In Case of Emergency - Break Glass

In Case of Teaching Emergency Read This: Too stressed to read? Just skip to the end.*

Welcome to the most anxious week of the teaching year!

T-minus 6 Days Until the AP US Government and Politics Exam.

The first year I taught AP I was filling the very large shoes of the revered AP European history teacher who had just retired. How on earth was I going to live up to the expectations of all the students who had signed up for his class? And it was his class - he had taught for over three decades! He didn’t just teach history, he was history. And besides, I was teaching three AP preps I had never taught before: Euro (all knowledge of which was somehow erased during college!), AP US Government ("Yes," I said, in my job interview "I'm happy to teach things I know almost nothing about!"), and Comparative Government (which I frankly didn't even know existed). I second-guessed myself every single day of that painful year. I struggled with the content, the skills, the students, their helicopter parents the pain of knowing how much better I could do given the time, support, and guidance. Our school day started at 7:10 am. I taught 5 classes. I had over 120 students. I stayed late, reading into the night, grading, grading, grading. I slept on the weekends. I changed a lot that year.

Old me: Multiple choice scores are an incomplete way to measure and evaluate the depth of learning of my precious students.

New me: Where the hell are those scantrons!

It was hard.I was drowning under all the ungraded tests and FRQs. And because I was so green to AP I didn’t really know what I was doingor where I was going. I was building the ship as I sailed it. And the students didn’t really like that ship. My ship was always trying to connect everything we learned about to current events, to their lives, so that they could really understand the meaning of their knowledge. Meanwhile, they just wanted me to sail their ship as fast as I could into AP Exam harbor. ”Just tell us what’s on the exam!!!!!”

As if I even knew! But gosh, we sure had a lot of stuff to cram in all those young noggins, and boy did I sail that ship fast!

This old chestnut from the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra is the perfect distillation of my first AP teaching year. “We’re lost, and I don’t know where we’re headed but we’re making very good time.”

And then when exam month came and I was NOWHERE near prepared, the panic began to set in. In AP US Government we hadn’t even covered civil liberties and all those hundreds of potentially tested Supreme Court cases yet (Wolf v. Colorado!? Give me a break). I wasn’t even to the 20th century in AP European! I started teaching faster and faster.

Pro Tip: the faster you teach the faster they don't learn!

On exam day, I was a wreck. I paced back in forth past the glass window looking into my classroom looking for signs of success from the students who crouched over their exams. So much was riding on this moment and there was nothing any more I could do about it.
And then, in the middle of this all important three hour exam for which I had prepared my students so carefully: some jackass ran down one of the halls and pulled a fire alarm! My teaching life flashed before my eyes.

All the kids had to immediately exit the building. Game over!

I stomped around the school, fuming over all the hard work lost. I think that was the first time I ever cried and cursed at the same time.

Fast forward 20 years.  

Those kids did great! The College Board has a protocol for just about anything. "Proctor: A tsunami is approaching the test site, sir. Exam Administrator: implement ETS plan 3.c1 and baton down those hatches!"
A year of teaching is so much bigger than three hours. Your teaching is so much more important than just preparing kids for a test.
Today, I get a lot of emails from former students. And as I look back, sure I’m proud that I prepared my students enough so that if they put the time and effort into the course they could earn a really great test score (and most did.) But the student emails I receive are never about their AP scores, GPAs, or anything like that. The students I hear from (who are now VOTERS!!!) write to tell me about "this amazing article" they’ve just read in the Wall Street Journal about foreign policy, or to ask me to help them remember the name or send a link to the article we all read and did those labs on about social capital, or to ask how our global scholars exchange program is going, or to tell me about the U.S. Senator they are working for in D.C.
 

So fear not, brave teachers. And don’t panic. If you have taught the kids to think and really dig into and engage with the material they are going to be GREAT! A-OK!

All the groundwork you laid throughout the year really kicks in now.
 

Remember:

The redesign exam emphasizes depth over breadth.

The redesign exam emphasizes understanding over memorizing.

The redesign exam emphasizes analysis over coverage.
Just like real life!?!?

No, you did not cover everything!

And actually you can’t cover everything!

