Take More Photos

I wish I’d taken more pictures. With cell phones, photos have become ubiquitous. Social media encourages us to document everything and share, share, share. And that isn’t all bad. I am not talking about selfies. I am talking about non-selfies. I am talking about what goes on in those moments that are frequently undocumented every day.

I was a classroom teacher for more than thirty-three years. About fifteen years ago, one of my colleagues mused that we spend a significant percentage of our life at work and we have no photos of that experience. From that moment, I started bringing my camera (a REAL camera) to school – even when a camera was also built into my phone.

But I wish I’d done it far earlier. I wish I had photos of my early days. A few are in the yearbook, but I have no candids from my classroom, rehearsals, or meetings. I wish I could see the faces of my students in the late 80s and 90s. I wish I had class portraits of those Theatre, Sophomore English, Television, and my early Freshman English classes. I wish I took pictures of the library and the resource center and even the hallways before they were changed and updated. I wish I had documented my everyday life at school – and the wonderful people with whom I shared it.

While the staff changes more slowly than the students, people come and go. Students move through with regularity, but the personnel around me is constantly shifting. Remember that student-teacher? Remember that wonderful quirky and creative kid? I usually remember. I wish I had a picture, too.

What is it about the picture that validates and strengths my memory? Why is it that I can smell and hear and feel the moment so much more vividly when the image is present than when it is just in my head? And I trust my own memory less and less these days.

I treasure the yearbooks. I treasure the old photos that people post on Facebook. They bring me back and they help me remember and cherish the people I adored. I know there is a mosaic of photos out in the world waiting to be woven together. I wish I had more to contribute to it.

I have heard it said that, by taking pictures, the photographer is not fully present in the moment. I disagree. I find that my camera focuses me on the event (yes, I am aware of the double meaning of focus in that sentence). I am more attentive and aware of an experience because I am photographing it. The camera does not pull me away, it pulls me in! I see more clearly, specifically, and exactly when I am taking pictures. It crystalized the experience.

I became my department’s photographer. I documented the events and changes in the school and in my classroom. In addition to my children’s concerts, shows, birthday parties, and games, I also brought my camera for smaller events and day-to-day moments at home and school. I treasure these photos because they bring me back to the way I felt then.

That is the key. While I do want to document the way the old writing center looked or how my daughter decorated her bedroom, what I am really treasuring is how I felt at that time, in that space, with those people. I am affirming that what we did and who we were had enough importance to warrant memorialization and its influence is lasting.

We are worth remembering. We are important enough to hold on to. Our past matters and frames our present. I wish I had learned that earlier.

Reading for Treasure: December

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction! Here are some articles to read before the holidays.

What Sci-Fi Can Teach Computer Science About Ethics: As a teacher of Science Fiction, I believe that the genre can give readers far more than a glimpse into the future. One of the most powerful aspects of SF is its commentary on ethics and morality. Science Fiction is almost always about the present far more than about the future, and this Wired article explores why future computer engineers might benefit from a little SF literature!

The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care: This long article from The New Yorker debates whether or not we should lie to our relatives with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. My view, before I read this article, was that contradicting and correcting memory challenged adults is irritating to everyone and helps no one. Now, I am not so certain. The moral and ethical issues raised here have given me a great deal to consider.

The Definition Of 'They': This short piece from NPR explores the word “they” as a singular pronoun referring to someone whose gender identity is non-binary. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, as well as many style guides, now recognize the use of the word “they” in this manner. In fact, this use of the pronoun is Merriam-Webster's word of the year! As a former English teacher, using a plural pronoun for a singular subject was a change of habit, but a necessary one: it meant treating my students with the respect and care that they deserved! It was the right thing to do!

The Problem With the “On the Spectrum” Armchair Diagnosis: In this article from Fatherly, the writer makes the argument that, when a non-medical professional says someone is, “on the spectrum”, they are trying to “explain away behavior considered odd. It’s wrong, yes, but also potentially damaging to people living with ASD whose disorder is increasingly misunderstood as it is weaponized.” Just as it is wrong to call someone “retarded,” and use of that word harms more than the person at whom it is directed, this article argues that the overuse of “on the spectrum” has similar ill effects.

