Cultures aren't just about big ideas and values

I am in total sympathy with the many Ukrainian citizens interviewed by brave journalists who are doing their job: attempting to find the "best obtainable version of the truth." A large number of "people in the street" agree that they did not prepare for the war and believed it would never actually happen (despite the long string of threats and provocations).

I joined those folks in having some naïve notion that wars had become too painful and costly to continue in their "old forms," and that future wars would be waged online and economically. 

Perhaps I had simply forgotten that, in the end, individual human beings often exert more control over how events unfold than we think possible. Putin seems to be the one-man force behind the invasion, and that MAY end up being fatal to his efforts to restore the Russian Empire, regain a sense of importance, or whatever compels him.

After all, in the end most people choose "not war" when given any options at all. Most people just want to live their lives unaffected by major conflicts and constant danger.

A Russian solder being shot at by cousins and friends in a closely connected country that has not attacked Russia might start wondering just how motivated to be. 

Russian civilians may feel nationalistic and aggrieved when times are stable but now find themselves regretting their own military killed babies in a country they regularly visit, filled with people they know.

We might argue that Putin is not the prime mover here -- that long-nurtured grievances made the rise of someone like Putin inevitable. That is the equivalent of all the nonsense (my word) we hear about "Trump is just the manifestation of white resentment... blah, blah, blah"). 

I saw a "60 Minutes" segment on a retired CIA black ops operative who claimed that the U.S. could have taken out bin Laden multiple times while he was holed up in northern Africa years before 9-11, and when he was just a fledgling bad guy. He even said that would have stopped 9-11. 

That's a claim without any support, of course, but it is not crazy. 

Many times one person instigates good or bad actions. Gigantic cultural forces as the agents of change, war, prejudice, and so much more are easy and cite as causes. It wasn't something I did, for heaven's sake.

If Russians are not allowed to blame Putin and if Americans cannot blame Trump, they are free to never blame, well, anyone for any reprehensible actions and ideas. 

"No one is to blame" seems like the defense of the feeble-minded.

Just like the woman I saw on TV berating a heavily armed Russian solder in her small village, with nothing more than her anger and national courage to defend her, individuals have to make individual decisions. They can't wait for the zeitgeist to take care of everything.

Life is all about choices.

Thinking of 44 million people as opposed to national borders

Forget the geopolitics, the armchair psychoanalysis of Putin, Trump, Carlson, etc., and the Google maps showing troop movements in Ukraine.

The real story is that while at least 50,000 Ukrainians have fled their country as the invasion continues, most of the 44 million residents of the country are stuck, huddled in subways, within locked homes, or scattered in far-flung rural areas. 

When we think of 44 million humans, we must realize that moving that many people anywhere is impossible. Most Ukrainians will be forced to deal with a new reality, one that will have different effects on different people. 

I heard a report on Colorado Public Radio today from a Ukrainian pollster who said the majority of people in eastern Ukraine (closest to Russia) were more interested in good jobs, food, and family safety than in who "rules" them. That strikes me as getting to the very heart of how humans have had to adjust throughout history.

Most of human history is an unrelenting onslaught of war, taking land or leaving land, redrawing borders or obliterating borders, taking from others and resisting the takers. 

When Rome fell over 1,500 years ago, most Romans didn't pick up and move. They had to make whatever adjustments were necessary to survive or die. Most of us don't choose death.

Germany surrendered in 1945. So did Japan. But the survivors didn't just exit their homes and nations.

I saw some early reports that as many as 40 percent of Ukrainians were willing to fight for their country, but the pollster I cited above said that was far more than really would. He thought it might come to 5 percent.

I have been trying to imagine what it might be like to be invaded by an overwhelming force, surrounded by chaos and destruction, not to mention misinformation. How might one individual find ways to either join with others to create stronger organizations or simply find basic life supports? 

Those residents of Kyiv, huddled in subways acting as bomb shelters, are the real story here. Journalists are always playing catch up in these chaotic situations, where truth is slippery and even getting eyes on any particular part of a country may be difficult and dangerous.

Of course, Vladimir Putin is a calculated killer with deep resentments toward the West. And of course Donald Trump said something so appalling as to invite disbelief ("That Putin guy is a genius."). And of course there are some in the media (Tucker Carlson) who are willing to go to any length to "own" President Biden or anyone identifying as Democrat.

Those things are interesting (and worthy of further reporting) but they are not really "news." They are, in the end, just confirmation of "olds" -- stuff we already knew.

I will be looking for the reporting that makes the struggles and challenges of individuals come alive, not that I can do a damn thing about it.

My initial takeaway from the Russian invasion is that most of humanity has not shrugged off the habits of the past. We thought such wars of aggression were past. 

They are not.

High school media programs need to keep their focus on their campuses

Here's an eye-catching paragraph from today's Poynter Institute post by Taylor Blatchford, former Colorado Student Journalist of the Year, currently a staff reporter for the Seattle Times:

A 2021 survey from the Pew Research Center showed that only 3% of U.S. adults ages 18-29 prefer to get their news from print publications. (77% of this age group said they preferred to get news digitally; 11% prefer TV and 5% prefer radio.)

Note that Pew didn't survey high school students, but it would not be surprising to find the figures not being much different for those under 18. However, I suspect that very different circumstances and communities make the high school campus quite a bit more receptive to print publications.

The heart of any school print program must be the yearbook, of course. College yearbooks are mostly a faint memory but high school yearbooks continue to thrive, even during the pandemic. High school is the last quintessential American experience and a large number of students and parents value a permanent history of those years.

There is still immense excitement when yearbooks are distributed, along with frenzied signings of books and hours of browsing and reliving great (and not so great) memories. Part of this is the much tighter high school community, usually confined to one building and (in theory) rooting for one another, their teams and their clubs and their performing groups. Consumers might even know who is creating the book, unlike college campus news programs, which are diffuse and often lost in the thousands focused on college academics.

Taylor is a smart woman and she provides this advice: 

Think about that number again — 3%. This means that if you’re focusing most of your time and energy on your print publication, you’re ignoring the preferences of nearly all of your student audience. No matter how often you publish in print, your student publication needs to have a workable website and a presence on the major social media platforms.

I agree with the need for a coordinated online presence, with multimedia reporting featured. And her advice is directed to college media.

I simply add that when we consider the confined community of potential readers a high school presents, simply dropping print papers or magazines may be an over-reaction, or perhaps even a surrender.

The annual distribution of the school yearbook need not be the only exciting moment for print in our schools. A substantial, well-reported and well-designed magazine, even if published only once per quarter (which seems to be the newest trend), can generate similar excitement.

The pandemic has not been kind to schools, with fewer and fewer chances to be "in community," from pep assemblies to drama productions to sporting events. 

It's great to build up a large number of hits and clicks, and to boast of thousands of followers, but I suspect that many of those visitors to our sites are not engaging very deeply with the news. This is based on my own usage of social media and websites. Print invites deeper interactions.

There is something amazing about an entire community of students holding the very same document in their hands, even if that attention wanes after a morning.

