Beating the Third Quarter Blues

Third quarter is long, dark, and cold. The excitement of the beginning of the school year has been forgotten. In fact, we all now know each other so well that it feels as if we have been in class together five-ever.

Second quarter feels like the incline before the first big thrill on the rollercoaster. The honeymoon is over, and we are well into the real work. It is challenging and intense. It ends with the winter holidays and winter break with great relief and celebration.

And then we return for third quarter. The winter holiday decorations have been taken down. If any are still dangling, they seem like a sad reminder of past joy. The temperatures plunge into subzero. The school courtyards are closed. The sting of finals doesn’t go away quickly.

Like the third volume in a four-part series, the third quarter has little of its own story. In class, we work on new texts, but old skills. Very little is truly new and, no matter how I try to inject novelty and excitement, the lessons are bridges between the introductions of first semester and the challenges that await us in the spring.

So what is to be done? How do we beat the third quarter blues? Here are a few suggestions:

Games: Third quarter brings more than March Madness and, by the time that rolls along, madness may be too tame a word. My Freshman English students love playing the Sunday puzzle on NPR’s Weekend Edition. These are little challenges and joys that provide us with a dessert after wrestling with Shakespeare. In theatre class, be begin an improvisation unit where we can play both completive and collaborative theatre games that make us laugh.

Student Choice: My freshmen work hard to understand Shakespeare. During third quarter, they get to make Shakespeare do what they want him to do! They create puppet shows, parodies, graphic novels, and Shakespeare talk shows. Most of these are on video and treat our very British and revered literary texts to a good dose of satire, humor, slapstick, and healthy irreverence.

Get Moving: Getting students out of their desks is always important, but during third quarter it is critical. Whether it is enacting the play we are reading, working in small groups, using large paper and drawing on the floor, or cutting out words from newspapers and magazines to create ransom note poems, students will be able to fight the third quarter blues better if their bodies and minds are in motion.

Reflecting and Renewing:  My Senior English class writes graduation speeches during third quarter. These students are so focused on finishing their high school careers that third quarter can be a horrible tease: it is in the way of getting to May! Reflecting back on their high school years, collecting memories, and realizing how much they have changed and grown brings an appreciation of the journey when they only want to see its end.

Life Beyond School: All of us, teachers, students, parents, and others, need to balance our work life with our other roles. During third quarter, we feel like Tantalus rolling a rock up a hill only to have it come crashing down when the job is almost complete. Sharing our non-school lives not only enhances our relationships but also reminds us that our world is bigger than schoolwork. Kids light up when they talk about their passions. A few moments to celebrate the teams, shows, games, and other non-academic parts of our lives can be the sugar that makes third quarter go down.

Some would say that the best thing about third quarter is that it ends – with spring break! We return and it truly feels like spring, even if it is wet, gray, and muddy. Fourth quarter is the last lap to the finish line and we are eager to complete the year’s work. We can live through third quarter with games, choice, movement, reflection, perspective, and lots and lots of laughter!

Let's Agree: We Need A Children's Bill of Rights

Nothing is more important than our children. How we treat them, both individually and collectively is the real measure of who we are. In this time of division and dissent, I am looking for places that provide common ground. I think the love of our children may be such a place. Can we all agree that all policies should be evaluated on their effect on children? No law, rule, order, or other government action should be passed that hurts kids! 

Children don’t pay bills. They don’t vote. Most of their decisions are made by adults. If they have any power at all, it is only through influencing the adults around them. They are one of our most vulnerable and important populations. Can we all agree that their well-being must be at the top of all agendas?

As a teacher, I sometimes think of my students as little adults. I forget that they don’t control most of their world. If they are late, it is as likely to be the fault of their means of transportation. They don’t drive. They may be pulled out of school due to the choices of their parents or guardians. Getting homework done is sometimes impossible due to things happening at home. I need to remind myself that they are just children!

I wonder if lawmakers and elected officials have the same challenge. Do they forget how adults’ choices affect children? Do they attribute more control and agency to minors than they really have?

Children are the collateral damage of many of our public policies. If parents don’t make enough money, children are affected. When healthcare is too expensive or difficult to obtain, children get sick. When policies that protect adults from discrimination, deportation, and degradation are undermined or eliminated, their children pay the price.

Every policy should be evaluated through the lens of its effect on children: Will this help the kids? Will this make children’s lives better? If this is going to create a challenge for families with children, and how do we help them address that?

