Mary Hobson 5/8/21 Mary Hobson 5/8/21

In Defense of Teachers

This evening I attended a virtual “Meet the Candidates” event for the people running for my local Board of Education. One of the candidates indicated that in talking with members of the community, they had heard from parents that “ a lot of new teachers” had been hired for this past school year and that there was a feeling that some of these teachers were not sufficiently experienced to educate their children. I cannot speak to these parents’ experiences, but I can speak about my own. My daughter had four “new to the district” teachers this year, and I found each and every one of them brought something to the table. In fact, my biggest fear is that many of them will not be rehired for the upcoming year. So, I wanted to take a moment and talk about my concerns with this rather generalized argument and explain my support for not only the “new” teachers but all teachers.

My first problem with this argument is that the speaker did not define their terms. The statement made was that the district had hired “a lot of new teachers” for the 20-21 school year. The implication from the remainder of the argument was that these were inexperienced teachers who were not able to provide an adequate education for the students in some way. But who were the “new” teachers? Not all “new” teachers lack experience. A teacher could be new to the district but have years of previous experience teaching somewhere else. Therefore, just because a teacher is new to the district (i.e. newly hired) is not a sufficient basis on which to judge their adequacy as a teacher. Furthermore, even assuming that the statement was meant to refer to newly credentialed teachers (i.e. lacked any previous teaching experience other than student teaching), that is still not enough information to tell whether they are a “good” teacher.

I want to take a minute and talk about “good..” I deliberately chose not to use “qualified,” because, presumably, a teacher would not have been credentialed or hired if they did not possess the required knowledge and experience to be considered “qualified..” At the same time, “good” is an extremely subjective term. Indeed, what constitutes a “good” teacher could be the topic of its own blog post. So, for purposes of this post, I use the term “good” to mean that a teacher knows the material they are teaching to the students, connects with the students, and adequately communicates both their expectations and the subject content in a clear and appropriate manner.

So, let’s talk about newly credentialed teachers. There are generally two categories: bright fresh young adults out of college, and second-career folks. I wanted to talk about the latter first. I find second-career teachers on the whole to be extremely good teachers. They have been out in the world actually using the subjects they are teaching in everyday life, giving them an extremely good handle on not only the basics but often the minutiae of the material. They can easily provide answers to the “how is this relevant to my life? when will I use this outside of school?”-type questions. They also often have great, relevant stories that can entertain. Both my brother and brother-in-law are second-career teachers in physics and history, respectively, and both of them are adored by parents and students alike. My cousin has been involved in music all of her life, providing private piano and voice lessons before becoming a full-time church choral director. This past year, she became a first-year high-school choral director; not an easy task during the year of COVID. In fact, I would argue she had what was probably the most difficult class to navigate given all of the extra concerns and cautions related to singing that come with COVID. And yet her school received a First at the state’s choral competition (among other music department awards). New is not the same as inexperienced and it is not equivalent to incapable. My daughter’s art teacher is an amazing woman who comes from the art world and has been teaching the children all kinds of things I never learned in art. She had found ways to tie projects into topics and games the children find interesting. One of the things she shared with me is her desire to teach kids that, out in the world, “art” is not just painting or sculpture or getting into galleries, but digital art, comic book illustration, toy building and modeling, animation, advertising design, and so much more. She brings a huge wealth of information to the students that no teacher, no matter how many years of experience in the classroom, could provide. To in any way suggest that she is not a good teacher because she is newly-credentialed lacks logic and merit.

