#155 Teachers Speak Out

Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Welcome to Have You Heard. I'm Jennifer Berkshire. And I'm Jack Schneider. And Jack, you have this sort of pale, shiny look that tells me that you have been glad-handing, hobnobbing. In all of its rooms, just so many conference rooms. Yeah, I've been away from the sun for many days and huddled up with my 10,000 closest friends at AERA. But, you know, it's good to be back in the real world. Well, for listeners who aren't aware, AERA is really sort of the education research gala of the year. It's spectacular. It's like Comic-Con, except with educational research of highly varying quality being delivered in like a Disney World style way where you couldn't possibly ride every ride at the same time and end up just going out for drinks with the three people you actually are friends with. And I'm sure the education researchers who happen to be listening that snide reference to varying quality did not refer to you or your work. Nope, not at all. While you've been off-huddled with various education researchers, I've been hard at work on the latest episode and I'm going to tell you about it now. Oh, I hope it's a good one. Back is everyone knows my very favorite episodes are the ones that a listener suggests and that's what we have in store today. It comes from former Georgia teacher of the year, Tracy Nance. And I'm just going to read to you what she wrote because I think you will instantly understand why this would grab me. Okay, here goes. I'm a regular, have you heard listener and then these absolutely insane times want you to know there are many state teachers of the year working against the current harmful legislation. And to offer our support and assistance as you cover education this year. The war being waged against teachers is not getting enough attention and it has gotten really bad out here and really bad out here is in caps. So when when Tracy when I saw Tracy's message, I made this sound. And I thought, how can we how can we get to work and so what we've got for you today is the really sort of the testimony of four different teachers of the year who are using their teacher voices to push back and I think it's really eye opening and it really does sort of bring to life exactly what Tracy said. Things are really bad out there. Jennifer, just a tip when you say teacher voices that actually implies that they spoke really loudly because those of us who generally speak pretty quietly when we use our teacher voices you don't want to be too close to the microphone there. I'm so glad that she flashed the have you heard equivalent of the bat signal so that. And now I'm realizing that I think I'm Robin in this situation and that makes you bat lady which I can deal with I can deal with so that we can join them as allies here in this this fight where I you know if it's a fight and it's about teachers you know we're I think it's clear who side we're going to be on. Well Robin while I proceed with the episode I have a very important task for you I want you to do some research. Uh, dredge up some polling data for us and we will see you back here in your tights. This is a big ask that's all I'm going to say. To the main event we are fortunate enough to be joined by four former teachers of the year first up is Monica Washington the 2014 Texas teacher of the year she's originally from Memphis and spent nine years there teaching English to seventh graders and then she met a Texan and fell in love it can happen which is how she ended up in Texas. And then she met a Texas teacher of the year she was from Texas and then she met a Texas teacher of the year she was from Texas and then she met a Texas teacher of the year she was from Texas. She was a very well-known business in my classroom connecting with my colleagues having a good time being the spelling coach for our school for our weekend competitions also coordinating our college prep program who were from families in which they would be the first to go to college that's the work that I was doing when my colleagues nominated me to be teacher of the year for our school. And then she met a Texas teacher of the year she was from the year the process by which Monica was selected as the top teacher in Texas started at her school then it just kept going through the region and the entire state surprising her at every step of the way. But Monica says that what really mattered to her about the honor was why she was selected. And then she said that she was a very praised the thing that I was so happy that they praised because it was what I tried so hard to do which was to build community with my students to allow them to have choice to allow them to connect with the community. And so we had a service together we engaged in discourse a lot I had this process that I used with my students that I called painting a complete picture. We had our state standards and we had our things that Texas told me that I had to teach them and read with them. But we also knew that there were things that were left out there were perspectives that were left out say for example if we were told to read the great guest beer we were told to read the scarlet letter. And we were told to think about what's missing whose voices are missing and so I would start them off and pull in some other pieces of literature could be also music and art. And that allowed them to see what was missing from the curriculum and that was something that that was praise allowing students to be able to have conversations about difficult topics and to do it in a way that it was safe and that they could learn about each other