White Folks ‘Embarrassed to Admit’ They Just Learned About the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Through an Episode of ‘Watchmen’: This Atlanta Black Star article responds to the opening scene in the new HBO series, Watchman, which shows the destruction a prosperous neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma by a Ku Klux Klan attack. It points out that there are important and pivotal parts of our history that have been ignored, erased, or otherwise hidden. While the TV series is addressing contemporary racial issues, watching Watchman should not be the primary way we expand our understanding of the complex and problematic history of race in the United States – and such an understanding is critical for everyone!

Uncommon Sense: Parenting Pointers: Suggestions from Thirty-Three Years of Teaching: Part 3

Perhaps because I worked with teenagers (and their families) for all of my adult life, I became attuned to how parental choices shaped a child’s behavior. I remember being shocked after a conversation with a parent during which the parent berated her child and told me, his teacher, exactly how she felt about him. During another conversation, a parent made it clear that she didn’t have any influence on her daughter. Her daughter ran the show. She was the mom, but the daughter had the real power. More often, I remember hanging up the phone and thinking, “I just learned how good parents function.” Parents who problem solved with their children, held their children accountable for their actions, modeled functional and ethical behavior, and enlisted me, their child’s teacher, to be their ally in raising a competent, compassionate, and ethical person!

My students’ parents helped me be a better parent to my own children and to help coach parents who were struggling. I kept notes and here is the third (and final) list of things that I have noted over more than thirty years of working with teens and their families:

Make the present as or more important than the future. How many times have you heard someone say, “this will be important for your future,” or “You will need this in high school,” or “This will help you get into college?” Yes, we must make sure our children are prepared for the road ahead, but not at the price of the present. And there is a second piece to this: what does it communicate to kids if we are constantly trying to get them fixed up for the future? What message do they hear when we push them to do things for some intangible future reward? Start the college process at the very end of sophomore year of high school and no sooner. Thinking of college prior to then also communicates that you are not enough now. You need to be more. How depressing.

Make sure you are a positive partner with those who teach your child. Work hard to build bridges with your children’s teachers, both at their day schools as well as their coaches, directors, and religious educators. They see your child in a way that could help you parent more effectively. They can benefit from your understanding of your child. One of my students’ parents gave me a letter entitled, “Our Child” at the beginning of the year that succinctly and poignantly communicated their perceptions about their son to me, his teacher. It gave me insight that helped me meet his needs and create a strong relationship more quickly and strongly.

Yes, we all pick our battles with our children. There are battles worth fighting and battles that should never be battles.  Can we talk about why there are battles? Some kids are more confrontational. Some parents have a personal style that invites conflict. Yet, we are the parents, they are the children. As a teacher, I have found that one of the most dangerous and problematic family dynamics is when the child runs the show. The parent chooses not to pick any battles. There are none because the child wins with or without a fight. The real battle is to avoid the battle. The child learns that the parent does not want conflict and therefore the threat of confrontation or a little yelling and the parent melts. There are alternatives to yelling and screaming. Threats, grounding, and restrictions only go so far. Shared decision-making, family councils, and sometimes the use of a third party are all means of teaching children how to share power. By the way, this starts before a child can walk! Ultimately, the adults must be in charge. If the child is in charge, we are all in trouble.

Many of us would prefer not to pay taxes. We must pay taxes, not only because bad things will happen to us if we don’t, but also because our taxes support things we value. Sometimes, going to family gatherings, church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, or completing chores is not something we want to do. But we are obligated to do so. We have a duty, a responsibly, that we must fulfill. Children have these obligations, too. It is just as important that they learn what it means to live up to them. Don’t let kids off the hook for this “don’t want to, but just have to” type of obligation. Don’t bribe them to do them. A spoonful of sugar teaches us that medicine needs to be sweet.  Instead, teach children that when we have an obligation, we live up to it even if it is unpleasant or if there are tempting alternatives. As a child, a member of a family, a member of a religious community, a student in a school, we must play our role and that often entails giving of ourselves. Teach kids to value this and to understand how this is much more than medicine but critical to the workings of our family and community.

