Scoreboards and Dashboards

American discourse on difficult issues these days is truly complicated.  It's not good enough to simply know where other people stand in a debate on the concerns of the day.  The lines have blurred along traditional boundaries.  Knowing someone is a liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican doesn't actually tell you what you need to know all of the time.  I look at people's perspectives based on scoreboards and dashboards.  I've been trying to come up with some metaphorical way to look at our complicated social/political landscape.  This is the best I can come up with.  Sounds crazy, but hear me out.

                                    

Dashboard people look at our social and political landscape in way that shows caution to the things that may be going wrong.  They pay attention to the warning lights that come on.  They respond using their own understanding of that thing.  The gas warning light is an easy one.  The low tire pressure light is an easy one.  But when the check engine light comes on, they know it might be serious.  I know many of us ignore some of these until things breakdown, but at that point we are all willing to take the car to a mechanic.  The short of it is that we want a machine that runs well and that is dependable.  If you compare this to politics or social strife, these people want resolve and for everything to be done fairly.  For the good of the whole country, they pay attention to things like racism, civil rights, election reform, the economy and any other issue that might jeopardize or hurt our nation.  This approach takes a lot of work.  To make one light go off, you may need to address other lights that come on.  Regardless, you look for ways that the whole system can run smoothly.

Other people are scoreboard types.  These people often deal in absolutes and have a win/lose mentality.  The question is not often how do we help, but how can we win.  We are a sports loving culture.  We love it when our team is winning and accept the win even if it comes in a sloppy manner.  Look at this scoreboard.  The home team is winning, but only a couple are doing the scoring compared to the visiting team that has a more balanced scoring result.  We just want our team to win and just like real sports life, we will make the people doing the scoring superstars.  In the social political landscape, these people will seek to make the ability to win the issue and not elevate the actual issue.  They will see a win as a validation of their position.  

I'm not calling anyone out, but I do offer a word of caution.  Know your audience.  Which of these people are you talking to?  If the new COVID relief package is the issue, listen for what is important most.  Is it the number of programs it serves or the number of votes it got and from whom?  If you are still brave enough these days to debate the issues, you may be better served debating within their perspective.  It may save a friendship and show some respect.

Lucky Enough to Know Tim Murphy

Today, I stood on Candy Cane Lane and watched Mr. Tim Murphy go through one last time.  It was humbling standing in the middle of his creation and legacy.  It was humbling to realize, like everyone else has, his impact on the community of West Frankfort and the surrounding region.  As the line of cars drove through, I saw the faces of so many that had a close friendship with him and have shared so many of their fond memories with me.  If you were lucky enough, you got to spend time with Murph and have your own memories.

I am one of the lucky ones.  Tim was teaching art at both the junior high and high school when I was hired.  He was also the volleyball coach at both buildings.  That means I got to share some laughs and frustrations with him.  Sure you knew him as the Candy Cane Lane man, but I got to be his co-worker.  Even after he retired, he never stayed a stranger.  He helped judge contests for us.  He helped build stage pieces for graduation.  He would come by just to say hi.

I was lucky enough to know how much he loved the Beach Boys.  He knew everything about them and had seen them live 93 times at our last count.  My finest moment with Tim Murphy was the time I bested him at Beach Boys knowledge.  The movie Love and Mercy came out about Beach Boys front man, Brian Wilson in 2014.  I asked him if he saw it and what he thought about it.  He had no clue and I was starting to celebrate.  I finally knew something that he didn't about the Beach Boys.  This is the joy of knowing Tim Murphy.  With all the awesome things he has done for West Frankfort, you can get tangled up with him about the Beach Boys.  In my last conversation with him, we were working on the stage for graduation last June.  We spent a good part of our time working talking about how good the whitewall tires looked on his yellow truck.  I am lucky enough to have known Tim Murphy.

When he retired, we lost art for a short time due to budget cuts.  His void was definitely felt and the loss of art was felt.  We tried in every way we could to keep art alive even if he could not teach it.  I know that the community will keep his spirit alive through Candy Cane Lane.  For those who are lucky enough, we can keep his spirit alive by telling his stories and letting him live through those stories.

