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.