and learn about themselves in a place where there's a teacher sort of guiding them to do that. We talk about students being able to see themselves in the curriculum and our state standards didn't really allow all of my students to see themselves so that was a priority for me. Listening to Monica talk about the kind of teaching that got her name best in Texas. I couldn't help but think that things are looking a little well different in the Lone Star state right now. Monica describes her style of engaging students as mirrors and windows making sure students are represented in what gets taught and then opening up the world to them with Texas now limiting classroom discussion of quote unquote divisive concepts. I asked Monica if her style of teaching would even be possible right now. I have shed tears over that because I know that there are amazing teachers who are out there who want to engage their students and you know conversation want to allow them to explore beyond what we're told to teach or what we are told to read with our students. These types of lessons now are considered divisive I've had my students talk to each other about race and it's never been me telling them what to think a student wrote a letter for me recently about what she learned or remembered about my class. She's a teacher now and the very thing that she named is something that I wouldn't be able to do now she said that I gave them choice. I gave them an opportunity to discuss difficult topics and that I stood to the side and I didn't teach them what to think but I taught them how to think there seems to be legislation now that prevents teachers from doing this very thing those topics are considered divisive. In her current role Monica travels all over the country speaking to teachers and advocating for their profession but it's when she's talking to teachers in Texas that the reality of the conservative clamp down on schools hits hardest. When I talk to colleagues across the state they say to me you know Monica I love the resources that you share with us I love the things that you did as a teacher and the things that you talk so much about but we're afraid to do these things now so. We stick to the script and we don't deviate from it and when students want to talk we have to shut them down and so how sad is that that a classroom that is supposed to be about inquiry and asking questions and exploring now teachers have to censor themselves even censor their students because they're afraid of violating our divisive concepts field. I'm not a teacher of the year because I'm a good English teacher which I am but I'm a teacher of the year for Texas because I did the things that they banned. And Monica is not alone in feeling that way history teacher Chris deer was named the 2020 Louisiana teacher of the year and was a national teacher of the year finalist that year he taught in St Bernard Parish. Louisiana for a decade and now teaches at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans. Chris says that a big part of the reason that his teaching has been recognized is that he really tries to make history engaging. One of the reasons that I felt like I was a successful teacher and other teachers find success in the history classroom is because when we teach history we do our best to teach full history and ensure that we're being incredibly inclusive and incorporating so many different stories and experiences and not shy in a way from history that students so rightfully deserve to know. And that does increase engagement. We're not just teaching a whitewash version of our country. We're teaching all of the great things our country did, but also not glossing over huge monumental events. I literally got to teach so much interest and content today. We studied the labor movement, the progressive era and the populist movement and what people have sacrificed to make this country a better place. Then there's Tracy Nance, the 2020 and 2021 Georgia teacher of the year who set this episode in motion. Tracy was a fourth grade teacher interventionist and instructional coach in the Atlanta public schools and she went from being held up as an exemplar of great teaching one year only to see her work attacked and politicized the next. Here in Georgia I was being invited to speak on educational equity and social emotional skills and that is what was being celebrated and I was being invited from all over the place. I even was invited by the Georgia Department of Education to give a talk to leaders on how to monitor culturally responsive teaching and social emotional skills. And what's so odd is that just one year ago in January of 2022 when the primary races were heating up in Georgia, there became a battle of who could have the best education policy and at that time it meant pushing forward on this resolution about teaching on race. And the state actually removed my social emotional skills lesson from their website because one of the candidates accused the Department of Ed and Governor of teaching what they call critical race theory. And it's wild. These have been celebrated. Good teachers have been doing this for decades. I never even really called it, you know, SCL in my classroom because it was just our morning meeting, our community gathering, our time to learn together and with one another. No, at this point you're probably thinking, well, this is kind of a downer. If even a claim teachers like our guests are feeling this beat up, things must be really bad. And while that may be true, it's time for us to move on to the part where these teachers of the year decided that they needed to do something. Together they're part