That other bell, the one that marked the end of transition where kids needed to be seated in classrooms for afternoon attendance was like forty-two, forty-three seconds away. I could tell. I worked at the same school, in the same building for six years. After six years there are things like the timing of bells that have an innate way of growing into a teacher’s timing and expectations. Into a teacher’s values. Bells have become my self-preservation. Only in between those bells, we allow a slice of ourselves to exist. 

Laila understood this about me as she walked towards my classroom after that first bell rang. I heard you! My, my, my. That, that, that. She was near the door with thirty-one seconds left before that second bell rang. That, that, that. Theirs, theirs, theirs. She also has learned this about school too. We, me, them, that, theirs…we all tell them their smart if and when they show us that they know that. Laila knows that. 

She said, “I’m not involved in that, Mr. Morris…That’s not me this time.”

This time. What does this time mean at the end of confessional sentences coming out of a 14-year-old girl’s mouth when speaking about friends, students, coming back from lunch and singing songs with less than 41 seconds until they’re supposed to be seated at their desks? Laila arrived at the doorway nine paces before her singing friends. She knew how to do that. I know that she knows that I know she’s learned a thing or two about school. 

“Did you go out to lunch with them, Laila?” I didn’t even really look at her when I asked her. I looked at her when she started to respond. “Yeah, of course. You know that, Mr. Morris. We go out to lunch together. Everyday.” She didn’t look at me when she answered. We both were watching her friends happily singing away while unlocking their locks to their lockers. That second bell rang. They were still singing. We were still staring. “Laila, get into the classroom. The second bell rang. I’m ‘bout to take attendance.”

“Okay. Mr. Morris.”

There’s an immeasurable thing that occurs in between remembering and writing memories down. A similar gap occurs when teaching and remembering how to teach. An equivalent gap happens to kids who understand the difference between acting like kids and performing like students in front of teachers. Some students grapple with it and get it on the spot. Some kids never get it and only realize it after when they are on porches with friends, half drunk, talking about that time Mr. SoAndSo said this or did that. Some just say, “I know, Mr. Morris” to the teacher in a way that makes their teacher know that they know. Those kids are smart. I like to think that some of those other kids know both ends of that dichotomy and come back from lunch singing songs because they know. Because they know, too. So they don’t give or break or bend. In a good way. Because they know. Those kids are smart, too.

For right now I think Laila is smarter than Shari, Felicia, and Nasir. But I don’t know. I know that they’ve learned and thought about ways to break or bend. But, I do know them. The same way Laila thinks she knows me enough to dissociate herself with her friends and pronounce to her teacher that she isn’t them. I think I know her well. Shari, Felecia, and Nasir too. But I help her more, between those bells, because I know her more and I think she knows me better than those other kids actually know me. Because I know that teaching comes down to bending, breaking and re-molding. I mean, they came back singing after lunch. Knowing. Not broken. Never bending. But I wanted to tell Laila that there ain’t nothing wrong with singing after a lunch and coming back into a building still singing. Unmoulded in a way. Adults never do that. I really sometimes deep down want to do that. But I never do. I don’t know if she know that. I wonder if those three other kids, who came back singing, know that better. Never knowing that they’ll never know what it means to break.

I never actually know so I never actually do because I’ve learned how to live in between those bells. That’s what I’ve been taught. That’s how I learned how to teach. The bells alone ring so loud that I automatically know what they are supposed to mean. Sometimes I forget what it means to live outside of them when I am immersed inside of them every day, all day, until they stop ringing. To still be still, and moving flexibly at the same time. Laila told me, without telling me, she heard them. Those other kids told me the same thing. But they didn’t say it to my face. They told me another way. They sang. They sang through those bells. And kept singing after those seconds after the bell rang silent. And then they stopped singing. They knew it was time for afternoon attendance. They came into class. They knew I heard them so I could never mark them not there. They’re there. All of them. I call names and say, “when you hear your name, say here.” They all do. I have to decide on what I should listen to more. 

