Yanking open the closet door

If you needed another reason to be outraged at the direction the United States is going, a bill currently moving through the state congress of Florida -- and 100% supported by Governor DeSantis -- would not only prohibit teachers from mentioning anything about sexual orientation (their own or anyone else's), but would require them to out LGBTQ students to their parents.

Further support of journalist Adam Serwer's statement that with the GOP, the cruelty is the point.

Nicknamed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, Florida's House Bill 1557 initially was intended to prevent any discussion of queerness in the classroom -- up to and including teachers revealing, even in passing, that they are queer themselves.  So this would, in effect, prevent a gay teacher (for example) from mentioning his partner's name, or even having a photograph of the two of them on his desk.  So what happens when he's seen holding hands with his partner in public, and a student asks him point-blank, "Are you gay?"  Is he supposed to say, "I can't answer that?"  Or "None of your business?"

Joe Harding, a Republican (surprise!) in the state House of Representatives, proposed an amendment on Friday to the bill that made it even worse.  If the bill passes -- and it looks like it will -- teachers who find out a student is LGBTQ are required to tell the parents.  Schools would be compelled to "develop a plan, using all available governmental resources" to out children to their parents "through an open dialogue in a safe, supportive, and judgment-free environment that respects the parent-child relationship and protects the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of the student."

Originally there was a clause providing an exemption "if a reasonably prudent person would believe" that outing the student might cause "abuse, abandonment, or neglect," but Harding took that bit out.

The cruelty is the point.

I'm going to say this as plainly as I know how.  I doubt any Florida Republicans are listening, and even if they are, I doubt even more that they'd care,  but despite that:

No one ever, ever, ever has the right to out a person to anyone, except the person him/herself.  Ever.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

While I often have wished that I'd had the courage to come out as bisexual much earlier in my life, I can't even imagine what my life would have been like if one of my high school teachers had outed me to my parents without my consent.  I wouldn't have been physically abused; neither of my parents ever laid a hand on me.  However, I was already enduring so much emotional abuse that now, almost fifty years later, I'm still dealing with the damage.  I shudder to think of what my life would have been like if my conservative, traditional Roman Catholic parents had found out I was bi when I figured it out myself at age fifteen.

Even without this, I was already told enough times what a crashing disappointment I was.  Add this on...  Well, to put things in perspective, as it was I attempted suicide twice, ages seventeen and twenty.  That I didn't succeed was honestly just dumb luck.

Had someone told my parents I was bi?  I have little doubt that I wouldn't be here today.

Oh, and the clause that outs the kid in a "safe, supportive, and judgment-free environment that respects the parent-child relationship and protects the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of the student" is unadulterated bullshit.  I can vouch for this from my own experience.  No one -- no one -- knew about my suicide attempts.  Not family members, not friends, not teachers.  From the outside, my parents looked like they were straight out of The Brady Bunch.  My mom, especially, was very good at being a chameleon, and the way she treated me in public was 180 degrees from the way she treated me at home.  There is no way that anyone would have known that I wasn't in an environment that supported my mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Once again, let me put this plainly: teachers don't know what students' home life is like.  Not even if they've met the parents, not even if they've talked to the student.  And I can say with complete assurance that if I were a teacher in Florida, they would have to fire me, because no way in hell would I comply with the proposed law.  Putting teachers -- even well-meaning ones -- in charge of revealing a student's sexual orientation isn't just irresponsible, it's actively dangerous.  Queer teenagers already have a four times higher risk of self-harm or suicide than straight teens do; this bill, if it passes, will make it much, much worse.

But I suspect that won't make a difference.

The cruelty is the point.

The only thing that might stop this is if people in Florida contact their representatives and senators and say, "No.  This is unacceptable."  It's all well and good to say, "The blood of every queer teen in Florida who comes to harm after this is on your hands," but by that time, it's too fucking late.  This bill needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stopped now.  Somehow, the most unfeeling, unkind, bigoted people have become the ones who are making the laws, and while there's no easy way to get them out of office until the next election, they sure as hell can get buried by angry letters and emails.

Please.  Do it now.

Lives are at stake, here.

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Missive from a loser

Nota bene: If you don't want to read a rant, you may want to exit right now.

