Changing standards should never be taken lightly. New standards always require a deluge of meetings and professional developments downstream, meetings and PDs that are followed by the added time sucks of new lesson plans, new lesson sequences, and often new books and software. Those lessons and materials only sometimes mesh well with previous learning. The careful sequences that curriculum committees put together for student transitions from year to year? Any appreciable change in standards risks blowing up all that previous curricular work, leaving numerous fragments of dead and disconnected lessons all over the field.

But who is counting? That’s the real problem in this scenario. Who is tracking the mandatory costs from government and district demands — let alone the fuzzier, sometimes-optional instructional costs that come with professional development, new materials and rewritten lesson plans? Accountants will track new books and software within the district, along with costs for professional development and related speakers, but not all expenses can be laid out cleanly in a spreadsheet. Opportunity costs end up ignored in particular.

A term from economics, opportunity cost refers to the value of whatever you cannot do because you chose to do something else. It’s the cost of the road not taken, and like that road, its outlines are hazy, offering no more than a glimpse into what-might-have-been. What is the cost of not doing something? If a district commits to using its available time and money to build a new extension onto the lunchroom, it probably cannot add a weight room onto the gym. Our districts have a finite amount of time, money and other resources available. Once the addition to the lunchroom is chosen, the district has implicitly given up the weight room. The opportunity cost is the value the weight room might have provided, a cost that cannot easily be determined.

Choices are often mutually exclusive. Every time we force teachers to dedicate chunks of their daytime hours to new brainstorms, those teachers must reallocate their time, and something has to give to make room for Brainstorm #23,489. Those somethings are our opportunity costs and they cannot be turned into hard data, so they mostly end up ignored by administrators and bureaucrats. If Mrs. Brown and Mr. Black are forced to give up morning or afternoon tutoring time to learn their new books and materials, who notices? Besides Mrs. Brown and Mr. Black, that is, who may be silently cursing as they tweak or entirely redo once functional sets of slides they prepared only the year before.

Rewriting standards and making educators drop everything to learn another set of changes…and then devise matching curricula again! …Aaghhh. Yet some states have changed standards more than once in the last decade. The standards situation resembles a remodeling run amuck, as a too-wealthy, too-bored would-be interior designer keeps changing the floors, walls, fabrics, paints and lighting until nothing works and nobody knows what to expect, even as the bills pile up and cracks appear in overloaded plaster. Teachers just start walking around bits and crumbles of plaster, trying to find the now rickety stairs. (Damn, I’m fascinated at how we keep working sometimes.)

We don’t need perfect standards as much as we need to settle on a good set of robust, adaptable standards that we can and will stick with – allowing for desperately needed continuity of instruction. The Core played hell with that continuity, incidentally. That’s a major part of the reason my students were drowning when it was first introduced.* But this post is not about the Core and it’s not about standards. It’s not exactly about opportunity costs, either.

This post is about LURCHING — lurching from one new program or idea to the next. Any teacher could tell those Secretaries of Education, district administrators and other pundits that routine and continuity are vital components of a successful classroom experience. Yes, sometimes gifted students can leap buildings in a single bound but, for the so-called average kid, staggering from one person’s great idea to the next person’s great idea without any rational bridge connecting those ideas… well, it doesn’t work well. If it works at all. Changed curricula leave holes in the learning ladder, a hole invisible to creators of new systems because they already know the curricula. And it’s harder to see a missing piece when you are already certain that piece is in the puzzle somewhere. Let’s say Sergei was expected to learn zygotes in fourth grade but zygotes just moved to third grade instead, a grade that Sergei just finished without learning anything about zygotes. Sergei’s personal curriculum just dropped zygotes entirely, but how is he to know? His teachers probably know but they are dealing with an avalanche of changes. Zygotes can easily fall through the cracks. There are no zygote emergencies, after all. This topic just becomes one more thing to pick up later. Or not.

What our brainstorms tend to ignore is that changes on a macro level throw micro levels out of whack. And micro levels are where our kids live. These abrupt changes are hard on teachers, but they are often harder on students. I said this post is not about new standards, and it’s not. It’s about the people inhabiting — the people living inside — today’s US educational system. Flexes in school routines are inevitable. New information must be incorporated as learning and technology advance. Changing demographics may require shifts in instruction, such as added English language support. Plus an unexpected coronavirus can create dizzying changes in rules and expectations virtually overnight. .

Eduhonesty: BUT WE NEED TO STOP IMPLEMENTING GRANDIOSE SOLUTIONS TO MURKILY-DEFINED, OVERSIMPLIFIED PROBLEMS.