Photo Credit: Beci Harmony (@bacihannah)

So, let’s move on to the last of the three types of “new” teachers—the young adults fresh out of college. First, let’s remember that all of these teachers have numerous hours of student teaching. Experienced teachers and administrators have watched them teach these subjects to other classes of students and deemed them, adequate teachers. Presumably, we should be able to trust our seasoned educators to make these determinations. If not, our problem lies not with the newly-credentialed teacher, but with the credentialing system—something over which they had no control. and, therefore, cannot reasonably be held against them. Alternatively, if we do trust our credentialing system, then we need to show it by not outright dismissing the adequacy of the abilities of newly-credentialed teachers. Each of us started somewhere. None of us got where we are without having been given a chance by a person when we had no experience or no credentials. Furthermore, our blind deference to experience over raising up a new generation has shot us in the foot in many professions. My understanding from friends in the business is that there is an entire level of experienced engineers that simply does not currently exist because the people who ought to be reaching that level right now went unhired in years past due to budget cuts and other issues. Many teachers are reaching retirement age. If we don’t begin to hire new teachers and give them the experience they need to move forward in their careers, we are doing a disservice to future generations.

Furthermore, I would argue that young, newly-credentialed teachers are precisely what this strange year of teaching required. New teachers are now Gen Z. These are the native tech users. I am Gen X and even I consider myself to have “grown-up” using computers and the internet. In a year that required trying new things and changing tactics at a moment’s notice, heavy use of technology, and connecting with students both in-person and virtually, I believe that newly-credentialed Gen Z teachers were in the best position. They had just been educated in new ways of teaching and interacting. and had experience with all of the “new” technology, but were new enough to teaching that they were not heavily invested in any particular teaching method and could easily pivot if they suddenly found themselves teaching from home because they were quarantined, or needed to teach to students both in the classroom and at home. They also had the benefit of being able to craft their curriculum knowing about the difficulties of COVID, rather than having to construct something different by modifying a curriculum to which they had already become accustomed.

Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema (@kellysikkema)

At the same time, I want to be clear that experienced teachers were amazing this year. Many of them engaged in Herculean efforts to educate their students to the best of their abilities under unique and unprecedented circumstances. To those who have complained that teachers “had it easy” this year, I want to share with you the story of my brother, who teaches High School physics. My brother is married to an amazing, immuno-compromised woman who has worked full-time from home this entire time. They have two children who could not go to in-person school because they could not risk the children bringing COVID home to their mother. Likewise, my brother could not teach in person for the same reason. Their two children were in 5th grade and kindergarten. The kindergartener took to online learning like a fish in water and had an amazing school year. The 5th grader struggled and, ultimately, had to be home-schooled. So, my brother spent most of his mornings home-schooling his older child but spent roughly two hours in online office hours answering any and all questions from students about lessons from the day before. He then figured out the lesson for the next day and, around 5:00 p.m., went to the school to record the next day's lesson once the building was sufficiently empty. The recordings for the various different classes (he teaches both AP and regular physics) were left for the aide to show to the various classes the next day, after which he would again spend several hours in online office hours making sure all of the students understood everything and, considering what he learned in that time, craft the lessons for the next day. What with overseeing one child’s online learning, home-schooling the other, making sure both children completed their homework, responding to students, creating and adjusting lesson plans, and recording multiple class lessons for his students, I am quite honestly surprised that he ever found time to sleep.

Did every teacher teach brilliantly this year? No. Was every student able to learn as well as they may have in years past? Most assuredly not. But this problem is not unique to your child, or your school district. Your child is not “behind.” Why? Because they are all “behind.” Everyone—every school every college, every parent, every teacher, every employer, must adjust their expectations. When children are born prematurely, or experience long hospitalizations for any reason, parents are told that we need to subtract that time from their age to understand where their education and emotional growth is. What happened with COVID is that it suddenly became necessary to do this for every child. They went through something huge this past year. We all did. We all still are.

What we need to do now is stop trying to hop directly back to “normal.” We need to process whatever the heck it was that just happened. It might also be helpful to take this time to evaluate whether going back to the way things used to be is actually desirable. Maybe, since we are already in a time of change and assessment, we can use this as an opportunity to change how education work, how employment works, how health insurance works, how our social safety nets work, how our government works, Maybe we decide we like what we have. If so, great. But maybe we discover that there’s a better way to move forward. A more flexible way that won’t bring our society to a screeching halt when (not if) another global pandemic hits. I think we owe it to ourselves to find out.

