Long Term

Another election has passed, and—as is generally the case—the balance of power has shifted. Some are gloating at their “triumph,” while others are licking their wounds, both of which indicate just how far astray our political process has wandered. Most, conditioned by media hype, let fear dominate their vote and their response to “opposing” viewpoints, and some on either side are and have been calling their “opponents” sometimes vile names.

Our current metaphor—elections as battles, with winners and losers—is fundamentally flawed. Our politics is not good vs. evil (with the roles of “good” and “evil” cast according to our individual political positions), but rather of competing visions of what constitutes “good.” Liberals/progressives as a class are not stupid (and the sobriquet “Libtard,” based as it is on the term “retard,” is offensive to those to whom it was once applied), and conservatives as a class are not lackeys of moneyed interests (and “Rethuglican” is every bit as inappropriate). The vast majority on either side sincerely want what’s best for Americans; they just differ on what that means.

We seem, however, to have lost sight of that simple fact—that rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans are not caricatures but human beings, complex and many-faceted, but essentially well-intentioned—and instead see the phantasms that pundits in the media paint in our imaginations. And the motives of the media are uncomplicated—“Whatever sells.”

If viewers can be made to fear something—anything, really—they won’t change the channel, and if they don’t change the channel, advertisers will pay. But advertisers aren’t the only ones to pay...we pay, too, although not with money.

Rather, we pay as a society...fear divides us.

In my Facebook stream this morning, someone posted that democracy tends to function better when there’s a common enemy—absent that, we turn on ourselves—and lately, that seems to be the case. It’s easy to cast extremists as the enemy, and extremists (on both sides) have the loudest voices—in many minds, they represent the side as a whole. Instead of uniting against a common external enemy, we manufacture enemies within—the Democrats, or the Republicans—and we attack them as vociferously as we ever did Communism or Fascism.

The thing is, we are not enemies. We may have different views, different ideas, different values, but we are fellow citizens and both as individuals and as a society we depend upon one another. It’s good that we have different ideas and different values, but our power is greatest when we combine them, not when we stand our (ideological) ground. When winning—an election or a debate or a majority or whatever—becomes more important than governing, we all lose.

So here’s my prayer:

May those elected honorably and faithfully serve the interests of all citizens (not just those who voted for them). May they abide by the principles that, when honored, lend honor and greatness to us all. May no one be considered expendable, may no one be counted an “acceptable loss,” above all may no one (liberal/progressive, conservative, or other) be counted an enemy. May they be willing to change their minds when evidence indicates that their views are mistaken. May they be humble servants of their constituents—all their constituents—and not rulers, even in their own minds. Insofar as they play favorites at all, may they favor the unfortunate rather than the fortune.

And may the rank and file on either side remember that we are all citizens together, and if we disagree, decide to disagree civilly (even if others do not—why would you let what others do determine what you do?). Let us all hold our representatives accountable for their actions, and if any mistreats, demeans, demonizes, or abuses others, deny them your continuing support.

With great power comes great responsibility...We the People have exercised our power in electing representatives, and we are responsible for what they do. Let us be vigilant and hold our representatives to a high standard. Let us not concede the high ground, let us not settle for the “least common denominator” without resistance, let us not forget politics and politicians until their actions affect us or until the next election. Let us rather expect much of our representatives, let us demand much of our representatives, let us get much of our representatives.

Why Teachers are Demoralized

I love my job. I love my job! I don’t love some of the things that others insist are part of the job, and I don’t love the climate under which I do my job, but (when I’m allowed to do my job) I love my job!

I don’t love grades and grading. I love giving students feedback—feedback fosters learning—but I actively hate setting a value on a given task and assessing a student’s performance on that task as a portion of that value. What about the rest of the story—the student’s growth, the student’s struggles, the student’s discoveries, the student’s development as a scholar and a human being—that grades on assignments never adequately capture?

And tests! I really hate tests. Left to my own devices, students in my classes would never take tests; I believe that other tasks—e.g. writing assignments, projects, and presentations—provide a much richer indication of a student’s learning than do tests.

Alas, I’m not left to my own devices.

Public school teachers everywhere are required to administer mandated tests which they did not write and which in fairness they should not include in their grade calculations. As a public school teacher, I, too, am required to administer certain tests. At my current school, where I see my students approximately 144 hours in a 180 day school year, mandated tests include:

• STAR Reading (twice/year at 2 hours per for 4 hours)
• Benchmark Assessments (BMAs: 8 times/year at 2 hours per for 16 hours)
• Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test (SBAC: once/year at 8 or more hours)
• EXPLORE Test (pre-ACT: once/year at 2 hours)

By these (conservative) estimates, students spend 30 hours of available instructional time on mandated tests. 30 hours testing divided by 144 hours of "contact" time equals just under 21%. I am not convinced that this is a good investment of students’ time.