I have vivid memories at two different schools of paper distribution day and wandering the halls before school (and after papers were available) seeing so many students sitting in front of their lockers and devouring the latest issue. 

From my perspective, students are hungry to read, hungry to be entertained and taken out of themselves. The sheer novelty of a printed school magazine may bring some of the same feeling we get when we receive an actual letter in the mail.

And we can keep the printed material as part of our personal histories. 

That Orwell guy knew what he was talking about

Doublethink is all around us and it works on many people.

As used in Orwell's 1984, the concept of doublethink is the ability to hold two completely contradictory thoughts simultaneously while believing both of them to be true. It also refers to deliberately choosing to forget memories and losing the ability to form independent thoughts.

Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine and the translated pronouncements of Putin are prime examples of how language is often manipulated to the point where truth is obscured. But the stolen election lies from many Republicans, led by the clearly Orwellian Trump, are not so different.

The Russian strategy of supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine and yesterday declaring that two provinces were now "independent," thus allowing "peacekeeping" troops to enter is a classic case of creating a problem in order to solve it.

Trump, of course, had to comment on his admiration for how smart this was on Putin's behalf, hinting that this might be a way to deal with some of America's border issues. 

Here in little old Douglas County we learn today that the radical majority school board had already come to a basic agreement with someone to replace the superintendent they opposed and dismissed without cause. A local journalist spent many hours tracking down recordings, text messages, emails, and public records to put together a detailed timeline.

And, of course, Erin Kane, the soon-to-be named new superintendent, managed to send a text message accidentally to Corey Wise, the man who was fired, that revealed the whole sordid arrangement.

The four radicals' reactions? "Nothing to see here. We are simply responding to "numerous requests and lots of pressure" from residents. 

"Doublethink" and "doublespeak" are rhetorical fallacies, of course, much like "ad hominem" attacks (personal and not related to issues) and "straw man" arguments (creating a situation in order to then present a solution). That last one is quite close to what Russia is doing right now.

Another way of thinking about how language can be manipulated to achieve almost any result is the concept of the Big Lie. If people in authority or in the media persist in repeating a lie long enough and with enough passion, many people lose track of the original lie. Many will suspect that there must be "some" truth to the lie. After all, why are so many important people, so many important media outlets, saying something is true.

As persuasive writers, we must avoid the temptation to make use of doublethink (war is peace, hate is love), but we also need to be alert to its use.

Part of media education is to learn to use journalism tools and strategies, but an even more long-lasting goal is to become familiar with how journalism works and how media can manipulated (and then manipulate us).

Our students may or may not do much persuasive writing in their futures but they will definitely encounter arguments of all kinds.

The very idea of an informed citizenry is always under attack.

What if the purpose of journalism were to go beyond facts?

A piece of writing advice that never gets old showed up in a recent post from Roy Peter Clark, writing guru: "The bigger, the smaller: The consequences of something huge, such as an epidemic, can be illuminated in part through a microcosm of a single well-chosen person or family."

It's a variation on the Ernie Pyle advice I often share about reporting: "If you want to tell the story of a war, tell the story of one soldier."

No matter how often or forcefully I urge my college writers to take this philosophy to heart in their own writing, particularly when they are writing memoir or specific descriptions, they struggle. They may start with some significant scene or moment in mind but they mostly cannot resist the urge to explicitly sum up or expand their scope to days, years, and even decades.

We get a lot of reporting lately on Ukraine and the Russian incursion there, but we don't get much reporting from "within" Ukraine. That likely accounts for the current mood that boils down to, "Eh, who cares? I don't know Ukrainians and am not certain where it is on the map. They aren't Americans, after all, and that whole old USSR empire seems so darn foreign.

Um, sure.

There will eventually be reporting on specific Ukrainian people and families, with a general goal of showing the universal face of suffering and fear and hope (maybe hope dashed). I would also guess that it will all be too late.

Getting to see and hear people very far from us and realizing that humans are not so very different from one another despite being dispersed around the globe might provide a foundation of support that could make a difference. 

But Americans have quite quickly gotten over abandoning people in Afghanistan, despite over 20 years of so many spending time and money there, and claiming to want to better that country's conditions. Remember when everyone -- from all parties and points of view -- pounced on the president and the chaos withdrawing from Afghanistan? They were shocked and upset and determined to show their displeasure.

Oh, perhaps you don't remember all that clearly. After all, it was about six months ago. And there was this omicron surge. And there are books to be banned, teachers to be taunted, and children to fall into poverty. 

RPC was referring to AIDS when he mentioned an "epidemic." Who spends much time worrying about AIDS these days? Old news. 

There are lots of facts to be shared and analyzed. There are lots of public statements by very important people. There are oddities to be explored.

But the heart of good journalism -- good writing generally -- has to be in telling stories of real people navigating crises and daily challenges, in loving and hating and struggling. 

I wonder what might happen if we could all get to know and even care for a single Ukrainian, a single Afghan, or a single child in poverty.

We are helpless against opponents who care more then we do

Today Russia sent "peacekeeping" troops into two areas of Ukraine that have been under separatist control for several years, and it remains to be seen if anything can or will be done about it. 

I don't know enough of the history and varied political issues that surround this crisis, which has made much of the world quite nervous for several weeks, but I do know this: there are no good answers or quick fixes there. We don't have any mutual defense treaties with Ukraine and no national appetite for any sort of "let's send in the most powerful army in the world" to bring back order.

Putin's incremental approach to reestablishing Russian power over Ukraine is smart, from my distant perch. No blitzkrieg or massive assaults. Just trucks and tanks rolling into areas where Russia has already placed many sympathizers or has paid off residents or simply appealed to some old ideas about the Russian empire. "We are here to save you. You're welcome."

We didn't do anything when this basic approach was used in Crimea some years ago and we seem unlikely to push things too far this time around. The rat is patiently munching on the cheese, so to speak, and Putin seems patient enough to wait out the short attention span of American politics. Perhaps Europe may feel more of a sense of urgency, as they are so much closer. But it would be hard to imagine any strong counterattack by European forces unless NATO signs off, and the U.S. has always been the loudest voice among NATO nations.

The Ukrainian military just is not large enough or strong enough to match the 150,000 troops menacing the nation on all fronts. 

As history proves time after time: might makes right (or at least that's the way to bet). 

This incursion into a neighboring country has risks for everyone, of course, including Russia, and you just never know how the modern, interconnected world will respond. 

I will note that our nation's pundits are all over the place on Ukraine and Russia, with formerly staunch anti-Communist Republicans deciding that they can support an authoritarian state after all. And Democrats begin from the position of "we will not commit troops to a Ukrainian war," which means we are left with economic and political sanctions. They must not be all that scary to Putin and his gang of oligarchs.

It does occur to me that if those oligarchs feel significant financial hardships and lose significant revenue and markets, THAT might be the leverage that could reverse the Russian advances. But I wouldn't count on it.

I can already imagine so many "thoughts and prayers" for the safety of Ukrainians. But those will be just as effective as the thoughts and prayers for our daily barrage of gun deaths, school shootings, and gang violence.