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“Mashon is gonna’ end up in jail. Kid just doesn’t know how to get out of his own way.” So, as educators, are we just going to sit around until time rings our predictions true or false? “Sharrita is going to end up pregnant by 16, watch.” Damn, would you talk about your own daughter, sister, or niece like that? And if you thought so, would you sit by? Part of my reflection process occurs in the confinements that only teachers are allowed access to––the lunchrooms, staffrooms, places inside schools before the morning bell rings or long after home time. In these spaces, I hear some things that make me question the character of those who chose the profession of public service through educating youth.

Maybe it is because I walk the hallways I once strolled some twenty years ago that I feel a closer connection to the students. Perhaps it is because I know all the apartment building addresses and stores around the neighbourhood that my conversations with students are a little more personable than the next teacher. I don’t know the reason for internalizing the heat I feel when I hear other teachers speak despairingly about current students they teach on a daily basis.

But I know I am gonna’ pop off at the mouth one day, and it won’t be nice. It’ll probably go a little something like this.

How can you talk empathy, kindness, service, love and anti-whatever out one side of your mouth in front of your students and utter negativity out the other side when speaking with colleagues? Do you not realize the salt you are throwing into the atmosphere––an atmosphere that must be adversarial to just that? This dialogue, even in a joking manner, harms not only the teachers around you who are listening to you but the students who can innately pick up on your insensitivity to their futures. Keep that energy to yourself, because many of us are trying to unburden these children with your status quo, unsanctioned condemnation.

I contend that most teachers want the best for the students they teach. I sometimes have trouble with the methods in which they go about attaining this goal. Especially when it comes in the form of vocalizing their disdain for particular students in the staffroom. I know we all have tough days and, at certain times, particular students grind our gears. But there is a level of professionalism that all teachers must strive towards, no matter tenure nor circumstance. We have all slipped in this regard. But many slip into making this occasional venting practice a venerable habit. And then they wonder why the kids don’t like them. And they get mad at that. And it snowballs. And who loses when this happens?

Everyone.

Well not everyone. These teachers are still paid the same and still come to work doing their job in whatever manner they please. But, the students––they experience internal scars that often last well longer than a school year or even a scholastic career. So please, don’t talk that noise around me, keep that energy to yourself.

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Outside, we lined up on the track for some warm-up laps. A few guys were talking about what they had heard but no one definitively knew anything. “Mr. Eder, you hear about what’s going on in New York?” I asked. “Nope. Two laps. Then get with a partner and toss the ball until you hear my whistle. Go.”

After gym class, there was an eerie buzz back inside the school. I walked into my history class and took a seat at one of the desks near the window. No one in the classroom had a binder or a textbook or a pen out. Ms. Dallon rolled in a TV cart while another teacher helped hook up a cable wire from the wall to the back of the screen. “I’m sure that by now you’ve heard that America is under attack,” she asserted. She found CNN on the TV and sunk into the top of her desk. “We’re not going to get any work done today,” Ms. Dallon added. “You guys should probably just head home.”

The next day, I did another two warm-up laps in PE and tossed the ball with a partner until I heard Mr. Eder’s whistle. I went to history class and took notes on the Great Depression. I did similar things at school the next day and the day after that until that Tuesday, September 11th eventually became “9/11” and a tragic moment in history dissipated into a “war on terror”.

Almost 20 years later, a less apocalyptic but similarly sinister incident occurred a little over 500 miles south of where the Twin Towers once stood. On January 6th, 2021, home-grown terrorists invaded Capitol Hill. In that moment, teachers galvanized. Twitter became an epicentre for dispensing educational ideas that could be used in the wake of the attacks. In the days that followed, teaching resources were shared through facebook groups and staff email chains. It seemed like our regularly scheduled “learning” stopped, even for loose moments, to learn, understand, and digest what had just taken place.

Twenty years ago, we missed opportunities to teach about oppression, privilege, and racism in the exact moments that we saw them unfold. Twenty years ago, we fell short on the occasion to dispel Islamophobia during the moments it began to arise. But the needle has moved. I was taught to “leave personal politics in the parking lot with the car before stepping into a classroom” some ten years ago in teacher’s college. I wouldn’t dare a teacher preparation educator to utter those words to tomorrow’s teachers, today.