Be very aware of your child’s use of the internet. Stay up to date on the latest apps and trends and discuss them with your child. Watch social media use, especially after the lights go out and you believe your child to be asleep. Have a discussion about when and how we use screens. Many families now have a recharging bank in a commonplace and all the phones land there (including the parents’ phones). In our house, all computers were in public rooms, not in bedrooms.

Read to them. Read with them. Read yourself. Read as a family. Join book clubs as a group. The research is totally clear: children who enjoy reading and regularly read for pleasure have an advantage in and out of school. Both their academic and emotional skills are improved dramatically (and drama activities have similar benefits). If you aren’t a reader, become one. I mean it. Then help your child become one.

Weave a web of supportive and important people around them. Even if family lives miles away, keep your children in touch. Have regular family events. If members of the family are in other places, call them together. Foster your child’s relationship with cousins, neighbors, and other people who will support their growth. When our son entered high school, someone asked why he needed a counselor when his mother was a counselor at the school. My wife answered, “He needs to have someone to talk to when we are the problem.” Your children may not always come to you with issues. Provide them with strong relationships from whom they can learn and to whom they can turn.

These three lists are not comprehensive. Different parents both need coaching and can coach different skills. That is why teachers, grandparents, neighbors, aunts and uncles, coaches, and others share some parenting tasks with moms and dads. The key is our willingness to reflect and improve. Just as our children are never really done growing up, we are never done learning how to be the best parents we can.

Putting the Social in Social Network: Facebook Thanksgiving

I am aware that there are issues with Facebook. I try to stay out of the political kerfuffles, and I am freaked out when the item I just bought at the store appears in my feed. I wish that Facebook would do a better job of upholding reasonable standards of accuracy.  

But that isn’t why I am on Facebook or Instagram. That isn’t how I use it.

I am there because I love thinking of you! I want to hear about your life. I am delighted to see your posts and photos because they remind me of you. It really is that simple.

Some people talk about the massive time-wasting potential of Facebook, and I am certainly guilty of avoiding productive work by scrolling through my feed. Yet, I leave that experience feeling good. Someone has a new job. Someone’s child did something cute. Someone is having a great time on vacation. Someone posted a funny meme.

It almost doesn’t matter what you post because the words and images bring you to my mind, and that is why I am there. Even when your post is not all sun and rainbows.

Sometimes, Facebook posts help us help each other. Sometimes they are calls for support. I have learned about sad events and funerals I needed to attend through Facebook. I have been able to be a voice in the chorus of support through Facebook. I have been able to reach out through Facebook.

I understand that we get bent out of shape about far more consequential issues. They are important. We need to address them. We must examine all information, on and offline, through a critical lens. We must hold each other and our communication vehicles responsible.

But my Facebook use does not have that kind of weight. I'm here to wish people a happy birthday. I'm here because, as I have written many times before, I'm not good at letting go. The information on Facebook gives me a momentary glimpse into the lives of my former students, colleagues, friends, relatives, and people who live near and far, almost all of whom I do not get to see regularly.

A friend said to me that he thought Facebook was problematic because it provided the illusion of closeness. We get some photos or words and thus feel connected when we should really pick up the phone or go visit someone. It is a cheat and a trap. I see his point.

But I am not sure I would or could have personal contact with many of my Facebook friends. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t want to, but it is not feasible. Sometimes all I really want or need is a picture or a few words. Sometimes, I call and we go out for lunch or a walk. There is a place for both.

I love meeting up with friends. Yet, many of my Facebook relationships are not that kind. Our connection on Facebook is superficial – and that is enough. It makes me feel happy to just think of you and get a tiny window into your experience.

And for that I am very thankful.