We are all tired. We are all stressed. We are all starved for human companionship and touch. Let’s be careful about the generalizations we make and the knee-jerk reactions we have right now. Yes, mistakes were made. But rather than throw blame around, let’s do our best to learn from them. Let’s try to be more thoughtful. More empathetic. Let’s model the behaviors we keep saying we want to see more of in our world.

Mary Hobson 6/7/20 Mary Hobson 6/7/20

Dear Fellow Whites,

I want to talk to you. Anyone is welcome to read this, but this is directed to you. Have any of you seen the movie version of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill?

Dear Fellow Whites,

I want to talk to you. Anyone is welcome to read this, but this is directed to you.

Have any of you seen the movie version of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill? There is an incredibly powerful scene at the end where Matthew McConaughey’s character is talking to the all-white jury and asking them to imagine a little girl. Then he describes in horrible detail all the things that happened to the defendant’s daughter. And you, the audience, are sitting there, envisioning it with them. And then he says, “Now imagine that she is white.” There’s this deep collective gasp because you know, you *know* you were envisioning a black girl and you also know that once you imagined she was white, your feelings changed. Did it make you uncomfortable? Did you sit with that, or did you blow it off as a nifty trick of cinema and storytelling? I’m here to tell you that that was no trick. That was our ingrained centuries of racism peeking out. And it is long past time to deal with it.

The first thing I want you to do is to watch the news and, after every story, regardless of the victim’s gender identity, race, religion, reimagine the story so that both the perpetrator and victim are white men. If any of those new scenarios makes you feel differently, stop and ask yourself why. The answer is: all of us have been socialized to value white male bodies over all others. And after generations of both blatant and subtle indoctrination, we have a *lot* of work ahead of us to fix this.

I have always considered myself extremely liberal and progressive. I wasn’t just a person correcting friends from the shadows. I spoke out. I donated money. But I have been remiss. I have failed to realize how exhausting simply existing in our society must be for all melanin-enhanced individuals in this country, let alone excelling and achieving as many of them do. I want to share with you something I learned recently and hope it helps you, too.

Most of you know I have lost a child. My son died just shy of 11 months old from heart failure related to his CHD. Many of you know that my daughter also has a CHD. And although hers is not as complicated or severe as Patrick’s, it is still considered “complex” and will always put her life at additional risk.

As COVID began to make it’s way into our national consciousness, there were people who called it a hoax. Few took it seriously. However, many of us with CHD kids had to start taking action long before any governmental officials did. Being hyper-aware of the health hazards our kids face, we generally prefer to err on the side of safety. CHD parents were pulling their children from school a week or more before schools were actually closed. We were one of those families.

Because of COVID, for more than 3 1/2 months, I have lived in fear that someone will unknowingly bring this invisible killer near enough to my daughter to kill her, and leave me grieving a second time. Pair this with the recent anniversary of My son’s second open-heart surgery and the hospitalization that ended with him coming home in palliative care, and I am having serious physical and emotional trouble just trying to function.

Now I want you to go back to the news. I want you to imagine that every night—for years—day in, and day out, you see a person that could be your son, daughter, sister, brother, cousin, best friend, father, mother, aunt, uncle, or other loved one being brutalized or murdered. Every. Day. Some of them are even murdered live, on video. And worse, the people killing them are never held accountable, often remaining in positions of power and free to do it again.

In my world, this looks like white people running around town without masks, not washing hands, crowding together on playgrounds or at the beach like it’s any other day. It looks like white politicians telling me that making money is more important than my child’s life. It looks like people telling me to “lighten up.” Or that it’s “just the flu.” News flash! The regular flu can kill my child. In fact, it can kill perfectly healthy one’s, too! But for me, I have to live with the knowledge that general everyday growing up has the potential to kill my child. So, some days, I have such debilitating panic that getting out of bed, taking a shower, and eating are too much for me. Politicians are supposed to care about all of their constituents. They are supposed to make sure we are all taken care of. But the policies they are putting forth are putting myself and my family directly at risk. And I am angry as hell and scared as shit about it.

