The muted satisfaction of kind of reaching a goal

This is and isn't about running.

***

I ran a marathon a little more than a month ago. Actually, scratch that. I completed a marathon. There's quite a difference between the two. 

I'd resisted it for almost two decades. I've run ever since tenth grade when I went out for my high school cross country team. (Given my average athleticism and slight build, I wasn't going to make any other team at my high school.) I was a mediocre runner, staying firmly on the junior varsity squad for the next three years. To give a sense of my place on the team, the coach described me this way during the end-of-year banquet when I was a senior: "Wilson — he brought a lot of people to practice." 

I did not enjoy cross country at the time, and I'm not quite sure why I stuck with it. I did, though, and one of the hidden benefits is that I ended up enjoying recreational distance running. It's kept me in reasonable shape and somewhat sane for more than 20 years. 

But races did a number on me. I'd throw up after every meet. I'm still not sure why, but I think it has to do with the weird way in which I'm competitive. That is, it's pointed almost entirely inward. I don't get upset about things like winning at board games or pickup soccer, but once I set a personal goal, I really, really like to meet it — to a sometimes unhealthy extent.

After my final high school meet in November 1999,  I didn't run in any sort of race for more than a decade — and even then, it was a Thanksgiving turkey trot where a good chunk of the field ran in a costume.

***

This time last year, I was having a rough go of it. Some trends you might recognize. Plans and projects I crafted were going sideways. I felt caught in a cycle of reaction. It was hard to see solutions.

During the holiday break last year, I needed some positive momentum. Something long-term and within my control to reach. Something that would force me out of a rut. 

Running for an hour or so at a time, especially in cold weather, is oddly therapeutic. It forces my attention on the here and now and clears out mental space. It's the next best thing to sleep in terms of making me feel better. Setting the goal of running a marathon provided the motivation necessary to consistently get out of bed early and get a few miles in. (Well, mostly consistent.)

I originally wanted to run a marathon at the end of May 2018 as a way to mark the end of the school year. That didn't work out because I forgot that May is a crazy month for educators and I was super tired. 

Then the brutal Nashville summer set in. If I didn't get up by 5 a.m., it would soon be too hot to run any sort of distance. So I got out of bed...most days. 

Then we had a baby girl in July. 

I ended up delaying the marathon until early November. It was a small one in downtown and East Nashville, appropriately called the Nashville Marathon. (Not to be confused with the massive marathon in Nashville held in late April. Many still call that one the Country Music Marathon, though it's now known as the St. Jude Rock 'n Roll Country Music Marathon. It's the one with band stages along the route and tens of thousands of runners.)

***

The mileage is the intimidating thing about a marathon, but what really separates it from shorter races is "the wall". It's what happens 20 or so miles in when all of the glycogen is gone from your muscles and your body transitions to burning fat. Glycogen burns faster than fat, so it creates an unusual physiological effect. The upshot is that a bunch of unpleasant stuff happens at that point. The most common is sudden exhaustion, though cramps or other muscle pains can occur, too. 

The wall is one reason training for a marathon is weird and hard. In most races, you train at the distance you plan to run. Quite a bit more, actually. But repeatedly running 26.2 miles (or beyond) will take too much of a physical toll, so most training guides max out at a run of 20 to 21 miles a couple weeks ahead of the marathon. 

I wasn't able to block out enough time to run more than 17 miles at a time before the race. Nevertheless, I figured that at worst, I'd just be extra exhausted at the end, but I could gut my way through it. 

Ha ha ha. 

What actually happened to me during the race was a typical story: felt OK for most of the race, then some leg muscles began tightening. I paused and stretched. I felt better for a bit, then the pain started, especially around my left knee. Running through mild tightness or tiredness is the part of distance running; your muscles adjust over time. Discomfort comes with the territory. 

It didn't help that the temperature at the start was a few degrees below freezing and didn't warm up until a few hours later.

So a cascade of problems started in my left leg. It felt like a boa constrictor slowly choking my knee with pain. It increased until I worried I would tear something. I stopped to walk. The pain subsided after a couple hundred yards, so I started jogging again. Thus began a cycle of pain/walk/jog/pain in ever-shorter intervals. My walking breaks were longer and longer. 

At this point in the race, I was geographically as far as the course would take me from the finish line (and my car). I wasn't carrying a cell phone and N was at home with the kids. Short of having a volunteer call an ambulance, the only way I was getting back to my car was on my own two legs. 