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It’s almost intimidating for teachers to really think about how many things students are taught inside of schools. Deep consideration of this idea almost trivializes the already trivial curriculum students must be taught. But the most terrifying part is the legacies of pedagogy that most teachers carry with them, almost unconsciously. The legacy of pedagogy, which is quite literally the things handed down by our predecessors in regards to the methods and practices of teaching, becomes dangerous when subconsciously assumed. Nobody needs to re-invent the pedagogical wheel, but when teachers re-create structures and teach in the way they were taught, we are all in trouble. Within education, this legacy pedagogy baggage is where the roots of racism, discrimination and injustice lay.

Diversifying learning content is important. Altering teacher credentialing opens doors to a varied population that may take education in a creative and contrasting direction. Re-prioritizing the values within public schooling would cede some inequities. While all great, these and many more actions will do little to challenge the inherently oppressive positions that legacy pedagogy baggage takes. The culture of teaching runs deep, man. And when not checked, it subliminally teaches youth some nasty, vile and abhorrent lessons.

For the most part, legacy pedagogy baggage regenerates the assumption that assimilation begets academic excellence. Divergent thinkers typically fair poorly in schools. The compression of individuality and creativity begins in kindergarten. I mean, if public schools had a slogan, it would read “think realistic…and like everyone else”. Due to this baggage that teachers carry, brilliance is seen in limited forms.

Thankfully, we’ve somewhat broken away from thinking that only the “smart” kids sit at the front of the class. But we haven’t yet untangled ourselves from the false reality of validating the most harming proximity marker. Proximity to whiteness. The most damning assault this legacy pedagogy baggage has ever carried is the teachings that proximity to whiteness ought to be something to aspire to. It’s taught in subtle ways, primarily because teachers teach the way they were taught. Because we look at all acts and answers through a particular gaze, we accept and deny a myriad of things inside of our classrooms. If we casually teach the way we were taught, we miss all the different people in front of us, because we are only looking for the “students”.

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In fact, I had little in common not only with those celebrities but also with my peers. We might have learned the same things while sitting in the same classrooms together and played sports during recess, but my friends and I lived in different worlds. We were obligated to participate in the same institution of education and loosely follow the same rules that society dictated for us as kids — but that’s where the parallels stopped. Ironically, what I went through at the beginning of my “educational career” as a young student was almost identical to what I went through at the beginning of my career as a teacher.

For the majority of my first years as a teacher, I came to school without a lot of things. I left my earrings out for the first few months. I left the clothes I considered “normal” for me to wear and then went and bought the things I thought fit the “traditional” teacher uniform: khakis, plaid shirts, boat shoes. I listened to talk radio on the ride into work instead of to the hip-hop music I was accustomed to having accompany me while driving. I did so in order to leave my accent at my door and to adopt a more “conventional” communication pattern. I was habitually conscious of making sure the tattoos on my upper arms remained covered. Essentially, I came to school without my authentic identity — because of what I had internalized about what words like normal, traditional, and conventional meant to the majority. Even though I was Black, I was carrying the same “legacy baggage” that came with being a so-called teacher.

Things within education and public schooling have changed since I was a student. Fortunately for me, it’s not hard to juxtapose the past and present: I’m teaching at the Toronto school I went to when I was a kid. Not the elementary school I entered my educational journey with or the high school I ended my public schooling with, but the middle school. It’s there that I learned just how racism still operates in the school setting. It’s a cold, hard, and ugly truth — one I know because I have seen racism from both sides of that teacher’s desk.

Although policies, procedures, and practices have changed, much of the core philosophy behind pedagogy has not. For example, the teacher diversity gap — which is basically the percentage of racialized teachers compared to the percentage of the general population that is racialized — while still abysmal, has narrowed slightly since the late 1990s. I could use statistics to support this point, but I would much rather use experience, since part of why racism still permeates the institution of public schooling is that the academic community has consistently relied on data over experience. I know that the teacher diversity gap has lessened because, when I was a student at my very, very racially diverse middle school, all the teachers were white. Twenty years later, as a teacher at the same — and still, very, very racially diverse middle school — almost none of the teachers are white. Yet racism still runs rampant throughout schools just like mine. Clearly representation alone does very little to extinguish it.

But what about actual policy? Or the tangible shifts in pedagogy? We have changed our policies on discipline, achievement, teaching, and training over and over, yet, from the time I was a student until signing off this past June on my ninth year as a teacher, I can testify to having witnessed, experienced, and read about racism in schooling. So what has, or hasn’t, changed?