And in this moment, I got a small taste of American life for African Americans, Latin Americans, and other minorities. And I began to wonder, how do they even function in our world? How are they not completely overcome with grief and anger, every day? Because every day they live in fear that someone is going to bring an invisible virus into their lives and kill them or someone they love. Just looking at us, they can’t tell if we have the virus. Our words cannot reassure them. No test will give them the answer. And even if we don’t show symptoms, they know that we can shed the virus. Thus, they must be hyper-vigilant. And man, that shit is exhausting! Knowing how little I’ve achieved in the last 6 years except figuring out how to start to function again, I am only now comprehending how strong and amazing these people and their communities are that they manage to get up every day and keep going.

And even now that I have finally had a tiny opportunity to experience and understand just a small piece of what they have experienced practically since birth, I am overwhelmed with anger and sadness. Because as much as it has helped me understand, there are still depths to their pain and experiences that I will never know and never feel. Realizing just how many people are living in a world that is actively trying to kill them, it’s no wonder they are tired and angry. Quite honestly, I’m surprised they aren’t more angry. They have waited a long time. Sometimes patiently, sometimes not. They have tried talking to us nicely. They have tried showing us facts and figures. They have used research. They have used story and film. We have video that shows they get killed for no reason and the perpetrators lie about what happened.

We owe them more than lip service. Our country and our successes have been built on their backs and the backs of their ancestors. Our country’s governing documents promise them equal treatment under the law. They don’t have to earn it. They are entitled to it just by living here. It is long past time for us to do something about this. And if begin to feel guilty as you realize just how much they have continued to suffer at our hands even in the last 40 years? Good! Sit in it. Make yourself uncomfortable. Don’t assuage your feelings with a token gesture, either. It’s high time we stand in the trenches with our black and brown brothers and sisters. Our whiteness is a shield, and I expect to see us using it to shield our fellow citizens from continued harm until we make significant and substantial changes to the racist institutions that run this country.

Here’s another exercise for you. If you think our systems are fair and that we live in a post-racial society, I want you to volunteer to trade places with a black person. No? How come? Because regardless of whether our conscious mind will admit it, deep down we know they don’t get what we do. And here’s another news flash: when you have been privileged all your life, equality looks like discrimination. We will have to work harder for some things. But not because others are getting preferential treatment. No. It’s because we won’t be receiving preferential treatment anymore. So save your boohoo stories of blacks “taking your place” at a job or a school. How entitled do you have to be to assume that it was your spot to begin with? You want true equality? Get rid of legacies. If all those spots were opened up and everyone had to compete for them, I can guarantee you there are a lot of schools that would have very different compositions. White women and all minorities have seen white men with money and connections but no brains and no real interest in learning get admitted to highly distinguished institutes of learning that we *all* know would not get admitted if they were actually considered on the basis of their grades. So yeah. It’s gonna suck. But not because we’re being discriminated against; because we no longer get to automatically move to (or at least closer to) the front of the line. We just have to accept that the loss of our privilege is a mandatory requirement for our continued living here and receiving the freedoms this country has to offer.

And if you feel compelled to tell me about your close black friend(s), or you want to explain to me how you’re not racist, don’t bother. I am telling you, here and now: Yes, all whites! We have all perpetuated racism, whether we did so blatantly, passive-aggressively, quietly, or unknowingly. Treating others kindly, following the golden rule, doesn’t earn us a cookie or a gold star. Treating other people as humans, as equals, is required, not extra credit. That is the bare minimum. It is long past time to provide black and brown bodies of all types the things our guarantees: not just a claim to equality, but actually equal opportunity, access, and treatment. And stop looking at it like a gift we are bestowing on them. This is their due. Their right as citizens. We owe it to them. They have been entitled to, but denied, that which the laws have promised them. We are indebted to them!

This ends now. It is way past time. My eyes, my mind, and my heart have all been broken open, and I will no longer allow my country to pretend that this isn’t happening. Stand up and help us move forward, or get out of the way and left behind.