In other words, not at all.

It gets you wondering about our national strategy of amassing a military that dwarfs all other nations in size and technology. We need a military, of course, to secure our own defense, but the national mood is to "thank them for their service" but keep them at home or inside their bases. And our foes know this.

Tough bargaining position for President Biden and other Western leaders. 

We are, essentially, asking the bully to back off out of some sense of the greater good. We have promised not to punch that bully in the nose.

That doesn't work on the playground and won't work in Ukraine.

So let the rationalizations begin about why we are going to allow Russia to create a puppet government in Ukraine. The world is full of them already. What's one more?

We have no idea what is going on, but whatever it is must be scary

I came across this excerpt from a longer magazine article and it seemed to connect with our current bizarre arguments in Douglas County:

From The New Yorker, here’s Margaret Talbot on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her ideological allies: “The America of 2022 is quite plainly not a country where citizens’ ability to worship freely is in jeopardy. Nor is the nation on the cusp of canceling gun rights. Yet the conservative justices often act as if they were alone in a broken elevator, jabbing the emergency button and hollering for help.”

Yes, this is from an opinion piece and this quote does not include the sorts of evidence that a an academic persuasive essay demands, but it captures the confusion and angst that many Americans must feel right now.

The default for everyone -- no matter where they lie on the political spectrum -- is to search for the worst case scenarios, for the furthest stretch. Many choose phrases like "...could result in..." or "...the end result of x may be y."

Douglas County, as I have mentioned several times in this blog, is among America's richest counties. It boasts a very strong school system with all sorts of private and charter options. It's about as homogeneous a place as you can find, with 87 percent of residents being white and nearly everyone having plenty of money.

But DougCo, somehow, has become a joke in which the wealthy battle it our over nonexistent problems and go off the deep end at the drop of a hat. 

There is no war on Christianity, for instance, unless it is a civil war of attrition as most churches shed members in droves. No one with any power or influence seems interested in anything that might decrease school shootings, much less take away any of our national arsenal of over 300 million guns. No public school teachers know much about critical race theory and no one teaches it, whatever it might be.

Republican leaders seem determined to push disagreements and fears as far as they can go, and to even contemplate compromise is a sign of moral flaws (and that applies to both ideological extremes).

A prominent local Republican is George Brauchler, who (of course) has a podcast and often is a right wing radio guest. He was one of the first to call for publication of the names of every DougCo employee who had called in sick a couple weeks ago protesting school board overreach. He's a lawyer and former district attorney, BTW, but other lawyers confronted the school board with the threat of lawsuits if a single employee suffered harm due to such publication and the board backed off.

Brauchler himself did not file the freedom of information request for those names, which mostly reminds us that the rich and powerful prefer to find others to handle the messy detail work. He's a chickenshit, to be coarse but accurate, but that is hardly unusual.

Soon the local school district will have yet another superintendent, and the radicals in the majority evidently have someone in mind who runs a local charter school. They can and almost certainly will ram her selection through, no matter what. Might makes right, right?

But that person stands no chance at all of being successful in the long term. Much as most of America will never be able to quite trust Amy Coney Barrett due to her rushed nomination and confirmation, most of Douglas County will always suspect that the new super is a puppet -- or worse, that the entire fiasco was planned all along to make certain a person who is not a staunch public school supporter can further disrupt the schools. 

Get enough rich people together and they can create their own schools. Public education is for losers.

Coaches, directors and advisers don't get to 'play the game'

A school media adviser will always be in an awkward position, being both a student advocate and an employee of the school district, possibly a parent and often a community member, but also someone whose role may be to help young people critique adults. 

And that doesn't include the many additional roles, beyond classroom teacher or even media adviser, that occur when adults and students spend many hours somewhat informally together, working toward a common cause.

A lot of personal counseling goes on during those after-school sessions working on completing a deadline. There's music and food and goofiness and the occasional tears or anger. 

There is a reason coaches and advisers and directors often develop stronger relationships with their students than, say, a math teacher who just teaches. One reason is that they are engaged in some sort of performance that will be public... not the sort of thing that we think of as connected to math class.

The adviser is in charge but is not the editor. We call it "student media" for a reason. If an adviser wants to become a journalist, that is certainly an available option (though that choice carries its own risks and a likely pay cut). Problems occur when advisers begin imagining themselves as journalists and forget that they are teachers first. 

This is not much different from the situations theater directors and athletic coaches find themselves in. Much of their work with students occurs during concentrated periods of time, prepping for a game or a show. 

In most cases, theater directors do not perform with their students. Athletic coaches never perform with their athletes. It is possible that the directors and coaches might be able to perform better than their young charges, but that is not the agreed upon relationship.

It would not be surprising to find that a media adviser might be the strongest reporter, writer, page designer, video editor, proofreader, etc., in the media lab. It would also not be surprising to find that a freshman English teacher has a much stronger grasp of the "light and dark" imagery in "Romeo and Juliet," as an example. 

What would be surprising in that case would be the teacher writing the "perfect" essay that all students should aspire to though none could rival, and then sharing that at the end of the unit. "Look at how much less you know than I!"

Occasionally in my early years advising I would become exasperated with some students not making themselves available for certain reporting that I deemed essential. For instance, the yearbook needed photos from Prom but most students were more interested in actually living their big night than acting as a reporter. So I might spend a few hours shooting photos. After all, what kind of yearbook would my students be creating if we didn't provide much coverage of a big event?

It took me some years to come to grips with what athletic coaches and musical directors know instinctively: if I, the adviser, cared more about complete coverage and excellence than my students, something had gone wrong. The book wasn't a student yearbook anymore, but something else... something at least partially "owned" by me.

Of course, it's impossible for coaches, directors, advisers or teachers to disconnect our emotions from the performances of our students. There is a pride that comes from helping young people produce something beyond what they thought they could do, and that pride has little to do with "wins" or awards.

Occasionally, some excited football coach will leap off the sideline and make a tackle or otherwise get involved in the game. They even had to create a rule to cover this after a coach tackled a guy returning a kick-off, the runner having evaded the tacklers only to be blindsided. The TD is awarded anyway and the coach kicked out of the game, if you are interested.

There is no such rule for media advisers. There are lots of ways they can complete some tasks necessary to publish, and most of those will be invisible to the public or to administrators. 

But the students always know.

Extremism eventually burns out, but it may take time

Unless teachers and parents make extraordinary efforts, most students who choose to become part of print and online news programs in high schools tend to be more progressive than their peers, or at least more interested in prodding and pushing against the status quo.

That is important for any newish adviser to know from the start of a career, and good for even the most veteran advisers to remember.

I bring this up because school boards are in the news (and that is rarely a good thing). In Douglas County, the politics are raw and unavoidable, with the latest development being that the district will be releasing the names of the over 1,300 teachers and staff who called out sick a couple weeks ago, causing schools to close for the day. Evidently, this was prompted by someone requesting this information and a nearby district in the same situation about eight years ago was ordered by a court to do the same thing.