NEW STANDARDS AND NEW TESTS WITH ADDED TEST PREP LEAD TO INCREASING LURCHING DOWN IN THE CLASSROOM. The zygotes go quietly missing, along with the analog clocks and maybe even some critical, fractional pizza slices meant to be added together. Too much is happening all at once. The fractions receive limited practice due to time constraints, and next year’s teacher may have to start almost at the beginning of again slicing up that pizza pie.

I’ll throw in a personal story: I used to be astounded at the number of middle school students I received who could not read the analog clock in the wall at the front of the classroom. “Ms. T, what time is it?” “Is it almost lunchtime, Ms. T?” “How soon is the next class? Do I have time to go to the bathroom?” Class start-times were posted, but it doesn’t do a student much good to know that social studies starts at 10:59 if he or she can’t read the clock.

A spiffy digital Darth Vader desk clock solved my immediate problem, but I wondered what was going wrong. Then I had a long conversation with an elementary teacher who explained that the “clock standard” was at the end of the year, only new standards kept being inserted into her curriculum, and nobody in her school was ever reaching that clock standard before the end of the school year cut them off. That standard then disappeared into the mists. It wasn’t in the next year’s curriculum. Once it “timed out,” it wasn’t anywhere. Since it pretty much vanished from the standardized tests after its slated “year,” no one had an incentive to tack those missing clocks onto the script a year later, even if there had somehow been time, which there wasn’t.

I miss twenty years ago. Before the tests took over, I believe a kindly elementary school teacher would have stepped off the bus for long enough to teach the missing clocks. But he or she can rarely risk doing that now. Everything is too scripted. Too often, the standards have to be on the board and a teacher found stepping off the common, test-based lesson plan can even be reprimanded for not teaching from a sometimes wholly inappropriate script instead. The impact of this set-up is hardest on the kids already on the wrong side of the achievement gap, of course.

Nuff’ said. Hugs to my readers, Jocelyn Turner

*Going sideways for a minute here: The phrase “my students were drowning” sounds like hyperbole, an overstatement. But that phrase is actually an understatement. Drowning may be awful, but it’s fast. What happened to my students and many other teachers’ students was not fast. It was 180 days of being frequently lost, as they were presented with obligatory new material that did not necessarily relate to any previous year’s instruction — setting the stage for long and tougher years to come.

Thinking of Dr. Seuss here:

“ALL BALL We all play ball.

BALL WALL Up on a wall

ALL FALL Fall off the wall.”

And teachers are not only falling off that wall. Some are dive bombing. Mid-year resignations keep coming at us, even as an unfortunate few just emotionally check out of the crazy while still driving to work — ending a “long long song” that some exhausted voices have quit singing.

Eduhonesty:

And regularly changing rules doesn’t help us. Since masks made most teachers feel safer, I’d have left the masks in place. To my knowledge, not a single child has died from mask-wearing in school. Add to that, children don’t have the slightest idea that someone may be “imposing on their freedom and personal liberty” unless adults decide to share adult viewpoints that the littlest ones can’t begin to grasp. Many students don’t have the slightest idea what this mask/liberty thing is all about. They just know the rules changed again.

A little more Seuss?

“Pup up. Brown down.

Pup is down. Where is Brown?

WHERE IS BROWN?

THERE IS BROWN!

Mr. Brown is out of town.”

And so are Mrs. Brown and a lot of Mr., Ms. and Mrs. Joneses, Smiths and Fernandezes.

They quit mid-year, convinced the hiring stigma associated with not finishing a contract did not matter, because they never, ever intend to return to teaching anyway. Others are planning to finish the year but are flipping channels on the professional remote, while waiting for the bellhop to come carry their personal books out of a room they may have occupied for years or even decades.

I think we are about to discover that that Mr. Brown is NOT coming back with Mr. Black. Poor Will has gone up the hill and he is planning to stay up that hill still. Teachers were never an inexhaustible resource. The new teachers that some people expect to rescue US schools? First and second year teachers significantly underperform more experienced colleagues — and that’s in good times. All reports on student behavior from the last few years suggest the pandemic years have inspired challenging behaviors at best and, on top of everything else, resignation-provoking ones at worst.

It’s been a “long, long song,” but all songs come to an end. Many individual teaching careers are on their last notes right now and the reason is simple: “Dad is sad very very sad. He had a bad day. What a day dad had!”

I am honestly kind of astounded that we could not have left school masking in place. How many times did we have to hop on pop without once thinking about pop’s feelings? Little children have an excuse. Hopping on pop is fun. But adults will be wondering soon where all the teachers went. No doubt research will be conducted to figure out what happened. Education Week will be cranking out articles with strategies to attract and retain teachers.

Will we be able to fix the mess we are making? More autonomy, less scripting, less testing and more money would certainly help, but right now I am shaking my head in disbelief as education somehow seems to have devolved into mask wars instead of math wars.