So for the last six or so miles, I walked. After about two miles, the weather and lactic acid buildup in my muscles caused a steady diet of pain. Not so much that I couldn't walk, but enough to make each step unpleasant. I kept thinking of the saying: "The only way out is through."

I managed to run the last quarter-mile and cross the finish line. My vanity — what was left of it — demanded it.

***

I write this because I don't think my experience is unique when it comes to goal-setting. That is, we often reach a version of a goal. There's the end and it's not quite what you thought it would be. 

Now my knee has mostly healed and I'm considering running another one. In a lot of ways, I feel like I had to run one in order to understand the scale of the challenge. Like many things — marriage, raising children, careers — it's impossible to understand or appreciate the challenges and rewards until one is neck-deep in it. 

When should a partisan vote against party?

At what point do you vote against your preferred party?

I've been thinking a lot about this question, mostly because I hope several million Republicans will do so come November 6. 

So, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, I've thought about the times I haven't voted for the Democratic candidate. I've lived and voted in five states, so I've got a decent sample size. Here's what I've got:

- The Democrat is corrupt. In a House of Representatives election for a safe D seat, I voted against an incumbent that was under federal investigation for corruption.

- Voting even though there's not a plausible Democrat running for office. I will still vote in an election even when Democrats don't field a serious candidate. (I figure if someone cared enough to put her/his name on the ballot, I owe the courtesy of taking each office seriously.) One of my deal-breaker criteria is that whoever I cast my vote for should, at minimum, be able to handle the rigors of the office. The Basil Marceauxs of the world, sadly, don't quite make the cut. (He's a Republican, but plenty of nutters run on the D line, too. I just like this video.)

- The Democrat is an idiot. In one gubernatorial election, I had met both the Democratic and Republican candidates. I thought the Democratic candidate, while nominally a serious candidate, would've been a disaster if elected. In this case, the GOP candidate was a moderate and, more importantly, wasn't an idiot. Being governor matters more than most other offices in terms of being able to execute on basic, non-ideological governing functions. Therefore, I put a high priority on a candidate who is diligent, fair-minded, and competent. Ability to do the job matters more than ideology. 

Essentially, I'll vote for a Republican when there's clear corruption or incompetence. 

For Republicans who loathe Trump or just think he needs a more aggressive check on his power, what's your criteria for stepping away from the party line?

A newborn and a threenager

So we brought home a newborn the other day.

This is our second child, so the lifestyle switch isn't quite as brutal. (We already weren't going out much.)

Our first child is a three-year-old boy. So, between the two kids, we can never fully focus on any one task at a time. Please take that into consideration as you read my posts going forward.

***

So, some just-brought-her-home reflections:

• A major parenting shift with the second child is that N and I are surprised by less. This doesn't make stuff like "baby wakes up six times at night" physically easier (especially not on mothers), but we can mentally take more stuff in stride. We know that day/night reversal eventually ends, no child cries forever, and that she will someday take a bottle from me.

• Our three-year-old has been all over the place. He wants to be helpful and also senses that he's getting less attention. We've had to be creative in finding ways for him to help -- fetching the nursing pillow and throwing away dirty diapers have been our go-to moves. Even so, he's had some epic meltdowns. A common precursor is delaying behaviors -- for example, he'll go back and forth f-o-r-e-v-e-r when choosing his PJs. The root cause seems to be wanting sustained attention from N and me. We've had to balance a careful line of giving him attention versus not reinforcing undesirable behaviors. Like a lot of parenting moves, the outcomes are delayed, inconsistent, and hazy.  

• N and I are incredibly fortunate to be able to take lengthy breaks from our jobs. Many people don't have that luxury. Family leave policies in this country are awful for babies and parents. We reap the costs of inadequate childcare in this country in all sorts of ways -- a national birthrate that is lower than replacement level, all sorts of negative health outcomes resulting from inadequate early childhood care, to name a few. I can't help but see this as a part of a general political trend of sacrificing the future to cut costs for the present. (Also known as "cutting off one's nose to spite the face.") This is why it is maddening for politicians to treat family leave policy as a "women's issue." If we want men to better partners and fathers, give them time to do so. 

An anecdote about asylum seekers

When I lived in Denver a few years ago, I taught a student who came to this country because if she and her family had stayed in their home country, they faced a credible threat from the Zetas. Her older brother had already been murdered by gang members. The way the cartels operate, the entire family was now a target for harassment, extortion, and kidnapping.