Despite important advancements, improvements, and changes that make for a more equitable public-education system, most of the general thoughts surrounding public education have continued to support the status quo. Most glaring is the legacy pedagogy baggage that the majority of teachers carry around. Today, you may walk into a typical classroom and no longer see chalkboards or desks aligned in rows. You may not even see textbooks. You most likely will see teachers who look completely different than the teachers who once taught you.

However, if you hang around long enough, and look close enough, you may notice that almost nothing new has been created. Generally speaking, teachers teach the way they were taught to. Similarly, schools still measure and subsequently validate intelligence through deformed definitions of the quote-unquote universal student. There are still kids getting reprimanded for chewing gum, for not putting their hand up to answer a question in class, and for wearing their hat in the hallway. Yes, we have made changes. But changes to structures don’t always beget changes to mindset. When it comes to anti-Black racism, an inequity that still deeply infests my profession and has plagued public-school systems since my time as a student, this fact is crystal clear to me.

I often used to hear my aunt say, “I’m just taking off the talk and leaving the whispers.” She would say that while she was cleaning in reference to making her home presentable, tidying up. Take off the talk and leave the whispers. When we update policies, practices, and pedagogy, this is essentially what we are doing. It is important to keep the house of education tidy and presentable. But clean floors and fresh tablecloths don’t count for much if there’s damage to the home’s foundation.

We may wonder why, given all these changes to education, things have stayed so much the same — especially when it comes to racial inequities. Well, changing surface elements does not eliminate racist thinking. Tidying up does not get rid of the boogeyman of racism that lurks under the beds and in our closets. There are still silent assumptions that have not changed in my 20 years of being involved with school in some form or fashion, the most prominent one being that academic excellence in public school always gets back to notions of cultural assimilation. If we truly want to see change, especially in regard to anti-racist education, we must be aggressive about what we consider racism, analyze why we consider it racism, be brave enough to have these conversations, and implement real policy and practices that do more than renovate the institution of public education. If we truly want to continue working on eradicating racism in the public-school system, we have to not only get down to the “whispers” — we also have to look at the tools we’re using and work to dismantle the house we are in.

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1.How to Collaborate with Peers

I cannot think of a single job on the planet that does not require collaboration. Your garbage man, dentist, taxi driver, and local politician all require a team to excel in their work. Social media has taken this essential concept of individual productivity through a collective effort and put it on steroids. But instead of forcing kids into a Facebook group for homework help, we can use social media to model productive collaboration through our own use of these platforms. I have pulled in excellent lesson ideas from Twitter and Instagram, but instead of walking into my classroom the next day and pawning off the lesson as my own, I put the tweet or the Instagram picture on the projector and explain to my students just where I drew my inspiration from. Later on in the semester, when my students were asked to write persuasive essays, instead of picking a subject from a pre-generated list on a handout, they had the opportunity to scour their Instagram explore pages in order to brainstorm topics and, later, to collaborate with their online peers in order to generate ideas.

2. How to Find Career Paths They’ve Never Seen Before

When I was a kid, I wanted to become a “businessman”. But I had no clue what that meant. My community was rather insulated; there were few mentors or people I could look to as a model or even ask the questions that I had. I didn’t see success in business in my home, at the neighbor’s house around the corner from where I lived, or in my community. And as far as my teachers went, they could not really tell me what the career of a “businessman” would be like. I mean, after all, they were teachers not “businessmen”. Social media gives us a way to close this gap. Kids already go on Instagram and follow their favorite music artists and Hollywood personalities. But beyond this, there is a bevy of less-famous people out there on social media who are very successful in their careers paths and who use their accounts to discuss their work. We can model this by following and interacting with fellow colleagues around the world, and we can guide our students to find, follow, and ask questions of role models in careers that interest them — careers that the young you or me never had the opportunity to learn about.

