My Friends...The Artists

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up where I did.  Raised in a rural area of central Missouri, I was afforded the opportunity to be schooled in a place where, for the most part, things operate according to the old Cheers cliche...everybody knows your name.  My high school alma mater sits among farmland, my hometown has one stoplight...it's rural.  Growing up, though, I never thought of this as being a bad thing. I didn't feel as though I was missing out on anything by not being in a more urban area. 

But somewhere along the line, I think I might have subconsciously bought into the false notion that the most creative among us, the artists/thinkers/makers, don't come from small towns.  I'm not sure why I did, but I kind of accepted in my early years of adulthood that the most bohemian of souls were products of urban culture, not Missouri farmland. 

And this has given opportunity for the rise of social media to be of honest benefit to me.  Over the last few years, Facebook, Twitter, and the like have helped me move past this erroneous idea that the rural man's artistry is somehow inferior to that of the city-dweller.  How has this happened?  Well, I've simply watched some of my Callaway County comrades blow the lid off such nonsense.

Here are four friends from my old stomping grounds who, over the years, have truly become artists of the highest caliber.  It's pretty awesome to stand off in the corner of the big room that is social media and see how art, the desire to explore, express, and to create, has become such a central part of each of their lives.  I've provided links to check out their work and hope that you'll spread the word.  They're all great folks, and more to the point, artists who remind me that top-notch creativity can and does come from the country.

1. Beth Snyder and Carrie Shryock, operators/partners @ One Canoe Two Letterpress

2. Zach Harrison, lead guitarist for The Hipnecks

3. Debra Broz, Ceramic Restorer @ Science of Art Restoration

• Online article from AustinPost.org HERE

A Political Prayer...

God...

As political fires begin to blaze with the approaching election season, I pray that your purposes would be accomplished, not ours.  I pray that your wisdom would prevail, not ours.  I pray that your peace would help us transcend our tumultuous spirits.

I pray for our president, Barack Obama.  I pray that you would enable him to wield the authority you've granted him in a way that honors you and the people you've appointed him to lead. I pray that he would have the courage to seek justice and the compassion to show mercy.  I pray that he would have the wisdom to lead us through problems that are often more complex than we imagine them to be.  I pray that by your spirit, you would make him equal to the tall task of leading a nation as diverse and, sadly, divisive as ours.

I pray for his wife and daughters.  I pray that Mr. Obama would lead and shepherd his family well.  I pray that he would be a Godly father to his daughters and a Godly husband to Michelle.  I pray you would protect them from the vicious and unwarranted attacks that too often come with being so close to a leader. 

I pray also for Governor Mitt Romney.  As he seeks office, I pray that his campaign would be built on a desire not to simply take power, but rather to govern with wisdom, conviction, humility, and compassion.  I pray that he would have the courage to defend convictions and that he would speak respectfully and graciously of those who do not hold the same.  May he campaign with integrity and fairness, and should you in your sovereignty allow him to ascend to the Oval Office, I pray you would prepare him to be a leader who would glorify you and do right by his fellow man even when it is far easier not to.

I pray also for Governor Romney's family that they would not be drawn apart by the rigors of being in public office, but that they would draw together for strength and support.  May they navigate this season of life strengthened and encouraged by your spirit.

Lastly, I pray for us, the American people.  I pray that we would remember that no earthly authority has been allowed establishment outside of your sovereign will (Romans 13:1).  I pray that our speech would be gracious and used only to build men up, not to tear them down  (Eph. 4:29).  Move us, God, to apply in our own lives the words of 1 Peter 2 when the writer exhorts his audience to "Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor." Most of all, I pray those of us who have given our lives over to you would hold fast to the truth that our first allegiance is not to an earthly kingdom, but to a heavenly one.