Will we able to fix this mess? As Theodore Seuss Geisel said: “Ask me tomorrow but not today.”

I can only hope tomorrow will look better than today.

End November 2017 Haiku

“My Leg Hurts Because My Foot Exploded”

Ms. Turner sitting

Calf and thigh high! And foot, sigh,

My foot broke itself.

I didn’t fall off the bleachers. I didn’t twist an ankle or slip on a patch of water. My foot simply… bruised from the inside and swelled up. They sent me home from the ER using a walker. The foot’s fine now. I had healed by late the following week, at least well enough to walk without assistive devices. But I still don’t know what happened except I was on that foot, climbing bleachers, while going back and forth and moving nonstop all day in a gym. Still, all teachers have nonstop days — now more than ever.

Eduhonesty: I used social media today to advise a teacher to try meditation, tapping or medication — whatever it would take to get her through the teaching day without ending up hurting. I read too many posts lately from teachers with headaches, teachers who are nonstop anxious, who are sick or recovering from being sick.

Does this describe you? Or someone else you know? Physical symptoms of stress should not be ignored in an effort to complete Lesson Plan #284 for the year. You only get one body and one life, one shot, as Eminem sang.

I don’t plan to go into detail about my haiku. I just want to flag that physical discomfort I kept walking on. It’s too easy to take a purple Nexium and ignore a stomach, or to down another Excedrin for the latest headache. It’s too easy to work through pain, ignoring the message underneath.

My foot gave me warnings that day. But I just kept going until I couldn’t keep going and then I borrowed crutches from a school nurse to half-hop to my car and somehow drive to the ER. One shiny, new metal walker later, I made my way home, where I then spent the week watching TV with my foot elevated, startled to discover I hadn’t gotten away with my determined effort to work through the pain.

As Madonna sang, “pain is a warning that something’s wrong.” What we may forget, especially when day-to-day pressure is too great — I have to get that spreadsheet ready before tomorrow’s meeting! — is that sometimes tornado warnings are followed by tornados. That pain? Something’s wrong.

I am writing this post to plead with educators to take care of themselves:

• Before that slow, labored hop to the car.
• Before kind ER nurses and doctors start attaching devices to fingers, chests, arms and ankles.
• Before helpful techs start wheeling your supine body to various imaging machines.
• Before maybe you do yourself damage you can’t easily or ever fix.

Remedies for physical and mental stress are superabundant today: meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, massages, exercise classes, tapping, hypnosis, music, recreational reading, walking, art, funny videos, essential oils, gardening…etc. I recommend locating and printing a list of remedies. Highlight your favorites and make a schedule. Pay for that yoga class if paying will get you to park and walk through the studio door. And if you are hurting, please see a doctor. When all else fails, medication may be required.

One last observation: If your workday REGULARLY causes you physical pain, that’s your body trying furiously to reach you. Whether you need another district, another administration, or another profession altogether, your instincts are already kicking in to push you off your chosen path. Don’t let your brain lead when your gut, head, or right foot are trying to break into your internal conversation.

Listen to your body.

After the first vaccinations, many people took a deep breath, relieved to again plan visits to their favorite pizzeria, ice cream shop, or barbecue place. Birthday parties were expected to rocket back onto the calendar. Vacations were booked for spring and summer breaks. We waited for normal.

And we waited. And waited and waited and waited. Disappointment defined 2021, casting 2022 into an ominous light. When weary people got together this year for the holidays, omicron numbers unsurprisingly exploded. As Princess Leia once told Han Solo, “It’s not over yet.” When Han replied it was over for him, well, that was an example of wishful thinking at its finest. Omicron case counts remain problematic, although fortunately we appear to be on the downward slope of this latest COVID-19 surge.

It’s easy to write a COVID-19 post that chronicles the virus’s attack on US education, but I’d like to go someplace different today: I’d like to list one win: Our students are learning an amazing amount about life, even when those lessons are unpleasant.

For example:

• A virus can fuel a breakdown in services and supplies.
• The supply chain’s links can break.
• A hospital may not always have drugs or beds.
• ER patients may be kept in a hallway for days.
• Grocery shelves can be nearly empty.
• Finding toilet paper may take multiple stops.
• Shop hours are unreliable.
• Favorite places may close all day when no one can be found to open the doors.
• Sadly, those doors may even shut forever.

More importantly for students’ daily lives, we are learning:

• School schedules cannot be trusted.
• This week may be virtual, but maybe not.
• Teachers may be absent often– and can even disappear mid-year.
• Skyrocketing illness cases can shut down just about anything.
• Substitute teachers cannot always be located.
• Even when available, not all subs can do the day’s math, science, or your-subject-here.
• Paraprofessionals, bus drivers and other staples of school life may also disappear.
• Classes when suddenly combined together seldom work well.
• Discipline tends to unravel with too many routine changes.
• Classes without discipline or routines waste huge amounts of time.
• Learning is complicated when repeatedly interrupted.