In an alternate reality, my former student could've ended up coerced into a life that is the nightmare for any parents of a teenage daughter.

Faced with an impossible choice, they uprooted their lives and sought asylum at the U.S. border.

When people face a strong likelihood of persecution if they return to their homes, especially in certain places where their governments don't have the ability to protect them, American law permits them legal entry as refugees.

***

I try to imagine suddenly needing to leave Nashville with my family, giving up my home for no money, and moving to a place where we didn’t speak the language. I imagine giving up my way of earning a living because that likely won’t travel to the new place, either. I imagine doing this while grieving the loss of my son. The scale of it all is unfathomable.

Yet that is what my student’s family -- and tens of thousands like them -- did.

These families are who we, through our Border Patrol authorized by the government we elected, are arresting and separating at the border. 

These families, likely already traumatized, are being ripped apart by public servants acting in our name. 

***

Immigration, including and especially taking in refugees, makes our country better off. (Read the studies, if you'd like.) Contra Jeff Sessions and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Bible, and Jesus in particular, is quite clear about what should be done for impoverished, desperate strangers fleeing persecution.

We empathize best through stories though, and this one has a happy ending. My former student is now in college, training to be a teacher. Her other brother is in high school. Her parents rebuilt their lives, working incredible hours at tough jobs. Their children are thriving because of their sacrifice.

***

The potential we each have within us is a delicate thing. Single, cruel acts can reverberate across families and generations. Rebuilding one’s promise after such cruelty takes enormous effort. For every story that ends like my former student’s, dozens more have a tragic conclusion.

When our country opens its doors to those in need, we all benefit.

The opposite is also true.

Our biases conspire against us

Extended breaks, like the one brought by the recent spurt of snow and ice, mess me up a little. The initial thrill wears off the first day so, then a lazy routine sets in, then I get anxious. I crave the structure and productivity of a work day while simultaneously wanting to do anything but work. It’s pretty close to the opposite of living in the moment. You can imagine requisite unsettledness that comes with it.

Hanging around the house with a two-year-old who is off his normal routine, unsurprisingly, exacerbates this. I wish his total focus on whatever is in front of him rubbed off on me, but it doesn’t work that way.

***

One of the takeaways from Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert’s research is that we are awful at predicting what will make us happy. To be more precise, we pursue the short-term boost, ignore the after-effects, and neglect the long-term investments needed to achieve happiness. Eat the donut, put off the call to a long-lost friend. Fixate on buying the sports car, neglect the daily run. Stay on the couch watching superhero movies, don't write the blog entry rattling around my head. And so forth, ad infinitum.

I’ve known this for years, read a few books by Gilbert and others like him, and still find myself with a non-productivity hangover at the end of breaks. You should’ve finished this. Why didn’t you use L’s nap time more productively? You haven’t been to work and you’re still going to be behind.

Did I plan entire trip around getting a chocolate milkshake from Hugh Baby’s two days ago? Yes. Did I practice guitar each day -- something I enjoy, but hate to start? No. Did I complete (insert paperwork I’ve been needing to finish for a week)? Don’t be silly. (Yes, I know that’s an ambiguous answer. What’s your point?)

So I know all of this stuff, yet cognitive biases still get me. Not all of the time -- I’m more ambitious in the morning (...when I can drag myself out of bed…) and once I get going, I can stick with something pretty easily. I love the payoff of getting something done. But it’s really friggin’ hard getting there.

I don’t have much a grand summation. Life can be challenging and our brains sometimes conspire against us. Pretty odd piece of the human condition.

My main comfort is that most everyone reading this likely struggles with same phenomenon. Another weird feature of our brains -- solidarity in unhappiness. Funny how that works.

Anatomy of a mediocre lesson

Today was probably my worst day of teaching this year. Here's why:

• I tried to cram too much in one lesson, so it felt disjointed on my end. The students likely didn't retain the most critical information because there was too much of it. This is best illustrated by attempting to slake your thirst by putting 20 oz. of water in a 12 oz. glass.

• I didn't consider the entire lesson from a student's perspective. Specifically, I didn't fully think through how they would process the information. Therefore, sometimes the students were put in a position of listening for too long a period without a chance to speak and write. This also hindered me knowing what they learned because the questions I did have them write about weren't the most critical to understanding the lesson. In short -- I focused on what would be doing at the expense of being clear regarding what I wanted them to do.

