Demanding a Seat at the Table
When I started the newsletter, I jokingly called it Takes & Typos: A (Nominally) Weekly Newsletter because I was unsure of how committed I’d be to the project. I had just exited Twitter, for the second time—I was trying Mastodon, also for the second time. Both of those stuck and I’ve also fallen in love with this medium. Each week, I look forward to sitting down on Sunday afternoon (with soccer, a police procedural, or wrestling in the background) and writing the newsletter. Even better are the replies. Each newsletter a few of you reply and offer your thoughts.
Sometimes y’all amen the takes. Sometimes you challenge my lens or ask me to consider another angle. A few times folks told me I was nuts. But it’s always worthwhile. So this week, I’m changing the name of the newsletter and getting rid of the “Nominally.” We've been at this for fourteen weeks. Dammit, it’s a weekly now!
Today’s newsletter is about the problematic ways journalists cover education stories and how they can learn from people like Anne Helen Petersen.
So welcome back or welcome for the first time to Takes & Typos: A Weekly Newsletter.
Way too often in discussions about education policy, students and teachers are the subjects of the reporting but absent from it. When writing about legal matters, reporters quote attorneys. When writing about medical matters, they cite doctors or medical researchers. But when it comes to education, the voices of practicing teachers are almost always absent.
Instead, they talk to economists, legislators, even hacks like Liv Finne at allegedly “non-partisan” “think-tanks” (I put both terms in quotes because non-partisan ≠ non ideological and because the amount of thinking that goes on at the Washington Policy Center is debatable). Ideologues get column inches but teachers aren’t worthy. That paradigm never sat well with me and being the (occasional) brute I am, I’d make it my business to call it out.
You’ll never get what you don’t ask for—each one of those resulted in a response from the publication. The Seattle Times story about the Tacoma strike was updated to include quotes from local teachers; Crosscut added State Teacher of the Year, Lyon Terry, to the panel at their event; The Times later published my op-ed offering a differing perspective about pending teacher evaluation legislation.
If I took the time to go for people’s necks about excluding teacher voices in the past, it makes sense to give flowers when they’re due today. Anne Helen Petersen, wrote this week about the burden of school spirit days and themed dress weeks/months in elementary schools. As a teacher in high school much of this was (thankfully) foreign to me. I don’t have a dog in the fight—I can’t be bothered with dressing up for Halloween, forget about the “100th day of school” or “Bling in the Holidays.” It all sounds exhausting and a distraction from the business at hand. But I’m bringing this up to highlight how Helen Petersen covered the issue. In setting up her story she wrote the following:
Still, I knew my annoyance was missing some vertical and horizontal contextualization…. I also knew that these days were meant to engender community, infuse the school day with some level of joy, and incentivize attendance — all things most schools are desperate for, particularly post-Covid shutdowns….
For today’s post, I asked educators to offer that context. The sampling you’ll find below comes from 150 responses from all corners of the country, in all types of schools, at all different levels, and with different levels of animus or apathy towards these days.
Look how easy that was: she saw an issue in schools that she knew was fraught in some circles. She sought input and context from educators and then shared their stories. If we can do this when it comes to themed dress days, then we can do it around compensation, evals, authoritarian book bans, and the myriad other issues facing schools. It’s a matter of taking the time and valuing teacher voices.
Publications and individual journalists respond to pressure. It’s often an oversight, rather than malice. If you find yourself reading a story about schools but ignoring the people who work in them, I encourage you to call it out.
Recommendations and Bits for the Week
The last two weeks, I’ve teased my re-read of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. I’m about 3/4th of the way through and boy do I have some takes. I last read the novel fifteen years ago—clearly I was in a different headspace at that time. I both loathe and love it. I need to have a conversation with someone, possibly a therapist, about how I can “love” a book with not a single likable character, no real discernible plot development, indescribable levels of violence, and the frequent and liberal use of the n-word by nearly every character in the book.
One newsletter reader, I.C., agreed saying “the only likable/innocent characters were victims…. Blood Meridian is a cruel world where it's a race to be the criminal rather than the victim.” The novel is like the Birth of a Nation meets Saw or an effete, zombie-less revisioning of the Walking Dead. l’ll have more thoughts when I finish and maybe a podcast conversation to boot. Again, if you’ve read or have takes, feel free to opine.
Lastly, in a recent newsletter, I touched on the troubled career of Tom Sizemore. He was most notable for his roles in Heat and Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore lost his acting career to drug addiction and horrendous sexual assault allegations. He passed away this weekend, stemming from complications from a brain aneurysm at 61. His best days were years behind him—such a messy end for a messier man.
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See you next week!
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