Long discussions about “entitlement culture” have picked up impetus while also giving way to changed discourse. Young people are growing up fearing for the future of a planet that had once seemed inexhaustible. These kids saw childhoods and young adulthoods perverted and shaped by the past two years of COVID reality.

But I must also observe that our kids are learning and being shaped by the new world — and that fact’s not all bad. They are going to produce a culture that has been informed by their experiences. They will eventually determine the world in which we live — what people read, what they watch, what they talk about, what they do and how they live. I hope they will build a kinder world. I am certain they will build a more realistic world.

Adults of the pandemic have been shocked and even derailed by events in the recent past. Today’s children are growing into that world, however, and children tend to be remarkably adaptable, at least compared to adults. As part of the natural course of childhood — because they are still world building — they can incorporate shifts into their personal paradigms that stagger adults.

Let’s take childcare. Adults were poleaxed by sudden childcare crises during the pandemic. I predict the next generation will not leave childcare as a national piecemeal, patchwork disaster-in-waiting. Our children have seen what happens when the absence of childcare comes up against urgent need for that care. They will understand that unaffordable childcare might as well be no childcare.

Eduhonesty: This next generation has the potential to be wiser than generations that came before them. Greta Thunberg and others her age have been leading efforts to pull climate change to the front of the world’s agendas. High school students have been walking out of school in support of teachers and improved school safety protocols. Adolescents navigating today’s high schools are poised to become this nation’s leaders, and they have learned invaluable lessons in the recent past. They will know that public health cannot be an afterthought, that clear communication of risks should be at the forefront of public health planning, and that schools cannot continue to deteriorate while budgets get debated.

We ran at the edge of functional, not thinking about what might happen if our barely funded schools, 95% occupied hospitals, and just-in-time* inventories might be dangerous. We took for granted the goodwill of the world, assumed that China would send us our drugs, silicon chips and finished lumber. But the mask shortage brought home a truth quickly: When demand greatly exceeded supply, those N-95 masks did not cross the ocean. Meanwhile, the price of lumber skyrocketed.

Quite a number of things have appeared to be crumbling lately, some to near their breaking points. Prices have made scary leaps. I just checked a receipt and found out I had purchased a $6.99 loaf of artisan bread. We were at least a year late purchasing our used van.

But, in “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” author Carol Dweck offers lessons that many teachers have been sharing in America’s classrooms, beginning with one critical concept: Mistakes can help us grow. Our students have observed firsthand the effects of mistake after mistake. If there’s a word that exemplifies how this pandemic went so wrong, that word is unpreparedness. Our society will not be so unprepared in the future. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience unfortunately comes from poor judgment, a truth that casts the last few years experiences into a more hopeful light.

We became careless. No one asked critical questions: What if we can’t get that medication from China? What if Taiwan stops selling us silicon chips? What if the world does not experience peace in our time?

If a learning curve can be a mountain, the COVID curve unquestionably qualifies. Yet our students are going forward, talking about racial and economic inequity, gender inequality, their own identities, and where those identities fit within their cultures. They are debating how to best manage safety during a plague: Mask or no mask? How long to quarantine?How to manage sports and clubs? Children and adolescents absorb every single day around them. They learn from what they see, and then break down and break out the meaning of their observations, often in conversation with peers.

I feel hopeful when I think about today’s students. These kids are talking together, and many are focused and urgent in their desire to improve the world. I trust our next generation to embrace the challenges revealed by the last few years. I trust them to learn and stretch themselves. I trust them to stay focused and, most importantly, to remember the perils that the adults in their lives forgot.

*Just-in-time is an inventory management method in which businesses keep as little inventory on hand as possible. That means those businesses don’t stockpile products and raw materials in case of future need—they simply reorder products to replace those already sold. This saves money storing products and a great deal of thought and energy goes into finding the magic line where a business does not run out of inventory and lose a sale, but also does not have to store or manage any significant quantity of that inventory. That’s part of why the toilet paper disappeared.

P.S. Testing has gutted social studies in some areas as schools focused on mathematics and English for the test, cutting social studies minutes and skewing curricula toward the tests. We must rein in the testing monster. Those who don’t know history ARE condemned to repeat it. Lessons from the Spanish Influenza might have made the last few years much easier.

From: (An assistant principal who always meant well)
Sent: (Before COVID)
To: (Around fifty teachers and paraprofessionals)
Subject: Referrals are in

Referrals are in, referrals are in!!!  I only order (sic) 2500 since the past two years we haven’t exceeded 2400.  They are in my office for pick up, please feel free to stop by and pick them up!