May your will be done, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

A Different Kind of Pastoral Appreciation

A few days back, I was having a discussion with my class about the fact that though October is known by most as the month dedicated to Breast Cancer Awareness, it is also the month designated as Bullying and Domestic Violence Prevention Month. Little did I know that the list went on. October is also designated as:

• Auto Battery Safety Month
• Dwarfism Awareness Month
• Filipino History Month
• Black History Month (celebrated in the U.K.)
• Fair Trade Month
• National Squirrel Awareness Month (for real)

Another designation October has, though, is as "Clergy Appreciation Month." I grew up in a church culture (of the Southern Baptist persuasion), so the fact that churches typically dedicate a month specifically to showing gratitude to and encouraging their ministerial staff members is something with which I'm fairly familiar. I have often seen church folks host special meals, arrange special church events, send special cards or letters of appreciation, or even give gifts to make known their admiration and appreciation for ministers who give their lives to the ministry of the gospel, often a daunting and lonely calling.

And to do such things is right. We are called, as followers of Christ, to build up the body by encouraging one another, spurring each other on toward good works as we are commanded by the writer of Hebrews. It is proper and good for Christians to show appreciation to those leaders God has put in place to shepherd His flock through any and all Godly means.

That said, I ran across a snippet of a sermon from Charles Haddon Spurgeon in which he may actually be laying out another, far more impactful way that a church can appreciate its pastors than by a gift card or a plaque or recognition.

Spurgeon tells the story of a man named Erskine, saying:

"There is a story told of Mr. Erskine having preached on one occasion before the communion, and a good woman, a child of God, heard him with such delight, and was so much fed and satisfied, that she left her own pastor, and went some miles on the next Lord's day to go and hear him again. That morning, he was dreadfully dry and barren, or at least she thought that he was. There was no food for her whatever; and being not a very wise woman, she went in to tell him so. She said, "Oh, Mr. Erskine, I heard you at the communion with such delight; you seemed to take me to the very gates of heaven, and I was fed with the finest of the wheat; so I have come this morning on purpose to hear you, and I confess that I have got nothing out of you!" So he said, "My good woman, what did you go for last Sabbath-day?" "I went to the communion; Sir." "Yes, you went to the communion; that was to have communion with the Lord?" "Yes," she said, "I did." "Well," said Mr. Erskine, "that is what you went for, and you got it; and the Lord blessed my word to you, and you had communion with Him. Now, what did you come here for this morning?" "I came to hear you, Sir." "And you have got what you came for, there is nothing in me."

Spurgeon goes on from this anecdote to implore his congregants as follows:

Think of this story when you are remembering the Lord's servants, and forgetting their Master Himself. I do believe that, as you are sitting here, you whose eyes have already been opened by the Spirit of God, if you will but say, "Cause every man to go out from me; shut to the door, I have entered into my closet even while in the pew; I am alone now, and I desire to see no man save Jesus only," you shall see Him, for He manifests Himself to His people all alone. Oh, that each one here would say, "There is nothing but Christ that I desire to see, there is nothing else I wish to remember, I would think only of my Lord Jesus; may He be pleased to reveal Himself to me!""

In some sense, I have been the "good woman" from this story.  I have, on many occasions, put the burden of my spiritual fulfillment on the back of a human, rating his sermon and acting as if his oratorial prowess, his ability to deliver God's word with Billy-Graham-esque authority were the prime determinants of my Sunday communion with the Lord. In casual conversation, I've compared pastors to more well-known pulpit personas, pitting them against each other as if the guy with mega-church credibility and the super-smooth delivery is a measuring stick to use against my pastor, the guy with the smaller flock. And when I have left church feeling like God and I missed each other, I've too often blamed the pastor (all in the name of honest and fair critique). After all, it's his job to make sure God and I touch base, right? Wrong.

Such a burden is too much to put on any human. When congregations put that kind of expectation on a pastor, he is certainly doomed for inevitable, heart-crushing failure.

So how can this story be a lesson in properly appreciating our pastors? In another portion of the same sermon, Spurgeon says this:

"Perhaps the preacher is one whom you dearly love, and you expect much from him. Well then, forget him, expect nothing from him, but look away from him to your Lord. Or perhaps the preacher's voice has no particular charm for you, the man is not very bright in his utterances; well, forget him, and try to see his Master. Forget the preacher for good and for bad, for better and for worse, and get to the Lord Himself."

