Teaching in a conspiracy theory world

Growing up in the generation that I did, I should be one of the millions of people who believe in these terribly damning conspiracies theories. But as a child of the 60s and early 70s, I also grew up with magazines like the National Enquirer and The Globe. I remember those two specifically, but the counter in front of the cash register was full of these. We made fun of them. We were educated enough to understand what they were doing and why everything in them was such a laugh. I mean, Archie Bunker believed in The National Enquirer. We also read things like books and newspapers, had dinner conversations with our parents, and generally were more concerned with the world than seems to be the case today.

Being a teacher during this time has proven to be a challenge that I never saw coming. I mean, kids are kids, right? I was aware of social issues which my students face today that were not faced by my generation. Ok, maybe some kids faced these things but the numbers were small and they had others who made sure they had what they needed. My generation was not, for the most part, raised by uncommunicative parents who believed they were the only ones who had a child's best interest at heart. My parents had much more of a tribal mentality in that other ADULTS were here to help kids. The government was not out to hurt children or the family unit. School was a place where facts were important, discussion and debate was the norm, and students were allowed to question but not curse the adults. 

I had one of my sophomores ask the most mundane question yesterday. At my school, they have begun to have a moment of silence and reflection after the Pledge of Allegiance. It did not exist last year so I am not sure whether it was there before Covid-19 or a relatively new development. He asked, "Why are we doing this now and what is it for?" (when I was in high school I actually told my father, a career Army guy, that I would no longer say the Pledge until things were more fair for women in this country)

I tried to explain the whole state and church separation, the fight against school prayer, why we now have a moment of silence etc. I think he understood but in my opinion, how sad that he doesn't even know the history of why we no longer have school prayer, how big the fight was when we still had school prayer and who seems to always lead the way, the parents. 

I guess when my students see so much conspiracy theory going on in their own homes, they cannot help but believe what they are hearing there. We should not have to fight against this phenomenon and I am not sure how we can. I do know that with each passing day, with each struggle to maintain my composure when ignorance raises an ugly head, my time as a teacher is coming closer and closer to an end. I sometimes feel like I have fought the good fight but I am tired of fighting. Teaching is the hardest job I have ever loved but I refuse to let it kill me. 

The excitement doesn't leave

 My ninth year as a teacher begins this year. I cannot believe my second career has already reached that milestone. This past week has brought me to the realization that I was meant to be a teacher, it just took me 38 years and a first career to get here.

I have been blessed to work at several schools and learned so much from each of them. I also learned how many people really don't understand the educational system today and the dance you must complete around them in order to survive. I have met teachers who were naturals; ones who should have chosen a different profession; ones who, with some experience will blossom, and some who have been teaching for so long they cannot adjust to the changes the system is going through.

This past week I was very excited to learn that my new journalism class was going to be able to meet in their own classroom and not share their space with my history classes. I have never been so blessed and then I began to try and make it a comfortable room for better creativity and for the students to feel it was a safe spot. 

I had tables removed because there were so many jammed in a very small room and I wanted the kids to have space to move around. One thing I have learned is a room where kids are creating, needs to be fluid. You cannot jam stuff in the space and make it inviting. 

I have plants and an old typewriter, posters and enough tables to sit and write or work on design. I have a big spot in the middle that is empty and with that in mind, I decided to make a small seating area, where the students could chill. What a journey that is going to turn in to. 

After perusing every site for educational furniture known to me an several Google searches, I have decided that companies have no idea how to create a comfortable area for teenagers. They are HARD on furniture. It gets knocked around and beat up, not because they are trying to destroy that expensive bean bag chair that looked perfect, but because they are not thinking about what they are sitting on, poking a pencil over and over in a bean bag, causes it to loose all the stuffing. Ask me how I learned that. .  

So today I am going thrifting. I am looking for two chairs and a table. Something like a coffee table and two side chairs. A seating area if you like, that the kids can kick back and relax in to peruse magazines and other newspapers for brainstorming. How do you brainstorm when your chair is designed by someone who wants bulk orders of indestructible over comfort?

So once again, I am excited to find the perfect setup for the class. I am excited to see my students back on Tuesday. I was excited to have so many of my students drop by my room during open house just to say hello. I couldn't wait to redo my history classroom or get my class lists. Every thing in both of my classrooms is designed for the students. 