• I failed to order the information so it was clear which were the foundation pieces of knowledge, then how various pieces connected. The connections that were there were haphazard so it's likely most students' first impression were formed in very different ways. This is similar to having a poor foundation to a house. The only way to really fix is just go back and do it again. 

***

When these days (inevitably) happen, I think back to early in my career. When a lesson went sideways then, it meant that student behavior would be so off that I'd usually need to call in another teacher or assistant principal. On those days, I would leave school emotionally drained. I'd procrastinate on planning because I'd still be angry. I'd go to bed feeling a pit in my stomach, knowing that I'd set myself up to have the same problems the next day. 

Teaching is better now. My worst day now far surpasses my best day then. 

Now, I'm mostly just annoyed when I don't do that great of a job. I hate it when I see kids who are trying to learn, just not quite getting there, and it's my responsibility.

I understand this is a part of the job -- of any job, really. Just thought it's worth marking the days in the classroom that aren't typically captured in an exemplar teaching clip or make it to YouTube because kids are chucking chairs at each other.

I won't be nominated to be profiled in Teach Like A Champion anytime soon, but you shouldn't see my class on Vine either. (If you do, let me know, so I can confiscate the phone tomorrow)

Onward and upward! 

To Blog or Not to Blog?

I've struggled with consistently blogging. This is less about me not having things to say and more to do with realizing that it's hard to write authoritatively when I feel less and less sure each day. Even regarding what that I do professionally -- teach in a charter school -- I feel like I have far more questions than answers. 

When reading something things I wrote when I first started teaching, it seemed like then I was far more confident in what solutions were. Perhaps expertise is a paradox -- the more one has, the less sure one becomes. 

The authors of most blogs sound quite confident. I'm pretty sure this is either 1) a pose or 2) foolishness. Check that -- could be both as those two aren't necessarily in conflict with each other.

Anyway, I (re)start with that caveat so I can use this blog going forward as a way to think through topics. 

This is what I've been thinking about:

* The tension between individual bad actors in a society versus the larger number of folks who are susceptible to a culture's negative influence

* The importance of cultural norms

* The cost/benefit of jailing lawbreakers

* Popular ideas of leadership versus leadership in action

* The tension of having a plan versus getting sufficient buy-in to execute the plan

* A habit in our political discourse that leads to some people being valued more than others by institutions committed to serving all equally

* The persistence of belief in the face of evidence refuting that belief

I will have more questions than answers. 

Way to go, Matt!

Friend of the blog Matt Rubinstein and company have raised seven figures:

Local education technology company LiveSchool has raised $1.65 million through an equity offering, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The Nashville Capital Network led the round of funding. 

LiveSchool offers a classroom management app to help teachers manage day-to-day classroom activities, such as tracking student behavior, contacting parents or issuing hall passes.

The charter school where I work has helped LiveSchool pilot this app. (Note: some other schools in our network use student management systems from other companies.) Several other charter schools in Nashville were also involved in the beta testing of LiveSchool. I'm not sure if the company has any client schools in the district, though I'm sure that will eventually come, if it hasn't happened already. 

Apps like this one that improve the flow of record-keeping and paperwork -- particularly in essential but mundane tasks like tracking demerits and hall passes -- make a big difference in managing a school. Student management systems aren't the type of reform that will be debated by the Tennessee legislature, but this is the type of nuts-and-bolts change that makes a difference in teaching kids. When data is more accessible, consistent, and easily visualized, teachers can do their jobs better.

Matt is a smart guy and I hope this money helps the company refine the product and grow. It would be great if Nashville become not only a hub for innovative schools, but innovative educational technology, too. 

Note: neither I nor the network of schools where I work are formally endorsing LiveSchool. Just proud to see a cool business launch in Nashville. 

What happens when entertainment is no longer entertaining?

This week, researchers reported that they can now image brains to diagnose CTE while people are alive. Previously, the only way to know if CTE caused a person depression, dementia, or suicidal tendencies was through an autopsy. Repeated concussions have been linked CTE. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates puts together a damning timeline on the NFL actions regarding concussions. Essentially, league executives have had a reason to suspect for quite some time that players were playing Russian roulette with their post-football lives, yet they told players differently. An excerpt:

2007 - An NFL safety pamphlet notifies players, "Current research with professional athletes has not shown that having more than one or two concussions leads to permanent problems if each injury is managed properly. 

