Attitude Reflect Leadership

Today during our staff meeting, we were told that the widespread problem of behavior management on campus (today we had another student-lit fire, one arrest, and two fights) is not a problem. It is a symptom of a problem. And what is the true problem?

Head down, immersed in my grading, I knew the answer. The problem is teachers. The problem is always teachers.

Nope, I was wrong. The problem was, “engagement.”

Oh, wait. Same thing.

We’re not engaging enough. Our lessons are not riveting enough. If students are misbehaving, the rigor is low or there’s not enough technology employed or we haven’t ordered enough dancing bears. We suck. We are not engaging. We will never be as engaging as Snapchat.

On my right, the teacher beside me, an incredibly dedicated, creative, driven, tough woman whom I look up to, and who had been called a “slutty cunt” not an hour earlier, burst into tears of rage. On my left, the sweet, mild, soft-voiced teacher who teaches one of my students from last year curled her hands into fists and started spitting disbelief.

Always blame the teacher.

You know it’s true. You know it’s our fault that students are illiterate, that they don’t know how to stay seated for more than sixteen seconds nor have a vocabulary larger than four-letter words. As we listened to a litany of our derelictions, I realized that the message we were receiving is the same one society broadcasts: teachers suck. We’re just not good at our jobs, or the kids would be doing better. People demonize us but don’t ever consider that the society in which we operate cripples our effectiveness. Worse are those who idolize us, expecting unreal greatness, but don’t ever consider that the society in which we operate cripples our effectiveness. Forget society; we have literally run out of copy paper at our school. Everything cripples our effectiveness.

And yet those same people who pay lip service to education, who, when they hear what I do, say, “wow” with impressed eyes and somehow feel they have then paid their dues to education, yesterday voted 60-40 against a sales tax raise that would go to education in North Carolina. Let me clue you in: telling a teacher they are amazing and you could never do what they could do is not the same thing as paying them. It is not the same as buying copy paper for the schools.

As the staff meeting went on, and around me people succumbed to ulcers and chewed pens in half, I listened to us being told our attitudes were terrible, and I thought back to Remember the Titans. It's fitting for any situation, but this fit like green on an apple. Attitude reflect leadership, captain.

It also made me think of a funny scene from that gymnast movie where, to reassure themselves before the meet, the gymnasts imagine the judges doing what they can do. Sometimes, if an administrator seems particularly obtuse, I just picture them in my classroom, trying to get my students to attend and respect them. And I feel better. 

If you can perform the educational acrobatics that we do in our classrooms everyday for at least a week, you can have a say.

P.S. Two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem today. They’re saying we’re heading for a third intifada. I’m posting this here because a week from now, Israel is going to start defending itself and everyone is going to say, “Look at Israel, starting up a fight.” But I want you to know the truth, that Israel is under attack, that a week ago in the first light rail attack, a three-month old baby was killed, and an Ecuadorian tourist succumbed to fatal injuries, and today a Druze man was killed (unlike the IDF, terrorists don’t discriminate between military targets and civilians, or, indeed, citizens). So when Israel responds and people cry because the ones who attacked Israel are in turn under attack, remember that, just like teachers, Israel often gets a bad rap for doing the best with what it can.