Getting By With a Little Help From Our Friends - Gaining Strength from Knowing The Others Are Fighting, Too

One of the practices that I love (and was established for me by the Brown) is the importance of Critical Friendships (which I've published on, utilized in my own work, and continue to expand). Because of Dr. Michelle Farrell at Fairfield University, I now call them Courageous Friendships which has united a group of Divergent Award winners over the last few years as we meeting every other Tuesday to write, brainstorm, kvetch, bicker, and problem solve. Of late has been the drastic U-Turn that might be coming our way should the Department of Education get new leadership that is anti-diversity, equity, and inclusivity. We've been reading the plans and it is dire. Even so, we know we need to be prepared for the fallout, especially for teachers and kids.

At the same time, I'm covering a course this semester, Philosophical Foundations of Education, and bringing forward ideologies and thinkers of the past so that today's students have a context of what has led us to this point. On one hand it fascinates me that we could possibly face an anti-thinking, anti-historical, anti-truth educational direction, but those that have been studying digital literacies have been paying attention to the online movements for some time. 

There are many who are anti-school and we need to prepare for this. 

I know that schools are a hot mess. I blame testing 100% and administrative policing. I also know what is possible in schools and wish there were more models demonstrating how pushing against test-only instruction actually enhances student learning (I am bringing my students to a 3rd grade classroom next week, in which the principal noted they are on the 4th week of different tests, and next week is the first chance teachers have to teach...I'm being serious).

All of this is to say, that I began my 14-hour day yesterday where my courageous friends noted, "Crandall...there's something on your mind." There was...not only the debacle of K-12 teaching, but also the inanity of higher education and the directions they pull its faculty. Higher education works off of funding a corporate model of profit. K-12 schools do bake sales to get pens and paper. They are different worlds that should be better united. I had to leave our weekly gathering to attend a candidate for hire interview, but also see the ways such interviews are for illusion alone. It's frustrating, and I continually ask, "How are we defining expertise? Leadership? Quality?" 

I think I've been asking this since I began the profession.

Ah, but I have a turbo today...I'm ready (and thankful to This American Life's series of Hannah Nicole Jones as she first began her reporting career. The Problem We All Live With. I listen to this often, trying to get my head around the US educational system, and that is how my day will begin.

That, and with a grandiose prayer to THE GREAT WHATEVER to keep the damage to a minimum in Florida. Phew. I can't even fathom such a storm. 

And with that, it's off to campus I go.