2009 - NFL spokesman Greg Aiello acknowledges, "It's quite obvious from the medical research that's been done that concussions can lead to long-term problems, 

2009 - The NFL begins to put up posters in locker rooms that state, in part, "Concussions and conditions resulting from repeated brain injury can change your life and your family's life forever."
"This is about Roger Goodell, that fraud, covering his own ass," says former defensive lineman Dave Pear.

In 2007, the NFL was still arguing that concussions wouldn't lead to serious problem? Surely they heard of what happened to these former players two years earlier:

2005 - In June, former Pittsburgh Steelers guard Terry Long commits suicide by drinking antifreeze. Neuropathologist Bennet Omalu later examines Long's brain and concludes he suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
"People with chronic encephalopathy suffer from depression. The major depressive disorder may manifest as suicide attempts. Terry Long committed suicide due to the chronic traumatic encephalopathy due to his long-term play," Dr. Omalu tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "The NFL has been in denial."Steelers neurosurgeon Joseph Maroon says Omalu is employing "fallacious reasoning" saying "I don't think it's plausible at all ... to go back and say that he was depressed from playing in the NFL and that led to his death 14 years later, I think is purely speculative. 

2005 - In July the peer-reviewed journal Neurosurgery prints Omalu's autopsy and brain analysis of "Iron" Mike Webster. Omalu concludes that Webster suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

I've enjoyed watching football for a long time, but now every time I see even a highlight on "SportsCenter" I just think about how guys are destroying their brains. Sure, they get glory, celebrity, and big paychecks, but ask the widow and children of Junior Seau if that's a tradeoff they'd make again. Even researchers find that it's only a relatively small number of former players affected, say 10 or 20 percent, it's still too much of a sacrifice for something driven primarily by people wanting something to watch on Sunday afternoons.

And I'm a guy who grew up immersed in Southern football culture. I live a mile away from where the Titans play. 

I wonder how many other people are going to start feeling the same way? I mean, with the NFL, we're talking about a $9 billion business and that's without taking into account the massive media industry built around. For that matter, what about the cultural and financial impact of college football?  

When I read Seabiscuit, I learned that the major American spectator sports during the Depression were horse racing and boxing. History shows there's nothing guarantees that football will continue to dominate the modern sports landscape. 

Given all this, it looks like a Major League Soccer franchise would be a bargain investment. 

TN teacher evals: that time when I learned I wasn't perfect

I'm back -- with striking brown eyes. See above.

***

There's often a gulf between how ed reform ideas look on paper and how those ideas play out at the classroom level. In other news, sugar tastes good and the Cubs won't win the World Series this year.

So I'm going to be discussing over the next few posts how some of the big reform pieces have affected my classroom. I'll start with an update about how Tennessee's new teacher evaluations impact me.

The headline is that the new evaluation process significantly improved my teaching. I've been evaluated by the old system in a district school and the new system in a charter school. I got better scores on the former; the latter was more honest and actually helped me do my job better.

That's due to both the rigorous rubric and how the dean of instruction at my school scrupulously implemented it. Sure, I could quibble with a few details, but the process as a whole is solid. It's impossible to construct an evaluation process that leaves everybody happy. Given the purposes of evaluation, it's going to bruise egos. Mine certainly was -- and that's a good thing for both myself and my students.

"If there's anything more important than my ego on this ship, 

I want it caught and shot right now."

***

Teaching is, above all else, a skill. As such, it requires an outsider's perspective to polish it. I can't think of a skill -- throwing a football, playing the piano, cooking a soufflé --  in which coaching isn't necessary.

But the process of coaching isn't easy because nobody likes to be told they aren't doing something well. The process is even harder if, like me, you've taught for several years and are used to running class a certain way.

The thing is, the feedback that I got was in no way earthshaking. She wanted me to improve the depth of my questioning. It wasn't rejiggering my classroom setup or chucking out huge parts of my classroom. It's just a seemingly small technique that's easy to overlook during the day-to-day grind of teaching.

It has also made a significant difference.

Before the evaluation, I knew my classroom culture needed a jolt. Students were doing the assignments that I asked, but quiz results showed they weren't absorbing knowledge at the rate they needed to do so. When teaching students that are several years behind, there's an impetus to learn quickly. Time is an enemy. 

In the classes following my evaluation, I paid more attention to asking questions. This meant slowing down class and scheduling fewer activities, but staying with those activities for a longer time. Some students hesitated when being asked to show deeper levels of knowledge. We didn't exactly produce material for an inspirational montage, á la Freedom Writers. 