There’s one reason teachers may be demoralized: being required to spend a significant fraction of precious instructional time administering tests of dubious merit when we know that our students learn little from taking them.

Believe it or not, the vast majority of teachers are passionately committed to their students’ learning. And while somewhere along the line most of us were indoctrinated with the idea that tests provided meaningful measures of student achievement (and if we write them to assess student mastery of the skills, concepts, and content we are teaching, they may), very few of us are anywhere near so committed to testing.

Testing is intimately connected to another factor that contributes to poor teacher morale: the deceptively named Educator Effectiveness System (or whatever it’s called outside of Hawai‘i—something like it exists in most states of the United States).

EES (or whatever) purports to measure the effectiveness of teachers, but both the presumptions that underlie it and the methodology itself institutionally demean teachers. The presumption is that teachers are terrible until they prove themselves otherwise, and the means by which teachers are required to prove themselves deserving of their (not exactly lucrative) salaries and (not exactly elevated) jobs are tedious, arbitrary, and insulting. Furthermore, those same high-stakes-for-schools, low-stakes-for-students tests (which only test how well students take them) are linked to educator effectiveness, meaning that teachers are held accountable not just for what they can control—e.g. classroom climate, delivery of concepts and content, quality of instruction—but also for what is beyond their control—e.g. home environment; extracurricular stresses; preexisting physiological, mental, and emotional factors.

The work itself—guiding student learning, fostering critical thinking and inquiry, igniting curiosity and a love of knowledge—is rewarding, but that considerable reward is significantly offset by the presumption that teachers are incompetent, the demand that we spend tens of hours of time performing and documenting work—work that does not necessarily or even usually contribute to our students’ growth as learners—in order to justify our existence, not to mention those not-so-lucrative salaries and the poor esteem in which we are generally held by the public whose children we serve...

I love teaching, and I know how fashion shifts in education as in anything else—if I don’t like the way things are done now, all I have to is wait a few years and I’ll have something different to dislike. I love teaching, but I tell any prospective teacher who will listen to do something else.

Teaching is both rewarding and heartbreaking, and the current educational climate, driven by a “reform” philosophy and the commercial interests of “Big Ed,” adds discouragement and tedium to the heartbreak. It’s hard, sometimes, to see the reward in light of what can feel like punishment.

And the coda is, morale is an important element of teacher effectiveness. Demoralized teachers have a harder time being effective than do teachers with high morale.

Passion vs. Reason

If you’re anything like me, you sometimes experience tension between who you are and what you want. Sometimes your highest nature—your passion—dares you to do something fraught with risk and potentially disastrous, while your reason cautions you that the path to a desired outcome is tried and true. And, again if you’re anything like me, reason often wins the debate.

I’m not suggesting that reason is the enemy. On the contrary, reason is a necessary part of our nature, and there are circumstances when reason should triumph—particularly when the stakes are truly high, reason’s perspective is vital—but I’ve discovered that in me, “reason” is often a disguise for fear or desire. Reason dresses up my fears and wants, giving them (seeming) legitimacy.

For example:

Although I love theatre and performance (in musicals and non-musicals), I find vocal auditions quite daunting under the best of circumstances. I lack confidence in my voice, even though it’s served me pretty well over the years, because (even though I know better) I tend to compare myself with other singers, many of whom have years more training and experience than I. Because when I audition I want a role, I typically play it safe vocally for the sake of my desire, even if my “higher self” wants to do something different that might open up new possibilities.

In the last month or so, I’ve begun to “discover” a part of my voice and vocal range I’ve longed for, because if I can grow in this direction it will open up more possibilities, and I decided that for my next audition, one of my songs would be in that range. It was a risky choice because that part of my voice isn’t quite ready for prime time, but I was determined, and vocally I was close to what I felt would show off this broader potential. I decided to risk it.

Yesterday was audition day. I woke up second guessing my determination. I had another song on deck that I knew I could do well and I wanted—oh, how I wanted!—to ditch the song I’d been preparing all month and go with one that was safe and might get me a role I wanted. It would have been so easy to go that route!