Rest in peace Timbo.

First Round Draft Pick

My son is a huge NBA fan.  He keeps up with players, stats and trades.  It's like he is aspiring general manager and who knows maybe he will be.  It has become a thing at our house to watch the draft each year.  While he is critiquing every pick no matter who takes who, I'm rerunning the Key and Peele sketch in the back of may head.  What if we treated teachers like pro athletes?

I enjoy watching the draft with him.  There is one thing about it that I get and that he doesn't yet at twelve years old.  When those kids in the upper picks start crying when their name is called, I know what that represents. Sure it will means millions of dollars for them, but it also is the reward for a lifetime of work and sacrifice.  Many of these kids are moving so far out of poverty and struggle that it is overwhelming to know you have made it.

Though I did not become a millionaire overnight, I can relate to this rush of relief after poverty.  I remember being drafted by Mt. Vernon Township High School back in 2002.  Lets keep this parallel going.  Based on the number of teaching interviews I had, I was a fourth round pick for the Rams.  They needed someone with a Sociology endorsement and I fit the bill.  This went on to a five year stay and me accumulating a load of good experience and opportunities.  I was then drafted in the 9th round as an administrator by Elverado in 2007.  In 2011, I was drafted by Frankfort CUSD #168 in the first round to be the Principal at Central Junior High School.  Note: This was the only place I had applied that year so "first round" may be misleading. 😊 

While becoming a teacher changed my whole world, there is no reason it can't have the same effect for anyone else wanting to be "drafted" into their desired profession.  Be a first round draft pick.  Work hard without exception or apology.  Know that you are filling a need for the organization.  Recognize and appreciate the opportunities that come your way.  Be the person that wants the organization to win regardless of the role you get to play.  This is what top round players do.  So what are you doing to be the first round draft pick in your desired field?

Balance Does Not Show Up on a Ballot

To be cliché about it, these are difficult times.  These days you have to wade through strong polarized views on how things should be.  We have to tolerate polarized elected leadership and sometimes tolerate regular polarized people.  These things do have an effect on our mental health and relationships.  A recent study found that 1 in 5 people are sleepless or have lost a friend over our political climate.  This is not good.

With the election over (not to mention the ads) the voting pressure is starting to fade, I want to encourage us to move towards balance.  No matter what your political persuasion is, open yourself up to find the merit in each position and find the balance in between them.  When we ponder the right answers for the American public, you can find them in the most balanced proposals and not the most one sided.

Let's take the Illinois budget trouble as an example.  We have a budget deficit of around $4.5 billion and the solution is hung up in a war between sides.  One side says we have to raise more revenue to fix the budget.  The other side says our reckless spending is the problem.  Guess what?  Both sides are right.  Together they have the total solution and apart they have nothing.  Just words.  If Illinois wants to do better, we have to have balance.  We have to increase revenue AND decrease spending.  We can't expect candidates to fix problems and find balance simply because they survived an election.

I get it.  Balance does not show up on a ballot.  If we want our desired candidate to be in office, we have to pick a side and vote for them.  If they don't campaign on the general issues of their party, we don't know what we are electing.  We vote for political ideologies, but not necessarily for the person that represents those views.  We often dismiss the "who" in favor of the "what" when it comes to the ballot.  The Pew Research Center offers some evidence for this.  Ahead of this most recent election, 78% of voters polled said they would vote a straight ticket when it came to the President and their House member.  In other words, they will cast a vote for each candidate on the ballot running from a single party.  Only 4% of potential Biden voters said they would vote for a Republican House candidate. 

If we want to find balance in our cultural and political landscapes, we have to change the way we vote.  I am a registered Democrat, but I have only voted a straight ticket a couple of times in my 26 year voting career.  Sure the Democratic political platform holds a certain weight with me, but there have been times that I knew the Republican candidate was a better fit when it came to bringing balance to an office and its unique struggles.  If voting is our civic duty, then we must also show responsibility for bringing the most good to the most people by voting for balance.  We need to worry about the people being the winners of an election and not the candidates.  Then maybe, just maybe we can all have balance.