(An assistant principal who always meant well)

(Name of Title 1 school)

(Somewhere in the Midwest)

Eduhonesty: Found this while cleaning old email. I remember we ran out of referrals in the spring. I am sharing this because the number is worth a moment’s reflection. Currently, the school has closer to 600 than 500 students, but those are hardly large urban numbers. It’s a little smaller than the US average. (Table 5. – Average public school size (mean number of students per school), by instructional level and by state: Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: School Year 1999-2000 (ed.gov))

I stopped to think about this, reader. Let’s do the math: 2,400 divided by 180 = 13.33 referrals per day. Except we ran out of referrals. Let’s say the number turned out to be 14 or 15 referrals per day. Let’s also note that school policy had teachers managing many behaviors without use of referrals. Teachers were to manage lesser infractions such as the random swear word or “tardiness of less than 5 minutes” etc. That “Prior Action Taken by Teacher” on the form is all about avoiding office referrals, and I don’t want that to seem a criticism. Teachers should not be bombing the office with every kid who decides to drop an “F” bomb when he hears his ex-girlfriend may be seeing a new guy.

The numbers will not be in yet, but I don’t personally know a single teacher who does not think that behavior is worse post-pandemic than before. For one thing, we have added a whole new category of infraction: refused to mask/distance/follow COVID protocols. Changes in routines alone are throwing off even the go-along, get-along crowd, many of whom want their old schools and their old lives back.

I only want to make one observation here: Admin may be struggling but those well-meaning assistant principals and deans must step up to the plate right now. Teachers are too busy to manage afterschool and lunch detentions. They may even be covering for a colleague at lunch. Deans and others who are part of the disciplinary process may want to let the little stuff go because of the sheer volume of referrals, BUT THAT MUST NOT HAPPEN. The kid who gets away with stealing an extra hour of game time on Tuesday will try to steal two hours on Wednesday. Kids naturally take advantage of weaknesses in policy enforcement, and if a kid gets away with cursing at his or her teacher once, that behavior may even be pushed pushed pushed just to find a limit — or find out there isn’t one, not really.

I am reading all sorts of “should I quit” posts and even “I am so glad I quit” posts on social media right now. Many say things like, “the kids are awful this year, worse than I have ever seen in my (10-20-30) whatever years of teaching.” “I can’t handle this anymore.”

Depending on their location, kids may be experiencing whole new levels of stress, unlike anything in their earlier lives. Their behavioral shifts are understandable. They are suffering from rapidly changing routines and expectations, leaving many nervous, angry and confused. Some have suffered family job losses, illnesses and even tragedies. This fact leaves administrators and teachers feeling a natural compassion and desire to go easy on off-the-charts behavior.

But we cannot afford to be too understanding. Student behavior has always been a major component in how teachers view their jobs — probably the major component — and teachers’ working conditions must be prioritized. A teacher shortage is coming, a fiery comet blazing in our sky. In some areas, the comet has entered the atmosphere. Schools are tapping district office secretaries and IT support people to teach in classrooms. Palo Alto High Unified School District asked for help from parents to help keep schools open Palo Alto schools recruit parents for support as teachers, other staff call in sick amid omicron surge (mercurynews.com). I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few maintenance and lunchroom employees helping to hold the line. Staying firm on student misbehavior will help keep teachers in the classroom — and students on track academically.

I see many changes coming, including better pay for teachers eventually. Shortages push up salaries. That’s still in the future, though, and right now this country needs to support and nurture teachers. That means letting them send kids out who are disrupting the learning process. It may mean taking advantage of recent steep climbs up the remote learning curve. Suspensions can include time logged for learning from home. Yes, some kids won’t log on, but while we don’t seem to be watching a planet-killer of a comet yet, that post-impact tidal wave may not be far away. School districts are seeing educators leave profession at alarming rate (kktv.com)

Eduhonesty up: With all of our recent educational changes, figuring out where to put our energies will be tough. One major item to prioritize stands out, however: interventions to manage student behavior must be positioned front and center. Strategies for behavior management must also be created with the understanding that teachers cannot add hours to their day to manage those behaviors. Too many are already drowning as they try to juggle home, family and job requirements. Too many keep finding themselves with 36 hours of work to do in a 24 hour day.

School administrators need to step out onto the front lines to manage this problem. If next year’s curriculum meetings don’t happen because of today’s disciplinary challenges, last year’s curriculum should become the default move. Business cannot continue as usual. Teachers who feel unsupported, or even isolated, are choosing to move on. I know a fair number currently who are only hanging on to reach a critical point in their pension benefits before turning in retirement forms.