After nine years I am still excited for the new school year. That will keep me up and  moving for even more years to come. There is no boredom, only smiles and welcomes to the new students crossing in to a new year., I love this job. 

I am masking up

Children wear flu masks in Starke, Fla., during the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. [ State Archives of Florida (1918) ]

Because I teach high school and we all know that teenagers know everything, I will be masking up when school begins for students next week. I am not leaving my health in the hands of a governor who could care less about teachers, or the students they teach. 

I continue to be stymied by the ignorance of adults. Kids I can understand because they are kids and they need adult guidance from the adults who are in charge of them. So if an adult doesn't want to interact with others and become a hermit in their home, let them choose not to wear a mask. I do not fit in that category.

I have been receiving vaccines of one kind or another since I was a baby thanks to the United States Army. It seems that every time we moved, we had to receive shots/vaccinations of one kind of another, especially when leaving Europe or going to Europe. I don't remember much about these except on one return trip from Germany. None of the Army nurses were available so we had to get our shots from a medic. His name was Sgt. Santiago and he hurt when he gave shots. He was very apologetic to my Mom, who told him not to worry that he had made me cry, but I have never forgotten that. 

I have had my Covid-19 shots. I am in a high risk category because of my age and slight COPD and I faithfully have not been out without my mask while teaching and out in the public. 

I am still wearing my mask. I don't go in the store without it on, not because I am scared of getting the virus, but because I have some respect for other people around me. I am not scared, but educated. 

Each year since I began teaching, I get a cold; it turns in to bronchitis and some years has turned in to pneumonia. I have had students sneeze on me, cough on me, throw up in my garbage can, leave used tissues on desks and on the floor, with no thought to the germs they may be leaving in the classroom or spreading to others.

I am NOT a germaphobe, but I do wash my hands, use Lysol to clean my desks and have done so since I began teaching. Last year, wearing a mask, I NEVER even had a runny nose. I had students who had to be reminded to put their masks on and numerous other incidents of students having Covid-19 or being exposed to Covid-19 and I remained free of any colds, flues, Covid-19, stomach bugs, or anything else the students bring to class. This tells me that masks work.

I don't like them. I don't wear them at home or in my truck. I can breathe just fine and wear a fresh one every day, sometimes 2 or three times a day, depending on my allergies, which they don't prevent. 

So even though I feel I am a better teacher without one, I will have one on next week when students return. They are not required to wear them this year. I hope parents understand the science behind the mask. I say a silent prayer for all of those who disdain science and reasoning and hope they do not lose anyone to this horrific virus but I am masking up. 

 

Things I Wonder About

 I sometimes wonder what my recent ancestors would say if they could come back for just a day or so and examine what is happening. These two wonderful people are my great grandparents. I never met them but they were instrumental in settling Lakeland, Florida after growing up in Florida. Daniel Henry's father was Orvil Sloan and grandfather was Daniel Sloan, who first came to Florida about 1840. Ruby's family descended from all the Carltons, Wilders, Hendrys etc. These are all old family lines I have been researching for over 25 years but that is not my wonder. 

My great grandfather, Orvil, was not very educated. Given the times, he married young and had a farm close to his parents. My great grandfather, Daniel Henry, according to everything I can find, only had a 9th grade education but he did not become a farmer. 

Orvil Sloan, according to the pension papers filed with the state of Florida, could not work any longer and only did a "piddling" amount of work for enough money to care for his family. His son, Daniel Henry, went to work at a general store and learned business. The store was somewhere around Plant City and when the owner began selling liquor, Daniel quit because it went against his upbringing, even though the owner offered him more money because of the success his business was experiencing with Daniel as the manager. 

So Daniel moved a few miles down the road to what would become Lakeland and with his brother, Aaron, opened the Sloan Mercantile Store on Main Street.  The photo above was taken in their front yard on Lake Mirror. I have the original with lots of detail, but there are copies all over the internet. I wonder what he would have thought of the internet? Or even that anyone would be interested in his life.

Daniel went on to own several businesses including the first car lot and several orange groves. He had indoor plumbing in his house and the first phone in the city. He served in the city government and also the state government, all with a 9th grade education. He and Ruby had 8 children, my grandfather, Edward, being the youngest. The above photo is on Florida Memory. It is his government portrait. 

