Category: Education

Allow Them To Lead

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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I once attended a week long teacher training session during the summer. It’s purpose was mostly designed to plan for the upcoming school year, but also to acquaint us with new and exciting methodologies. As part of the the event we were given homework assignments to complete each evening. One of them involved answering a questionnaire that would then be analyzed to determine our talents, skills, dispositions. At the end of the week a psychologist gave us an overview of the results with great excitement because they had shown that the most frequent characteristic that we teachers shared was altruism. In fact, virtually ninety nine percent of the over one hundred educators in the room had scored higher in this category than any other.

Altruism is defined as “disinterested and selfless concern for the well being of others, behavior that benefits others’ well being at the expense of one’s own.” It is not particularly surprising that a room full of educators volunteering to attend five long days of learning during their vacation time would be unselfishly more concerned about other people than themselves. In truth anyone who lasts more than a few years in the teaching profession has a special kind of heart because the work is often grueling and the pay never quite compensates as fairly as it should. Nonetheless there are dedicated souls who return year after year to provide one of the most essential duties in our society. There is little of more importance for the future of our country than the education of the young.

Teachers overlook a great deal of criticism because of their very natures. It is quite rare for them to think of much more than their students. In fact they have a kind of obsessive concern for the young people in their care, sometimes even long after those pupils have grown into adults. For the greater part of a year they see a group of pupils day after day and feel a sense of responsibility toward each one of them. Their dedication is so all consuming that it is difficult to describe. They think of their pupils on the way to work and before they fall asleep at night. They are as anxious for the safety and success of their charges as a parent would be.

Teachers across America have missed their students since schools closed in March. So much was left unfinished, unsaid. They have grieved at the way things had to be. They have worried about their kids and in most instances worked harder than they would have if the school year had ended normally. They understand well how important it is both academically and psychologically for our nation’s youth to return to a semblance of learning and traditions. At the same time they worry about safety and have a sense that somehow the plans for reopening schools are too vague to insure that everyone will have a positive and healthy experience. Mostly they understand the complexities that have not been addressed and they wonder why they, the very experts who know the dynamics of classroom management, have rarely been consulted. 

Our nation’s teachers have many questions and concerns and even ideas that should be addressed sooner rather than later. Instead there is great uncertainty in the vague plans being set forth by education agencies and school districts. Meanwhile the president of our country insists that we must take care of our kids and their parents by opening schools regardless of whatever else may be happening and makes no mention of the teachers. Those altruistic individuals who are the heart and soul of every school in America are rightfully afraid and little is being done to quell their fears. They need answers for their justifiable anxieties that a “fly by the seat of their pants” approach will result in a disastrous mess.

It is going to take time and funding to make our schools places where everyone feels comfortable. Simply screening students and faculty with thermometers and probing questions as they enter buildings each day will take far more time than it sounds and may in the end be ineffective in keeping Covid 19 at bay. The design of classrooms, the numbers of students assigned to one teacher and the management of passing periods all have to be addressed. Cleaning of the building will have to be continuous throughout the school day and will no doubt require large maintenance crews. An on site nursing staff will be critical. As far as I am able to  ascertain schools simply do not have budgets large enough to create the necessary changes nor do they have a unified direction to keep everyone working toward common goals.

When the teachers express their doubts and their worries they are not attempting to get out of work or express support for one politician over another, but they are genuinely concerned about the young people for whom they will be responsible. They want and need to know how the needs of everyone will be met. They understand that the efforts will require the support and backing of the entire community or they will be doomed to failure from the start.

Businesses that opened slowly and with regard for the safety of patrons have done well. Those that ignored precautions are part of the blame for the uptick in Covid-19 cases. Why would we ask our schools to open at full capacity with only cosmetic changes? Why do the minimal guidelines feel as though they are the result of a rush to pass the buck of responsibility?

It’s time we called upon our teachers and asked them what they need to make schools places where everyone feels comfortable in returning. Their ideas may require great flexibility and an investment of time and money. Teach are the altruists who continually allow the world to fall on them. They will not take advantage. That is not what they are about. They will use their wits and their skills to create the safest possible environment. It’s time to allow them to lead.