3. What Confidence Is — and Isn’t

Like television, social media shows us the “finished product”; we are rarely privy to the drafting stages. The mundane has been silenced and erased. As a result, many children who are preoccupied with social media do not have a realistic grasp of what “everyday life” means and they often confuse boasting with showing confidence. One example in my classroom was Instagram’s “youngest flexer”, Lil’ Tay, whom my students brought to my attention. Amassing over 2 million followers in a few months, she is a nine-year-old who rose to internet celebrity through viral videos that portrayed her bragging about a lavish lifestyle filled with luxury homes, luxury vehicles, and extravagant shopping sprees. As a class, we used examples from Lil’ Tay’s Instagram to examine the difference between reality and hyperbole and to discuss the difference between someone who brags and someone who is confident in themselves.

4. Why Today’s Mistakes Can Hurt You Tomorrow

Being behind the screen can free us from restrictive social dynamics so that we can speak more openly, but online interactions also ignore or erode the social dynamics that support positive interactions. This puts the youth of today into a difficult position: in a world where every account ever made can be traced, their adolescent and teenage online interactions might be attached to them for a lifetime. This is very different from most teachers’ adolescent experiences — universities and employers never found out about our exploits because we were never able to gleefully tweet or post them in the moment. It is our job to inform students of this paradigm shift while we model our use of social media in an explicit way so that they understand that some things are not to be shared on social media. Several times a semester, I will talk to my students about a picture I am thinking of posting while sharing my reasoning behind why I feel the need to post. My students routinely ask why I decided to post a picture of me with my family or a “throwback” picture of me playing football in high school. These questions provide the opportunity for me to teach outside of the curriculum, explaining how one’s use of social media should be aligned with their values rather than spur of the moment inclinations. When I take twenty minutes out of a school day in order to answer questions and provide students with my own reflections regarding the photos or phrases I use on my own social media, it extends their capacity to think critically about social media. It shows them that our digital footprint is a reflection of ourselves, thus we should guard it with the utmost integrity.

5. How Your Focus Today Can Affect Your Future

The notion that your “portfolio” now extends to your online interaction can be a good thing, at least if you know this at a young enough age, so you can utilize your digital footprint in a productive way. We know that you won’t become a police officer or lawyer just because you post a bunch of “Law and Order” episodes on your Facebook or Instagram. However, we don’t necessarily know yet how your online profile may amplify your future endeavors. Bethany Mota is a prime example of how social media may change the way adolescents prepare for adulthood. At age 14, Bethany began using YouTube to video blog about her fashion and style purchases. Over the next few years, as her influence and followers grew, she partnered with J.C. Penny and Forever 21. By 2001, she had begun her own clothing line with Aeropostale in 2013. Now, not everyone will become a financially successful entrepreneur simply by the videos or pictures they post on social media. But, if one does have a passion at an early age, a consistent digital footprint may reflect favorably when it is time to apply to potential schools and employers down the road. Sharing Bethany’s story and others like it with students helps them to see how they can begin working toward their futures right now.

Right now, it is easy to demonize social media for the stains it has left on human interaction. But social media is here for the long haul, and it has changed our society. In our growing roles as educators, we must teach students about social media and not the other way around. We must study this highly effective communication model and implement ways that students can benefit from it, while arming them against its dangers.

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Last week, school was shut down due to the ongoing labour negotiations with the government, and we teachers had to hold signs in the freezing cold and walk up and down the sidewalks, for hours, in front of our school. I suggested to my colleagues that we walk down the block to another school. Get some fresh air, talk to some new faces, kill some more time. Everyone agreed and we marched on.

Striking conversation with these folks was easy because they were one of our “feeder schools”. Meaning, after kids matriculated from their school, the majority of them came to ours. So we were able to quickly get through the smaller talk of the weather and get to the small talk: convos about particular students that they once, and we now, have. After a while of small talk, I felt the need to talk talk. The school these teachers teach at is infamously known as a “bad school”; known for its poor kids and poorer test scores. So I asked a few of them, “what is the difference between your school and the other one down the block?” alluding to another school that also feeds into ours. I know that these teachers had never taken the eight to ten minute walk up the street to visit this other school, because if they did, they wouldn’t have answered me the way they did. Their responses didn’t shake me. In fact, I expected them. Being outside gave credence and relativity to their assumptions. “No offence, but these kids come from here,” pointing to the buildings that surrounded us. As if living in an apartment building equated to a morphed sense of academic retardation. Another one commented, “I tell a kid I’m calling home and his response is, ‘good luck, my mother’s phone number is out of service”. No follow up. Teacher doesn’t even say that she tried. Just listening to the kid lie without realizing that in 2020 there ain’t no adult walking around without a phone that is not capable of receiving communication to some extent. They talked about different things, but it was all the same. Pure perception, no reality. 

