A value proposition for a new era

Recently, I read an article in The New York Times about the debate over whether Earth is entering a new epoch (Zhong, 2022). Geologists categorize Earth’s existence according to epochs, and within them are eras and eons during which species thrived and went extinct. Humans are but a blip in the timeline, but we are ones defining the terms of the debate today. Soon after I read this article, a colleague who’s the superintendent of a diverse and well-heeled suburban district told me that she feels we’ve entered a distinctly new era of leadership. Let’s call this the PTSP era — Post-Trump, Sorta Post-pandemic.

Scientists have organized bodies that formally name time spans, but public educators have no such thing. We generally point to significant pieces of legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act or major reports like A Nation at Risk. And we collapse periods from the more distant past under umbrella terms, such as the Progressive Era. Each of these categorizations represents an era of school reform grounded in distinct beliefs about how to ensure that more students achieve standards that prepare them for college and careers.

The standards-based reform era may still shackle public educators to the yoke of annual state tests and related policies, but much of the air has gone out of the balloon in our PTSP era. More attention is being paid to social-emotional learning, mental health, and issues of diversity and equity. Students and parents are pushing for change in both constructive and destructive ways. And while few would disagree that our goal is to take care of our kids, there are endless competing perspectives on what teachers should do with students every day, how to organize schools and districts, and how to measure progress — among other things. When there are fewer clear guardrails than ever and more folks are clamoring for change, school system leaders face serious questions about the value proposition of public schools.

A profound question

At the beginning of the school year, I visited my friend Jen Webster who had just started a new job as the No. 2 leader in a very diverse district of about 25,000 students. When I asked Jen about the main issues she’s facing, she shared that student behaviors were at the top of the list. As a veteran middle and high school principal, Jen had never seen anything like it. But one anecdote she shared has stayed with me.

A high school student who had been acting out asked Jen why she needed to be in school and sit through a boring class when she could be getting all of the information online, at home, on her own schedule, as she had during COVID-induced shutdowns. Her inappropriate behavior stemmed from a very reasonable question: “Why should I have to get up early and sit quietly in class to receive information from an adult when I could just access it on my own terms?“

Jen and I talked about how simple and profound that question is and how challenging it is to give a good answer. We know we must do things differently. We know we can’t go back to the way it was. We know that we need to do something new, and we want to do something new, but we are not sure exactly what that looks like. At the same time, our school leaders have to find enough teachers, bus drivers, and substitutes and manage money responsibly to get results. All this while kids are in crisis and parents are organizing politically to thwart anything they don’t like, especially if it’s grounded in equity.

We know that we need to do something new, and we want to do something new, but we are not sure exactly what that looks like.

It seems to me that what many of us think is most important about public school has shifted since March 2020. There are long-standing valid debates about whether schools should prepare students for academics, citizenship, or employment — and, of course, the answer is “all of the above.” Today, in the PTSP-era, I think our disagreements focus on the experience of schooling itself, rather than the outcomes.

The methods by which schools go about their work have been largely left to the devices of educators, the marketplace, and the research and policy communities. Curriculum development is a classic inside-baseball process. But now, students and parents have eyes wide open to the limitations of typical in-person schooling and ask, “If I can download it, why do I need to come to class?” Combine this with the incredibly effective playbooks of Christopher Rufo and the Moms for Liberty organizing against anything that suggests America is not a perfect country, and leaders are left to defend their practice against both legitimate questions and misinformed provocations. So, what does a strategic defense look like?

Leading, not fighting

During the holiday break, I was laid up with a bad cold, which gave me the opportunity to rewatch one of my favorite shows, The Sopranos. In one episode, Tony Soprano talks about one of my favorite books on leadership: The Art of War by Sun-Tzu. One of Sun-Tzu’s most important lessons is don’t get into a fight you’re not going to win. Fighting is easy. Changing the dynamic so that all parties walk away with something can be much harder. But that’s leadership.