In Jefferson County, those names were released after a similar work stoppage soon after several radical board members were recalled. A recall election can't be held until officials have been in office for at least six months, so that may still be in DougCo's future. Based on current tensions, it would be shocking if there were NOT a recall election this June.

Also this week: San Francisco voters overwhelmingly recalled three school board members, with the major complaint being that those recalled were too focused on social justice issues and not focused enough on getting kids back to "normal" school. But the "winning" side ended up being Chinese-American parents who objected to some schools being forced to bring in more minority students. Lowell HS, for instance, is a high performing school whose students are overwhelmingly Asian or white. 

The California district was also the object of some derision as the board spent lots of time and effort on renaming schools whose namesakes had some sort of objectionable past. And in the midst of the pandemic, so less. 

Asians are not a numerical minority in San Francisco, and they value the extra push, so to speak, that a challenging school like Lowell can provide their children. The issue of education excited a lot of Chinese-American voters, a group that does not always engage politically, according to several news reports.

Circling back to my original point, that journalism students tend to be a bit more progressive than their peers and their communities, a true challenge is finding ways to protect excited students from getting too far into the weeds while balancing their free expression rights and not dismantling their idealism.

Extreme views, however satisfying and even honored by some, are usually reined in by reality. The truth is that for every Douglas County, where politics and a regular back and forth between reactionaries who would be fine with the public school system becoming completely privatized and with moderates who value public schools and supporting new ways to be more and more inclusive in our schools, there is a San Francisco, where some school leaders may have become distracted from the basic goal of supporting students and the teachers who help them develop.

A school media program that gets out ahead of the community risks losing readers and risks narrowing it coverage and its curiosity.

The editors of the school paper probably chafe at some of the "old" ideas they see in their communities. They are eager for change and they may be fine with stirring up trouble. "Stirring up trouble" is not a bad goal for news media, BTW, but there is danger for the teacher advisers who find themselves in a weird gray area: Not journalists. Not outside readers. Not members of the administration. 

I will get into this tension that advisers must negotiate in my next post.

A bluish state still suffers from basic disagreements

Colorado is similar to most other states, with a clear urban-rural split and lots of nagging problems that resist quick solutions.

Crowded, often crappy roads. Homelessness without any clear solutions. Poverty gnawing at large numbers of citizens. Sky-high housing costs. Gun violence in cities and soaring suicide rates in rural areas. Ah, modern life.

In today's news we find that the state just passed 12,000 deaths due to Covid, though the public health rules are being phased out. Much as those mostly elderly and vulnerable Coloradans have been phased out. And folks around here seem ready to join the national push to "put the pandemic behind us" and act normal. After all, now we are back to the very young and the very old being the primary victims of the virus (no who really cares?) and our stagnant vaccination rate reflects the national split on vaccinations beyond the ones we all are quite used to (polio, chicken pox, measles, etc.). 

There is a bill moving through the state legislature to ban carrying weapons openly within 100 feet of a ballot drop off box. Predictably, the committee vote to advance was all seven Democrats approving and all four Republicans voting no. 

Significantly, the bill does not ban concealed weapons, but you can't have everything, can you? The bill seems like a no-brainer, joining a list of other prohibited expression and action near voting locations. Nobody can seriously be in favor of allowing blatant intimidation as a polling place, can they?

I don't care how well-trained or reasonable people are, armed civilians lurking around the drop off box I use to vote sounds like intimidation. Republican plans to assign their foot soldiers to "keep watch" over their neighbors is the very definition of fascism and it's just another example of not trusting, well, anyone in this country.

Another story today announced that an obscure election official from Grand Junction will run for Secretary of State. Unfortunately, Tina Peters has been charged with a variety of offenses and continues to rage about the 2020 election results. As with many in the Cult, she argues that the election results are somehow incorrect though she can not reveal any evidence. 

At this point, Cult members who still listen to this stuff are lost to any sort of reasoned democracy. On the other hand, the more radicals the Cult supports in the coming elections, the better for Democrats (perhaps that is mere naïve hope). 

Our country school board continues to disappoint, rushing to create a process for hiring a new superintendent, which would be the fourth in just six years. Chaos is the kindest way to describe the current state of debate in Douglas County, the sixth richest county in America.

The problem with the recently fired district leader boiled down to him supporting the previous board's choices on masking -- that really IS the job of any superintendent -- and on tearing up the district's equity policy as part of the struggle against teaching Critical Race Theory in county schools.

Hardly anyone knows much about CRT, and certainly the four radical right board members have no idea. They were elected, however, by lots of white people who are terrified by almost any discussion of topics they don't understand or don't agree with or just want to ignore. 

Not a good time to be a history or journalism teacher in these parts. Not a good time to be a teacher in general, I suppose, since the board majority has increased a conflict between professional educators and hobbyist politicians looking for some air time on FOX and conservative radio.

But most current teachers will NOT leave the district, I predict. Starting over in another district is much more complex than signing a new contract. And most county residents will not really understand what is going on and not really care unless they have children in the schools here. 

One thing we never have to worry much about in America: the rich will be OK.

Sports are comforting because we keep score, not because players are perfect

I have often noted in this blog the abundance of "bad" news out there. In fact, most news you will encounter today will be negative in some way. 

I listened to a recent church sermon about how harmful perfectionism can be to our self-esteem and our spiritual health and everyone will immediately agree with that sentiment... before returning to the battle to be perfect in some area or for some project.

This past weekend included high stakes basketball games, the Super Bowl, and the Winter Olympics, not to mention all sorts of other contests all across the world and one thing that makes sports riveting is that most contests result in a winner (and a loser).

Athletics always involves a lack of perfection -- even the best quarterbacks throw errant passes and even the finest skier miss gates -- but the good news is that sports offers those clear winners. It may not have been perfect, but the LA Rams are THE world champs. Olympic bobsledders MIGHT have gone a tenth of second faster, but the fastest time gets the Gold. 

I was judging a national high school editorial writing contest last week and I was asked to choose first, second, and third plus a handful of honorable mentions. I thought the editorial I chose as the winner was clearly better than the runners-up but I would never claim that it was "perfect." In fact, it's possible that some elements of the winning piece impressed me so much that I was willing to overlook some clunky transitions or some unconvincing support for its claims. 

Suffice it to say that it was "the best" among the entries, just as the eventual 3A girls basketball team that wins the state tournament will be "the best" despite enduring turnovers and missed shots and assignments. The team that scores the most points wins and takes home the trophy. 

The previous year's champs may have been far better as a team by almost any measure, but sports offers the sort of clear "winner" that most of life does not. 

For instance, can we even imagine what "winning" over the pandemic would look like? Is the very word "winning" unsuitable when over 900,000 Americans have died from the virus? Most of us are resigned to an uneasy truce in the war against the virus, much as we have long done with the flu.

But history does record "winners" of wars, though we could philosophically claim that no one wins when thousands die in the contest.

One could argue that more damaging to most people is the yearning to "win, whatever the cost" rather than perfectionism. 