of a new initiative called the Voices for Honest Education Fellowship, part of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year. Tracy says that she and the other fellows are trying to use their platform to speak up on behalf of teachers who might not be able to. This particular group got started because of these bills. The National Network of State Teachers of the Year has existed for a while. The top 10 finalists for each state is allowed to join every year along with that state winner. And there's a big focus on that teacher voice and impacting policy for our kids and their families. I think one of the things that makes state teachers of the year ready and able to speak out is that we don't have to worry as much about the consequences of that pushback. Each of us have had many, many teachers from our states email us telling us their concerns and asking us to speak up because they're afraid to. They're absolutely afraid to. The concept behind the group is pretty simple. During their season in the spotlight, these teachers of the year get used to having a microphone. In other words, they're already comfortable speaking up. One thing that I learned throughout that experience was how big my voice is. When you are a teacher inside of those four walls, you're so focused on what's going on with the kids in front of you, their identities, their hopes, their struggles. And so we tend to forget that we can speak out about it. We put our trust in politicians and say they've got this. They've got public education at a minimum. And we tend to look away. But what we learned in this role is that we do have so many important things to say. And when it comes to pedagogy, when it comes to the kids who are put in front of us in that particular classroom space, teachers are experts. We know what kids need and we know what helps them grow. For history teacher Chris Deere, speaking out seemed like the obvious thing to do. If politicians were going to weigh in on his field, he was going to push back. I felt like I had the competence and expertise to be able to weigh in on it because I literally teach history for a living. So if there was going to be legislation that has passed concern in teaching history, I wanted to weigh in on it because who better knows but history teachers themselves, a lot of this legislation, they're not passed in good faith and they're certainly not passed by history teachers. So I wanted to ensure that teachers' voices are at the forefront. But more importantly, our students' voices are at the forefront and it's been incredibly crucial work Louisiana tried to pass a bill, an anti-honest education bill to bend with a called critical race theory. And this bill was stopped in its tracks because teachers and students organized because we wrote up it's because we protested. The work it never ends and I didn't want to just get a title and sit back like we are in a long term struggle and so we need to engage in that struggle because it's a healthy struggle and one that puts our students first. There's another reason why these former teachers of the year are uniquely positioned to speak out publicly against say bills limiting what teachers can teach and students can learn. As public figures, they occupy a sort of in between space. On the one hand, they are actual teachers whose students and parents know. On the other, they are a stand-in for the teachers who are constantly being attacked in the abstract. As an ex officio member of the Georgia School Board, Tracy got to know that in between space all too well. When they hear what people are saying about teachers and to me specifically, total strangers, my family is appalled. When it gets personal, it gets very real. And a lot of the narrative, the negativity, they start to see how senseless it is. The only pushback that I received here was just political. After I spoke out on NPR, the superintendent's chief of staff called me and asked me to apologize to our state board chairman. And I really thought about it and I decided that professionally I had spoken on behalf of teachers and students and that an apology for using my rights to freedom of speech was not warranted. That the governor had given me that seat expecting me to use my voice and that's what I did. And Steve says he's keenly aware of the disconnect between the political attacks on teachers versus how he's regarded within his own school community. I don't really see it from personal parents or people in my life. Like when I get to know my students and their parents and I engage with them, it's always incredibly positive and interactive. And a lot of the pushback that I see, they're from people that aren't necessarily engaged with their teachers personally. And there's some interesting studies that show that a lot of people do like their kids' teachers, but they might believe something about teachers in general. And they sit with that cognitive dissonance because I have hardly ever received pushback from parents that I work with because in many ways they can see everything that I'm doing. My calendar is public. I send emails. The students bring things home. I encourage them to have conversations with their parents. I talk with them and to come back to the classroom. And we engage with our students and our communities. Usually they engage with us back in positive and healthy ways. And that's who we do this for. That's why we show up every day. That's why we put in the work and the time and the effort and the labor. We do it for our communities. Okay, so Jack, you've been patiently standing by and I understand that you have some polling data for us to really kind