As we consider the value proposition of school during the PTSP era, more leaders are going to have to learn how not to fight. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting that superintendents stop standing up for kids and families when there are egregious wrongs. Nor should folks just give up and walk away. I’m suggesting an alternative approach that rests in the notion of healing from collective trauma.

When I taught adolescents labeled severely emotionally disturbed back in Brooklyn in the 1990s, I learned not to take their behaviors personally and to acknowledge the depth of their feelings even if the trigger seemed minimal. The classic example is when a student inadvertently bumps into another in the hallway. Many students can brush that off and keep walking, hopefully with a mutual acknowledgement — “excuse me” or “my bad.” But for my students, a slight bump in passing could lead to a major throw down. I had to learn that their reaction wasn’t about the actual interaction, it was about something in them that they didn’t know how to handle. I had to learn to acknowledge their perspective before I could calm them down and get to the deeper issues at hand. I had to understand their trauma of living in abject poverty, not having stable homes and families, and being regularly let down by schools and the social service system.

Community for learning

In the last few years, our young people have experienced a variety of traumas, and at different degrees. Some have been significantly affected by the loss of loved ones, changes in their economic status, their own sickness, and increased isolation. Others fared relatively well, with the main downside of schooling at home being that they played too many video games or spent too much time on social media. For all young people, whatever their degree of trauma, the value of school comes from and within the community. The experience of school, of being with caring peers and loving adults, can sustain them. Of course, community shouldn’t be built at the expense of academic progress and achievement of goals. Yet community can be the very thing about school that helps young people re-engage in achieving academic goals (Pope & Miles, 2022).

The creation of community among students requires adults to work together, perhaps in professional learning communities where they determine standards, analyze data, and design units of study. It also requires them to create a classroom that promotes collaboration. Let students access basic information while at home in their PJs. Then they can engage deeply with each other and with caring adults in applying that knowledge to real-life challenges. Community means seeking to understand why an emotionally fragile student overreacts from getting bumped in the hall, instead of just telling them to calm down. And when a high schooler questions why they need to come to school, community means giving them a reason to want to be there. This is how you can avoid the fight.

It’s harder to be generous about parents and organized advocates who bring contentiousness and conflict to school board meetings. Yet their tax dollars fund schools, and they have the right to show up, whether we like it or not. Bad behavior should never be excused, but I think many of these loud and angry people are experiencing their own kind of trauma — let’s call it a Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They know they’re in a shrinking minority.

People of color will be a majority of the U.S. population within the next generation. Many white people are just fine with that. But a small — yet significant — number of people are terrified. What if we saw them as traumatized by the blinders they’ve had on for their whole lives? What if we sought to understand that they’re acting out because they fear losing what they thought they had? What if we gave them an entry point to a community where they could learn a different way?

I know, it sounds like a Pollyanna pipe dream. Yet, educators have a responsibility to educate, even if we don’t always like who’s in our class. This is the time when we must invite people into difficult conversations about how we want to live together, rather than continue to shrink our circle of allies. The value proposition of public school for adults is that they too can be part of a community that is working toward achieving shared goals that will benefit all their children.

Establishing that the value proposition of public school is about the community itself is a leadership challenge that is vast, complex, and likely to lead to frustration and failure. I don’t suggest any of this is easy. Yet, I’m not sure I see another way. What we do every day with our students and with each other can make a difference. Perhaps some adults can’t  be saved. But lots of otherwise good people who just want to see their children succeed have been duped into thinking that they’re right about what bathrooms should be used, what books should be read, and what the truth is about American history. They too, deserve some grace. Frankly, I don’t know the alternative.

References

Pope, D.C. & Miles, S. (2022). A caring climate that promotes belonging and engagement. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 8-12.

Zhong, R. (2022, December 17). For planet Earth, this might be the start of a new age. The New York Times.

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This article appears in the March 2023 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 6, pp. 54-55.