Children aren’t to blame for any of their parents’ struggles, but they share them. While there are many voices screaming to protect unborn children, voices are desperately needed to keep protecting them as they grow up.

While protecting them from certain ideas, philosophies, or encounters with different people may be on some lists, can we please elevate protecting them from hunger, crime, sickness, and illiteracy?

How about a Children’s Bill of Rights! Here is a start:

Regardless of political, religious, or ideological labels, every child deserves to be:

Loved and wanted

Fed and well nourished 

Healthy and have prompt and affordable access to doctors and medicine

Well educated

Safe in their neighborhoods, homes, and communities

Free from bullying, abuse, and mistreatment

Given freedom to grow, develop, explore, and play

Housed comfortably and appropriately

Free of worry for the safety of their family

Of course, there is more; this list is just a beginning. Yet, can we agree to this? Can everyone say that these items are the beginning on which we can build greater agreements? If we can agree on this, perhaps we can move our country forward and help everyone, no matter what their affiliations or alliances or age, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness!

Lessons from Mountains Beyond Mountains

I was first introduced to Paul Farmer and the book that Tracy Kidder wrote about him in the summer of 2007 when we chose Mountains Beyond Mountains for a community-wide one book program. I brought it to class the next fall. Ten years later, this book still has plenty to say.

This semester, I am reading this book with my Senior English class and I am stunned that a book published fourteen years ago can remain so relevant and powerful. Paul Farmer’s experiences and organization may have changed since then 2003, and certainly, there has been upheaval in Haiti, but the messages in this book are just as important as ever.

Medicine is more than drugs, doctors, and hospitals: One of the key ideas in the book is that we need to provide a “preferential option for the poor.” Borrowed from Catholic Liberation Theology, this central tenet of Farmer’s organization compels him to go to great lengths to serve his most impoverished patients. This may mean far more than administering medicine or healthcare. Farmer provides water, food, housing, jobs, and much more.

This idea that healthcare goes beyond the traditional doctor, medicine, hospital combination is also key. Healthcare, according to Farmer, is the total wellbeing of a person and community. It is the goal of social activist medicine. What good are the pills that will cure the disease if the patients’ living conditions are horrible?

We are all connected to each other: Farmer challenges our assumptions about wealth and money. Farmer questions why some are so wealthy and others so poor. Where did this come from? What are its effects? He argues that Haiti’s poverty has provided much wealth to America. He suggests that no individual or community’s success is independent and solitary. Instead, those who have more have an obligation to help those who are in need.

This brings up two critical concepts: duty to the poor and the interconnected nature of our world. Farmer is religious in his devotion to the poor. One of the myths that he explodes is that our choices affect only us; on an individual and collective level, there is human collateral damage paying for our affluence.

We are obligated to help those who are suffering: This creates a relationship of obligation. If my comfort has been created by someone else’s pain, I have an obligation to do something about this. Farmer takes this very seriously and his efforts border on the superhuman and selfless.

Help people help themselves: Farmer is not a “white savior.” His organization and philosophy are designed to create self-sustaining local programs. He doesn’t sweep in, wave a wand, and leave. Instead, he helps people help each other. He trains, creates systems, and makes certain that they fit within the culture and values of the community. His approach is very different from the typical international aid approach.

Assume the best: Farmer talks about a “hermeneutic of generosity.” It is an assumption of a positive motive. People aren’t poor because they are lazy, addicted, or scamming the system. Farmer makes a conscious choice to take the higher road and presume the better nature. It is supercharged optimism.

We must fight the “long defeat:” Farmer knows that the battle he is fighting, the battle he invited us to join, is one that is going to be a “long defeat.” Farmer tells the writer of the book, Tracy Kidder, “We’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”

There will always be mountains beyond the mountains we climb: There will always be more challenges. Whether we “win” or are defeated, the fight must go on and we must contribute.

In times of discord, disagreement, and division, Farmer’s voice is one we need to hear. More than ever, we need to remember these lessons from Mountains Beyond Mountains. 

America Needs Star Trek More Than Ever!

Star Trek: Discovery, please don’t suck. America needs a new Star Trek as much as ever. The Original Series premiered during a time of war and during the heat of both the civil rights and women’s rights movements.  Each series continued to address the issues of their times.

We need Star Trek now!