School Bells Will Soon Be Ringing

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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Going back to school was always an exciting time for me. School was a shelter that kept me going even when times were tough. After my father died school gave me a sense of normalcy when my world felt so upside down. When my mother had mental breakdowns school provided me with a sense of purpose and control in a life that felt as though it was skidding off the rails.

Every July I would plan and anticipate the coming of the new adventure in the classroom. I bought clothes, shoes, supplies. When I was still a student I wondered who my teacher would be. When I became a teacher I wondered who my students would be. I thought of being together with my friends again. Everything about the time felt shiny and new. It was like starting with a blank slate, an opportunity to learn and change for the better.

Even after I retired from more than forty years in education I still went out in July to buy new pens and pencils and to freshen my supply of paper. I enjoyed back to school sales and somehow felt the same joy of anticipation that I had known since I was five years old. I eagerly read the posts from teachers with whom I had worked and I lived vicariously through their preparations. Eventually I had to admit that I missed working with students too much to just enjoy my new found freedom. I found tutoring jobs and taught mathematics to young people who were being homeschooled. I was still part of the educational world if only in a small way.

This year is so different. The usual teacher and student anticipation has become trepidation. The joy factor is absent as teachers consider the need for a new kind of supply closet, one filled with disinfectants, soap, hand sanitizers and extra masks. Their planning centers on how to keep students sufficiently distant from one another in a room so small that such a feat seems impossible. Teachers understand that the usual sights and sounds and smells will be very different from anything that they and their students have ever experienced. Understanding this fills them with a sense of gloom which late at night sometimes becomes a feeling of doom.

The world of school as we have come to know it will not include knots of friends playing together at recess. There will be no relaxing over lunch or trading of chips for a bag of cookies. Gatherings in the hallway will be prohibited. Teachers who have always been all things for all of the people they serve will have added responsibilities that will be exhausting both for the labor involved and the sense of responsibility incurred. They will be the ones continuously cleaning the desks and supplies. They will be the ones enforcing the safety rules. They will be the ones watching for signs of physical or mental trouble in their all too tiny classrooms where the virus has the potential to lurk in every corner.

Teachers understand better than anyone how different things will feel and be. Children will only see their friends from afar. The smiles and facial expressions that enliven relationships will be covered with masks. Only the eyes will tell a story and many of them will have difficulty focusing on learning when everything feels so wrong. No matter whether classes resume in person or remotely a deep sadness and sense of fear will hover over everything. School will not be a haven of routine but a haven of uncertainty. Being there or not being there will be equally difficult.

Teachers and their students are now part of a grand experiment and nobody can say with any assurance what exactly will happen. I can only predict that teachers will put every ounce of their dedication into to trying to make the most of an horrific situation. It is what they do. It would be nice if we would support and appreciate them as they grid themselves like soldiers going off to battle. They are quite naturally frightened because they know of the dangers they may face as they care for the most important treasures that our nation has.

Schools are getting threats of loss of funding if they don’t do things a certain way even as educators understand that one size fits all theories never work. People who have never ventured into a classroom to actually care for children all day long are creating policies that hinder the kind of flexibility that is a necessary part of teaching. There is much talk about what parents need and what students need but very little about what teachers need. There is even renewed criticism of the entire educational system because in truth it is impossible to structure learning in a way to please everyone. The outcry is leaving teachers wondering if anyone even cares about the incredible duties and dangers they are being asked to embrace without question.

The school bells will be ringing in a month or so. Many of them will be virtual. Others will be in person. It will not be the same. The routines will be different. The challenges will be many. We can only hope and pray that we are making the right choices. What we do matters greatly. We should hear what our teachers have to say. It is something we don’t tend to do very well. Perhaps now is the time we start. 