And you don’t need to cover everything because the new exam is NO LONGER a vocabulary test on steroids. The new exam actually measures important things like students’ analysis and skills - what they can do with what they know. Remember, the first 23 of 55 multiple choice questions are all analysis of documents and visuals. If you have been having your kids explain the what, why, and so what of visual data and our class starters this year, your students are going to be successful: in the best way.

The end*
So take a deep breath. If you’re still feeling nervous I’ve got tons of stuff on my site that will help your kids think and do government & politics. You’ve done your job. You’ve taught your students how to think, given them great analytical skills, and instilled in them a passion for learning. In the end isn’t that the kind of citizen our country needs most?

And they all lived happily ever after.

Hope

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Flavio stole through the thick Angolan brush, his bare feet bleeding and bruised, the firelight of burning huts illuminating his back as he pushed into the night. At dawn, when the soldiers returned to the charred village to look for survivors Flavio was well into his 500 mile trek to the Congo where, now an orphan, he stowed away on a freighter and sailed to the United States. In 1994, in a cramped sweltering classroom in inner-city Houston, a tall, ropy-limbed African boy held out his strong hand to shake mine. His neatly-pressed clothes were a size too small, but his eyes sparkled with light.

Robert E. Lee High school - overflowing with over 3000 mostly immigrant students - was an oasis for refugees from crises across the globe: Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan. Over 100 countries were represented in our school and strolling down the hall, if you listened carefully, there was no telling what language or story you might hear. Despite their burdens - some worked forty hours a week, some were parents, others were their own parents - the tired, poor, and huddled students of Lee High seemed exceptionally grateful to be in school. Lee was like a balloon they blew up each morning and then climbed inside, its walls the thinnest protection from the harsh world outside.

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While I taught my students the history of their new home, they taught me the story of suffering. By Christmas we had buried Jean, a lanky happy kid from Jamaica, excited about graduation, crushed on the way to school; mourned the mother of my 16 year-old student Edilson, killed in a hit and run as she walked to work, making him an old orphan; and then there were all the students I never met whose journeys to the promised land were cut short - stopped at the border, stepped on a landmine, thrown from a freight train, drowned by bandits. But I also learned about resilience in my students’ excitement in their new lives and experiences: we loaded into my car for free-day at the Museum of Fine Arts on free-day, I traded them driving lessons in my Subaru (“it’s like a toaster on wheels, Meester”) for Cumbia dance lessons for me and my wife, and together we invented bilingual nicknames for their classmates - Freddy Cabeza, “Fred Head”; Nestor Alegria, “Happy”; and Jose “K” Rico. The past was so hard that, like air escaping a balloon, life forced them onward. 8:00 a.m., studying the gilded age after a late-shift at the grocery store, or a long night nursing a sick younger sibling back to health, my students slumped on their battered desks, dreaming of a brighter future. A cargo ship carried Flavio across the Atlantic, and at the end of his year at Lee his brilliant soccer skills took him to college. His eyes shone as he walked across the graduation platform and into the future. Hope is not quantifiable, cannot be learned from a lecture, or measured on a test; but it is one of the most valuable things we can ever learn.

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Prayer in School

Prayer in School

Civic Literacy

A Republic Madam - The Musical.

As Benjamin Franklin left the Pennsylvania State House after the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787, the wife of the mayor of Philadelphia asked him what the new American government would be. 81 year old Franklin turned frailly and slowly replied, “A republic, madam. If you can keep it.” For the past 20 plus years I’ve taught civics, government, and history knowing that the survival of our republic rests upon a well educated public. L’etat c’est us, after all! We gave ourselves a republic and we could take it away. It’s up to we the people to safeguard it. As Franklin said to the mayor’s wife, and Michael Jackson sang to our great nation, we’re the only ones who could keep this good thing goin’ baby!

A republic is a very good thing to keep, indeed.

Republican democracy (we added the democracy part later, Franklin and his ilk weren’t too keen on the government by the people part of democracy - in fact, they never once dropped the word democracy in the Constitution) is one of the best things to ever happen to we the people. Here’s the thing- not all of us are oligarchs, kleptocrats, monarchs, theocrats, tsarinas, or Sith Lords - but no matter how mean-spirited, shrill, or foul tempered we are - each and every one of us is people. So it’s good to have a government by the thing we all, by definition, are! And here’s a fun fact (like some facts aren’t fun), no democracy has ever gone to war against another. And, going out on a limb here, I don’t think war is something worth fighting for.