There was, however, improvement in ways measurable and not. Sure, my pride took a minor hit when the problem was identified and most kids were caught off-guard when pushed to explain and analyze in new ways, but it helped them learn. That's why the taxpayers are paying me.

A rigorous evaluation engenders some anxiety. I was more than a little nervous on the day of mine. The bottom line, though, is that it's a reasonable process and necessary to actually improving the delivery of instruction. 

If done correctly, it shouldn't be comfortable. It will, however, help with teaching the kiddos.

The importance of the mundane

Sorry for the hiatus -- I still haven't mastered this whole "teach, blog, and have a life" thing. Not that I haven't been writing. I just find that many of the things I've written but not published are half-formed ideas or fully-formed duds.

No promises about what I do publish, either.

Anyway, a vignette from today and the realization it inspired:

******

I've started directing a play after school with a cast consisting of students from the charter school where I teach and a district school. They've got a stage; I like directing, so it works out. It's a good group of kids. They get along with each other and are committed to doing the amount of work it takes to put on a play. As a director, I can't ask for more.

They often talk about the differences between their respective schools. I note that aside from its use as an adjective, the word "charter" is rarely mentioned. Their focus is on more mundane matters like: 

"The lockers in this (district) school are really big."

"Really?"

"Yeah, we have these little cubbies in our classrooms."

"Like an elementary school?"

"Well, our school used to be one."

"Is your school small?"

"Yeah, kind of. But it's not an elementary school."

That was the end of the analysis of the differences between a charter and a district school.

Just another reminder that on a practical level, kids don't care about too much about these macro ed policy fights. They're more concerned with stuff like who their teachers are, how much work the teachers assign, and if the school offers the extracurricular activity they like. And, oh yes, where they'll put their stuff during the day. On a deeper level, of course kids pick up on academic rigor and school culture, but the average kid will struggle to articulate it. 

This isn't to say the big policy fights don't matter; they do. It's just that it's so easy to lose sight of how children perceive schools. 

It's up to adults, of course, to shape a student's perception. However, all of us in this education game still, in the end, must operate within that perception. 

In other words, the final question of every ed policy decision should be how this impacts students on a day-to-day level. 

*****

On a different note, this is a good time to plug the clip of my dream high school play, courtesy of Rushmore. 

Why, yes, it is on my bucket list to direct a play that requires pyrotechnics and outfitting a student with a flamethrower.

"Also, you'll find a pair of safety glasses and earplugs beneath your seats. Please feel free to use them."

Going from "they" to "we"

I was a child when the United States invaded Iraq for the first time. Since I was pretty typical boy, I spent hours in the woods near my house, playing "soldier." My friends and I shot at imaginary Iraqis with our imaginary guns. We always won. 


One time, though, one of my friends fell backward, saying, "They got me!" 


Alone in my room that night, I thought about how sad it would be if my friend had actually been shot. I pictured his mother crying. 


Then I thought about the pretend Iraqis we'd been shooting. I realized that they, too, had mothers who would cry if they were shot. 


I lost my interest in playing "soldier."


****


It's obvious and easy to condemn the latest batch of bigotry spewing forth from those trying to prevent Muslims in Murfreesboro from exercising their First Amendment right to worship. Bob Smietana's  story in the Tennessean speaks for itself:

Currently one Muslim student at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro is allowed to pray in an empty room during lunch, said James Evans, spokesman for Rutherford County Schools. 

Evans pointed out that Christian students hold a lunch Bible study at the same school and that a Christian club there called First Priority has several hundred members. 

[Pete] Doughtie said Muslim students should assimilate to Christian culture. Rather than allowing Muslim students to pray, he’d rather see all students take part in a Christian prayer each day at school.

“We have been a strong Christian country, and if we don’t get back to it, the whole face of this nation is going to change,” Doughtie said.

Doughtie, a 71-year-old retiree who publishes a small newspaper featuring right-wing views, is featured heavily the article. I hope the idea in giving him such a prominent platform is to give a human face to the opposition.  In a typical article, the idea is for us to empathize with him. In this case, though, the statements attributed to Doughtie (and the other major subject of the article, Rev. Darrel Whaley) seem to function the same way a freak show does at a carnival. We readers get to observe and note that, whatever our shortcomings, at least we're not that.


In an odd way, even Whaley seems to exhibit some level of self-awareness on how repugnant his views are:

An evangelical Christian pastor, Whaley believes Muslims will go to hell if they don’t leave their faith and become Christians. 

He says that he’s not a bigot and doesn’t hate Muslims. 

