, we need to collectively do that examination.

Gareth Morgan, in his Images of Organizations puts forward a variety of metaphors for organizations. Those who see organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems speak of organizations as ecosystems or biological entities.  There are a wide variety of metaphors and comparisons we can use.  Perhaps it is time we widen our choices of metaphor.

Perhaps it is time, we do question those who try to frame the growth and development of our children and the meaning of our lives as a race, a contest, a business to run for maximum productivity and profit.  

Perhaps it is time we question our world being framed in that way as well.

*Graphic quote from Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

What I'll Be and What I Am by Brooklyn Lbl

What I'll be and what I am

Is the kind of teacher you will slam

Not because I cannot teach

But because U don't understand how I reach

I don't fit what U may praise and want

I cannot be the person who would greatly haunt

Me if I were 2 convert 2 your style

I cannot teach without a smile

What I'll be and what I am

Is a teacher second but first a black man

Yes there are times that the stakes are high

But U don't determine that it's done by I

And I cannot be frameworked by Danielson

Or anything that is learned in a manual, son

Measuring me by test scores sucks

It's like determining a chicken's future by its clucks

What I'll be and what I am

Is a lifelong learner who doesn't fit your plan

Your thinking is dominated by domains And data

My teaching greets that realm with a "hi, hater!"

Breaking spirits of teachers until minds meld

Won't quiet us all 4 I cannot be quelled

What I'll be and what I am

Is the the kind of teacher U don't understand

U love 2 evaluate people's pedagogy as weak

But academics aren't the only way learning can speak

I've in fact heard it scream through dreams more than tests

I've felt the pulses of hope beat through young chests

My exchange with them is genuine and real

I don't need your approval 2 validate the success we feel

What I'll be and what I am

Is myself a teacher U cannot stand

Right To Work Laws Leave Teachers Out of Democracy by Dr. Michael Flanagan

On February 18th, 2017, Iowa became the 30th state to enact Right to Work laws. On February 20th, two days later, Iowa Republican State Senator Mark Chelgren proposed a Bill that would force state universities to hire based on political party membership. The proximity of these two events was no coincidence. The Bill, Senate File 288, would implement a partisan quota system to ensure that there is no more than a 10% difference in political affiliation of new employees based on voter registration. In actuality it would be a means to dilute the liberal college faculty membership and increase the conservative. Political parties control our elections, and membership in those parties drive policy. We are given two well funded political choices, and third party candidates are disregarded. This Bill does not address non-affiliated voters, only those registered as Democrats and Republicans.

In addition to this new proposed legislation there have been recent attempts to intimidate professors because of their political ideologies.  A conservative group called Turning Point USA created a Professor Watchlist website where students can report their professors for their political beliefs or writings. Luckily, there was a pushback of support for the professors singled out on these watchlists. The ability to speak out and resist this type of political repression is suppressed by Right to Work laws.

For those of you who are confused about the history of Right to Work laws, in addition to being simply anti-labor  Right to Work has its origins in racism. White businesses saw organized labor as a threat to Jim Crow segregation. Under Right to Work laws unions can not collect mandatory dues from members. This weakens the collective bargaining power of unions, their ability to lobby for better working conditions, depresses wages and lessens worker rights such as the ability to strike. Basically workers in Right to Work states are at-will employees.

These attacks on professors and university staff follow a long line of attacks on teachers, specifically their right to tenure. Attacks on tenure will have a disproportionate effect on teachers of color. Silencing the voices of teachers and professors to speak out against biased policies makes it possible to re-segregate public schools under the guise of school choice. Right to Work laws take away teachers ability to advocate for better learning conditions for their students. This proposed Iowa Bill to base employment on party affiliation will be another violation of workers Freedom of Speech.