of capture that distinction we were just talking about. But on the one hand, the teachers we've been hearing from are, you know, they're thanks to these positions, they're public figures. And so they sort of stand in for what I think of as big teacher. And on the other hand, they are actually, you know, they're like teachers who parents and community members actually know. And so, you know, that's the sort of thing that people find really confusing. Like on the one hand, they're hearing all this terrible stuff about teachers. And on the other hand, the teachers that they know don't seem to be doing all of that in doctoration. And so I know that you have been digging up some data to help us figure that split out. Go. That's right. I've just been randomly dialing people and asking them questions and then writing their answers down on a piece of paper. And I'm ready to report out on this. So some of this data comes from the annual PDK poll. So the Phydelta capa poll run by Phydelta capa international publisher of Phydelta capa. They're all their free advertisements right there. And some of it comes from the education next poll. there some days. differences in the way that they structure poll questions. So sometimes they'll ask the same question in essence and get different results. But the first that I wanna talk about comes from the PDK poll. And as our regular listeners know, one of my favorite findings every year from the PDK poll is that Americans have a much higher opinion of their local schools, and particularly their own kids' schools, then they do of the nation's schools as a whole. And I find that really fascinating, right? That it reveals a lot about our national narrative about the public schools, which doesn't really align with our lived experiences. And the Kappin poll has some interesting evidence that basically says the same thing about teachers. So they asked about trust and confidence in public school teachers. And among all adults, there was only 63% positive response to confidence in community public school teachers. Now that includes public school parents alongside folks who are not parents of school age kids in the schools. Among public school parents, it's almost 10% higher, it's 72%. And we can imagine that if we were able to tease this apart and look just at people who do not have kids in the schools compared with folks who do, or if they had asked the question, an exact parallel to the way they ask the question about the nation's schools, give your own child's school a letter grade A through F, give the nation's schools a letter grade A through F, I think we would see an even larger split there. And interestingly, that split is even wider when they ask questions about confidence in teachers to appropriately handle different subjects and different areas of the curriculum. So the split, for instance, on the ability of teachers to appropriately handle US history, 67% of public school parents are positive about that, whereas only 56% of adults overall are. We can see similarly wide gaps around social and emotional growth, racial and ethnic diversity, media literacy, how the history of racism affects America today and gender and sexuality issues. So I think it's really interesting to think about one of the things that we've talked about on this show, right, the narratives that emerge in the abstract about education in the United States, as opposed to the lived experiences that people have. And then I think it's also interesting to look at how different kinds of identity characteristics or political affiliations further shape that. So it's not merely that there's a split here between the lived experiences that people have and the narratives that they're exposed to. It's also that they are more likely to believe or adopt particular kind of narratives if they come from particular kinds of backgrounds or have particular kinds of political affiliations. So one of the things that jumped out at me from the cap and pull was that in terms of community confidence in public school teachers, 76% of folks who have more than a college degree. So maybe they have a graduate degree or maybe they just did coursework beyond the bachelor's degree. 76% of them have positive feelings about their community's public school teachers. That number drops to 55% among those with no more than a high school diploma. And I think that that's actually a proxy for political affiliation more than anything else. I think there's probably some complex stuff going on there about race and class and region. But I think actually this speaks to one of the things that you and I have talked about and written about, which is that the Republican Party has done a really effective job of alienating particularly rural people, but white people without college degrees from the Democratic Party and one of the ways they've done that is by using schools as a site for culture war. And so I think we see that playing out in this data. If you just look at the Democrat Republicans split, Democrats, 73% trust local teachers, whereas Republicans only 60% do, which I think squares with the data we were just looking at. But that's all Republicans as opposed to the figure I gave earlier was people with less than a high school degree. So we're talking about a particular kind of person, probably Republican, I would guess in that situation, but not necessarily. And then the last figure I want to share comes from the education next poll. And that's just about faith or confidence in teachers unions. And so people who identify as Democrats were 60% supportive of teacher unions in the ednext poll. And the ednext poll is sort of