What would he think of people today? He was, by every written account I can find, an honest politician in Tallahassee, which is why he left after two terms. He insisted his children attend school and was instrumental in creating the original Lakeland High School. He worked to better the city of Lakeland and my great grandmother did the same. Service seemed high on his list of accomplishments but he never wanted accolades. 

Did he wear a mask during the Spanish Flu in 1919? Was he against women or people of color having rights? Was he a fair employer? Did he take care of his workers and their families? The old First Baptist Church in Lakeland had a chapel attached to the main building named after him. It is filled with stained glass windows for each of his 8 children. He attended every Sunday. 

I wish I could find his papers. I wish I could track him through his writing like I have my other ancestors. There is a feed store where his home sat. There are even more crooked politicians than even he could possibly imagine in Tallahassee. I wonder what he would think about the state today?

Still believing in people

 I write two blogs, one on animals but this morning I felt this needed to be included in my regular one. Growing up in the military, I knew we had always taken our dogs, regardless of where we moved to and finding housing that would accept a dog. Living outside the military since I became an adult, this process seems to be foreign to a lot of people. It has caused great sadness in the plight of homeless animals.

About a year ago, I helped a friend find a dog for her family. This family had never had a dog before, only cats but the kids were clamoring and the decision was made. 

We visited several shelters but the black lab mix we met at one of the shelters stole my friend's heart so she called her husband to bring the kids. The pretty dog seemed perfect and she loved the kids so she found a home. She had been transported from a shelter in Georgia, a dumped dog in a rural area that was heartworm positive with very little history. 

She now lives with her two kids, her mom and dad, cats and has turned in to a part of the family. She had to have some training for the cats and to behave around other dogs on a walk, but she adores her family and is extremely smart. She figured it out. She had won the jackpot.

My friends are moving back to England next week. Rainbow and her kitty sibling are going with the family. She is not being returned because of the struggles to take animals to another country. She is not going to go back in to a rescue situation. She is being treated as part of a family. That is how you own a pet. That is what you do when you move. You take your family members with you. It should not even be up for discussion. 

So from being dumped on a rural road in Georgia to becoming a world traveler, Rainbow is having the time of her life and she is very loved. My only wish is that all humans who adopt animals would treat their new family members the same. 

Preparing For The New Year

 

Teachers in my district report to school next week. The students report a week after. I think we had all hoped that Covid-19 and all its' nastiness would be fading, but it seems the Delta variant has come back with a vengeance. I am vaccinated but will still be masking up as I have done since this began. Preparing for the students and what is sure to come.

I teach World History and this year will begin teaching a single class in Journalism. I am excited about the opportunity to resurrect the school newspaper and develop the writing and editing skills of my students, who I don't know at this time. 

I am lucky enough to have a classroom for journalism which is across campus from my history classroom. I wanted them to be separated. I wanted them to have a spot where they could be open and safe. A place where they could work without the annoyances of students walking by and peeking in the windows. A spot where the students would not be continually trying to distract one another and avoid work and actually looked forward to what they were doing. I believe this will be the case. 

Right now, the journalism room is filled with the flotsam and jetsam from the previous teacher. I stopped by yesterday and it was still filled with math stuff. Books and charts and T-squares, calculators and Algebra worksheets. Ugh. Talk about opposites. Seeing all that math stuff made my hands shake and my face break out in a cold sweat. I have my antique typewriter which will transition from my history classroom; I have some T-shirts from the Washington Post and the New York Times that will hang, along with several posters, on the walls. I have lots of table and chairs. Computers will go in this week and I am repotting some plants to make it look homey. The blinds will be open to let in the natural light and I am hoping the students will be ready to learn when they come back. 

My history classroom was not stripped from last year so I don't have as much to do there. I will take down and rearrange wall posters, set up my boards, print out the syllabus, which will also go in the online platform. My desk needs to be put back together and all my cabinets which were missing those little shelf thingys to hold the shelves have been bought, ready to fix the shelves.

My classroom plants need to be hung and the tables and chairs need to be set up in the way the classroom will work. I like circles, but much will depend on who my students are and how many of them I have. 

We have Professional Development next week and all kinds of meetings. Our Open House for parents, which we did not have last year due to Covid-19, will be on Thursday. Do high schoolers come to Open House? Do parents? 

Thanks to my friends and family and the supporters in my area, I have plenty of class supplies that I will not have to purchase but right now it is all in boxes and must be organized. 