Perfection is the sort of desire that Plato was talking about when he argued that perfection DOES exist but only in an idealistic sense and that all of creation is striving to return to or otherwise reach that "perfect Form."

Some top athletes are driven to shave just a few more tenths of a second from their times or increase their shooting percentage by a point or two. I'm not sure that is what drives them crazy. 

But a person who is driven by wanting to be recognized as #1 or the world champ or the gold medalist or the highest paid or the most admired... THAT can and does make people nutty.

'If I don't like it, nobody gets to like it'

There has been a recent increase in calls for certain books to be removed from required reading lists, from certain grade levels, and even from entire public libraries. Each case has its own twists and turns and many times there could be room for discussions over exactly what age ranges seem appropriate for certain books.

The Tennessee case of Maus being removed from the 8th grade curriculum in one district is an example of the tension between "anything goes" and "best sources for topics" and paternalism... and exactly WHEN certain topics and narratives should be introduced to children.

There is a difference, of course, between outright censorship and making considered choices about what is read or not read. No one could possibly read everything that is available but most would agree that adults should have pretty much unlimited choice in their reading, even if many of those choices are abhorrent. 

My knee jerk reaction to reports of book banning is to get upset and start quoting the First Amendment. My "head" tells me that censorship rarely works very well in the long term, as we see Maus now at the top of the best-seller list on Amazon, for instance. But my "heart" has a tough time with the censors, assuming that book banning is ill-considered and that the would-be censors have rarely read the books in question.

There are many in America -- and this is quite common among Republicans -- who believe the public school system is not something to be celebrated and fully supported. Many desire more control over what children read and discuss and study. 

It is certainly possible that the rise of book challenges is an ominous skirmish in the efforts to "blow up" the public schools and dismember a major part of state and local governments. 

But there are times when I think about WHEN to teach certain important texts. The first example that springs to mind is "Romeo and Juliet," often taught in English 9 classes. I have done so myself and the experience rarely goes well unless the teacher is willing to devote extraordinary time and effort to the play.

The thinking may be that ninth graders are quite close to Juliet's age (not quite 14) and can therefore make stronger connections with the play's emotions. That doesn't hold up well, though, as hardly any ninth graders have experienced the kind of all-consuming love that R&J experience. And connecting with Shakespeare's language? Ooo boy. Not a chance.

Ninth graders CAN connect with a film version of the play and the 1996 Baz Luhrmann version featuring Leo and Claire can go over very well. But English teachers want students to appreciate the language and poetry and themes and imagery... leading to many students becoming turned off to Shakespeare just before they might start handling more complex literature.

I have taught R&J dozens of times to all sorts of students, but my personal experience is that it wasn't until I was in college taking a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" course (we read all 36 plays in one semester!) that I began to really appreciate the artistry and the influence of the play.

We had studied the play when I was a freshman in high school and it made no impact at all. The 1968 Zeffirelli film made a lasting impact, helping me better connect with the lovers and the social commentary and even the poetry, and when I found myself teaching British Lit in the early 1980s, I gained a new appreciation for the play and was surprised to find that this play essentially invented the concept of romantic love in the western world. 

Bottom line: I'm fine with teaching "Romeo and Juliet" to high school students but favor waiting until they are juniors or seniors. There are numerous options to teach reading and analytical skills to freshmen and most are much more accessible. But I would enjoy a discussion that delved into other options.

It's not censorship to advocate for a particular piece of literature to be taught later in school. It IS censorship to demand that a particular book can never be taught (with burning books that alarm us the next step).

I continue to hope for more reasoned discussions about books and curriculum, but am not holding my breath.

It's more fun to shout and burn.

We respect and honor educators whenever convenient

Republican state representative Tim Geitner has introduced a bill in the Colorado House (HB22-1066) that would require all public school educators to post the following:

• A list of the educational materials that the local education provider uses for each grade, subject, and course
• A copy of each survey, nonacademic assessment, analysis, and evaluation distributed to students
• A list of the devices, programs, and software that the local education provider uses that collect student biometric data
• Information concerning the professional development requirements for educators whom the local education provider employs.

"Educational materials" includes written curriculum plans. It also requires each school district to develop a policy on teaching controversial issues (no definition that those) and a process for citizens to report, well, anything that bugs them.

I know. I am broadly summarizing this catch-all bill that has almost no chance of passing. But it's interesting to note that exerting greater control over schools, curriculum, and classroom teachers has become a key issue for Republicans across the nation. 

Were I still teaching high school, I would question each general bullet point of the bill as well as the motivation behind all the seemingly laudable calls for "transparency." I am not against transparency, as you might have noted in yesterday's post.

But transparency needs to go both ways. For instance, Rep. Geitner and his wife homeschool their two sons, which is fine, but which makes me think that here is another "sideline observer" taking some shots at public education. Behind each bullet point is a blatant lack of trust on Geitner's part with the message clear: teachers are getting away with something.

There is so much in this bill that captures the zeitgeist of unrelenting criticism of teachers and schools from a large percentage of the community, but one objection I have is about this idea that lesson plans (I assume that is what some "educational materials" cover) must be available to everyone.

I never found detailed lesson plans to be helpful in my own classroom, though I certainly had extensive plans and rationalization for everything I taught. When pressed, as in the case of an administrator conducting a formal evaluation of my teaching (a truly pointless exercise that requires everyone involved pretending that one designated period of one chosen day is representative of a teacher's performance, while also pretending that the former P.E. teacher, now turned administrator, has deep knowledge of the subject matter I am teaching), I could write out a lesson plan without much effort.

Most of the time, however, my syllabus and constantly evolving weekly plans guided daily teaching, and most "lesson plans" resided in my head. I like being prepared but found that teaching became much more fun when I learned to let go of tightly controlled classes where the outcomes were predetermined.

Honestly, everyone sort of "gets it" that a lot of school consists of students writing, speaking or demonstrating exactly what the teacher wants and expects. The longer I taught, the more I valued being surprised -- and the surprises were not always pleasant. Journalism classes are ideal for providing surprises, but I found that mainstream English classes did not have to turn into "call and response" activities.

One of my favorite sports commentators was Frank Deford, now deceased, who shared a radio essay on some aspect of sports on NPR each Wednesday morning. As I often say, sports is about far more than wins and losses and statistics, so non-athletes were not excluded. 

I often would listen in the car on the way to school, note his use of rhetoric or argument or narrative storytelling, and decide to share his essay with students.

Once in the office, I would go to the NPR website and download the text of his commentary, reformat it in InDesign, and print a class set of copies. It helped when I had first hour free to provide some time to do this, but the entire operation took about 20 minutes depending on how busy the school copy machine was.

I usually had no time to prepare much of anything specific about that essay but part of the fun was that students and teacher would discover and question and expand and question on the fly. We were off-script and I never knew where the discussions might take us.

My AP Language and Composition classes and I would read the commentary aloud, together, pausing to discuss everything from a challenging vocabulary word to clever syntax to Deford's unique "voice" as a writer (as a reader, as well). In the biz, we call this technique "interrupted reading" and I used it all the time, no matter the course.