Discipline should be the central topic in those schools that are struggling with surging disciplinary infractions. If thirteen office-managed disciplinary infractions have crept up to twenty-some infractions, classroom learning has already been badly impacted by those behaviors. Teacher morale is going down rapidly, too. I absolutely guarantee this. Teacher morale is DIRECTLY tied to student learning for most teachers.

All eyes now should be watching our teacher exodus. We can recover from many forces undercutting education. We can’t recover from a widespread, permanent loss of dedicated teachers.

Antibiotics for 20 Days

Small sick one sneezes

all over wet sub papers.

I want to go home.

Not in the Gym though She’d Like to Be

Broken young humans

wear boots and casts to walk.

Humans break easy.

In Self-Contained at the End of the Hall

Dan who cannot speak

moans, waves hands that cannot grasp,

runs and talks in dreams.

Eduhonesty:

One thing about “Dan” that people may miss. Not all our Dans and younger children can tell us if they are sick. That 20 days on antibiotics was real, and I walked right into it. I’d been sitting beside “Alex,” this nonverbal little guy all morning, smiling at him as his large dark eyes watched me. It wasn’t until he took my hand when we walked to the bathroom that I realized how hot he was. Heat was baking in silent waves off that little hand.

Kids don’t get the same cues adults do and they don’t always understand those cues. They throw up all over their desk and the classroom floor because they don’t see it coming. Or they know they feel nauseated but they don’t know exactly what to do next. This is not a bathroom emergency for which the protocol is clear. Should they ask to see the nurse? Interrupt the teacher? Do they feel that bad? Before a kid comes up with a working strategy, breakfast may spew all over everywhere, and suddenly the custodian is doing biohazard duty while the teacher is heading off future teasing and managing excited eruptions throughout the classroom.

As to that girl missing gym, that above haiku contains another truth: Kids will go to school injured, and older kids especially will also choose to go to school sick. They don’t usually get on the bus or in the car when aching and feverish — although that happens — but humans, young and old, are masters of rationalization. “It can’t be COVID. I don’t feel that bad.” “My allergies are so bad right now.” “If I don’t go, mom won’t let me go to Erin’s party tomorrow.” “I promised Mark I’d meet him at lunch. I don’t want him to go to lunch with Marta. I know she likes him.” Children and adolescents tend to live in the present, with friends and fun trumping any other considerations.

Even parents rationalize away illnesses. Or ignore them. I got pink-eye twice from a bank vice president — or, rather, her daughter who turned up in class with eyes that shouted, “Doctor, please!”

Eduhonesty: This post is in support of teachers who are asking parents and others to understand why they don’t want to be in the classroom when children are demonstrably getting sick all over the country. I’d like to take a moment to praise those Chicago and other students who are raising flags about health and safety. No, some schools at this time are not safe. For those schools, a remote option should be available.

This is not convenience. This is health. The evidence has been piling up that not everyone who gets COVID can expect to be well in two weeks — or even two months. A close relative of mine lost her sense of taste and smell to COVID and still has not recovered those senses; it’s going on one year and two months now and counting.

Schools are not little corporations filled with adults who understand expectations and protocols. They are often old, too-airless buildings filled with kids who look like sardines while navigating passing periods. Most of those packed-in kids remain hazy on germ theory, although they know much more than they did two years ago. And, oh my, can America’s students be slimy. I have wiped so many noses in my past and watched at least as many noses get wiped on handy sleeves. Sometimes kids with bad allergies just run around with snot on their face for months. That’s kids, especially in winter.

I understand the fierce desire to open school doors. This is education, and for many children education works best inside a classroom. Opening those doors is a tough decision, one which has to be informed by numbers, but what I want to emphasize is this: NUMBERS ARE NOT ENOUGH!

The plans we make also must take into consideration KIDS — KIDS who are not now and never have been little adults. Numbers from a mostly adult population don’t truly apply to groups of children in closed spaces. Children cannot be treated as inputs into a plan that ignores childhood.

I don’t know how we got to this place, this angry place that has many parents and others demanding a return to the education of 2018. I understand fully the desire to go back in time to a simpler time. But simple plans can be too simple and bold policies can be too bold.

Let’s try to put this in a nutshell: Government leaders and school board members are creating and implementing strategies that rely on the diligence and caution of people who still believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. In middle schools and high schools, those plans expect circumspect behavior from adolescents. “Circumspect adolescent” is a perfect oxymoron — a case of clearly misunderstood use of exact estimates which somehow end in an only choice that is no choice.

When transmission rates are too high, I believe we must shut the doors. We don’t have to shut those doors for the year or maybe even for the month. But we must be ready to shut the door until the wave passes:

1) For the sake of the grandmas and grandpas who may end up coughing and feverish, shots or no shots. My boosted mom is doing pretty well after a week with COVID, but her bedrest likely created increasing problems with a clot in her leg.