Yesterday I woke up to news of Donald Trump's El Paso pro-wall rally on just about every media website there is.  Among the highlights were Trump's claim that there were 69,000 people in the crowd (there weren't), that most of the wall is already built (it isn't), and that despite that, we've got a national emergency because we need to build the wall (we don't).  There was a call to Make America Great Again.  *cheers*  America needs secure borders.  *cheers*  Democrats want open borders, free admission to criminals, and eat babies for breakfast.  *cheers*

But all of that is what we've heard over and over (if you're on Twitter, over and over and over and over and over) so it didn't really raise any eyebrows, either with the #Resist or the #MAGA contingents.  It wasn't until I read the comments from Donald Jr. (also greeted with shouts of acclamation) that my blood pressure really started to rise.

Don Jr. threw himself into whipping the crowd into a frenzy, and he did so by pointing out how cool it was to see young people in the crowd.   "You know what I love?" he said, to more cheers.  "I love seeing some young conservatives, ’cuz I know it’s not easy.  Keep up that fight, bring it to your schools.  You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.  You don’t have to do it."

Excuse me?

You think I have time to indoctrinate my students?  I'm too busy giving them a basic grounding in biology to waste class time telling them to become socialists.  In my 32-year career, I have known four -- count 'em, four -- teachers who were clearly partisan and made it clear their students were expected to toe the party line.

And it bears mention that two of them are conservatives and two of them are liberals.

Some of my students last week, learning how to Gram stain bacteria [used with permission]

Even in my Critical Thinking class, which if I were not cautious could turn into a daily biased screed, I struggle constantly to maintain balance and fairly represent all angles.  In our unit on logical fallacies, I make sure that my examples of erroneous thinking are chosen from both sides of the political aisle (yes, I count them).  I make it clear that tossing aside the opposition's viewpoint simply because they are the opposition is as lazy as gullibility.  I tell my conservative students to make a point of checking out MSNBC every so often -- but I also tell my liberal students they need to check out Fox.

So: loser?  Excuse me?  I have thrown everything I have into teaching, on a daily basis, for over three decades.  I buy about a third of the lab supplies I use because our budgets have been cut to the bone and I'm unwilling to eliminate labs because we can no longer afford them.  I, and most of my colleagues, are at school well before the contract requires and stay there long after the contract says we could go home.  Teaching is a fun, frustrating, rewarding, exhausting career, and I hope I have touched some lives the way mine has been touched.  I still am thankful beyond words for the likes of Ms. Jane Miller (my high school biology teacher), Ms. Bev Authement (high school creative writing), and Dr. Harvey Pousson (college calculus).  They altered the course of my life, and I model much of my teaching on the kind, compassionate, interesting, funny style they brought to the classroom.

It's nothing short of appalling to be called a "loser" by a guy who has from kindergarten on gone to expensive, exclusive private schools, who never had to work a day in his life, who has been handed everything on a silver platter, and who still thinks he has the right to criticize people who work long hours in meaningful careers each and every day.  Even more appalling is that the #MAGA crowd thought what he was saying was just the cat's pajamas.  Damn liberal teachers, indoctrinating our young folks.  I'll definitely vote against the school budget next time it comes around.

And of course, I'm under no illusions as to why he's doing this.  I wouldn't call either Donald, Senior or Junior, smart, but they are not lacking in a low, animal cunning.  Not only does this message play well to their supporters -- tyrants keeping their followers feeling endangered and besieged is a strategy with a long and inglorious history -- but it also insulates them against even hearing another side to the issues.  Which is exactly what the Trumps want.  Create an airtight, vacuum-sealed echo chamber, and don't even let a hint of the opposition's argument cross.  Represent everything the liberals say in straw-man arguments, convince the true believers that all they need to do is listen to Dear Leader and his son and everything will be fine.

It makes me despair a little for the future of America.  I have a naturally optimistic bent -- as I've said before, it'd be silly to be a teacher if I was a pessimist -- but stuff like this makes me think we haven't hit rock bottom yet.  The fight back upwards is going to be a long and arduous one.  And I, for one, am thankful that there are teachers who are still out there giving our children the tools they need to see foolish propaganda for what it is.

But on a more personal note, to Junior himself; how dare you disparage me and my colleagues when I doubt you have set foot in a public school in your entire life.  Your ignorance and snide arrogance are stomach-turning to anyone who knows what actually happens in schools.  So I'll end with saying this, from the bottom of my heart, and I hope you're listening:

You can go to hell.