understood to lean more right center in their framing of questions. So that number might have been higher had it been asked, for instance, by the NEA in their poll. And only 22% of people identifying as Republicans were positive about teachers unions. And those numbers were actually even more stark around teachers' right to strike. So I think what we're seeing here is not only the emergence of an abstract narrative around teachers, which I think is relatively new historically speaking. There are certainly some broader generic narratives around teachers, but these politicized narratives, I think are relatively new. And I think that they are easier to weaponize among particular constituencies. And I think that all of this place out in the polling. Well, thank you for that, Jack. That was really enlightening. And I mean that. And you did a great job of calling people on your rotary phone, on the wall, in your kitchen. That's right. Sample size was 13. Yeah. So you stand by for now. And we're going to be picking up on some of these issues later. OK. Back to our special guest. We've been hearing from three former teachers of the year who are using their platforms to speak up on behalf of honest education for other teachers who might be too afraid to speak out and against legislation that's targeting vulnerable kids. So how's it going? Well, you already heard that bills to ban the teaching of so-called critical race theory in Louisiana were a flop, thanks to the efforts of Christie and others. And when Georgia recently considered its own version of Florida's Don't Say Gay Bill, Tracy Nance was on hand to use her teacher voice in opposition. Here's some of her testimony. We have a lot in common here. And foremost, what we have in common is a desire to protect families and kids. And that brings me to the name of this bill. It says it is to protect us. And I'm wondering right now who it does actually protect. When I'm looking here and I'm listening to what I'm seeing, it is the parents who seem to not understand or have eyes and ears and a voice of their own to see their children's, what we're calling, gendered behavior. It seems like we're about to force a bill on everybody. When really, we need to talk about the parents that are having trouble speaking with their children. Maybe that is a bill that we need to look at, right? If children aren't talking to the parents, they don't trust their parents. That seems like the bigger issue here. I don't think that we need to put this on teachers. That bill, it failed, along with a massive school voucher bill. You'll be hearing more about how Georgia activists stopped the school privatization train in a future episode. So this is great news, right? Well, this is where our story gets a little more complicated because the position of teacher of the year has always been a political until now. To help us navigate these tricky waters, we need to bring in one more star teacher. Her name is Gina Nelson. And she was the 2020 Oklahoma teacher of the year. She has taught everything from theater to English, winning too many accolades to describe here. And she says that during her time as teacher of the year, she made a point of steering clear of politics until she felt like she had no choice. As the teacher of the year, you are not political. You are just there to represent education. And then I saw all of the things that were going on in Oklahoma, all the threats that were coming. And I realized that it was time to give educators a voice at the table. Then last year, Gina decided to get into politics in a big way. She ran for superintendent of education in Oklahoma. Even though I was not successful at winning against the guy who believes that there's kitty litter in our classroom, what I was able to do is have conversations in every single county, 77 counties in Oklahoma about the true issues that education is facing right now. As someone who rooted for Gina from afar, I can tell you that she ran an amazement. But she worries that defining support for public education in terms of political parties is a really dangerous trend. I truly believe that education is not Democrat or Republican. It is an issue that affects every single person. And I really feel that we have to stop weaponizing education to be a Republican or a Democrat issue. That's just who I am. That's my belief system. But you know, it's really interesting how education though has become the political pond that everyone is using to move a variety of agendas. Whether it is agendas to remove certain curriculum because they believe that they're teaching inequality or they're trying to make people think that diversity is, you know, some kind of villainous thing that we are indoctrinating children with. Or that they're trying to isolate, you know, the LGBTQIA communities as well. Or they're trying to push whatever agenda that they have by basically including it into certain curriculums. So for example, the gentleman who beat me, he really wants to put teachers in these classes from Hillsdale College that teach patriotic education or reeducation. That is truly for me. What is very terrified. In other words, public education has to have the support of the public, which is precisely why it's under such attack. Education is what actually helped a person like me who came from nothing. I came from rural Oklahoma. Very traumatic background. The thing that lifted me up was public education. If it was not for my teachers and the school districts, I would not be alive today. That is not me saying that in any kind of hyperbolic way at all. And so I know the power of public education. And I think that others