But he can’t stand their religion and will do whatever he can to limit the spread of Islam in Rutherford County and in the United States. 

“We are not against Muslims praying in a mosque,” Whaley said. “We are against Islam.”

It's a relief to know he doesn't hate them for practicing their religion. He's just hates their religion, period.


But as I said, it's easy to condemn. It's much harder to do what they're refusing to do -- extend empathy and compassion.


So let's first try to understand why they reject empathy and compassion:

Doughtie also worries about a so-called “stealth jihad.”

He learned that term from a book by the same name by author Robert Spencer, who runs a blog called Jihad Watch. The book says that Muslims want to undermine America from within. 

Since at least 2009, that claim has been repeated by local activists meeting in churches and community groups in Middle Tennessee. 

Those meetings have regularly featured anti-Islam speakers and authors like Spencer, Brigitte Gabriel of Act for America, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, and Bill French, a former Tennessee State University professor who goes by the pseudonym Bill Warner. 

They’ve persuaded activists like Doughtie to see almost every action by Muslims with suspicion.

Fear is a black hole sort of feeling, feeding on itself until it infects everything one perceives. It destroys reason, logic, compassion, and empathy. One sees everything "with suspicion." Fear lives off its cousins: lies and ignorance.


Doughtie and Whaley fear Muslims because they've been fed lies by people who profit off demagoguing against Muslims. They've failed to truly educate themselves, to seek out views balancing the poison of people like Frank Gaffney. 


I don't know why they've been satisfied with this fear. Perhaps it offers some sort of cold comfort, a sense of place in our ever-more integrated and diverse world. Many don't feel safe until they've divided the world into "us" and "them."


Whatever the cause, fear tears at the soul. It destroys lives and communities. The object of their fear will return the same to them. 


The only way out of this cycle of fear is to practice its opposite. The most revealing statement in the entire article is this:

Until the new Islamic Center was approved in 2010, “I didn’t know that there were any Muslims in this community,” said Pete Doughtie, owner of the Rutherford Reader, a local free newspaper.

Doughtie simply didn't know his neighbors. His ignorance turned to intolerance when he started relying on outside hatemongers like Gaffney for information rather than engaging with his fellow citizens of Murfreesboro.


It's a telling that our communities can be so diverse, yet we can so easily wall ourselves off from each other. If I didn't work as a public school teacher, I wouldn't know many Muslim families. I wouldn't know that their values are the same as our values, that their community is a part of our community.


If it weren't for my job, I wouldn't know that there is no "they" and "them." There is, in this community, only "we" and "us."


Pete Doughtie, Darrel Whaley, Wilson Boyd, Muslim families, all of Middle Tennessee -- we -- are all in this together, but there's a rift in our community. For us to find a way out of it, we're going to have to do the opposite of what fear tells us: take a risk and truly become neighbors.


For me, that will be hard. For me, the "they" is Doughtie and Whaley. 


How do we acknowledge the humanity of those who don't acknowledge the humanity of others?

Something that changed my life

A few months into my first year in the classroom, my mentor teacher in Philly saw that I was having a rough time with a student. She sat in my classroom after school and listened to me vent for ten minutes.

When I finally shut up, she was quiet for a while. Then she said this:

What helps me is to remember that no matter where a child came from, they are coming from somewhere. Someone has sent that child to you. For that person, that child is the best thing in her life. That child may be flawed, but it's still more important to that person than anything else. You are being entrusted with the best thing in that person's life. It's not up to us to judge the person. It's up to us to remember that each child is the best thing in the world to someone.

School starts in a little more than a week. School board elections are heating up.

In the midst of all that, it helps reorient me to remember that all of this is about helping people with the best thing in their lives.

William Raspberry and fake competitions

It is one of life's coincidences that the man who inspired me to first to be a journalist, and then later a teacher, grew up in the same hill country of Northeast Mississippi as I. That said, the differences between his childhood growing up in 1940s segregated Okolona and my upbringing in Tupelo are stark. I can't claim any special insight into what made William Raspberry; I'm just grateful that he broke through barriers of race and class to become a prominent journalist whose writing was published by his hometown paper, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

William Raspberry's columns were the part of the newspaper I read immediately following my favorite section--the comics*.  After my parents, he was the most influential person in shaping my nascent worldview. I remain attracted to the values he espoused:

• Balancing self-reliance with the needs of a diverse society
• Attempting to see the world as it is, so we can work to make it the world we want it to be
• Learning the lessons of history, while avoiding being handcuffed by the mistakes of previous    generations
• Respecting the humanity of all, but with no patience for the arrogance of power or privilege

In addition, I appreciated Raspberry's tone, which the New York Times imprecisely called "moderate." A better word, suggested by a commenter at the Washington Post obituary, is "reasoned." Raspberry argued for all sorts of things that had nothing to do with being in the center in a left/right political spectrum. This was because Raspberry understood the difference between a value and an opinion -- the latter being subject to change based on the facts he reported. More often than not, his columns focused on finding shared values in a world of conflicting evidence and countervailing opinions.