Our republic can’t keep itself.

There have always been forces opposed to the power of the people and there always will be, but make no mistake,today our republic is under attack. The Framers gave us a Constitution that kept the reins of power firmly in the hands of the few. In 1789 people meant only male, white, educated, land-owning, high falutin, and in some states, Protestant (there were no buggie bumper stickers proclaiming - I’m a Zen Buddhist and I vote!) But slowly, as our nation matured, our definition of people expanded to including blacks, women, Indians, 18, 19 and 20 year olds, and now, for a limited time only, Zen Buddhists. As we the people becomes even more inclusive, I believe power will flow to more and more of us. And we all lived happily ever after. No. This year’s election was a reversal of the trajectory of American history, and a narrowing of people and restriction of power, which is why, more than ever, in order to keep the republic we’ve got to educate and empower all the people in our classrooms (or preople, as I call my under 18 non-voting students)! There’s plenty of signs that our republic is slipping away: gerrymandering, minority rule, disagreement on basic facts, a growing disregard for the rule of law, and a creeping authoritarianism.

Teach like the Republic depends upon it.

A vital living democratic republic depends on a well educated, active, and highly caffeinated people. In 1992 I started teaching in inner-city Houston, dedicating myself to teaching the republic. I was up against a lot! The schools I taught in were underfunded, ill-equipped, and thoroughly demoralized, but even in the most affluent sectors of the republic, America was not overdosing on civic literacy: More Americans can name the Three Stooges than the three branches of government (though currently, I believe, there is some overlap - Larry, Moe, Executive Branch. Is that right?); four in ten Americans can not identify a single First Amendment right (or maybe they just didn’t know that they had the freedom to say them out loud!); and believe it or not, only 17% of Americans can even identify their own political ideology (“I don’t know, I’m definitely either conservative or liberal!”)! As the political saying goes, “half the people read the newspaper, and half the people vote. Let’s hope it’s the same half.” Sadly, that old maxim is already woefully optimistic and outdated. As of 2016, only about 2 in 10 Americans got their news from a print newspaper - half the number who got their news online. The 2017 version of the quote would be, “twenty percent of people read the newspaper, 50% of eligible voters vote in presidential elections, let’s hope it doesn’t get any hotter on this planet!” Teaching my students about the Three Stooges of government is just the start; education, of course, is about more than just knowing stuff. For the people to keep the republic we must teach this generation civic literacy so that they not only how government works, but also whether it works, for whom, why it works the way it does, what caused it to work/not that way, what the effects this are, how to tell fact from fiction, information from opinion, to be skeptical consumers of news and information, to understand cause and effect, to evaluate facts, and, in sum, to think critically and be a good citizen. Civic literacy is the backbone of democracy and essential to keeping our republic, and according to recent studies, it’s at an all time low. Today, after my 22 plus years in the classroom it looks like our republic is on life support, and I can’t help but think it’s time to teach harder and up our civil literacy game!

Here’s what I do about it. Teach for civic literacy.

A couple of years ago as rich visual data proliferated across the internet, I wondered why so few of these marvelous mind-expanding resources were filtering down to the my students. And when I did share charts and graphs in class, why were my perfectly intelligent students, so ill-equipped to process the this data? To build critical visual literacy, I decided to start every class with critical questions about curious, relevant, and engaging graphs, charts, maps, cartoons, and infographics about American government. Not only were my students exposed to rich social studies content, but they were building critical visual fluency - and enjoying it! Before long, students began to bring their own visual data into class and our daily visual bell ringer was expanded to include  an action extension where student-citizens can practice the vital skills of keeping the republic. I dared to imagine how our entire republic would benefit from activating these same critical visual skills and civic participation.

What will you do keep the Republic?

in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. And as America slouches into civic illiteracy, it is no surprise that we’ve got a Stooge running our government. Join us online for our daily civic bell ringers, or even better, have your students create their own! How will you answer when a student asks what kind of government we have?

Vanishing Act

Cy Twombly

There is a Zen saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." I use every tool I have to engage and inspire students so that they are ready to learn. I also draw inspiration from the great Italian educator, Maria Montessori who wrote. "The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." We teachers work hard, pushing and pulling; cheering them on - all the while trying not to be seen. Preparing our students so that once we have vanished they can continue a life of learning without knowing we are always there beside them.