Yes, students COULD have listened to the same commentary on the radio as I, but a truth of schooling is that if we expect students to devote the same time outside of class as we, the teachers, do, we are doomed to disappointment.

In the unlikely event that Geitner's disingenuous call for more transparency would pass, I guess I could write down something like: "If Frank Deford's NPR weekly essay contains teachable references and writing strategies, Wednesdays might begin with a 15-minute discussion of said essay. Parents interested in the essays themselves are invited to listen to NPR or read a PDF of the essay on my class website."

In actuality, that is exactly what I did.

But do we need a law to standardize logical classroom management? If not, what underlies this sort of bill?

Reporting isn't magic and we don't need to pretend that it is

Colorado has an environmental clean-up problem caused by an indeterminant number of uncapped oil wells that have been abandoned. I say "indeterminant" because there are about 20,000 wells that are producing so little (or nothing) that owners may simply abandon them... and apparently no state agency is tasked with checking on these older wells frequently. Some number of them are leaking harmful gases and chemicals.

I learned about this from the Colorado Sun, an online-only news site that operates as a non-profit dependent upon donations and grants. The paper shared some background on HOW the story was reported, including some information on who did the reporting and how long it took.

Here is a key graf: "The research framed our three-part series that starts at a West Slope community where residents have wrangled with three different drillers in a 10-year span … and ends with a bunch of Rio Blanco County wells whose owner’s registered address has jumped from the Koch Industries campus to a strip mall in Rockwall, Texas, and potentially to a home on the 16th green of the Highlands Ranch Golf Club."

This at least hints at how extensive the research needed to be and how potentially complex the issue is. It's both an "explainer" and clever marketing. After all, who doesn't like going along to solve a mystery? The post, sent to subscribers, adds a bit of transparency to the reporting while offering people a chance to check out the investigation if they missed it last week.

News media transparency is a proven way to build trust between readers and the medium. What do readers want to know (that they normally may not from traditional reporting)? How about who was interviewed and when? Some sources may request anonymity but most will not and most stories are just not that sensitive. If only one person was interviewed for a story, shouldn't readers know that? One source is hardly convincing.

Were reporters "on the scene" or did they interview from afar, perhaps by Zoom or Skype or even an email? Being there adds depth to the reporting and readers will often appreciate the extra effort shown by reporters attending an event or simply spending some time at a scene.

The Denver Post sent a similar email to subscribers this week, this time on a three-part series on regional transportation. Here is an extended excerpt:

Reporter Jon Murray began thinking about this project in early 2020 but set it aside as the pandemic took hold. Two years and upended commuting patterns only made matters worse for the agency. As Jon reported, RTD has millions of dollars of backlogged maintenance, a shortage of workers, and does not expect to restore all its reduced service for five years. Trains, so dependent on hauling commuters downtown, have been especially slow to recover.

Jon spent three months researching this project, gathering documents, and talking to experts, riders and people at RTD to understand the root causes of the agency’s financial difficulty.

"RTD at a Crossroads" may not be our most read stories of the year but they speak perfectly to our mission to help Coloradans better understand their public institutions.

I was struck by the last graf, which led to a gentle request for financial support to continue reporting like that on RTD. Sometimes we publish what is important even if it is not "click bait" material. Sometimes we just have to be OK with more limited readership.

The message provided another chance to check out the series through an embedded link, but it also gave readers a quick glimpse into the process of reporting and what themes were explored in the investigation.

People like to feel they have been granted special access, special privileges.

The student press should do much more in educating readers about our process and about how reporting is done. Most students don't give the actual act of reporting much thought. No one does.

Until we invite them along.

Perhaps a future generation will make things right

If we could fast forward a few decades, we might find that our nation (and world) has found strategies to make instant communication and the unrestrained ability to comment, no matter how ignorant we may be, less abrasive and less straight-out angry. If that sounds hopelessly naïve, consider the sort of future world we want for our grandchildren.

Grandparents need to be optimistic, blending empathy for youth with hard-earned scars accumulated over many years. 

If we can't find that optimism somewhere, we may give in to people's worst impulses, one of which is currently in vogue: namely, trying to police our neighbors.

The governor of Virginia unveiled an email "hotline" for people to report anything they deem suspicious happening in the public schools of the state. In Texas, citizens are encouraged to become vigilantes against abortion and the now-disgraced Supreme Court just shrugs. Some states are discussing new laws that would require cameras in every classroom. At least one has asked that teachers file lesson plans for an entire year in advance every June. 

At least a few Republican leaders in these parts advocated for teachers' names to be published, identifying those who called in sick last week to protest recent school board actions. If I were one of those teachers, I would be proud of my protest -- to petition the government for a redress of grievances is one of the five freedoms of the First Amendment.

But there is something to wanting to avoid making it even easier for online trolls and for angry and frustrated neighbors to abuse and demean other people. Politicians go into public life recognizing that many will criticize them and even hate them. Teachers do NOT enter education assuming they will become punching bags for a nationwide gang of adults with lots of time on their hands.

This idea of "ratting" on your neighbors is disgusting at its core, don't you think? I'm not talking about witnessing something illegal and feeling that you need to alert the authorities. I'm not talking about deep suspicions of abuse happening next door.

I'm talking about neighbors reveling in the power of informing on others, usually with the "others" being people who don't look like or act like or worship like those informers would prefer.

Here is what Frank Bruni wrote in a recent blog post: 

"What we sweepingly and inexactly refer to as cancel culture is, in part, the online aggressiveness of Americans who patrol for transgressions and prosecute the transgressors. And there can be a thin line between holding people accountable because they’ve done clear wrong and mercilessly vilifying them because they have contrary views or expressed themselves clumsily."

Advanced technology and social media plus partisan politics have combined to create a sort of surveillance state already. Who really expects to keep their lives truly private these days?

My hope is that as a society we can develop tools to better define that line between calling people to account and simply disagreeing. 

Perhaps our grandchildren will be the ones to find and use those tools.

Right now, that is our only hope.

Wait... I was supposed to do what?

I was reminded today of the importance of really understanding the directions and requirements for an assignment or job, and that NOT paying attention to those directions and requirements can lead to errors.

The specific reminder came in one of my online writing courses, where the assignment was to write to ME, the instructor, with some information on how learning to write a "white paper" might be beneficial in their futures while doing some very early research into some large company of interest -- most of the students don't actually work for a Fortune 500 firm, but they are asked to "dream" -- and pointing out some initial thoughts on ways their research on a white paper might benefit the company.

The course links to an online short course on what white papers are and how they are put together. Part of the assignment was to complete the LinkedIn Learning course and attach the certificate of completion. 

The first part of the assignment contained background on the "big picture" of this assignment, which will eventually lead students to write a formal proposal (directed to an executive) followed by the actual white paper, which is the capstone to the course. 

But the second part of the assignment text had the headline Assignment Description, and the steps required were clearly laid out. A surprising percentage of quite bright college students did not seem to read that second half of the prompt, which led to disaster. 