Perhaps we can most effectively show our deep and sincere gratitude to our church leaders by doing as Spurgeon suggests, by coming to church intentionally seeking Christ, determined to boldy approach God's throne of grace ourselves (Heb 4:16) rather than expecting our pastors to usher us there against our will.  Perhaps we best encourage pastors by placing God-sized expectations on God, not them.

To be clear, there are clear and explicit spiritual expectations laid out for pastors in the apostle Paul's letters to Titus and Timothy, as well as the book of 1 Peter, but none of these qualifications give a congregation grounds to nit-pick a pastor or, worse yet, designate him as the determining factor in their personal relationship with Christ. Such an expectation will certainly prove an unbearable weight for any man.

It is my hope that this month as we raise needed money to fight breast cancer, handle car batteries safely, celebrate Filipino history, and remind ourselves that squirrels exist, we might also take the opportunity to truly show our pastors how much we love, care for, and appreciate them by freeing them to proclaim the good news of our God...not expecting them to be God.

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The Heavens Declare...

Psalm 19 begins as follows:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."


And I'm glad the heavens do...because there are mornings that my attitude sure doesn't.

There are a lot of mornings that I need the heavens to refresh me on who God is; He's glorious, powerful, creative...beautiful.

Thanks, God, for putting reminders like this in the sky.

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Lest I Sound Self-Righteous

Today, as I reflected on my last three posts, all of which are aimed at offering those outside the teaching profession a look into my world, I began to wonder this: "Am I painting an unrealistic picture of myself?  Am I portraying myself as some model teacher who is the Mother Theresa of the educational landscape?  Am I sounding snippy, defensive, and egotistical?"

Thus, I want to attempt to make one thing clear.  I'm no Superman.  I'm not the last bastion of virtue in public education.  I don't have all the answers. I'm not a martyr, and I certainly don't want anyone to ever think I have delusions that being a teacher makes me more righteous, noble, or persecuted than the next guy.

I'm a work in progress, a guy with good intentions who is learning day by day. I'm not always brimming with compassion. I don't always make the right calls when it comes to managing students. In short, I have the capacity to "fail" students, not by giving them F's, but by simply not being the best I can be for them.  At times I may talk like I'm the most dedicated professional on the planet, but there are days when...well...there are days, right? 

However, on a good day with the wind behind me, I'm a little more wise than I was the day before. I honestly believe the trajectory of my professional life is positive, though sometimes my progression is a barely noticeable upward grade at best.

As is true for all of us, educator or otherwise, my struggle is to do the best I can because that's what is right and just for me to do. We all have our rough patches, and none of us can do our job perfectly at all times, but that does not excuse us from striving to fulfill our calling to the best of our ability. Such striving calls each and every one of us to deep reflection and, at times, brutally honest self-evaluation.  

To offer just a bit of insight into this struggle, as I've experienced it in my profession, here is a selection of a piece I wrote this summer entitled, "Primum Non Nocere," translated from the Latin as "First, Do No Harm."

Primum Non Nocere
If there was one goal I had when I got into this profession, it was to make children love writing.  I wanted them to understand the power of the written word and to respect the potency of the pen.  I wanted students to be freed to explore all aspects of life through their writing and to inject their own voice and personality into the world around them.

So, how did I go about achieving such a lofty goal? It was simple.

1. With dictatorial authority, I assigned enough writing work that my students would likely have traded places with the unfortunate souls picked to labor in the construction of the pyramids at Giza. I saddled my poor pupils with an unholy amount of work, much of it assigned in an attempt to fatten the gradebook, and explained it away as just a part of "rigorous" course expectations. Additionally, when students wrote, it was always game time.  Unlike football, a sport in which practice time exceeds game time by a five to one margin, my writing assignments were all high stakes games intended to determine winners and losers.  When the assignments are as numerous as the stars, there's no time for practice, so my I made sure my students knew I expected perfection in every writing...all 10,557.3 of them.

