Month: July 2022

Most public school teachers in Texas are not certified, according to a recent news report. This concerns me, not only because I am certified to teach two subjects, but the public may not care much or consider this development a bit of a tragedy in the ongoing American presumption—for generations now—that public education is broken beyond repair.

Back in the 1950s, when my mother was in college studying to be an elementary teacher, graduates with the degree were deemed certified to teach any subject. They were ‘teachers,’ hired to teach whatever subject was necessary: coaching, history, math, music, science, civics, even more than one subject.

Then the progressive ’60s came along, and teacher certification became a whole new ball of wax. Teachers needed to major in their chosen subjects (except for elementary teachers who were still expected to teach all the basics). Secondary teachers needed to choose a major like history, P.E., music, science, language arts, foreign language, government, business, etc., etc. So when I was going to school in the ’70s, teachers knew their subjects well like reading, math, history, band, and whatever the schools offered and the district and state curriculum required.

Then the ’80s came along with society’s alarm over high school graduates who were functionally illiterate. At the time, I was in college studying to be a teacher, and in Texas the rules changed drastically every two years after each Legislative session. First, every current teacher and professor in the state was tested in reading and writing. Though the teachers’ passing rate was at 98%, a few teachers lost their jobs. A coach and a shop teacher come to mind. There was talk among us college kids that the whole thing was racist, a stunt to put out mainly Black teachers who did not attend white-only colleges back in the Jim Crow days.

Then those of us who still wanted to be teachers had to take pre-certification tests in reading, writing and math. Ugh. I was never good at math but had to pass the subject to be a teacher … of any subject. Later we had to take certification tests in not only our subject(s) but also education itself. Somehow in those days, I ended up taking a good 40 hours of just education coursework including student teaching. And even before student teaching, we had to take brief workshops in teaching reading. We were told the State of Texas considered every teacher a reading teacher—and if a student graduated illiterate, we all could be blamed and our certificates revoked. Ugh.

There’s an art to teaching

Those education courses ended up being like a minor for all-level students like me: those studying music, P.E. or art. There were a lot of classes, tucked into the required general undergraduate course of study and your major subject. And truly, most education courses ended up being fun, enlightening, and easy compared to college in general. Maybe that last part is why the public is OK with teachers not necessarily knowing ‘how to teach’ when starting out. The public expects a novice to learn on the job like a cashier, bank teller, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, legislator. The problem is: schools are Kid World not the Real Work World most adults know well.

Kid World is not like family life either. Believe it or not, kids in school generally act nothing like they do in front of their parents. Parenting and teaching are not the same thing either; the goals of parenting and teaching are not the same; neither are their respective outcomes.

But I credit all that education coursework for preparing me for what to expect when walking into a class of 20 students any grade K-12. And I was surprised to learn from day one everything I had been taught about student behavior and attitudes was true.

Back in the mid ’80s, along with all the teacher tests, were required education courses such as: History of American Education, Multicultural Education, Lesson Planning, Classroom Management, Educational Technology, Early Childhood Development and Educational Psychology (more than one course).

And the year I graduated, earning my Texas teacher certificate the same date, the Legislature reduced those courses to about 18 hours, kicking out Multicultural Education for one. That lone course was in many ways the most important to me as a WASP (you know, White Anglo Saxon Protestant). Didn’t even know I was one or how ‘we,’ white people, think, act and behave especially toward non-whites. Educators of future educators knew the projected demographics, so we’d be prepared. They weren’t wrong … about anything.

In the 1990s, the Texas Legislature, trying to fill so many open teaching slots across the state—which continues—allowed anyone with a college degree to be a teacher. Some school districts hire on the spot; others create 50 hours of online coursework to complete within the first year of teaching; some districts create an alternative certification program. But an AC teacher may never have to take college education courses of days gone by.

The philosophy of the Texas Legislature, allowing college graduates to apply for and receive teaching jobs even if not certified, was that secondary students would benefit from the wealth of knowledge shared by an adult who had spent a career in banking or the military, for example.

But now most teachers are sans ‘certification.’ Does that really benefit young people? Most teachers quit within five years of trying out the career, granted whether they’re certified or not. I’ve seen new teachers quit the first week, first month, first semester, and first year. Can’t blame them. They are educated and can find other opportunities for work, maybe earning more money. Besides, not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. I’d say most people.

What I’ve learned as a teacher is: schools and students first must have continuity and consistency. They need routine, day after day, year after year. Students need to know the people teaching them were willingly prepared to teach in our nation’s schools. They need to feel sincerity, excitement, passion, and dedication to the subject taught by their teachers. And young people can tell, and they often expect, adults who will breeze in and out of their lives, leaving them when the going gets tough. Other than parent, there’s not a tougher job than public school teacher. The educated adults who stick around—if at all possible—as school teachers make a positive life-altering impression on kids. All of us remember our favorite teachers … for a reason.