Good Tired

John Lewis used to say that you have to get into "good trouble" if you are trying to make a difference.  He often used this phrase when talking about being arrested during the civil rights movement.  I have used a parallel phrase lately that in no way compares to the gravity of the civil rights movement, but heroes like him have inspired me to be relentless given the current pandemic condition of schools.  

I often say you have to be a "good tired" when it comes to these difficult times for our school families.  Work too hard and care too much.  This is how you can be a good tired.  Like a carpenter that ends the day scanning his work with pride and wondering how to make it better, we have to embrace working hard for our kids and teachers.  I know many that have written this school year off as a bust and in a lot of ways, I can't disagree.  We have run into our share of roadblocks.  But instead of being beat down about what you can't do, be beat down by how much you are doing.  I don't mean work yourself to death. We have to take care of ourselves, but work that you feel good about like a great visit to the gym.

My school has went in and out of remote learning more than once this year.  It is hard on everyone, but is necessary due to the conditions we are in.  Yes this is frustrating and yes it can be depressing.  Like it or not, your school family is looking to you as a leader to minimize the negative impact that the pandemic has had.  We do not have the luxury of sitting back and throwing our hands up.

If I could speak to other admins that might be lost or struggling, I would say don't stop even if in-person learning does.  We have to be models of persistence and resiliency with our students.  Probably most importantly, we have to remind our community that we are still the guiding institution that they need us to be.  We have lots of annual events that we may have to do virtually, but we won't skip them.  When we do, it feels less like school and more like a pandemic.

I won't lie.  I do feel like I am working way to hard.  I'm often wiped out when I get home and I didn't even do a 15 hour day with a ballgame in it.  I'm tired, but I am satisfied with my effort for kids teachers and families.  That's a good tired.  There is a lot of good tired going around.  I love scrolling through Twitter to see all the ways leaders are keeping everyone connected when it is so difficult to do so.  Finding ways to help kids know that their school cares about them is a lot of work so thank you for doing it.  Leaders and teachers, be proud to be a good tired.

You Are More Than Enough

I basically haven't left my school building in six months.  I got pretty used to missing the little things about being an in empty building pretty quick.  Now that we have returned to school first in an all remote format and then to a hybrid model, I have been able to gradually reconnect with my students and teachers.  We attend half days four days a week and then all students are remote on Fridays.  Students have the option to do a full remote model and about 20% of our kids do so.  We are not back to "normal", but we are happy to experience school again and get to do meaningful work.  

As we have come back and progressed on, we are facing a lot of realities that subconsciously we knew would be here.  Like most schools we have trouble keeping up with students who are not attending.  We have a large number of low-income and IEP students that are choosing to be full remote and failing multiple classes.  We have met many challenges and rose to face new ones.  Connectivity and device access was a challenge met.  Preparing a building for the safe return of students and staff was a challenge met.  Learning how to teach remotely and the skills that accompany that is a challenge that was met.  What we weren't ready for was the heartache of not being able to reach and teach all of our students.

In casual discussion with my teachers and others from neighboring towns, I see a pattern.  Teachers are over wearing masks, hand sanitizer and social distancing.  That was the easy part.  Great teachers are worried about helping every child.  Right now we have many students struggling.  Students are failing classes, reaching out for counselors, and in some cases in charge of caring for their younger siblings so their parents can work.  Some students are completely unreachable without outside help.  Because students are hurting, our teachers are also hurting.

I have talked to more than one teacher that feels that they are not enough right now.  They feel that they are failing kids in a situation beyond their control.  They are spending longer than usual hours to reach out only to spin their wheels.  Teachers, I have news for you.  You are enough.

In fact, you are more than enough.  You may not get to see your students everyday for full days.  But the interactions you get to have are huge to those kids.  You may not think they are listening to your instruction in science or reading, but they are happy you are there to give it.  You are so incredibly important to them.