2. When grading that work, I taught them to respect my authority by essentially writing a counter-essay on their paper.  My best estimates are that I was routinely killing off one pen for every 1.7 essays I graded.  I offered no shortage of red-ink feedback, and while there's no way to recount every insightful comment I offered students, I can assure you I had a plethora of creative ways to say, "WRONG!"

3. When my young pupils got a creative tingling in their spines and left the safety of a writing formula, often leading to poor decisions, I chastised them by asking, "Why couldn't you just have done it the way I asked?" After all, I had clearly told them that I wanted them to sound just like (insert name of professional writer here), right?

4. To really make my student love writing, I spoke of due dates as Levitical law, required students to follow arbitrary processes I don't even follow (do as I say, not as I do, right?), and made them so scared of putting a comma in the wrong place that they simply chose to abandon comma usage entirely.

5. To put the proverbial cherry on top, I preached what I didn't practice.  I pushed students to write from the heart and to wrestle with how to best express their thoughts into words...even though I hadn't in a long time. I was a teacher, not a writer.  Through the way I conducted my class, I confirmed to my students that writers were people who lived in New York, wore funny hats,  and eked out a meager living unless they were willing to write about vampires in love with humans; teachers, on the other hand, were people who weren't brave enough to move to New York, couldn't pull off wearing funny hats, or weren't desperate enough to write about vampires in love with humans.

Put simply, the medical community has the perfect word for the teaching strategies I employed early in my career: malpractice.

All of this may sound overly dramatized, and perhaps it is to some extent.  There were moments of success; not everything was a failure. However, as I reflect on the first few years I spent as an English teacher, I can clearly pick out numerous teaching tendencies that were far more detrimental to than helpful in developing my students' abilities and desire to write.  While it was definitely tough to look back and realize that I may have actually turned many a student away from writing, that harsh realization has led to a renewed and deeper commitment to the goals I had nine years ago as a new teacher.

So what's my new plan of action?

1. Practice, Practice, Practice. My students will still write...a lot.  However, whereas I used to make every writing a high stakes situation, I now plan to incorporate more freewriting as an opportunity to rehearse strategies as well as create the raw ideas from which major writings will be formed.

2. Coach more than I criticize. The best coaches instill two things in their players: confidence in their existing abilities and a drive to become better.  Few coaches, though, do this by overloading players with criticism and exasperated correction.  I should be no different.  Rather than treating student work as a fault-finding mission, I want to find every reason to affirm their successes and to encourage them to build on those.

3. Birth writers instead of cloning them. Formulas can be helpful and offer safety to developing writers, but formulas can also kill the personality that makes each writer unique. So can expecting kids to imitate professional articles used as mentor texts. In my class, I want to encourage writers to develop their own unique voice and style.  This will, undoubtedly lead to some missteps as students seek to find their voice, but that's part of the beauty of writing; there's as much to be learned in getting lost as there is in arriving!

4. Let them write like writers.  Not all writers work with solid deadlines and not all writers follow the same processes.  Friends of mine who are published writers often set their own timetables and none of them faithfully follows a one-size-fits-all writing process involving notecards, outlines, and the like.  What if students, knowing what they were expected to produce, were asked to responsibly set up their own timetable for completion?  What if students, after being exposed to different writing strategies, were allowed to develop the writing process that best suited their personality and needs?  While such propositions sound scary, they also sound a lot less like coercion than were the strongarm tactics I used to use.

5. Show them how a writer works.  It is my mission to  destroy the false perception that writers and teachers cannot be one in the same.  I am a writer. I just happen to be a writer who works in a public school.  I wrestle with ideas.  I struggle to find the right way to pen what's in my head.  I agonize over revisions.  I want my kids to see this happening.  Rather than hearing me talk about writing, I want my kids to see me write.

Only time will tell if these strategies will help me develop and inspire young writers. However, I have no doubt that these plans will, at the very least, help me live out the words of Hippocrates, "First, do no harm."

Bear in mind that this piece is still in progress.  I haven't touched it in a while, but I do plan on refining it further. As I tell my students, very little of our writing should ever truly be "done."