I couldn’t even be bothered to “stir” these teachers that I had just met. Instead, I was hit with a profound reality. That is, that when poverty intersects with schooling, it is not the poverty that is the most fundamental obstacle. Rather, it is teachers’ perceptions of what poverty supposedly means. Sure, these kids come from impoverished neighbourhoods, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about school, or that their parents don’t care about their child’s education, or that you need to be their saviour. All it means is that you need to pay a little more attention to the situation and the context surrounding you. Perception is not always ultimate reality. This poverty mindset is the true disconnect between impoverished students and teachers. 

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Wishing bad on students is purely reactionary. When a frustrated teacher blurts out, “maybe something bad needs to happen to him so that he’ll learn” they kind of mean it. When a teacher is wishing bad on a student they are not purely wishing bad but merely, and inarticulately, projecting their understanding of discipline, punishment, retribution, consequences and responsibility. Of course, the “something bad may need to occur in order for him to really learn” speaks to the decisions whoever he is is making and that teacher’s inability to circumvent, veer correctly and manage. Deeply, what that teacher is actually saying is that his actions and behaviours are beyond her scope of child rearing (which is a part of what teaching entails, especially in elementary school) and in order for him to “fix up” he needs to be exposed to even more negativity than she is capable of providing within her classroom. What “bad things” do we want to happen to the children we teach in order for them to finally sit up straight and listen to us when we are teaching in a class? What bad thing needs to happen to him so that he will finally “get it”?

“He just doesn’t get it, yet. Unfortunately, he’ll learn one day” is another phrase I’ve heard too often inside of staffrooms and in front of classroom doors while the utterer of that phrase looks on as that kid inside his classroom is dancing to the national anthem or throwing erasers at other kids instead of doing the math work in front of him. But, what doesn’t he get? That the anthem is part of school routine and he knows he should stand still but he also likes to be the centre of attention? Or that the math he has in front of him is too difficult so instead of being ridiculed by his peers he finds other ways to gain validity and acceptance and his position within his classroom? What he needs to learn and what you think he needs to learn are two different things.

On the surface level, what wishing bad on a kid really means is that you wished your job could be easier. You wished that he just learned like everyone else and you can’t be bothered with learning how and what and why he doesn’t learn like everyone else. Hoping that “something bad will happen” to a kid in order for him to learn is a shallow stab at a distorted utopianism. And the leaves of these wishes scatter somewhere in between hoping a kid gets yelled at by a principal, to being suspended, to getting kicked out of school, to getting in “real” trouble and being intertwined with law enforcement and jail time. I know the teachers who wish bad on kids, however frivolously they say it are like Biggie Smalls in meaning and don’t ever wish death upon a child. But simply hoping something bad happens to a child in order for them to learn or actively seeking it out is way too abnormal and shouldn’t be a train of thinking for any teacher. Because, those bad wishes are akin to psychological violence. 

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In teacher’s college we read articles about teaching, participated in role play scenarios about hypothetical classroom situations and listened to actual teachers who would come in from time to time and talk about their job. I even remember one time when we made funny looking head ornaments to describe our “learning styles” and then walked around the classroom talking to other teacher candidates that had the same learning style. And then we were asked to walk around and talk to folks who had different learning styles. And then we were asked to walk around once more and talk to one or two people that we hadn’t talked to yet. Then we all sat down and were asked to share our reflections on the experience, one by one. That activity covered a day’s worth of teacher’s college. I earned my Bachelor of Education and was a certified teacher a few months later.

I’ve spent nearly a decade employed as a full-time teacher moving from school to school, teaching a range of subjects to students in a range of grades. In the last decade, I’ve realized a few issues or challenges, or whatever politically correct terms I’m supposed to use instead of saying fucked-up-problems, that school has. There are a lot, but the most fucked up one is the actual teachers.