And, of course, several students did not attach the certificate for the LinkedIn Learning course.

Lest you think I am an ogre, I assure you that those who (likely in haste) misread the requirements have until Friday to submit a new version of the assignment and they won't be penalized. Perhaps I am just a softy, but we have only completed three weeks of the course and I expect confusion in online courses until students get into some sort of routine.

I may not get paid much for my college teaching but I'm pretty certain that the universities are not all that interested in me catching kids fouling up. It's easy to do, I guess, but how can I help them progress as thinkers and writers if I don't get to see their writing?

But it's not just fouling up an assignment where we can see this phenomenon. Remember the brouhaha over firing the Douglas County superintendent about masking, CRT, and more from last week? At least one school board member revealed inadvertently (and maybe this is just my interpretation) that she had no idea there would be lots of input through email (gosh, I have 700 emails to read!) and that many in the community might be upset when a beloved long-time educator was fired without cause. Who knew?

You can argue that she SHOULD have known. Everyone is an expert on education, or so they believe, and parents will often go to great lengths to protect, support, or otherwise chime in on their kids and their schools. Emotions run high regularly.

But to have someone elected to office who clearly had no idea there might be stress and tough decisions and fair (and unfair) criticism? That tells me that this still new board member didn't understand the directions.

One of my little side gigs is being part of review panels for ACT on test items, mostly looking to insure that there is one and only one correct answer for each item. I have often observed how one small word -- usually NOT -- can completely change the direction of an item. I try to read quickly, like a test taker, and it is quite common for me to not see that "not." 

After agonizing over how the item doesn't appear to work for some time, I eventually notice that little word and all the problems clear up. Wow, do I feel silly -- but this all happens at my computer and no one need ever know (except you, dear reader).

I know teachers have been repeating this for many years, but you never go wrong reading and understanding the directions. We likely started hearing this in first grade but it bears repeating, even for smart college students and confused school board members.

Wealthy county can't quite accept its success

I suppose I could get into teacher bashing almost every day in this blog, and there is some benefit in being consistently reminded about the low status that educators "enjoy" in America overall. I take some comfort in the fact that despite so many years of being undervalued and over-criticized, great people somehow still manage to enter the profession.

The latest bashing in these parts begins with -- and this will not shock anyone -- Republican radical politicians who have floated the idea on a local talk radio station of the Douglas County School Board publishing the names of all nearly 1,500 district employees who called out sick yesterday. 

Radio host and attorney Dan Caplis said this: "I think the names of every one of those teachers who abandon the kids tomorrow, they should be considered public record, and nobody should be threatened or abused or anything like that... None of that garbage. That's weak and silly and awful."

Beyond helping you decide to never hire his law firm in the future -- a decision unlikely to hurt the firm, which has plenty of rich people to service -- you might be wondering about the quality of his thinking and how that might seep into his law practice.

The inherent logical contradiction in his position is clear: He wants those names made public and he played the "teachers aren't in it for the money but for the children" card -- "they abandoned our little girl."

But he immediately tries to soften his call for public shaming and for the public to know exactly who they should criticize by saying that, really, nothing bad should come of that public shaming. No one should be threatened. Ha! 

Rabid politicians providing red meat to their most ardent followers often try to play this game of whipping up emotions with one hand while urging everyone to "keep it clean." Which hand gets the most attention?

I have heard a number of people talk about "elections do have consequences," claiming that the turnout for the November election was very small. That sounds right, doesn't it? After all, the common wisdom is that school board elections don't gather much interest since most voters don't have kids in the schools. Board elections are held during "off years," depressing voter turnout and (so goes the hope) reducing the impact of politics. Again, ha!

I looked up the stats. Roughly 119,000 people voted in the last board election out of a total number of registered voters of 282,334. That's 42 percent, which is disappointing but not unusually small. You can find all sorts of examples of board elections across the country drawing 10-15 percent of the potential voters.

So I would guess that it wasn't so much microscopic numbers of voters in the November election as much as the "cause and effect" relationship between modest turnout and increasing power for each individual vote. The power of getting extra voters to the polls and the fact that each "new" or changed vote carries power has led to some swings in board membership, and it would not be surprising to see another swing in the 2025 board election.

But a lot of bad (or good) can happen in four years. After all, for current freshmen that span covers their entire high school career.

School board elections are officially nonpartisan though that is true in much the same way as Supreme Court judge nominations are officially nonpartisan. 

Douglas County voters break down like this: approximately 100,000 registered Republicans, 54,000 registered Democrats, and 123,000 Undeclared. 

It's not easy to track down board members' voter registration status, but the four new members were quite open about their Republican Party affiliations, while the three holdovers include two Democrats and one Undeclared. So, the current political party splits seem to accurately mirror the county breakdown other than in the Undeclared category. 

The schools regularly score well by almost any measure, from standardized test results to college admission to graduation rates. At a glance, you might think that the board members must be child-centered, thoughtful policy makers, supportive of educators and parents... all striving to give every student and staff member a chance to excel.

As is often the case, the better things are, the worse they feel. Many Coloradans must shake their heads at the idea of all this strife in one of the nation's wealthiest counties with a long tradition of academic excellence.

Poor Douglas County.

Thinking about kids being used in societal experiments

Our daughter Lesley shared an email from the Littleton Public Schools, where we have two granddaughters attending Arapahoe HS, and here is the most relevant portion of the message.

What this means for LPS:

• Beginning Saturday, February 5, 2022, there will no longer be a public health order requiring masks in schools and public indoor spaces in Adams and Arapahoe counties.
• LPS will continue to follow the guidance of local health experts.
• Beginning Saturday, February 5, 2022, masks are optional for people of all ages regardless of vaccination status (students, employees, parents and visitors) inside our schools both during and outside of the school day. Parents will decide whether or not their children will wear a mask in school. Masks continue to be recommended.
• The federal law that requires all students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, to wear a mask on school buses is still in place.
• KN95 masks and surgical masks continue to be available in every school.
• All other layered and overlapping health strategies such as increased cleaning and improved ventilation will remain in place. Parents should continue to keep their children home from school if they are demonstrating symptoms of illness. Parents should continue to report illness and COVID exposures using the form on your school’s website.
• COVID testing remains available at our district testing site. Schools will receive a limited supply of home tests for symptomatic students as well.
• Schools will develop plans to support the individual health needs of students. Parents should contact the school health office to initiate this process.

No surprise. There will be some associated problems, certainly.

I do admire the clarity of most of the bullet points as they seem to anticipate most questions parents will have. After two years of the pandemic, the district SHOULD be quite familiar with almost every point of view and argument. A persuasive essay writer needs to spend considerable time anticipating counter-arguments, for instance.

I did read an interesting argument for dropping SOMETHING (masks or vaccine requirements, since social distancing has already been ignored by most). That writer chose masks since the vaccines (with boosters) really make the crucial difference. The argument is that there are diminishing returns to a constant state of emergency.

A constant state of emergency leads to frustration and a feeling that we are "stuck" without an end game.