And why do I offer this?  I post this primarily for the following purpose: I want to assure everyone that while I may take a stand on a super-sized "high horse" from time to time...though I might shake my fist at the sky some days in spirit of self-righteous indignation, you can be assured that I am keenly aware of this fact:

On even my best days, I am an imperfect teacher (not to mention husband, father, coach, man of faith, etc.). I want to see students do great things and I really do love them, but I have failed them before and will fail them again.

It is my sincere hope that if nothing else, though, I am genuine and honest. I ask that of my students, so I have no excuse for not doing so myself.

Cash Ain't Carrots, and I Ain't A Donkey

Disclaimer: The "ain't" in the title is a clear indication I'm approaching 15 years in the Ozarks (and I wouldn't trade one of them).

In my last post of this series on public education, I touched on the issues I have with public education being run like any other business.  The focus in that post (found here) was on the idea that while teachers need, and should desire, accountability, arbitrarily firing and replacing teachers based solely on yearly high-stakes testing, which is inadequate/incomplete/ill-executed/misleading at best, is a poor way to hold educators responsible.  Teachers simply cannot be evaluated as one would evaluate managerial staff in the corporate, profit-driven world of business.

However, the current push for a more business-minded approach to public schooling does not stop at the simplistic idea of hiring and firing based on one-off test results.

Currently, many policy makers are pushing for merit pay, or as I call it, behaviorism for teachers. Behaviorism, largely based on the work of B.F. Skinner, supposes that our behaviors are primarily the results of outside forces; that to examine our own actions, we must look not inward, but to the external forces which cause us to think as we think, feel as we feel, and ultimately do as we do.

In some cases, Skinner's ideas make complete sense.

When I worked at McDonald's during my high school years, behavioral operant conditioning was a large part of the way management encouraged me to do my job with excellence. As an example, when I did well or went above and beyond the call of duty, I received some arbitrary "McDonald's Money" which I could trade in for gift cards, trinkets, or other incentives.  Additionally, when I exceeded expectations, I could reasonably expect to receive at least a modest raise during my scheduled employee review.

And hey, I won't lie to you; these and other positive reinforcements did what they were designed to do.  I do consider myself someone who wants to work hard, please people, and make a good name for myself, but let's be honest; I didn't work hard because I believed in the mission of McDonald's.  I didn't try to uphold the sanctity of the Big Mac.  I certainly wasn't busting my tail because I knew in the depths of my soul that selling people a Double Quarter-Pounder was my calling in life.  I did it because I wanted the rewards of hard work, not because the work itself had any meaning.

Now, here I am as an adult, a professional educator, with people proposing to me that I be treated like I'm back at McDonald's.

The idea of merit pay goes something like this.  Teachers who produce results (of the standardized test variety) should not only be assured of employment, they should also have the chance at bonuses commiserate with the level of his or her student's scores.

For the moment, I'll put aside such minor contentions as:

• merit pay pits teachers against one another (why would teachers share great teaching secrets when there's only so much merit money to go around?)
• merit pay would only apply to teachers in specific content areas, primarily math and science (sorry art teachers, you're apparently not  all that important)
• merit pay would do nothing to bring good teachers to low-income or inner city schools (sorry, inner-city Chicago, everybody seems to want to teach in middle-class suburbia all of a sudden...)

Here, instead, is my main contention.  I find merit pay insulting.  

If someone thinks that I'm going to, all of a sudden, start "really teaching" my students because lawmakers dangle a few extra Ben Franklins at me, they've grossly misinterpreted why I do what I do.  If a person thinks that I've had these really great teaching methods locked away in a vault and that I've been holding back on using them until the feds offered me a bonus, we probably don't hang out very often.  

Pardon me if I'm a bit uncomfortable with my government treating me like a donkey who'll follow after a cash carrot dangled two feet in front of my nose, but I'd rather just know that someone in Jefferson City or Washington, D.C. has enough faith in me to think that I might already be doing my best simply because I consider it a moral imperative, not because I can't afford a new TV.

But this debate shouldn't be about me and my thin skin, should it?  Ultimately, this debate must center around the needs of those being educated.  Merit pay, like any educational movement must address this question: "What is best for kids?" 