I probably would have gone to university anyway, but I got to university because I wanted to make it to the NFL (by the way, collegiate sports and potential professions in professional athletics is absurdly oxymoronic, but that’s a topic for another time). Because I was able to have a portion of my tuition paid for throughout the majority of my university career, and also because there was still room in my house and my parents weren’t assholes so they didn’t make me pay rent while I was chasing a dream, I was able to pay the six thousand dollars to go to teacher’s college. Thinking about it now, my ability to almost effortlessly get to the point of getting accepted into teacher’s college, and being able to pay for it while simultaneously being able to survive, was also due to the fact that I had two parents who were married and lived in a house. I was able to go role play hypothetical classroom scenarios from September to May and drive to a side job after a day of strenuous classroom engagement due to multiple financial and social factors that I half created and was half born into. And those reasons right there, my friends, is precisely why education has been churning in turmoil for a long ass time.

The good thing is that we (well, not you and me, but you know, Them Peoples) can fix it. Or at least fix this one problem. The fact that we have a crisis within public education does not mean that we should ramp up teacher credentialing, it means that we should lower it. Yes, that is right, we need to make it easier for people to become teachers instead of making it harder. We have too many people who became teachers because it was their back up plan and because they could afford to spend the time and money going through the process of teacher accreditation. In the meantime, there are folks that would make amazing teachers that couldn’t afford to become one due to time or money or the understanding that their time and money just wasn’t feasible. This is a long winded blog to simply say that education would be “solved” or perfect, but it would be better if we had better teachers. And the only way we can or will get better teachers is if we make becoming a teacher easier. What I think we could do from there requires around 400 more words and I know you gotta get back to lesson planning and insta story watching. So, I’ll leave you with this: we must become more open in the recruitment of teachers because, well because, teacher’s college robbed me of six racks.

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Currently, I have 26 children that are in my “homeroom”. I teach them the core subjects: math, English, and science, as well as a little bit of this and that. Currently, I have a child who writes on par with me. Like, literally, if I asked her to elaborate on the topic of emotional intelligence her writing could hold, at the least, a dim lit candle, to the things that I am about to type out. On the other hand, I have kids who, don’t even need a reminder, but instead, need to be taught to capitalize the first letter of the first word when starting a new sentence. That is my reality on a day to day. Which is also besides the point, because what intrigues me is that both of these kids have a high “E.I”, or Emotional Intelligence. And somehow, in our world of social media and “clout” and networking, we have failed at grasping just how to analyze and assess that in our schools.

I bet that if you swapped these two kids in their home life, neither parent would be able to distinguish the academic difference of either child. The kid who writes prose like a young Stephen King and the kid who doesn’t know that he should capitalize at the beginning of the sentence are both likely capable when it comes to washing dishes, or taking out trash, and undoubtedly fit within normalized dynamics of an average household. Both understand how to manage their own emotions and both are able to articulate their intent. But when the school work gets slapped down, one is way more subjectively competent than the other. 

Yet we supposedly value emotional intelligence – at least that’s what I hear over and over in staff meetings and workshops. Ironically, we ask a bunch of blanched, middle-aged teachers to heighten their own emotional intelligence to the point of deciphering, objectively, the emotional intelligence of the students they teach. Students who typically look nothing like them and are undoubtedly generations apart. And we ask them to do that through our overt emphasis on standardized this and thats and obscure evaluations where only one method and one way of linear thinking, taught and espoused by the teacher, is promoted. And then we wonder why “emotional intelligence” is just another wishy washy phrase we throw around in order to sound like we’re up with the times, in order to demonstrate that we actually care. 

The most brilliant students I have taught over the last few years are the ones that don’t necessarily adopt the pedantic reality of “educational success” – no cap. And not to venture too far into another steam of thinking, but can you blame them? People are getting rich off of YouTube. Compounding how fame intertwines with making money would cloud any mind born post 2005. Emotional intelligence is as important as intelligence intelligence. Get the opportunity to sit in on a grad school class and you’ll realize that it is all, fundamentally, one in the same. Kids aren’t necessarily born smarter. It is the way we teach in traditional schools that relieves certain children while ostracizing other ones. Be open to how you, what you, and in what ways you validate “smartness” because it is all around you. You just need to step your emotional intelligence up. 

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