I didn’t. I stayed the course, although I sweated and fretted and, when it came time to sing that song, I tensed up and lost some of what I’d had all month. And the outcome was that I was called back for roles I’d probably have been called back for if I’d played it safe. I don’t think the risk gained me anything. It didn’t really expand my opportunities. I could have played it safe, avoided all that stress, and it wouldn’t have cost me a thing.

Only, that’s not the point.

I’m glad I did what I did—glad I took the chance even though it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, even though it made no difference in the outcome, even though it could have reduced my opportunities—because in taking that chance I pushed back against both fear and petty want and reached for what I really wanted. I didn’t let fear and desire dress themselves up as “reason” and ground my lofty ambitions—I went for it, even if my voice trembled.

Too often, we adults lose what we all had as children: the unselfconscious ability to try anything just because we can. In learning to think things through and anticipate outcomes, we bury that spark of spontaneity and daring for fear of failure. We become perhaps too pragmatic and practical—we “play small” and stay within the bounds of what we know, rather than pushing into the frontiers of what might yet be.

For just a minute yesterday, even though I was terrified and my voice—my whole being—trembled, I dared…and I didn’t die.

I think I’ll dare again.

Liberty Call

When I was in the U.S. Navy, I loved “liberty.” Leave was awesome, but it was a fixed amount and when you used it up it was gone, but liberty was a renewable resource.

For those who don’t know, “liberty” was time off—duty free time—and was generally granted when:

1. Your unit was in a place that accommodated off-duty activities (whether in port or on base)
2. Your daily work was done
3. You were not assigned “watch” or other supervisory duties during the liberty period

Those who have never served in the military may not appreciate the significance of liberty (I think other branches may have called it “on a pass”)—you are accustomed to having a work schedule, and your employer has no claim on you outside that schedule, certainly no authority to control your movements when not working—but for service members, the military absolutely has the right to control your movements. Even when off duty, I had no inherent right to leave my ship unless I’d been granted liberty by Command.

Perhaps you can see, then, why I loved liberty call.

Liberty call meant that I had no duties whatsoever until liberty ended. I could go out and get drunk (I often did—this was before I got sober and long before I got happy), I could stay up all night, I could shop or gorge or do any legal thing (legal according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, admittedly a higher standard than civil law). It was freedom, for a night or a weekend, in San Diego or Singapore or Perth or Subic Bay, P.I.

You might be wondering why I’m dredging up all this admttedly-ancient history, and who would blame you? Five paragraphs and I still haven’t got to the point! Bear with me—it’s all relevant.

A couple of days ago, I read a post that made me think of…“elements”…I would like to be part of my life, but aren’t. Not so long ago, thinking about what I crave but lack would evoke feelings of bitterness and resentment and grief, but my practice has helped me grow beyond those reactions, and my reaction on this most recent occasion was very much like what I used to feel at liberty call. I realized that if those elements were part of my life, they would impose duties, as well, and while I would joyfully accept those duties (I would love to perform those duties in that service), I could also rejoice in not having them right now.

It was…“liberating”…to feel that way—to know that because those elements are not part of my life right now, I have greater “freedom” than I would if they were—even though I would trade that liberty for the sake of those elements without a qualm.

It’s another manifestation of “It’s all good,” and I’m happy to discover how far I’ve come in about a year.

I’m happy, full stop.

I’m happy!

Sovereign Souls

I see a number of internet memes that, while well-intentioned, just rub me the wrong way. The underlying sentiment is often a sympathetic one, but the phrasing has an unfortunate tendency to objectify people by talking about them solely in terms of what they do for (or to) others. A case in point:

“Some people come into your life just to teach you how to let go.”

There’s significant good in this meme—it encourages those hurting from rejection or loss to find some good in their circumstances—but at the same time it reduces “Some people” to mere objects, defined solely by the affect they have on “you.”

Each of us is a sovereign soul, charting a course by design or intuition or accident—or some combination thereof—to our own heart’s-home. Each of us (including the ones who reject, abandon, hurt, or hate us) has myriad intentions and purposes, hopes and desires apart from the rest of us.

As each sovereign soul pursues its own self-determined “destiny,” it encounters others and acts according to those unique intentions, purposes, hopes, and desires. Sometimes one sovereign soul’s course is compatible with another’s; other times, they conflict. Whatever happens, each sovereign soul carries gifts for those they encounter in the form of lessons.

Lessons are not always easy. Sometimes they’re painful and usually they’re hard and often they’re unwelcome, but they can be precious gifts. That’s not to say that everything anyone does (no matter how awful) is justified—cruelty in its many forms cannot be excused just because it may teach a lesson—rather, it’s to say that sometimes, maybe even often, our suffering can be in some way redeemed if we find the lesson.