And to that end, merit pay appears to fail. Need proof? I won't recount the whole study, but this brief piece from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution does give the essential findings of a study done to see if merit pay actually does its job, which is not to reward people like me, but rather to best serve the needs of students (Merit Pay and Student Achievement).  

As I all but admitted the other day in my first post of this series (found here), there are certainly some teachers out there who actually are in this business for the wrong reasons.  Sadly, there are some who are more concerned with their wallets than their students. However, while the media may try to sell you the idea that such a characterization describes many of us, I assure you that is a gross and insulting misrepresentation of fact. Such people are the extremely rare cancers, aberrations that serve mainly to provide the media with just the chink in my profession's armor necessary to sell a gloom and doom narrative.

But, you know me, right?  

Business is Business...Education is Not

One of the biggest issues in education these days is the demand for teacher accountability. Largely because of our incessant need to use other countries' educational systems as our own measuring stick (even when the comparison is apples to oranges at best), we demand that teachers be held accountable for producing quantifiable results which we derive mainly from yearly high-stakes standardized tests.

Am I against accountability? Let me assure you, that is not the case. I certainly believe that teachers need to be held to high standards. Principals need to know their teachers well, examine their methods, evaluate the learning environment they create, and work to maximize the potential of each and every teacher under his or her charge. Teachers should be expected to push for excellence, motivate students, and to master/employ the most effective, proven methodologies in their practice. If a teacher doesn't expect these things of himself, he most certainly needs to be held accountable.

What I am against is accountability based solely on a business model. In the business world, the equation is generally simple: those who produce clear-cut, easily quantified and digested results will have jobs and opportunity for advancement, while those who do not produce results will be fired and replaced with new (and hopefully more successful) employees. It works in the business world, right? If a salesman can't sell, you get a new salesman. If a waiter drives customers away, you get a new waiter.

But, if you really want to apply such a business mindset to the world of education, you can't think of teachers as people with no employees under them; you have to think of teachers as managers. A manager is responsible for making sure the team underneath them is producing results. A manager has to organize the team, lead the team, put everyone in a position to produce desired results...and make the tough decisions to part ways with employees not producing.

And this is where the business model really breaks down. In the business world, a manager is generally judged on the results produced by those under their leadership. If a baseball team is winning, the general manager is a genius; if they are losing, he will need to be looking for a new place of employment. However, teachers cannot---AND THE VAST MAJORITY WOULD NOT EVEN IF THEY COULD---"fire" those on whose results he or she will be judged.

I as a teacher, do not have the freedom to cut little Johnny loose if he just isn't going to make me look good on the one-off, 40-question multiple-choice test the state claims is the ultimate, definitive measure of my efficacy as an English Language educator (this high-stakes test, by the way, contains no writing element because the state can't afford to pay people to grade it).

And would I send Johnny packing even if I could? OF COURSE NOT!!! A teacher's job is different than a business manager's job because teachers know they must prepare and educate kids when they are compliant and when they are defiant, when they sit politely and absorb information as well as when they are spewing profanity and intentionally derailing every attempt the teacher makes to do his or her job. A teacher accepts the fact that their job is to educate every kid, regardless of whether they have perfect attendance or barely show up 2/3 of the time because their parents kicked them out and now they're bouncing between relatives, friends' homes, or even the streets. A teacher knows that their job is to maximize every kid's potential whether they are a sophomore who is already prepared for college work or a senior reading on a fifth-grade level. And why are teachers like me happy to take on this charge? We do it because we know that our investment in kids' lives is too important and too complex to be monetized, digitized, or easily translated into spreadsheet data the feds can use to see how we stack up against Singapore.

Yet, in the business-model thinking that so many, especially in government positions, are pushing, a teacher's job security should primarily be based on whether or not a teacher can effectively "teach to the yearly test," a practice that robs students of an education that is rich, broad, intellectual, social, philosophical, and personalized in favor of a pre-fab, one-size-fits-all education employed not as a true investment in students, but as a desperate attempt to dominate a high-stakes test and thereby keep one's job.