I know many people believe that teachers have an easy job, summers off, and are set on teaching their children weird things that don't matter. I can tell you, my job is easy only because I love what I do. My summers are a little more relaxed but I still managed almost 40 hours of professional development in my area. I teach facts. Some are not comfortable, but the truth will always win out in the end. That is what we teach our children. 

I still have work to do but by the time my new students walk in to my classroom in 6 days, I will be ready. I know it.  

Teachers supporting teachers

 

I chose to become a teacher after my career in the media came to a sudden end after 35 years. Although I had a Bachelor's degree in Political Science, Florida requires you to complete a teacher's certification program. Mine took seven months and several hundred dollars, but I became more and more excited about the possibilities. 

The support I experienced then was wonderful. From the professors to the other students, we were always available to work with each other or answer questions. Most had already decided what they wanted to teach. For me, it was history. I was advised not to do history. History jobs were few and far between. High school history jobs were held by coaches. History teachers stayed for years. The list goes on and on. 

I didn't take their advice, most thought I should become an English teacher, and two weeks after I completed my courses in education, I had a job teaching middle school U.S. History.  

My career in teaching is relatively new, only 8 years, but during those years I have become certified and endorsed in other areas: journalism 6-12, ESE K-12, Reading and ESOL. I have attended too many professional developments to count and every summer you can find me taking more to maintain my skills. 

The strongest support I have received in eight years have been from other teachers. In the schools I have been in, I have worked with some awesome administrators who supported their teachers and went to bat for them. I always try to remember that their bosses are sometimes not on the same page. Unfortunately, districts are answerable to school boards which are answerable to parents and politicians. Teachers that have administrators like that are lucky because then teachers can support other teachers. 

I have been lucky with parents. I have only had a couple who yelled or removed students from my class. Some parents don't like for you to punish their children for things like plagiarism. They are very worried about what impact this will have on their child's future. Perhaps they could teach their children that stealing, whether from the internet or from a store, is still stealing. The teachers I work with tend to agree. 

I have been lucky with students. Every year my students make gains. Sometimes they are small; sometimes they are big, and sometimes they outshine even my expectations, which are very high. Most teachers do set a high bar and expect the best from their students. Most students will strive to meet that goal. The trick is to not set the goal higher than the student is capable of. I have never met a teacher who did not know the difference. 

Teachers are always there to lend an ear or a helping hand. Many times they don't even know the other teacher's name. They only know they need help with something, whether it is a lesson plan or pencils. 

Yesterday, how I feel about teachers came through loud and clear. It began early in the morning when I helped a teacher move in to her new classroom. I have worked with her for years. She is an excellent teacher and I have a truck so we moved boxes of stuff upstairs in her new classroom. We are going to love having her there. 

From the time we entered the building, the others we ran in to were friendly and welcoming. They introduced themselves and offered any help she might need. What a breath of fresh air. 

In the afternoon I began my teacher stuff, checking email, answering, checking on wish lists for supplies, etc. I had helped a brand new teacher with an idea to use Donor's Choose for her gym supplies because I had such luck at my first school helping the coaches and students get things as diverse as tumbling mats and blocking dummies. I shared her project on our district teachers' page and then checked on the teachers from my school. Our chorus teacher was looking for a few things so I made a small donation to her. 

Then I got a note from a different person in the district offering to complete my wish list for composition books. Wow. Before I could celebrate that, I received notice the first year teacher I helped with her Donor's Choose had her project funded. 

To top off the day, another friend whose is an artist, posted a small, original painting of Shakespeare for the first comment agreeing to commit 3 acts of kindness in the next 30 days. I won and will gift my friend, the new English teacher, for her classroom.

The sense of family and closeness that most teachers feel for each other is unlike any other relationship I have known. I think they understand each other because they are all faced with the same issues on a daily basis. Even though most of us come from different backgrounds and different life experiences; some are just beginning their journey and some are reaching an end; we all want the same thing. 

We want our students to flourish and grow. We want them to have the opportunities available to them. We want them to ask questions and offer solutions to problems. Sometimes we succeed; sometimes we struggle. Luckily, we have the support of so many others in our community. This is what teachers do.

If you would like to help support teachers, please visit Donor's Choose where your can choose a project you like or my district's page on Facebook: Adopt a Manatee County Teacher. You can also check in your area for classrooms that need a little help with supplies. I appreciate your support and they will as well. 

l