****

"In virtually every public controversy, most thoughtful people secretly believe both sides."

--William Raspberry, 1935-2012

Raspberry was, and still is, right. We have so many decisions to make about how best to educate our children. And you know what? We secretly believe the answer to most policy questions is both. The problem is that our instincts put policies in competition with each other. Instead, they should be in cooperation. We are confusing the values (which we mostly agree on) with opinion (where there's legitimate difference).

I've written before that pitting charter schools against district schools is a silly and a false choice. What we need to focus on are finding high-performing pockets of excellence and learning from them.

One of the best things about working in education is that it can be a win/win. If I do well, a student does well. If another teacher at my school builds a fantastic culture, I benefit. If another teacher in another school does a great job, that's also a win for me as a fellow citizen. Our community can never have enough well-educated citizens.


It's also frustrating to see a false dichotomy made between traditionally-trained teachers and Teach for America. The right frame is how can we get more high-performing teachers in our classrooms?

Once we've acknowledged that the only competition in teacher training is attracting the best people into the profession rather than pursuing a different career, then there's a bunch of great policy issues in which to delve: How do we best train these teachers so that they become great teachers as quickly as possible? How do we make teaching a sustainable and financially rewarding profession? How do we offer educators many career paths?

We have scarce resources, but they're almost never distributed in an all-or-nothing fashion. However, we argue about these choices as if they were. We set up false competitions when we actually want to make investments so that all kids win. 

This doesn't mean we won't, or shouldn't, have debates about policies on how best to educate our kids. We should. This is important stuff. But when we do, we should acknowledge that, more often than not, both sides have shared values as to the importance of education, teachers, and great public schools. Otherwise, we're going to spend a whole lot of time and effort in a fake competition. 

We're all rooting for the same team: our kids. 

****

* Calvin and Hobbes has been equally influential in my life, but that's a topic for another day.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are solely my own and don't represent any organization with which I'm associated.

'The past is never dead. It's not even past.'

...so writes William Faulkner in one of the great lines, ever.

Some fantastic journalism from the Chattanooga Times-Free Press on how a Baptist minister loved his gay son who died from AIDS.
    

When he and Frances walked into the hospital room, Stephen was lying in the bed in a thin gown. His body white and weak. The same blue eyes, but hollow underneath. 

Stephen looked at his father. The room felt tight with fear and embarrassment. Matt knew his son was waiting to hear his voice, listening for reassurance.

And Matt began to cry in front of his son. Frances held her hands over her mouth and cried, too.

"Son, it's OK," Matt said. "We are going to love you the way you are."

Stephen sobbed. He crawled out of bed and into Matt's lap and Matt held him like he did when he was just a boy. Stephen put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him on the cheek.

"Son, don't worry," Matt said softly. "Nothing between us is going to change."

Andrew Sullivan writes about surviving AIDS.

People forget that HIV decimated the immune system - but people actually died from the opportunistic infections. These "OI"s were something out of Dante's Hell. So many drowned to death from pneumocystis. Or they would develop hideous KS lesions, or extremely painful neuropathy (my "buddy" screamed once when I brushed a bedsheet against the tip of his toes), or CMV where a friend of mine had to inject himself in the eyeball to prevent going blind, or toxoplasmosis, a brain degenerative disease where people wake up one day to find they can't tie their shoe-laces, and their memories are falling apart. Within the gay community, 300,000 deaths amounted to a plague of medieval dimensions. Once you knew your T-cells were below a certain level, it was like being in a dark forest where, at any moment, some hideous viral or bacterial creature could emerge and kill you. And for fifteen years there was nothing to take that worked, just the agonizing helplessness of waiting to die, and watching others get assaulted by one terrifying disease after another.

I was alive during the plague years, but barely aware of its extent. As with the Holocaust, this is a topic we must study and revisit because we can't let anything like it ever happen again.