This current presidential administration has been waging a war on the press, going so far as to claim the media as the “enemy of the American people”. When a government is orchestrating an authoritarian repression of civil rights, the most important thing to do is to control critical thought. Any authoritarian attempts to undermine democracy historically begins with controlling the public schools and expelling professors as a means of solidifying control of children’s minds and ideals. Teachers are historically at the forefront of fighting for social justice. College campuses are often the center of  many protests and a place to organize and push back against the repressions of this current presidential administration. In response, states across the country have been passing unconstitutional laws to repress protests and criminalize those protesting for social and political change. It is these types of fear tactics, popularized under McCarthyism, which led to teachers in 39 states having to sign loyalty oaths.

Over the years there has been an increase in animosity towards teachers and their unions, but politicians and the media have been careful not to go after police unions the way they are openly against teachers unions. Again, since 80% of teachers are female, and Republicans have a terrible record on women’s rights, and this is no coincidence. Labor unions are the one impediment to total control of our political system by groups like the Koch Brothers funded American Legislative Exchange Council. As much money and influence as ALEC may have, unions still spend millions on elections, and union members tend to vote Democratic.

Legislation against teachers is not only a means of political repression, but it is also motivated by greed. Labor unions represent millions and the policies they lobby for create safer working conditions and raise wages. Wall Street profits increase when there is less regulation and lower wages. Besides wages and benefits, union pensions are also a target for politicians and their Wall Street hedge funders, as well as our new billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. There is hundreds of billions of dollars controlled by labor union pension funds that Wall Street wants. Repressive laws against teachers and unions eliminates their ability to organize and resist the privatization of public schools. This will allow for more public education funding to be funneled to charter schools and to be used as vouchers for private and religious schools.

With the attacks on public education and unions by the Republican Party one would think that all teachers would support the Democratic party. Unfortunately, the neo liberal policies of the Obama administration were no better for public school teachers than the current administration's. The cost of Obama’s terrible education policies is evident in the results of this last election. Trump’s win was a rebuke of organized political parties and the inherent corruption within them. Establishment politicians were stunned when the people of this country did not accept the hand picked candidates forced down our throats. That populist uprising shows no signs of diminishing since the elections either.

There continue to be national protests, with politicians being swarmed at their Town Hall style meetings when they return home from DC to face their constituents. The elites who control our politicians see the swarms of people, who are leaving both political parties en masse. Establishment politicians and the special interests who control them are choosing to turn off their phones, cancel town halls, and label the nation wide demonstrations as the work of “paid protesters”. Both parties are still playing politics as usual, and the Republican Party continues to take aim at the Democratic Party, labor unions and teachers. However, the people in the streets not only see what they are doing, but they literally know where these Democrats and Republicans live. They might want to remember who it is they actually work for.  

Passing Right to Work laws in order to destroy unions, and targeting professors based on party registration may seem like a good strategy to these politicians, especially while they are hiding from their constituents. They continue to enact repressive laws in an attempt to minimize protests, while the militarization of our police force continues. There is no guarantee that this Bill in Iowa will be signed into law, but there is one thing the people of this country can do: we can make the man who proposed it, Senator Mark Chelgren, infamous. Here is his contact information: State Senator, District 41, Address: 819, Hutchinson, Ottumwa, IA 52501 Phone: (641)777-7047 Email: mark.chelgren@legis.iowa.gov. Let him know what you think about his Bill.

   

School Vouchers Will Indoctrinate a Generation in Alternative Truths by Steven Singer

Originally posted at: https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/school-vouchers-will-indoctrinate-a-generation-in-alternative-truths/

My middle school students are good at telling the difference between facts and opinions.

Facts, they’ll tell you, are things that can be proven.

They don’t even have to be true. They just have to be provable – one way or the other.

For instance: “I’m six feet tall.” It’s not true, but you could conceivably measure me and determine my height.

Opinions, on the other hand, are statements that have no way of being proven. They are value judgements: That is good. This is bad. Mr. Singer is short. Mr. Singer is tall.

It doesn’t make them less important – in fact, their relative importance to facts is, itself, an opinion.

But today the very ability to prove facts has been called into question.