do too. So having that grasp on education where we can make people fear what teachers are doing in our classrooms or place mistrust in our communities. That is a weapon that many are using right now to really get their own needs and gains and monetize and make lots of money off of it. And so that has zero regrets about using her teacher voice to run for office in Oklahoma. She's now starting a pack to support other pro public education candidates. But one of the lessons she learned is that no matter how vocal teachers are, they can't win this battle on their own. What I would say to teachers is that we have to say vocal. I know it's scary. I have spent the last 10 months on the road up against some very scary situations. I know I wish I could tell people right now that you know everything is going to be okay. But if we stand back and we are complacent in our advocacy, not activism. There is nothing that can be done by standing outside and holding up a sign. We have to be engaged with our legislators, with our parent groups. We need more public education, parent legislative action groups. We need more of our faith leaders to come together and back public education. We need more people from the business communities to come in and back public education because the teachers cannot carry this battle on their own anymore. Back to Louisiana teacher Chris Deere. He says that he often hears from teachers these days who are fearful of raising their voices. And while he recognizes that his teacher of the year title puts him in a unique position, he says that he regularly reminds the teachers he talks to you about the power of their collective voices. They may say yes, you might be able to say this because you have that voice and platform, but at the end of the day in my classroom in my school, it's XYZ. And all I try to do is give teachers the best positive encouragement and tell them like yes, this is tough. We are engaged in a struggle and it's incredibly disillusioned. I don't want to downplay that at all. But at the end of the day, we are the pedagogical experts and our collective voices should be heavily weighted throughout this dialogue. And if we have a platform and if I have a platform and some sort of means or privilege to try to advocate in certain ways for policies, then yeah, you better believe I'm going to try to advocate to ensure that legislation is being passed that helps students have a supportive and affirmative educational environment. And then if legislation is being passed that does the exact opposite, which we're seeing a lot, then I'm going to try to organize with other teachers to push back against these draconian bills. There's no better person to engage in this fight for students than us teachers. So no matter what legislation is passed, no matter what your admin says in many ways, we got to stick to our guns and our narrative and what we say and what we believe and what we do on a daily basis speaks for itself in communities across the country. I asked all of our teachers of the year, what kind of advice they'd give to their peers right now. Chris says he wants teachers and history teachers in particular to remember how much impact they have on their students. It's a lesson that he learned from his first history teacher that would be his mom who still teaches history in Chalmet, Louisiana. Hi mom. And Chris says that he relearns that lesson almost every day. I think it's crucial, you know, as a teacher to never forget the power that a teacher can have on students. I mean as history teachers, we witness firsthand the positive impact of teaching truthful history to our kids and the impacts are incredibly positive. And I see it every day. I mean, I'm blessed with the powerful job of seeing kids thrive in real time when their identities are affirmed via the content that I am fortunate to teach even though they're legislation and laws out there to be honest, if legislation were to be passed that said that I couldn't I would do it anyway because throughout history acts of resistance have what moved us forward and have what progressed us teaching history. I think it's important to provide hope and joy when done right when students have opportunities to engage with one another to have productive conversations to see themselves reflected in the curriculum and to have opportunities and spaces where they can be empowered. At the end of the day, I'm a teacher. I love it and wouldn't have it any other way. And that's why I continue to teach and also to fight. In the Chicago Washington, the Texas teacher of the year, we met way back at the start of this episode has some advice for new teachers who are just starting out. We see them. We are them, right? We get them. And so as they are entering the profession that does not feel welcoming to them. It doesn't quite frankly feel welcoming to students right now. It's important for them early on to know the power of their voices that they can unite with like-minded educators and when they see something that is not being done that is uplifting for their students that is positive for their students. And when they see something definitely that is harmful to their students that they practice with each other first if they have to articulate those inequities. And I know it can feel scary when you are new and you need the money. Even though there's not much you need that you've worked for that and you don't want to jeopardize your profession. But Monica also asked if she could use this platform to speak to the world about an issue that's been on her mind a lot lately. Keeping your so many conversations about the teacher retention problem