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A particularly disturbing field in biology is parasitology, because parasites are (let's face it) icky.  But it's not just the critters that get into you and try to eat you for dinner that are awful; because some parasites have evolved even more sinister tricks.

There's the jewel wasp, that turns parasitized cockroaches into zombies while their larvae eat the roach from the inside out.  There's the fungus that makes caterpillars go to the highest branch of a tree and then explode, showering their friends and relatives with spores.   Mice whose brains are parasitized by Toxoplasma gondii become completely unafraid, and actually attracted to the scent of cat pee -- making them more likely to be eaten and pass the microbe on to a feline host.

Not dinnertime reading, but fascinating nonetheless, is Matt Simon's investigation of such phenomena in his book Plight of the Living Dead.  It may make you reluctant to leave your house, but trust me, you will not be able to put it down.

The cure for passivity

Let me say at the outset that I enjoy and respect my students.  This is in no way intended to be a criticism of them as people.

However, I've noticed an issue with them this year that is pretty much across the board.  I know it's been there in previous years -- maybe I'm just becoming more sensitive to it, or maybe I have a disproportionate number of kids with this characteristic in this bunch of classes.

The characteristic is passivity.

They're extraordinarily well-behaved -- they're quiet, respectful, kind to each other and to me.  I think I've had to raise my voice maybe twice this year.  By and large they do their work, and any directed task I give them, they will happily dive into.

What strikes me, though, is the extent to which they want THE ANSWER.  Few of them -- there are exceptions -- will stop and try to put together what they know to figure out the response to a question, to go out on a limb and make an educated guess, or (even more seldom) to look for evidence on their own to support their answer.  They are perfectly content to have me or another student give them THE ANSWER, which they write in the blank, and forthwith stop thinking about it.

The result is that their grades on homework, labs, and problem sets are uniformly good.  Man, they have those blanks filled in like crazy, and usually with the right answers.  The problem shows up on quizzes and tests -- especially in my AP Biology class, where it's not sufficient to know the vocabulary.  To be successful in that class, you have to understand the concepts on a deep level, not just to regurgitate, but to analyze and synthesize.  If you compare the average grade on quizzes to the average grade on homework, there's a disparity that demands an explanation.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And the more I've thought about this, the more I've come to the conclusion that we in the public school system have created this problem.  We've taught them all to be passive recipients of information, to sit there and take notes, merely writing down whatever the teacher tells them to, rather than questioning it, thinking about it, trying to connect it meaningfully to what they already know.  Education has become simply the memorization of lists of terms, not the opening of new worlds, the expansion of minds.

We've forgotten, I think, that the root word of education is the Latin educare -- meaning "to draw out of."  The purpose of education is to put the person in charge of their own understanding, not to make them more dependent on some authority figure to fill their brains up with factoids.

It's getting worse, not better.  We're evaluating students (and teachers, and in some cases, whole schools) on the basis of student scores on standardized, multiple-choice tests.  We discourage thinking outside the box, emphasizing that they're to find THE ANSWER, not uncover novel ways of approaching problems.  We discourage collaborative learning -- usually, it's labeled cheating, and honestly, in the context of most classrooms, that's what it's become.  In most of what we call "cooperative learning," we enable one or two students to do most of the work, and the others to ride their coat-tails, rather than true collaboration where all minds are deeply engaged.

And upon reflection, I think a lot of it is based in fear.  Fear from us teachers that if we relinquish some control in the classroom, the students will revolt, disrupt, or (at the very least) refuse to learn.  Fear that if we don't test, test, test, we won't have any way to know if the students are mastering what we're asking of them.  And the fear runs all the way up the hierarchy; teachers don't trust the students, administrators don't trust the teachers, and the state departments in charge of oversight don't trust anyone.

I think the only way to fix this is with a complete overhaul.  Vocabulary lists and rote book work have to stop being the main way students are evaluated.  At very young ages, children are natural creative problem solvers; we need to hook into that, encourage it, start modeling factual knowledge as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.  If you want to know how a car engine works, sure, you need some vocabulary.  You're not going to get far if you don't know which part is the carburetor.  But  if all your mechanic knows is the definition of the terms, and how to recognize the parts on a diagram, it's doubtful that you'd trust him/her to repair your car.