Wonder if they realize by now the eyes of Americans are studying them up and down. After dozens and dozens of mass school shootings since, say 1994, there’s an obvious profile. White. 18-22. Drop out, unsuccessful in school. Insecure. Loner. Angry. Suicidal. Desirous of military-style assault rifles.

The American people are left carrying on as if living in a war zone because war rifles are the weapons of choice in this bloody Ground Hog Day we just can’t stop. So now everybody must remain on high alert wherever we go, work, play, worship, shop, travel, drive, perhaps for another generation or so.  Because the 20 million war assault rifles circulating in this country aren’t going away any time soon as well as their body-blasting bullets.

Texas released a final report on the Uvalde school massacre, blaming a confederacy of dunces among law enforcement agencies who stood back for more than one hour and allowed it to happen. The state’s insult against the community’s law officers makes no sense to the families of the deceased and all the students who survived being shot.

The state report detailed the shooter. He had attended the very school where he carried out his child-killing spree, even walking right into the elementary classroom where he sat for a year long ago and was bullied every day, according to his old teacher. High school classmates called him ‘school shooter,’ he was so dark, creepy and suspicious. The only thing he had never done was handle guns; his family never indulged his fantasy by giving him one as requested for birthdays and Christmas. The report states the day of his murder plan was the first time he shot a gun.  

Suicidal depression

With all the school shootings and mass shootings elsewhere by young males, society has focused on security, fencing, armed campus police, metal detectors, active shooter training, key card entry doors, and counseling shell-shocked children and teens—we’ve neglected to focus on prevention. We’ve become that cynical, calling each mass shooting Tuesday in America. But most of the young mass shooters primarily are suicidal … but they don’t wanna die alone. They’re so angry at the world, some shoot their families first then go out to a public place and shoot as many people before turning the gun on themselves or being killed by police. Our country averages one mass shooting a day, according to statistics by Giffords, the nonprofit founded by and named after former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who bravely survived a gunshot to the head during a mass shooting.

Giffords’ statistics bring to light what we should have been focusing on: preventing suicide by firearm. Every year 41,000 Americans are killed by firearms: EVERY DAY 110 killed with guns. Almost 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides, 38 percent homicides, 1.3 percent police shootings, 1.2 percent unintentional/accidents, and less than one percent undetermined. Giffords goes on to state, “Firearm access triples suicide risk. Waiting periods and extreme risk protection orders offer people in crisis a second chance.” More shockingly, Giffords’ research found: “Three million American children are directly exposed to gun violence each year.”

Along with our national watch to prevent suicides, whether family, friend or neighbor, a new suicide prevention hotline has been rolled out: 988. Easy enough for everyone to remember. Trained staff, even people who once tried to commit suicide, answer phones to help others in emotional crisis, distraught people who want to end their lives right now.

The latest phrase in public schooling these days is SEL: Social and Emotional Learning. This was created in part to help the nation’s students who had to deal with a year or two of online learning away from schools, classmates, teachers and in a way reality. But SEL is geared toward helping any student who’s in crisis.

All the adults spinning over continuous mass shootings have looked at the issue not from the developing brain of an adolescent, the usual suspect in school shootings. The frontal lobe of the human brain, the part in our foreheads that allows us to think before we act, is usually not fully developed until mid 20s, and brain scientists are now discovering for some humans mid 30s. Young people see every issue in extremes: “You always say that!”; “You never do this!” They really think they’ve got life all figured out at age 16. They only see black and white, right and wrong. If they feel wronged, they’ll seek revenge. This is the way of youth, which again can last way into the 20s and 30s for some people, particularly males.

Seeing life in shades of gray [the way life really is, we come to accept] is incomprehensible if not impossible for most adolescents. With their frontal lobe not fully formed, some truly conclude nothing will change in their lives, there’s no hope, no meaning, so what’s the point? We’ve all been there. But you know how young people won’t listen to those of us with more time on the planet. Wish they would. Any one of us could tell a kid how to find the positive in themselves or any situation, how people change and circumstances change and nothing lasts forever. School was not the best time of our lives for many of us. We’re randomly put together in classrooms and expected to deal with assorted personalities, from the bully and the popular to the meek and the rebellious.

‘Keep ’em talking’ is an easy enough first step in suicide prevention. That is where so many families fall apart. Everything ends in an argument. Parents refuse to understand feelings or issues that are very important to a young person. Young people feel left on their own, hearing their parents say time and again, “Life’s tough, kid.” If the family is the fabric of a great nation, well then, America, we have a lot of patch work to do.   

Check out the Giffords organization to stop gun violence:

Home

A liberal colleague—someone terminally ill yet kept working to the end—shared with me, of all people, what may have been her final thought about American politics: “All my life, I’ve seen the political pendulum swing to the left or to the right. It never stays in the middle.”  Strange words she seemed intent on departing to me, an acquaintance more than a friend. I didn’t realize politics was on her mind. Maybe she sensed a kindred spirit. She was at the head of the Baby Boomers, I at the end. Whatever the reason, this seemed a final statement, and she wanted me to know her Big Lesson … from living in this nation.