and it's often phrased as if it's a teacher problem. It is not. There are beautiful human beings who are ready to do this work but the culture of the profession, the context within which they have to do this job feels toxic. And so there are the conditions that need to be created for teachers to be able to be their best selves or best professional self. And that's just not happening. And so I don't want teachers to take it on when they feel stressed, when they feel like everything is going wrong that it is all their fault. It is a culture problem and I hope that they keep showing up and keep speaking up, get confident in the speaking up and be there as much as they possibly can for their kiddos. But take care of themselves in the process. And finally Tracy Nance, the driving force behind this episode Tracy take it away. Georgia teachers teachers across this country, I see you, I know the hard work you're doing, I know how intellectually, physically and emotionally demanding this work is even when the country is not debating your worth and your value. It does not matter what the media sells, it does not matter what extremists say, you are valuable and we need you. Our kids need you. My own children need you. Please keep at it. Please plug into communities of educators and family groups that are going to support you and uplift your amazing work and try to just put on your shades to block out all the shade. They're going to continue to throw your way because we know in history tells us that when we're making progress, there is going to be backlash. We also know that the moral arc of the universe is long, but we will get there if we keep teaching and we keep believing in our kids. A huge thanks to our special guests, Tracy Nance, Monica Washington, Chris Tier and Gina Nelson and Jack and I will be right back to talk more about the politicization of public education and to reveal the topic of our in the weed segment for our Patreon subscribers. Here's a hint. Jack recently predicted the public education is in for a rough ride in the near term, but he sees a rosier future. I want to know more. If you do too, just go to patreon.com/have-you-heard-podcast to become a supporter. So, Jack, I want to come back to something that you were talking about in your very helpful overview of that polling data. And that is the relatively recent emergence of a kind of politicized narrative around schools and teachers. And I have to say that I really share Gina Nelson's concern in this regard. We've just been through another round of school board elections earlier this spring. And on the one hand, there was some really good news there. You're starting to see these culture war candidates flounder. That's great. But on the other hand, you know, I could see, you know, there was clear evidence that in places like Illinois and Wisconsin, this is becoming, this is breaking down along just, you know, traditional party lines, right? In Illinois, for example, the Democratic Party wait-in, spent about $300,000. And, you know, I would say their investment paid off that the candidates who won were better than the candidates that they defeated. But you could also really see, you know, there's some red flags there that if if we just begin to understand anything having to do with schools, teachers, policies that govern both as yet another extension of our hyper partisan sort of political world, that, you know, that is, that's going to be a problem. Gina made such a compelling case that that public education depends on the support of the public in order to endure and help the kind of kid that she was. And that what that's what to me feels really dangerous about this moment. Yeah, I think if we look historically at some of the concerns around what educators may or may not have been doing in classrooms, right? We know that the politicization of public education and teaching is not new, but what is new, I think, is the broad brush strokes that are being used here. So, you know, in previous eras, the problem wasn't teachers. It was progressive teachers. The problem wasn't teachers. It was communist teachers. And maybe not even communist teachers, right? But like the communists themselves who probably doped a teacher or blackmailed a teacher into becoming a communist during the, you know, the sorts of upheavals we saw in the late 1970s and 80s and which continue through today around sex education, LGBTQ+ issues, right? The problem was often framed as a small number of teachers violating the wishes of parents and families and acting out of step with what most teachers were doing. Today, right, it's much different, right? It's that teachers are groomers. It's that teachers are agents of wokeness, right? These are the kinds of narratives. We hear much in the same way that, you know, once upon a time you look back at arguments about schools and their quality and it was often a particular kind of school that was framed as being outmoded out of step with current practices, right? So we saw this, for instance, in the late 19th or early 20th century around rural schools, right? Rural schools were not large enough. They didn't have the kinds of course offerings that students needed. Right? But the argument wasn't that America's schools were failing. It was that these teeny schools needed to be updated for the 20th century. After the Cold War, we began to see some more generic kinds of claims about the schools related to being able to keep pace with the Soviets. And by the 1980s, we see these arguments like that made in the Nation at Risk Report in 1983 that our schools had fallen horribly behind. And that's something we've