And it's not just with auto mechanics that the fundamental goal is understanding how the pieces fit together, and how to creatively work through problems you've never seen before using the knowledge you already have.

That's the goal of all education.

After all, in this age, students have a mind-bogglingly fast access to the raw facts.  If, to solve a problem, run an experiment, understand a behavior, model a cell or organism or ecosystem, they have to learn the word mitochondria, they can do that in fifteen seconds flat.  I'd far rather they understand how energy flow through living things works and forget the terminology than the reverse.

We need classes that are based in active, project-based problem solving.  Ones where sit-down-and-listen time is occasional and of short duration.  Where students figure out what they need to know, and using us (and their technology) as resources, learn the terms and definitions in a real-world context, within which the vocabulary actually means something.  Where critical thinking and evaluation of source validity counts for more than grades on a multiple-choice test.

The transition to this model for schools would not be easy.  And such classes will demand a great deal from teachers, much more than the lecture/problems/homework/test model we've been using since the 19th century.  But walking into our classrooms this day, the second Wednesday in February, will be thirteen years' worth of students with tremendous potential, and thousands of dedicated, hard-working professionals who care deeply about education.

With that kind of talent, potential, and energy, it's eminently doable.

We just have to admit to the problems -- and commit to finding solutions.

Thanks for the opportunity

I'm sure that if you're an elected official, it must be a sore temptation to have your success in the public arena convince you you're an expert on everything.  After all, you've been chosen to represent the people who voted for you; that must mean you're brilliant, right?

Well, not only does it take more than people's votes to verify a person's intelligence, it also takes more than a huge and well-stroked ego to generate opinions that have merit.  And as an example of this, let's look at State Representative John Allen of Arizona, who just last week went on record as saying that there's nothing wrong with a system in which teachers have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

In a House floor session, Allen said:

There’s lots of people out there with second jobs.  Most of us in this room have a second job.  Good for them!  I like seeing people try to get ahead in life, when they take their god-given talents and efforts and make themselves better.  That’s America!  The idea that we are somehow torturing somebody if they have a second job is just ridiculous.  And, they have a long summer!  What a great opportunity for people like us and teachers to go and get a second job.  Let’s all go out and get a second job this summer.  I know my wife would greatly encourage that.

 Yes, we have summers off.  Unpaid.  The myth that teachers have "three months of paid vacation a year" is appallingly common -- I still recall the first time I confronted that, and corrected the individual.  "How would you feel if your employer required that you take three months of unpaid leave a year?" I asked, and the response was frank bafflement. I was a little emotional about this issue; this was during a period in my life when I was a single dad, and had a landscaping business in the spring and summer just so I could pay my mortgage and buy groceries.  Starting in April, I would come home from school, change my clothes, head out to some rich person's yard, work until it was too dark to see, and then come home and fall into bed.  I worked seven days a week, and I still was literally down to nickels by the end of the pay period.

"Great opportunity," my ass.  The main "great opportunity" I wanted was not to lose my house or have my sons and I go hungry.

So there was a lot of outcry about Allen's comments, both by teachers and by anyone who knows how hard teachers work (and how little they're paid -- especially in Arizona, where salaries have hovered around the 50th-out-of-50 mark for years).  And in the fine old tradition of politics, where the motto is "Death Before Retraction," Allen simply doubled down on his rhetoric... and made it worse:

They’re making it out as if anybody who has a second job is struggling. That’s not why many people take a second job. They want to increase their lifestyles. They want to improve themselves,  They want to pay for a boat.  They want a bigger house.  They work hard to provide themselves with a better lifestyle.

A boat?  Sure!  I could have afforded a boat:

 But if you're talking about anything more than that, the "better lifestyle" I aspired to was to occasionally be able to afford to by a container of ice cream for my kids and I to have for dessert.

And I'm one of the lucky ones.  Not only do I work in a state where teachers are better paid, I eventually worked my way up the ladder and became, if not wealthy, at least comfortable.  But for Representative Allen to insinuate that teachers -- or any low-paid workers -- are getting second and third jobs because they want luxuries leaves me so angry that I'm nearly speechless, and mostly what I can think of to say in any case is vulgar even by my standards.