With Liberty and Justice For All

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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I write this on July 4, 2020, a day when an uptick in cases of Covid-19 has resulted in the closing of beaches and parks. There is a mask mandate in my state and I received a text from my doctor suggesting strongly that I stay at home. It will be a different kind of holiday from the seventy two others through which I have lived and I find myself feeling quite pensive as I think about my country and its people. There is a great deal of division and unrest at work during this time. There are many questions about what constitutes patriotism and as I ponder such thoughts I think about a survey that asked non-Americans to describe what they like best about the United States.

It is interesting that those who are not citizens of my country often view our nation from different perspectives. They overwhelming speak of the bounty of our nation. They point to the massive houses in which we live and the amount of land that is still so open. They think that our food is undoubtedly the best in the world and they maintain that nobody creates entertainment as well as we do. More so than any other aspect of our country they find our diversity to be amazing and beautiful. They are in awe of our right to criticize our government and its leaders without fear.

Of late almost every issue within the United States has been highly politicized and certain groups claim the mantle of patriotism in the name of only certain kinds of approved behavior. It is all too often asserted that anything less than unflinching allegiance to a particular way of thinking about the United States and its history and traditions is an affront to those who have fought for the freedoms that we have. In truth a thoughtful analysis of the revolutionary ideals of the United States would point to a more generous attitude toward freedom of expression. The visitors to our country seem to understand better than some of those who are citizens that the most wonderful aspect of our country is its glorification of free speech and thought. The intent of our founders was to build a land in which patriotism meant honoring individual rights to disagree. This is indeed the very thing that countless individuals have fought to defend.

Our pledge speaks of liberty and justice for all and yet anyone with a modicum of observational skills must surely understand that our society is an imperfect rendition of that ideal. There are people living in our country who were once denied even the most basic of all freedoms. They were held as property, rated by monetary value, counted as  fractional humans. It is not unpatriotic to note these things. They are true and we have advanced enough to understand that they were wrong.

Our nation was severed in violence and bloodshed during a war that pitted state against state because some states worried that their economic future might be disrupted by the gradual elimination of slavery. Literally every article of secession listed anti-slavery policies as the reason for withdrawing from the union. The states rights for which they fought was the right to continue owning human beings. Their act was treason and resulted in the greatest loss of life in war this nation has ever known. In spite of the suffering that the traitors inflicted on the country our country chose reconciliation and healing when the war ended. It had finally righted the wrong of slavery that had so stained the fabric of liberty and justice. The nation attempted to become one again.

There have been many other struggles to maintain freedom since that time. Our imperfections have persisted alongside our desire to be a democratic republic with the compelling goal of providing liberty and justice to all. We battle again and again to preserve those ideals even as we must surely know that their distribution is not always even and fair. Still we do our best because we love this country even when we believe that it is moving in the wrong direction. We are not a monarchy that idolizes a single individual as the arbiter of our laws. We are a democratic republic that allows us to select individuals to represent us and a president to insure that all of our voices are heard. We note the wrong when they occur  not because we hate our country but because we love it. We do not leave or rent our nation in two because our fight is to help our country move toward closer and closer approximations of perfection.

Who is the greater patriot, the person with blind allegiance or the one who is willing to risk being denounced for alerting us to injustice? Which is more courageous, following rules even when they are clearly hurting people or doing something audacious to bring wrongs to light? Did our founding fathers intend for the citizens of this country to intimidate those who have differing points of view? Did they believe that we must all walk in lockstep? Is it possible that the person who quietly kneels during our national anthem is actually doing something great for our country rather than insulting it? Should we be tied to the status quo or do we need to confront issues that continue to plague us? Does making our country great again mean doing things in only one prescribed way that ignores the needs of those who are struggling to feel valued and respected? 

We have become a beautifully diverse nation of many cultures. People have always come here in search of freedom and acceptance. They have followed the rules, fought in the wars, worked to make lives for themselves and their families in spite of the reality that they have not always been treated as fairly as they hoped. At this watershed moment of our history perhaps it is time for each of us to realize that a mindless virus better understands that we are all the same. It discriminates less than we humans have so often done. If we are to truly be as patriotic as we sometimes claim we are then our love of country should lead us to the determination to ensure that liberty and justice are finally and truly the right of all. There can be no better sign of our greatness as a country than embracing all of our fellow citizens and righting the wrongs that are limiting their liberty. Only then will we all be free at last. 