As I said, I truly have no issue with teacher accountability. If you know me, you'll trust me when I say that if I begin to slide, become stagnant, develop attitudes or habits in my profession that are unhealthy, or simply am not teaching to the expectations of my principal, superintendent, or my community, I hope that someone will call me on it. Should that ever happen, I hope that I'll be given (and will have earned) the opportunity to address my shortcomings and improve. If, after having that opportunity, my leadership does not feel I can get the job done, I need to be let go.

However, like those teachers who made the difficult choice to strike in Chicago, I hope that my employment will not solely be based on a once-a-year test that is, at best, an inadequate measure of student capability...as if the data it yielded could tell you the story of:

• The young man I counseled through parental neglect.
• The young girls who've had to come and tell me that as sophomores, they've become expectant mothers.
• The kids I've fought to reach despite the fact they showed up to school high or with a severe hangover.
• The kids I've pleaded with to stick with it, stay in school, and be one of the few, if not the only, graduates in his or her family.
• The kids I mourned with when their classmate overdosed at a weekend party.

These kids (and others I don't have time to mention) may not have been in a position to produce the desired stellar test results that would afford me a business-model pat on the back, but I would never have "fired" a one of them even if I could have. Quite the contrary, I fought for each and every one of them as if they were my own, satisfied in the fact that I am a teacher, not corporate middle-management; I'm more than a simple test-derived number used to compare, rank, sort, retain and fire.

I'm an instructor. I'm a friend. I'm a confidant. I'm a coach. I'm a motivator. I'm a discipliner. I'm a counselor. I'm an example. I'm a provider. I'm a father-figure. I'm a teacher.

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You Know Me, Right?

A few weeks back, Chicago educators took to the streets in a strike, protesting (among other things) out-of-control class sizes and a teacher evaluation system that puts the majority of its eggs in the basket of standardized testing. The nation watched as battle lines were drawn between the Chicago teacher's union and the city's mayor, former Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel.

As the conflict blossomed, I was not shocked at the initial spin the media put on this issue; of course, the teachers were painted by many in the media as greedy, lazy, completely apathetic towards the needs of their students. Understand, I was still insulted by the way much of the mainstream media portrayed the teachers, but I can't act as if there was anything novel about the disparaging characterization they received; I suppose such "slings and arrows" have just become repetitive and routine in the eyes of the laborers at which they are launched.

I've been in this business nine years and I've heard people in my line of work denigrated by the media more times than I can recount, so I'm not shocked when people want to paint my colleagues and I as individuals who weren't good enough to do anything real and, therefore, just defaulted to teaching in lieu of getting an actual job. I have come to see it as par for the course when someone assumes all teachers just quit trying when they get a tenured contract. I'm no longer surprised when people talk of public education as a black hole of waste and hold their tax dollars over educators' heads as some sort of bludgeoning tool. I'm sadly used to people making snide comments about how no serious profession gets three months of paid vacation. Even as I record these things right now, it bothers me that these are familiarities.

Are there teachers in this business for the wrong reasons? Sure. Are all teachers equally effective and/or gifted in their craft? Of course not. I get it; honestly, I do.

Still, I'm tired of this broad brush that's being used to paint me, my colleagues, and now the Chicago teachers as incompetent, self-focused, ineffective, and easily-replaceable. I'm tired of people talking like my job could be done by any hack. I'm tired of hearing the same people who call documentaries by Michael Moore gross misrepresentations of truth full of hasty generalizations and boldfaced falsehoods turn around and pretend docs like "Waiting For Superman" are a completely accurate depiction of reality.

Many of you know me, right?

Do I whine about my salary? Do I piddle my summer away watching daytime television? Did I sign a tenured contract and begin showing movies everyday instead of teaching?  Don't I fight for my kids day in and day out? Haven't I  given up personal, non-contract time to go the extra mile with kids on essays? Didn't I use nearly two months of my summer "vacation" spending my discretionary income on gas and  tuition so that I could continue to grow as a teacher in both philosophy and practice?

If you're reading this, I feel like you probably know me well enough to answer those questions accurately.  You, more than likely, know what kind of person I am.  You know what I want for kids.