We need its optimism and humanism. We need its affirmation that we will be able to work together and celebrate our differences. Star Trek says that our courage will be greater than our fear; our love will triumph over our prejudice, and our intelligence and creativity will ultimately bring about a world of wonder.

More than anything else, Star Trek affirms our common humanity. Star Trek imagines a world in which no one wants from hunger, no one lacks a good doctor, no one fears for their safety, and there are no barriers to a child’s ability to grow and learn. Star Trek affirms our common humility. It says that everyone should be allowed to make their own decisions and interference is a form of hubris. Yet there are times we must say, “let me help.” The characters in Star Trek taught us about duty, honor, and obligation.

Star Trek states that our actions must live up to our words and ideals, and that’s a difficult feat to accomplish, yet we must strive for integrity. We cannot be our best selves if we do not have a clear vision of our noblest aspirations.

Star Trek portrays situations where evil and good are intertwined because they aren’t always easy to distinguish.  However, Star Trek assures us that thoughtful, compassionate, and intelligent people will help us to make these complicated choices.

Science as at the core of science fiction and Star Trek posited that science is a force for progressive change. Logic, reason, and critical thinking were powerful tools on the Enterprise.

Through Star Trek, we learn that resistance is not futile, words are greater than weapons,

and the relationships we build are the real agents of change.

The rumors and news about the latest incarnation of Star Trek are hopeful. There is reason for optimism. As we learn about the characters and the cast, the situation and the time period, fans worldwide are crossing their fingers. We need the ideals of Star Trek and we need them now!

The new series, Star Trek: Discovery, starts production this week. Make it a good one.

Because College!

While it is final exam season again, this is not my regular rant against finals. Rather, it is an argument that we should not let imagined expectations of college drive high school practices, especially ones like finals, when they are poorly executed, that are not beneficial to students.

Why do we need to keep giving finals in high school? Because students will encounter them in college? Why are multiple choice tests important? Because students will take them in college? Why do students have to memorize useless facts, listen to teachers lecture, and suffer through hours of AP everything? College! College! College!

Let’s examine this rationale (or rationalization). Even putting aside the fact that not all students are going to attend college, do we need to replicate college in high school to prepare students? We are not replicating the college schedule. We do not have many teachers with PhDs. In fact, much of what we do and how we do it is quite different than college. Thankfully, many important aspects of the college experience are very different than what happens in high school. The photo attached to this post was a bulletin board in a college dorm. Can you imagine it at a high school? Perhaps our cherry picking of college practices serves another purpose.

College students are eighteen to twenty two years old. Their developmental needs are significantly different than a fourteen-year old’s – or even a sixteen year old. Why do we insist that one size fits all? Should our students who want to go into business wear suits and bring briefcases to school? Why not? They’ll have to do it later.

How do we know that whatever practice we are justifying happens in college? Most teachers are more than a few years out of college. Many of our AP and upper-level teachers haven’t been college students for decades. And while old school practices are certainly alive and well in many areas of academia, like the rest of the world, colleges have changed since we graduated in the 80s or 90s. 

Every college is not the same. Many colleges are moving away from the traditional lecture class because research has found that active learning is more effective. While some college classes still give final exam tests, many are using alternative forms of assessment – just like in high school!

College professors are not often trained to be teachers. Their primary focus is research; teaching is secondary. Thus we may run across professors who may be experts in their fields, but have difficulty communicating with students. In recent years, some colleges have put an emphasis both on training professors to be effective educators and to create awards and other programs that encourage good teaching. Why are they doing this? Because college is not the place to look for great educational practice.

Lecturing is simple and focused on the teacher. It is what many teachers have experienced. Multiple-choice tests are quick to grade and make the life of the teacher easier. We must be honest with ourselves and ask if the reason we rationalize our practices by saying that students will need them in college serves the students or the teachers?

The choices that high school teachers and administrators make certainly should take into account their students’ possible future activities. However, the main consideration should be what is best for students now. We cannot look to colleges to be educational role models. We cannot simply superimpose college practices on younger students.

As with all practices, we must ask ourselves, what are we teaching and why are we teaching it? We must look at the practice’s effect on our students and ask if it supports their academic, emotional, and social growth regardless of their college prospects.

If we teach students well, and make sure that our practices match their developmental needs, they will have the skills for what follows. If our students are our partners in learning and not merely audience, we will be better able to tailor the educational process to their specific needs. If we leap over the present and force them to relive our ancient college experiences, we will be doing them a disservice that traps them in our past instead of empowering them for their own futures.