March on teachers and for today, put aside all those measurements that make you feel icky.  I don't care what AimsWeb or iReady says about the performance of your kids.  Those kids have you and you are more than enough.  Hamish told us to be relentless.  Rita told us that every kid needs a champion. Keep being those things and hold your head high.  One day this will be over and we will see this experiences as something that made us stronger.  Your kids will see you as someone that gave them back a sense of normal when nothing else was.  You are more than enough.

Know Justice Know Peace

There's no doubt you have seen posters that say "No Justice No Peace" on them during recent protests over instances of police brutality and social injustice.  The statement is true not only now, but througout history.  When the powers that be stop serving the people or stop being fair, the people rise up.  This has been proven over time across the globe including in this country.

Source: Associated Press

The latest chapter of racial injustice is the conclusion of the heartbreaking story of Breonna Taylor.  This tradegy caught my eye and interest more than the others.  We had the opportuntiy to watch George Floyd's murder on television and the court of public opinion was in full effect.  The evidence was before our eyes.  We knew what justice would or should look like for that situation.  In the case of Breonna Taylor, we didn't get to see it unfold.  We only heard the story through the eyes of the police department after a no knock warrant went wrong.

I'm an educated man, but this is the first time I had heard of a no knock warrant.  I immediately applied my 4th amendment skills and condemned the practice.  Then I decided to learn more about them and why they are used.  I still condemn the practice, but I did do the work.  No knock warrants are used when police need to enter a premisies unannounced to prevent the destruction of or tampering with of evidence.  These are primarily used in cases of drug crimes.  They became common when we ramped up the war on drugs in the 80's.  They have generally been supported by case law, but with reservations.

So a no knock warrant led to the unfortunate events that took the life of Breonna Taylor.  The warrant was issued because detectives convinced a judge that this residence was trafficking drugs.  This is based on USPS packages leaving the apartment and being delivered to a known drug house two months earlier.  I have a lot of problems with this.  The speculation that drugs were being mailed to this apartment was old by the time a warrant was obtained.  Instead of intercepting packages and trying to search those either by warrant or probable cause, we employed a tactic that is dangerous to both the residents and the police officers.  Kenneth Walker shot one time at officers fearing that the home had been broken into.  This is an expected fight or flight response.  Then, officers fired into the home killing Breonna Taylor as she laid in her bed.  No drugs were found.

The mayor and city council quickly banned no knock warrants in Louisville calling it "Breonna's Law".  This came a month after her mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.  That suit was settled for $12 million and week later we learned that no charges would be filed against the officers in connection with her death.  It reminded me of the OJ trial.  He didn't kill those people, but he would be responsible for their deaths in civil court.  The same backward logic applied here aserting that the city acknowledged wrong doing by settling the suit, but refuses to hold the officers accountable for actually killing her.

In this case, the no knock warrant denied Kenneth Walker and Breonna Taylor of basic justice.  In it's simplist terms, justice means fairness.  When investigators could not crack the case, they sought a sketchy warrant that not only endangered the lives of the residents, but the lives of the officers as well.  The result is heartache and a reminder that our war on drugs disproportionately affects poor people and people of color.  Show me a white collar crime suspect that has been served a no knock warrant.  There are very few, because white collar crime warrants are highly scrutinized by the courts, where in drug cases they are handed out quite easily.  If you need more on how dangerous they are, Houston banned them last year after two were killed and officers were injured serving a no knock warrant.  The evidence was there before Breonna Taylor.  The New York Times did an investigative piece that found that 81 people and 13 officers had died during these kinds of raids between 2010 and 2016.

So the statement is true.  When there is no justice, there will be no peace.  I chose to change this from an ultimatum to what should be a statement of American values.  When you know justice, you will know peace.  If we continue to target groups disproportionately with unfair practice, we do not know justice and we will not realize peace.  Yes we need to catch and punish the evil doers.  But we have to do that within the bounds of fair practice and when we percieve our governments to be oppresive, we will rise up.  Those are not my words, but the words of Thomas Jefferson in 1776.  Know justice so we can know peace.