been living with and dealing with for a couple generations. And, you know, I find myself surprised at myself that I didn't see this coming around teachers that the narrative around, you know, what a teacher is, what motivates teachers, what they are trying to do inside classrooms has changed. And I think the thing that surprises me the most in my own lack of, you know, foresight here is just how easy it is to make those claims about teachers, right? Like not only do families drop their kids off at the school and not come in with them, but teachers close their doors. You know, we don't know what's happening inside the classroom and we have taken it on faith. And I think that faith is well placed, but we've taken it on faith that educators are professionals that what they're doing is in the best interests of the young people in their care. Again, I think that's well placed faith, but it does ask a lot of people to say, you know, hey, drop your kids off as young as four years old at this building where, you know, you may have met the person who's going to be taking care of your kid all day or the set of adults who will be interacting with your child all day. But you certainly don't socialize with them on a regular basis. You don't have the kind of deep trusting relationships that you might have with, you know, close friends, really close contacts. So it is an act of social trust that we engage in and that's so much of what we try to do in education is built on a foundation of trust that is collectively established rather than individually established. Right? We rely on each other. We see, okay, well other people are doing this, other people have confidence. And in that sense, undermining that confidence makes it a little bit like the Wiley Coyote situation for those of us of certain vintage, right? Where he runs off the cliff and he's just fine until he looks down and then realizes that there's nothing under him and at that point he falls. And that's what I worry the most about right now is the erosion of the collective social trust that we have in and around public education. And it's been eroding for a couple of decades just around the idea of the public school and its quality. But it really hits close to home when you're talking about, you know, the teacher inside the classroom with your kid. That's such a good point that, you know, we don't really think about that is, you know, I think all of us understand that social trust has eroded. Look at what happened during the pandemic. And so that, you know, I think you're so right to focus on how that would really eat away. It's so much of what it is that schools do. Well, Jack, I can imagine that after listening to this episode and listening to you and you're pulling data and now you're very gloomy assessment that our listeners need a pick me up. And I'm hoping that you have something in your pocket for them when we go into the special area that we call the weeds. Yeah, it's our have you heard branded tang, which comes in pocket sized pouches and you can just pour it right into glass and it perks you right up. So for 999 a month as a Patreon subscriber, you can get a 10 pack of have you heard tang? You know, as soon as the word pocket left my mouth, I thought, oh no, I've done it again. I've walked right into this. I've set him up for one of his terrible, terrible, do we even call it a joke? Well, anyway, it's, it's real, Jennifer. So I recently read a piece in the in the new republic and it was about sort of what's happening in and around public schools and there's this, you know, many, many quotes from one Jack Schneider, Fessery UMass Loll and first I roll my eyes because, you know, like really like not only do I and then you realize what insight, but I have to say there was, you know, you did say something that really intrigued me. You made this point. I think it was the closing quote of the piece about how the, you know, the next, the near term things look really bad, but that you seem to think that this, this moment that we're in, we're going to get out of it. And I thought, well, I'd like to know more and I bet our listeners would too. So if this intrigues you listener, all you have to do is go to patreon.com/have you heard podcasts and you'll see a list of the extras you can get just for throwing a few dollars our way each month. We do a custom reading list. And if you subscribe at the $10 month level, you get a copy of the new paperback edition of a wolf at the school house door with a new preface by the authors and you get to come with us in the weeds. And for listeners whose journeys will be ending here. Thank you for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. We have grown, you know, maybe not exponentially, but whatever smaller word there is. to describe by orders of magnitude over the past few years and it's entirely because of word of mouth orders of magnitude. Yeah. So thank you for that. If you're a new listener, please make sure that you're a subscriber so that the latest episode automatically downloads. If you want to go on and give us a rating or a review, we continue to believe that that helps drive people our way. It is always a little disconcerting to see that there are multiple shows called "Have you heard we should at least be the top one of those?" And thanks for for dropping us male every now and then as well as for tagging the shows handle or tagging us when you're tweeting about particular episodes. It's always fun to see that people actually listen and sometimes appreciate what we're doing. On that note, I'm Jennifer Berkshire and I'm Jack Schneider. This is "Have You Heard." [BLANK_AUDIO]