The point, though, is that people never come into our lives just for us. They are sovereign souls, just as we are, and probably just as lost as we are ourselves. We stumble into one another and sometimes all we can take away from a painful encounter—the only thing that makes the pain tolerable—is the lesson.

Why I'm Not Taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Let me preface this by saying that people should do what they want—if they want to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and/or they feel it’s an effective way of raising awareness of a terrible disease, they should follow their hearts. Good deeds are good deeds.

I’ve been issued the Ice Bucket Challenge. I will not be participating in the Ice Bucket Challenge, not because I believe there’s something wrong with it, but because of my values, my beliefs, my relationship with charity, my “issues.” There will be some who accuse me of being a spoilsport (or maybe an elitist), and while what others think of me is none of my business, perhaps one or two are interested in why I won’t play along. This is my answer.

One powerful influence on my values with respect to charity is Matthew 6:3-4:

But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
New Revised Standard Version

I’m not suggesting that the Ice Bucket Challenge is irreligious. I’m not quoting scripture as some universal authority that must bind and compel anyone, believer or no. I’m not suggesting anything about anyone except me —from a very young age, I have felt that my charitable giving was a private thing, nobody’s business but mine, nothing to boast about or even let others know about, lest feeding my ego become my motive for giving.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised awareness—and a lot of much-needed money—for a worthy cause. Yay! That’s awesome! I decline to participate not because ALS doesn’t deserve the—attention—it does—nor because it doesn’t need or deserve the support—of course it does. I decline to participate because I’d rather just give without fanfare or fuss, because I want the attention on the cause and not on me, because I’d die of hypothermia if I did an Ice Bucket challenge for every worthy cause—causes dear to my heart include but are not limited to:

• the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
• the American Heart Association
• the American Cancer Society
• the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
• the Alzheimer’s Association
• the American Diabetes Association
• the ALS Association
• the AIDS Foundation
• numerous conservation organizations
• numerous arts organizations
• numerous youth service groups

I do what I can. What I do, and for which organizations, is personal. Given how much of my life I live publicly (this blog is an example), it may seem inconsistent that I choose to keep this private, but there it is. It is consistent with my values, and that is going to have to be good enough.

Aloha!

Nothing Wrong With Me

As I settle into the excitement of another school year, I reflect on a summer very different than I anticipated (and in some ways uncomfortable) and realize that it was…good.

For a number of reasons, theatre is my primary social outlet—the structure of a production provides a framework within which I know my place, and the collaborative nature of theatre makes relating with one another expected—and when I’m not in a production I find myself slipping into a more solitary (and lonely) pattern. While perhaps it is my nature to be solitary, it is not my desire, which is among the reasons theatre is so important to me—theatre is my ‘ohana and I love it and those who inhabit it intemperately.

For four months now (and counting), by my own choice I’ve been apart from that context, and for much of that time I’ve been somewhat idle, too—while for teachers summer isn’t the idyllic repose others imagine it to be, it is outside the classroom and sans students—leaving me to my own devices and solitary vices.

And it’s been lonely.

Of course I could have invited myself into the lives of my fantastic friends and I would have been welcome, but outside the production context, I just don’t. Everyone has work, everyone has rehearsal…it feels like an imposition, even if intellectually I know better. So I just don’t.

I had the opportunity to be in a show this summer, and I chose not to be. I knew the price of that decision when I made it, and while the price was high, I feel good about that decision and more importantly, I feel good about my reasons for doing what I did. While I confess the importance of theatre to me as a social outlet, I am a theatre artist, and the artistic aspects of theatre outweigh even the substantial heft of the social element. I made a hard choice for a good reason, when it would have been easy to compromise to avoid solitude.

What made it good—good despite the loneliness and idleness, good despite missing my theatre family—is that I actually felt I was in good company. I found myself contemplating the growth I’ve experienced in the last year, and calling it “good.” I spent a lot of time with and on me, and it felt fine. I didn’t like being lonely, but for the first time ever it didn’t make me feel insignificant or unimportant or unvalued. It gave me time to process all that’s changed since RENT closed, to find places in me to celebrate and cherish all I’ve become.

With school back in session, I have a focal point in my students and my teaching practice, which eases the loneliness. And while nothing is promised, I hope to be back in rehearsal soon. I look forward to being back in my element. In the meantime, I’ve gained another measure of peace and contentment, knowing that whatever my circumstances, I’m okay and more than okay.
There’s nothing wrong with me.