What bothers me most of all, though, is the hypocrisy.  Allen, and the rest of his colleagues in the Republican Party, have won elections by claiming that they're in there fighting for the common guy, the middle class, the people who are willing to work long hours to make it -- then they routinely vote down increases to the minimum wage, proposals to offset the costs of health care and insurance, and programs designed to pull people up out of poverty.  Oh, they'll fight like hell to save unborn children; but once those children are born, the general attitude is "you're on your own."  In their eyes, apparently a person's rights begin at conception and end at birth.

So to Representative Allen, and anyone who cheered him on: you have no idea what you're talking about.  If you'd like to follow me around one day and see how hard I work, you are welcome in my classroom any time.  But until the time you're willing to do some leg work to find out how the people you're passing value judgments on actually live, do us a favor and shut the fuck up.

You are also welcome to check my garage for boats.  You won't find any.

Changing the river's course

In talking to friends and family members, I've found that a common experience we have is in there being a small number of people who have radically altered our lives in a positive direction.  Sometimes a single gesture, smile, or well-placed word can shift our pathway profoundly, and the sad truth of it is that we seldom ever get around to telling those people how much they have changed us.

This comes up because a few days ago I found out that my high school French teacher, Shirley Taylor, died last summer.  I remember Mrs. Taylor well -- I had her class for four years running -- and she stands out in my memory as everything a teacher should be.  Firm but not harsh; high standards, and with a determination that every student can meet them; and a subtle and wry sense of humor.  But the one thing she did that I remember best is something she probably didn't even recall herself afterwards.

I was a fairly good French student but lackadaisical in most other classes, content to get by on a minimum of work, rarely pushing myself to do any better than I had to in order to stay out of trouble when I brought my report card home.  But Mrs. Taylor saw in me an ability to learn languages, and pushed me more than once to spend a year in France after I graduated.  I'd excel, she said, and I'd come back completely fluent.  It surprised me that she singled me out; like I said, I was no great shakes as a student.  The funny part of it all in retrospect is that I didn't take her advice about spending a year in France.  I didn't travel until much later -- to Mrs. Taylor's intense disappointment -- but when I first went to a non-English speaking country, years afterwards, I still remembered Mrs. Taylor's confidence in me.

"You're a natural," I recalled her saying.  "Someone like you needs to see the world."

I haven't stopped traveling since.

My French teacher, Mrs. Shirley Taylor (1936-2015)

The strangest thing about those moments is that we ourselves sometimes don't recognize them as the earthquakes they are while they're happening.  My entire life jumped to a different set of tracks when my high school counselor, Mr. Grace, grabbed my arm as I was walking down the hall in my senior year, and told me I needed to take a scholarship test that was being offered at the University of Louisiana.  I wasn't planning on going to college -- what I really wanted to do was to join the Park Service and move to Arizona -- but he said, and I quote, "You're taking that test if I have to go to your house on Saturday and drag your lazy ass out of bed."

So I did.  And I was one of the scholarship winners.  Automatic admission and full tuition to the University of Louisiana.  He turned my life a different way by that one action -- who knows where, or who, I would be now if it hadn't been for that one thing?

I remember with great fondness three other teachers who shaped my world -- Ms. Jane Miller, my high school biology teacher, whose passion for her subject and deep enthusiasm were absolutely contagious, and whose style I still model in my own classroom after nearly thirty years of being a teacher myself.  Dr. Harvey Pousson, my college calculus teacher, whose gentle, soft-spoken wit and brilliant way of explaining abstruse concepts made calculus one of my favorite subjects (and how many people do you hear that from?).  Ms. Beverly Authement, my high school creative writing teacher -- who I can say, without hesitation, turned me into the writer of fiction I am today, and without whose cheerful encouragement I would never have had the confidence to tell stories to the world.  (And who is, by the way, still a teacher today!)

I've been able to thank a few of these and other folks who have sculpted my life's path, and who have forever enriched my world.  Even though they may think they're forgotten -- that what they did was insignificant -- they remain the people whose influence has lasted.  And it makes me more determined not only to give gratitude to the ones whose lives so inspired my own, but to have more awareness myself about what I say and do.  Will anyone look back, forty years from now, and remember me as one of the pivotal connections in their lives?  And, most importantly, will that memory be a positive one?

I may never know the answer to that -- and that's okay.  Maybe the force that diverts the river doesn't recognize the effect it has, then or perhaps ever.  But it does highlight something I've known for a while: that we all need to be a great deal more cognizant of how we interact with the people around us, because we may be having a much larger effect than we will ever realize.