What is missing, of course, are effective levers to get the anti-vaxxers to bow to society's need for protection. The only other strategy seems to be to let pretty much everyone get infected (like the old chicken pox parties) until the combination of "natural" immunity and vaccinations reduces the virus to the same levels as the common cold and the flu. That seems like using a large hammer on a smaller nail, but it can work if we, as a society, have the stomach to advocate for many more serious illnesses and deaths.

i saw today that the U.S. has the highest number of deaths from Covid of any wealthy country (four times as large a percentage as Germany, for instance) and that much of that can be attributed to not enough of the elderly being boosted. Perhaps a tolerance for lots of death is just part of the American DNA. But that question is for another day.

I found that last bullet point in the LPS list to be so vague as to be pointless, but perhaps there are further plans that will define the process and the ways to "support the individual health needs of students."

We should all be concerned about students (and families) who are immunocompromised and who now face some difficult choices. It is difficult to imagine too many students at Arapahoe HS continuing to wear a mask, particularly if they have been vaccinated. The vulnerable will be even more vulnerable.

The removal of masks while vaccination rates are still spotty strikes me as an experiment with live humans, most of whom did not volunteer to be part of the experiment. On the other hand, sharply accelerating infection rates can prompt officials to reinstate the mask requirements, maybe even for short periods of time. 

No one really knows, and that means most parents can't really breathe a sigh of relief. 

But never-ending masking is not an attractive option.

The winter of our discontent marches on.

In our little corner of the country, the chaos is scheduled

Bashing teachers is hardly a new phenomenon in America. After all, we ALL spent years in some form of schooling and when we spend enough time around something we develop opinions. In a way, most of us just assume we are somewhat "expert" when it comes to education.

Most educators, however, would point out that being a student does not equal understanding how classrooms and curricula work, and certainly does not demonstrate that being a teacher is like or how difficult it is. 

I noted a comment from a legislator recommending that it would be a great idea for some harried businesspeople to step away from the "rat race" and enjoy far less stress by teaching for a while. 

I actually laughed out loud when I read that. 

Don't get me wrong. There are many positives about education as a profession, despite the criticisms and misunderstandings and low pay (compared to many positions requiring similar levels of training and education). But lack of shared experience can lead to confrontation and anger and, sometimes, chaos. 

Here in Douglas County, one of the richest counties in America and a firm bastion of the Republican Party, the latest bit of chaos is happening tomorrow -- yes, we actually schedule our chaos around here.

Due to several decisions made by a rabid, reactionary school board majority (installed in December after a board election that drew only a small percentage of voters), many teachers are frustrated and angry. 

The last straw appears to grow from those four radical board members demanding that the superintendent resign or be fired (and today was the deadline he was given to decide). The reason for this is quite clear: he chose to join the side of the mask argument in continuing them in DCSD schools after the county ended any mask mandates. One of his stated reasons was to protect the most vulnerable students and teachers in the district -- those who are immunocompromised, for instance -- and slightly inconvenience the vast majority of students and teachers who are either fully vaccinated or not at much risk of serious illness. 

In brief, the superintendent chose the general position of "whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." That may be too religious a take, so how about "a nation should be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens"? 

Everything being a political decision or position these days, the fact that most young students seem to be at least OK with masking to protect their classmates and teachers -- so long as they can actually be in school -- is overwhelmed by a percentage of adults who come down on the side of personal freedom getting more weight than "loving thy neighbor." 

None of the radicals on the DCSD school board would agree with my somewhat simplistic comparison, but that doesn't mean it is not true. It is simply uncomfortable.

And NOT loving thy neighbor is not an automatically unethical decision. Taking care of ourselves first is defensible (as in putting on OUR mask when the oxygen drops down on a plane before putting the mask on our child). But even the most fanatic defender of personal choice has lines.

The disagreement nearly always comes down to finding the line. 

At last report, at least 1,300 teachers have called in "sick" for tomorrow, with the aim of protesting at the school board offices against the board and asking for more support. It is key to know that there are about 3,400 teachers TOTAL in the district, and that means that today's snow day is likely to lead to another snow day on Thursday. There is no way school can be held when nearly half of its teachers don't show up at work.

So the chaos has been scheduled. Strikes by teachers are illegal in Colorado, so this is NOT a strike or even a work stoppage. This is a fiction that is allowed by law and practice, with so many teachers all being sick on the same day. 

The temperatures on Thursday begin below zero. There will be lots of snow and ice. 

But the sight of over a thousand teachers braving the elements to protest has to be impressive, whatever the observer's view on the protest itself.

It's like those Germans have a word for everything

For whatever reason, the German language developed some lengthy, difficult-to-pronounce words that seem to be "just right" for some specific situations (and English has often just swiped the words and folded them into our vocabulary). English often uses such "loaned words" from other languages, adding richness but also confusion.

One that causes some head-scratching when we run across it is Götterdämmerung, which literally means "twilight of the gods." Figuratively, the term is extended to situations of world-altering destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence. The word originated in the Old Norse Ragnarök, more widely known thanks to Marvel movies.

As writers, we need to use this sort of word with care. My guess is that a large percentage of readers would have to look the term up and that annoys many people so much that they simply stop reading at that point.

A good rule of thumb is that if we have to include a paragraph defining a term that is not in common usage by most of our readers, why bother? Some German words are so common that we don't give them a second thought, of course. Kindergarten, angst, and sauerkraut come to mind. I like "zeitgeist," -- literally "spirit of the time" -- but I'm not sure most readers regularly use the term... so beware.

One German word that has become more and more part of the standard vocabulary of educated Americans is schadenfreude, literally schaden = damage  + freude = joy. The pandemic has provided many opportunities for fully boosted people to use the term.

Here is a paragraph from a commentary written by Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, from the Jan. 31 NYT:

There are several possible theories of how humans evolved a tendency to feel schadenfreude, the German term for the joy one takes in another’s misfortune. Perhaps our cave-dwelling forebears felt something similar when they saw an enemy get too close to a saber-tooth tiger, despite repeated warnings, and end up as an afternoon snack. “That’s what you get, Og!”

Father Martin's reference to evolution makes sense. After all, potential ancestors who tended to put themselves in life-threatening situations often did not pass on their genes, though Nature does not feel joy or sadness about that. 

Martin urges us to both accept the emotion of schadenfreude we might feel, as when we read about a vaccine denier dying of the virus, but not to revel in it. He calls such reveling "mean" and not very adult behavior.

Schadenfreude is fun to say and much cooler than some English equivalent, like "to gloat" -- though gloat doesn't quite capture the passive nature of observing something bad happening to someone and feeling joy. 

I want to be like our Jesuit priest writer and be more mature. Most of us do.

But right now the best I can do is keep my immature joy to myself. 

The classic example we use in classrooms when explaining schadenfreude is our tendency to laugh when we see someone slip and fall on an icy sidewalk. "It wasn't me!" we think.

But someday it likely WILL be me. Pushing past that initial feeling of joy/relief seeing someone we don't like much slip on the ice is what leads us to empathy, and the world needs more of that.