2) For the sake of other family members whose “sick leave” may have already left and whose income may not allow them to skip work. US businesses now often have a vaccine or weekly test policy, but omicron is managing to break through the vaccines. My mom is a symptomatic break-through case in a memory care facility. It’s worth taking a moment to think about places where employees are tested weekly. If Tom is tested every Wednesday, what happens when he gets sick on Thursday? The answer will only sometimes be, “Tom takes time off and goes to bed.”

3) For the sake of the kids who do not need the guilt of thinking they made their family or friends sick — or worse. For the sake of the kids who may get sick — yes, the percentage of truly ill children with COVID is extremely small, but a small percentage spread over millions of kids will result in many very sick kids regardless. And when “Dan” starts getting really sick, he will struggle to communicate that fact. Our schools are filled with vulnerable kids. At the start of the year, a teacher is given a list and there is nothing strange about finding students with diabetes, immunosuppression from medications, or chronic lung disease. (These kids should have a remote option regardless of the state of the pandemic.) Obesity is an established risk factor for children and is rampant in the US today.

Plans for outbreaks should always include well-thought-out options for closing the doors in worse case scenarios.

Christmas break anyone? It’s finally arrived. Has it felt like a super long year so far? If you are sitting reluctantly at the computer still, wishing you were “done,” this post is for you. Readers, please pass this on to coworkers who may also be hunkered down working. Let’s all stand up for our own version of nap time.

The title of the Chicago News Tribune article by Heidi Stevens is “We need to stop demonizing our food.” (Dec 5) Here’s the paragraph that inspired this post:

“Eating disorders skyrocketed during the pandemic. Since March 2020, when lockdown orders went into effect in most states, the National Eating Disorders Association helpline has reported a staggering uptick in calls — a 78% year-over-year increase during some months. Teenagers account for up to 35% of the calls.”

Let’s extend this thought: Girls and women form the majority of persons diagnosed with eating disorders. Research varies on the extent of differences and, just as I believe girls are underreported for ADHD, I suspect boys are underreported for eating disorders. Recent studies back up my view. But eating disorders remain a heavily female category in a stressful time. Anorexia sufferers are about 90% female and a recent study in Pediatrics showed “cases of adolescent anorexia increased 65 percent in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.” (Adolescent Anorexia Up 65 Percent in Canada During First Wave of Pandemic, Study Finds (msn.com) My two previous posts about the dramatic increase in suicide attempts among adolescent girls highlight a mental health crisis.

I think back to my children and other little kids I have known. Food is one of the first great comforts we discover in life, as any parent knows. Fwench fwy, anyone? Cad I ‘ave a gookie? Even as adults, many of us are attempting to duplicate mom’s macaroni and turkey stuffing,

Eduhonesty: This will be a short post. As Heidi said, we need to stop demonizing food. Because sometimes right now, it seems all the news is bad. Gas prices are scary, the weather is wrong, supply shortages have knocked favorite foods off the shelves, school shootings keep coming, adults and kids are putting schools on soft lockdown with rumors that sometimes turn into credible threats, and, all the while, omicron is surging.

If parents and teachers want to encourage healthy eating right now, that’s great. Pushing clean, fresh vegetables and fruits hurts no one. I am making daily fresh fruit smoothies, a fun activity that encourages eating melon pulped into juice.

But discussions revolving around fat, calories and weight have the potential to do harm, especially since weight gain has been one part of today’s COVID misery. According to Harvard University, “39% of patients gained weight during the pandemic, with weight gain defined as above the normal fluctuation of 2.5 pounds. Approximately 27% gained less than 12.5 pounds and about 10% gained more than 12.5 pounds, with 2% gaining over 27.5 pounds.” (Did we really gain weight during the pandemic? – Harvard Health).

It’s natural to want to attack our weight gain problem, but I’d like to suggest that maybe, in most cases, issues of weight gain should be left mostly alone. As a teacher, I have watched girls freak out over added pounds, cinching in waists with impossible belts and cutting out breakfasts and lunches. Then I have dealt with midmorning and afternoon eruptions, inspired by light dinners, few or no snacks and no breakfast. Those girls get hangry from lack of food. Sometimes they break into tears. Then they often binge eat as a consequence.

We can worry about fat calories later. I recommend treading lightly. Melon is a great snack. But if Ava wants a Candy Cane Chill Blizzard from Dairy Queen, I encourage parents and teachers to support her. Encourage her to go out safely with friends and then watch a fun movie (preferably not Night of the Dying, Sloppy Corpses Trying to Get Into the Mall, though if that’s a feel-good movie for her, I take back my last statement). Eating soft serve ice cream filled with candy chunks while relaxing at the end of the day may be exactly what Ava needs. Blizzards are cheaper than Prozac. They are low in sodium, have some useful calcium, and may not be high in fat, depending on what candy treat is mixed in.