Right she was about the political pendulum. I’ve realized it, too. Republican leadership finds it necessary to cement moral beliefs into law, and Democratic leadership jackhammers such restrictions to govern with a free and open mind. So I was not surprised to find in my lifetime that abortion would become illegal again and no more a woman’s right.

Aren’t we aware of America’s hateful history regarding women? Hanging them for witchcraft. Throwing them in jail for midwifery and treating sick neighbors with herbs. Writing into law the legal age of consent for ‘women’ to be age 10. ! Making contraceptives illegal and later only available to married women. Laying on thick the double standard between the sexes. Permitting sexual harassment at work and anywhere else. Terminating employment when a female worker is pregnant (even if married). Forbidding women to open bank accounts or credit accounts without their husband’s signature. Making women change their last names when married. Allowing men not only to send their wives to asylums for ‘hysteria’ but granting divorce for any reason and leaving former wives homeless and penniless.

Yeah, we’ve come a long way, baby.

What life on earth has shown me is: When it comes to human relationships, nothing ever changes. Girls chase the boys who do not like them. Guys pursue gals for sex. Pregnancy sometimes occurs among sexually active teens. Unintended fathers rarely stick around through marriage or fatherhood. Some grandparents, perhaps feeling guilty for mistakes made in raising their teens, end up raising their grandkids. Teens who get pregnant and keep their children end up in a cycle of poverty they will never break. And the daughters of teen moms often end up the same way. The same-sex parent’s influence runs deep.

Sorry to sound cynical, but cynicism is why Roe v Wade was approved across the nation 50 years ago. Abortion was going to happen no matter what. For some, men and women, boyfriend and girlfriend, religion and unborn human life go out the window when money is the issue: big money to not only pay doctor bills but hospitals, insurance, food, diapers, medical care, education, clothing, furniture, formula. The statistics about abortion found that more women than men opposed the procedure but most women who sought abortion already had at least one child.

The facts of life

Money is the bottom line in a lot of human decisions. That is another Big Life Learning Lesson for me. If you want to solve a mystery, ‘follow the money’ will usually lead to the answer. Why would a woman have an abortion? Follow the money. Women are, more so than men, the practical ones.

So after the political Right finally overturned Roe v Wade, word was they were plotting to go after women who had abortions over the past five decades and then somehow have the time and money to look for any woman who had a miscarriage—because of another old hypocritical American belief about women are to blame for a miscarriage. The Right could not be gracious about their big political, social, moral and religious victory. Seems they are out for blood … just like our American ancestors in 17^th century Puritan New England.

My other Big Life on Earth Lesson is about judgement, always against women. That’s what all the witch hunts were about, sticking it to women. A modern look into the real reason for the witch hysteria is, you guessed it, about money and land ownership and men in their communities lusting after women’s (often widows’) literal treasure. Now the Right has us thinking that a new witch hunt is underway, this time seeking any woman who pursues or has ever had an abortion—and here in Texas ‘awarding’ the snoops $10,000 of MY tax dollars per conviction.

The mistakes young people make, always as I previously said, come with lifelong heartache, not always an unexpected pregnancy and the birth of a child but more often a lingering cynicism—that love itself is an illusion. Many songs about being used and cheated and just as many about romance lovers swear will last a lifetime. Love, whether from one or both in a romantic relationship, can and does lead to a new life. The circle of life, the outcome of sex, is beautiful … but not always, not for every single person or all couples.

This far into the 21^st century, Americans are not about to stop loving who they love, being who they are, making love to whom they want. We’d like for cooler heads to prevail when it comes to sex. But that’s not human nature.

Abortion is an issue that many Americans have worked to overturn. Their belief is life begins at conception, now at fertilization. My God. So Puritan-sure of themselves. My point is: Life is a Mystery. The detected heartbeat law, passed in half the states to prevent early abortion, is before the heart is formed. So what is making the beat, visible in a sonogram at six weeks? The elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease are alive as far as a beating heart, yet they are not living.

Americans love to entwine politics with high moral philosophy like when life begins and when life ends. That’s why just as many people who are anti-abortion are also anti-euthanasia, ending a comatose life on machines. And yet the same crowd supports capital punishment for the criminally condemned.

Judging is what Americans do best whether women (who make up more than half the population) or racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, the homeless, the addicts, the insane, the unsanitized. American laws regress and progress perhaps in equal measure: Eisenhower to Kennedy, Johnson to Nixon, Bush I to Clinton, Clinton to Bush II, Bush II to Obama, Obama to Trump. Banning abortion no matter the circumstance—butting into millions of women’s and girls’ lives with no business to do so—is regressive. It’s judging women and girls and lives most people have not lived. Why is the scripture “Judge not” overlooked, overruled? We were a better nation when we did not judge abortion. People are better off tending to their own affairs instead of others who they do not know or care about.