  

I Have Watched and Learned

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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My mother used to urge me to watch and learn. She would take me into the bathroom and show me that cleaning the toilet was way more than just swishing the most visible areas with some cleaning solution. She demonstrated how to iron a shirt and make a straight seam with a sewing machine. She showed me how to cook without a recipe. All the while my duty was to only observe what she was doing. There were no written instructions. I simply increased my knowledge by witnessing her at work. Before long I found myself watching and learning everywhere I went. I suppose that it was a good trait to have because I realized along the way that there is much information to be gathered by being a “fly on the wall.”

Since the first of March I have been busily noting the unfolding of events during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most interesting of all have been people’s reactions to the various things that have happened in response to the virus. With the killing of George Floyd in May occurrences and the perceptions of them became curiouser and curiouser. From my birds eye view gathered from the comfort of my home here are my random observations:

  • It was much nicer and more comforting when we were all concerned with one another and working together much as we did in the first couple of weeks of the novel coronavirus coming to our country.
  • Conspiracy theories of all kinds are rapidly attempting to overtake the truth.
  • Along those lines it must be noted that the pandemic is not a hoax and it will not miraculously go away in November once the presidential election has been held.
  • Not all persons participating in the Black Lives Matter marches and protests are rioters, looters and destroyers. In fact, of the millions who have marched across the globe all but a very small percentage are peaceful. Portraying them all as thugs who want to pillage and destroy our country is no substantive foundation.
  • Not all of our police and law enforcement officers are corrupt and racist. In fact most of them are good men and women who strive to protect us with fairness. Portraying all of them as evil is yet another ridiculous idea.
  • Defunding police departments is not a means of ridding ourselves of law enforcement.
  • Information from scientists and medical persons is far more reliable than anything one might hear from politicians, neighbors or some guy who has a thing for conspiracy theories. Being scientific in a time of pandemic is advisable.
  • Wearing masks will not make us sick from carbon dioxide build up. If that were true doctors and nurses would be long dead by now.
  • It is a great American right to have different opinions. It is not more patriotic to be a member of a particular party. True profiles in courage usually rock the status quo causing us to think.
  • Those who note and comment on problems within the systems of the United States do not hate the country. In fact, it may be said that they care so much about the country that they want to help repair the aspects that are broken.
  • History is often far more complex that a single point of view.
  • Those of us who are not Black will never be able to completely understand what the lives of Black Americans are like. To ridicule or ignore them when they attempt to describe the inequities that they experience is insensitive and inhumane.
  • Just because someone does not have Covid-19 and does not know anyone with the virus does not mean that it is not a serious illness. 
  • We take precautions for the safety of everyone. Proclaiming that we have a right to be reckless is the ultimate in selfishness.
  • Many, many people are hurting and this is causing great stresses and anxieties that we should not ignore.
  • It would behoove us to find out who among us needs help whether it be financial, assistance finding employment, or dealing with psychological issues. This is not a time to horde our good fortune while ignoring the hurt of others.
  • We should not even be thinking of repealing the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic. Too many people are relying on this healthcare safety net. They need to know that it will be there for them if they need it.
  • We should find a way to keep people in their homes rather than evicting them. To make people homeless right now is the ultimate in cruelty.
  • This is not a time to threaten dreamers that we will finding a way to stop DACA that is Supreme Court proof and eventually send them back to the places where they were born but may not even remember.
  • No piece of cloth, stone, metal icon, or song should ever be more important than any single human life. 
  • We must address the measures we will need to safely open our schools so that both students and teachers will feel comfortable upon returning. We must also be ready to be flexible in the event that Covid-19 begins a second wave.
  • Beware of anyone who tries to focus on our divisions or who revels in the pain and suffering of certain groups. Watch for trigger words and phrases that constantly lay the blame or poke fun. 
  • Covid-19 is an acronym for coronavirus disease of 2019. It is not the Chinese flu.
  • Covid-19 is not political and we should not try to make it so.
  • We should all make a point of being kind. There is enough uncertainty, privation, and sorrow without turning on one another.
  • If we do not work together again, we may fall together. We will all need to sacrifice and understand that going to the beach or a bar or a ballgame or out to eat or on a trip or to a concert is far less important that saving even one life.
  • We demonstrate how much we care by our behavior and by the expectations we have for our leaders. When they seem to be more interested in themselves than in the people it is our duty to call them out, not model their selfish behavior.
  • Remember above all else God loves every one of us and he wants us to love each other.