Not that I’d necessarily share that nutritional information. Let’s take body image, weight gain and related topics off the table for now, while approaching nutrition and exercise carefully. Our kids have more than enough to manage.

I blogged on a crisis almost two weeks ago that the Surgeon General has just taken on. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy warns of youth mental health crisis worsened by pandemic – The Washington Post

From the CDC (Emergency Department Visits for Suspected Suicide Attempts Among Persons Aged 12–25 Years Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January 2019–May 2021 | MMWR (cdc.gov)):

“During 2020, the proportion of mental health–related emergency department (ED) visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased 31% compared with that during 2019.”

…

“In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ED visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among adolescents aged 12–17 years, especially girls. During February 21–March 20, 2021, suspected suicide attempt ED visits were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019; among boys aged 12–17 years, suspected suicide attempt ED visits increased 3.7%.”

ESPECIALLY GIRLS. Astoundingly, suspected suicide attempts were a remarkable 50.6% higher among girls compared to boys at only 3.7%. On a normal day I might let that 3.7% pass unremarked. With COVID and other changes between 2019 and 2021, a slight uptick in attempted suicide rates seems understandable.

But an increase of 50.6% — that number blows up the charts. That number is a nuclear bomb. If I were to pick a leading indicator to document a group’s emotional breakdown, I doubt I could find a better choice than suspected suicide attempts. Any group that shows a 50% increase in suicide attempts is absolutely in crisis.

Eduhonesty: The toxic emphasis on testing has been attacked repeatedly in this blog, but repealing unnecessary testing right now seems like putting a band-aid on a third-degree burn. We have to do more than reclaim our classroom days for teaching. We have to reclaim our children. When death seems like the best option to a physically healthy adolescent, in a country that has seen 28 school shootings this year, we need to slam on the brakes. IMMEDIATELY.

Discussions related to curriculum and test deficiencies need to be thrust onto the backburner. State standardized tests should be cancelled for at least a year or two in order to work on more urgent problems — such as those many girls who are obviously buckling under the strain of everyday life in 2021. What is happening?

I’d like to ask readers for help me. We have to discuss those girls. What is happening to our girls? Why are they falling into such depths of depression? What are we doing wrong? Or what are we not doing? We can’t leave this to the Surgeon General and US health bureaucracy. We can’t leave it to the schools. Please share this post. The mental health of our girls needs to be at the top of today’s confused agenda.

These are suicide attempts.

I am glad we are finally hearing more about this crisis — and I hope there will be more focus on the astounding difference in effects by gender.

*Note to parents: If you have a child who is slated to receive special services, I would check to see that those services are being delivered. If they are not, please don’t simply demand compliance. The district may be UNABLE to comply with last year’s plan. Instead, work with your district to find a workable solution for support.

“Kristine” chants, fiddles, breaks her pencil lead.

Ignores the latest test.

Looks sad.

Her mechanical pencil will not survive this test.

I give her a yellow pencil.

The pencil is so not the problem, though, as a middle school student might say.

_________________________________________________________________

Tension is baking off of Kristine in silent waves, as she kills graphite threads. The administration wants this latest writing test. But it’s another test. Test. Test. Test.

One way I know that our relentless measuring of knowledge has gotten out of hand: I am grateful Kristine is breaking her pencils instead of herself. It’s a teacher thing. When I see long-sleeves and pants on hot, muggy Illinois days, I wonder if a student is a cutter. Are there scars below those sleeves?

The tension out here has ratcheted up too. They are not OK, these pencil breakers.

Here are a few sobering facts from the CDC (Emergency Department Visits for Suspected Suicide Attempts Among Persons Aged 12–25 Years Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic — United States, January 2019–May 2021 | MMWR (cdc.gov)):

“During 2020, the proportion of mental health–related emergency department (ED) visits among adolescents aged 12–17 years increased 31% compared with that during 2019.”

Stress levels in some areas have become meteoric, especially among girls. I’d like the CDC or someone to explain this latest gender disparity, too:

“In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, ED visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among adolescents aged 12–17 years, especially girls. During February 21–March 20, 2021, suspected suicide attempt ED visits were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019; among boys aged 12–17 years, suspected suicide attempt ED visits increased 3.7%.”

Eduhonesty: I honestly don’t have the slightest idea how to explain what is happening to the girls.

I know Kristine is barely making it through the day and we have lots of Kristines.

I know it’s time to stop measuring so much and start nurturing our students more. Students can make up learning loss over time — but first they have to be peaceful and enthusiastic enough to engage with new material and optimistic enough to believe they should invest in their own futures.