But do you know the media? Do you really know them?  Do you know their motivations and goals?  In all humility, I ask you to consider this: is the media more interested in selling an alarmist story in which the educational sky is falling or giving you the truth in which I treat your kid as a precious individual for whom I'd do this job even if it paid minimum wage?

In the coming days, I'm planning on posting some thoughts on education, not to gripe or moan or complain, or even to boldly defend public education against all criticism--it certainly has its deep, deep issues that need addressed. Should you read any of these posts, I honestly pray that you'll have enough faith in me to know this: I only post them so that you can get your information from someone you know (and trust, hopefully) rather than Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, Ann Coulter, or some other media source mainly in the business of creating and selling a crisis, regardless of how much reality they have to alter/spin/cut/ignore in its manufacture.

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Let's Get Lost

Last Saturday, my beloved Mizzou Tigers, reeling from a virtual no-show against Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks, took on the University of Central Florida. Now, I've heard it from many folks that Mizzou is clearly not ready for the SEC, and to those folks who've been so kind as to tell me that, I say this: the UCF game showed we're barely ready for Conference USA, much less the SEC.

As I'd feared, the Tigers came out and had to grapple with a team that should not have been their equal. However, I'm trying to limit the effect sports have on my sanity by learning when to walk away. Thus, when my tigers began sputtering in the first half, I made the decision to simply leave the house before my mood deteriorated like Mizzou's offensive line under heavy pressure.

Getting into the car, I really had no idea where I was headed; my only requirement was that there be no television within eyeshot of my location. I headed north on Highway 32 toward Buffalo with no real destination, wondering where my drive might take me. Shortly after leaving I hit one of my favorite spots just outside of town. A few miles north of Bolivar, the road starts downhill, gently bending to the right, as the view to the left opens up to a large pasture butted up against a small creek and backed by tall bluffs. Just a few days earlier, a friend and I had been driving past this spot, prompting him to ask if I'd ever taken the road that headed off behind this particular area. I hadn't, but decided that today I would.

Taking that turn, I had no idea what I'd find, but I was stunned by the beautiful scenery I witnessed as I drove. Large expanses of green pasture; rustic, nostalgia-inducing barns; panoramic views of the Ozark's rolling hills; all such sights were a relief to a soul saddled with frustration over a football game that would, in reality, be soon forgotten. Unfortunately, I did have an engagement that forced me to cut my explorations short, so just as I began to sense I was getting into unfamiliar territory, I turned around, heading off to fulfill a Saturday obligation.

Not an hour later, the urge hit me. I had been just on the edge of knowing exactly where I was at. I had reached a point of unfamiliarity, of discovery, and had whipped it around and returned to the places I knew well.

It was at that point that I got back in my car and headed out with one goal in mind: I would get lost, regardless of how long it took me to do so...and I succeeded.

I went back to the original point of crisis at which I'd earlier turned back, but this time I didn't retreat; instead, I took the first turn that my mind desired...and then another...and then another. Eventually, I was just driving with no assurance that I was even heading in a direction that might lead me home, but the winding paths, unfamiliar views, deep green fields, and varied hues of the turning leaves gave me little reason to care where my journey might lead.

After roughly 45 minutes of meandering through parts of Polk county I never knew existed, I encountered a familiar landmark and took that as my cue to resume the day's necessary activities (which did not include finishing the game I'd long since abandoned).

This journey may seem like nothing more than "Sunday driving" done on the wrong day, but for me, it was a much-needed reboot. I'm by nature a creature of habit and not generally comfortable with environments outside those with which I'm extremely familiar. This one solitary drive through the country reminded me that we must live purposefully, but sometimes our purpose must be to get a bit lost; to discover; to find new and inspiring experiences; to live like Abraham, who under a command from God sans specific details, simply headed out into the great unknown with the faith that God wouldn't send him into the wilderness for no reason.

In the familiar, we often find the usual fare. In the unfamiliar, we put ourselves in a position to find unexpected treasures. Today, I was pleased to find the latter.

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