A Grand Experiment

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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We are almost at the end of June which means that we have to begin thinking about sending the children back to school in six to eight weeks. I often used July to plan lessons for the coming academic year. I am a freak when it comes to preparing ahead of time. I have never been able to do anything at the last minute. When I look at the possibilities of chaos in the coming school year I feel for teachers everywhere. Never has there been so much uncertainty about what will happen once children return to the classrooms.

The governor of Texas has declared with great confidence that all schools will reopen and that masks and other forms of protection from the virus will be optional. The reaction from the public has been mixed with many insisting it’s time to get back to normal and others worrying about the dangers of turning classrooms into germ farms. I have heard of parents investigating home schooling for at least the next year and teachers resigning or retiring because of health issues. We are wading into unknown waters and the fear is that those waters may be infested with sharks.

I teach eight home schooled students and we have not yet decided whether I will resume in person lessons or continue teaching them remotely. I am not as self assured as our governor is. I am still in the mode of wanting to wait to see what happens in the coming weeks. I can’t afford to bring illness into my home so I am a bit more circumspect.

Knowing what to do is a major dilemma for so many people. I agree that the best case scenario is for the nation’s students to return to a sense of normalcy but there is still a little voice whispering concerns to me. My forty plus years of teaching taught me that classrooms are like petri dishes for growing germs. I’ve seen more than my share of outbreaks of disease that closed down campuses. My hope is that this does not happen when we attempt to get back to the books.

The planning in many school districts appears to be far too nebulous for my taste. I’m of the mind that every teacher and parent needs a clear outline of Plans A through Z that will take into account any eventualities. All the shareholders need to know exactly what to expect when they return. How many students will be in each classroom? Will masks be a requirement? How will the school day change from the norm. Everyone must be told what will happen if there is an outbreak of the virus in a particular classroom or if the virus runs rampant through an entire campus. There should be plans for doing a better job with remote learning if that becomes a necessity again. Just using canned programs did not appear to be particularly effective so there should already be discussions about to how teachers might make those lessons more meaningful to their students?

There should already be concrete learning alternatives for those students with illnesses that might make them more vulnerable to the effects of the virus. Parents need to know what to expect if they choose to keep their children home. Teachers who have compromised immune systems should be provided with opportunities to become remote instructors for the children who need to avoid classrooms. There needs to be consideration for all individuals, not just a statement that if they can’t handle things they should just stay home.

July should be dedicated to using the creativity and talents of teachers to help in the design of each possible scenario. Schools need to be willing to try new ways of providing instruction that focus on the health and safety of all parties and provide the needed materials to institute each idea as needed.

I know of parents who are trying to find masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes for their children to take to school. Each campus should be well supplied with such items and even have a larger than usual janitorial force to maintain bathrooms and general cleanliness throughout the school day. I have so often see restrooms without soap. This is something that should not ever happen and its occurrence must be reduced with a firm plan for continually monitoring the building throughout the school day.

So many schools have eliminated nurses from their faculty. I can think of no better time to bring them back onto every campus. Schools will need their expertise in attempting to insure that the virus does not overwhelm the efforts to provide education. They can also vanguard the daily monitoring for signs of potential illness and help to determine when and if there are particular dangers.

I know that many school districts are working diligently to be prepared. I hope that they are willing to allow teachers, parents and even students to both ask questions and provide input. I would also request that the governor please quit changing his mind about how things should work. His latest remarks undid a great deal of work that had already been done. If you are going to make the teachers and students return at least allow them to create the plans that work best. This is going to be a grand experiment and our halls of education need to be ready for anything.