Our government has put forward statements that are demonstrably false: The Bowling Green Massacre. Undocumented immigrants commit massive amounts of crime. Donald Trump had the largest electoral college victory of modern times.

All of these should objectively be viewed as facts. They’re false, but they are provable. Yet when we resort to the kinds of things that should count as proof, we refuse to agree, we come to a clash of epistemologies.

Today, your truth depends more on your political affiliation than your commitment to objective reality.

There was no Bowling Green Massacre. No one was killed in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Certainly there was no large scale mass death perpetrated by terrorists. There were two Iraqi nationals arrested who had been planning an attack outside of the U.S. They had been buying guns and materials here because they were easier to get.

However, many conservatives refuse to accept this. They believe there was a Bowling Green Massacre. And they believe that it justifies Trump’s immigration ban.

The same goes for undocumented immigrants committing crime. They do NOT actually commit more crime than U.S. citizens. In fact, they commit less. They don’t want to attract unnecessary attention and risk deportation.

But once again many conservatives refuse to believe it. With no hard evidence, maybe some anecdotal evidence blown way out of proportion, they simply accept what they’re told by their government and their chosen media.

And Trump’s electoral college victory? He won 306 of 538 electoral votes and lost the popular vote. Forty-five Presidents won by a greater margin. And only two Presidents had a lower popular vote tally.

These are just numbers. I don’t know how they’re controversial or how anyone can disagree, but many conservatives do.

Don’t get me wrong. Liberals do it, too, though to a lesser degree. Ask most liberals about President Barack Obama’s education policy and you’ll get a gooey story about support and progressivism. It isn’t true.

One popular meme shows Obama lecturing a tiny Trump about how he should invest in education and respect parents and teachers. Yet Obama never really did those things, himself. He held federal education funding hostage unless districts increased standardized testing, Common Core and charter schools. THAT’S not what parents and teachers wanted! It’s what huge corporations wanted so they could profit off our public schools!

But to many liberals Obama is some kind of saint, and any evidence to the contrary will be accepted only with great reluctance.

THIS is our modern world. A world of alternative facts and competing narratives.
Part of it is due to the Internet and the way knowledge has been democratized. Part of it is due to the media conglomerates where almost all traditional news is disseminated by a handful of biased corporations that slant the story to maximize their profits.

People end up picking the sources of information they think are trustworthy and shutting themselves off to other viewpoints. There is no more news. There is conservative news and liberal news. And the one you consume determines what you’ll accept as a fact.

As bad as that is, Trump’s education policy is poised to make it much worse.

He wants to radically increase the amount of school vouchers given to students. These allow federal dollars to be used to send children to private and parochial schools. As if the fly-by-night charter schools weren’t enough.

It’s a scam. A get rich quick scheme for corporations at the expense of students. But perhaps the worst part is how it exacerbates our world of alternative facts.

Students at private and parochial schools don’t learn the same things as public school students. At many religious schools they are indoctrinated in conservative market theory and a Biblical view of history and science.

You think we can’t agree on the truth or falsity of facts now? Just wait! What counts as a source will be radically different for the first generation of kids sent to such disparate schools.

This isn’t just about cashing in on education dollars today. It’s about creating a generation of adults educated with school vouchers who accept far right ideas about the world as bedrock truths. Climate change and evolution are hoaxes. Trickle down economics works. Slavery benefited slave and master alike.

These are the false truths the Trump administration hopes to seed into a larger portion of the next generation. And when you indoctrinate children so young, there is little hope they’ll ever be able to see beyond what they’ve been taught.

Conservatives counter that liberals are doing the same thing today in our public schools. That’s why they want to send their children to the private and parochial schools. They don’t want their kids taught about modern science without reference to God. They don’t want them to learn history that puts socialistic policies in a positive light. They don’t want them to learn that white people were ever inhuman to people of color.

And how do you argue with them? How do you have a productive conversation when you can’t agree on what proves a fact true or false?

This is the challenge of our generation.

I don’t know how to solve it, but I know that school vouchers will make it exponentially worse.