Newsletter #5 - Giving People their Flowers
Happy Sunday,
This week’s missive is an appreciation for really awesome people who have either inspired me or made me a better professional. I originally planned to write about the AI essay kerfuffle, then some doomy stuff about American decline, but this felt more important. We never know how long people will be with us.
This week the dean of US soccer journalism, Grant Wahl, passed away unexpectedly while covering the Argentina vs Netherlands quarterfinal match at the World Cup. His passing was sudden. He was eulogized by many. I appreciated Dave Clark's tribute in Sounder at Heart. Notably, there was an outpouring from corners of the internet I never expected and a tearful farewell on the Athletic's soccer podcast.
Each time we lose someone like Wahl, gone far too soon, I am reminded that we shouldn't wait until people are no longer with us to give them their flowers. So this week I decided to praise some folks; I want the important people in my life to know how much I appreciate them.
Flowers for Trusting Leadership - When I worked at Lincoln High School, my principal Pat Erwin, had a simple leadership style. He scouted out teaching talent: hired hard-working, committed educators, and empowered them to run the school. He acted more as a GM for a pro sports team than a principal. Our staff planned our own PD, based on our needs. If we needed money for a field trip or a classroom resource he’d find money somewhere in the budget. Major decisions around things that impacted the entire school were made collectively by a site-based decision making committee. He had an open door and faculty could come see him at any time with concerns or ideas. I didn’t appreciate it as much then as I do now, but he often served as a bulwark between teachers and the decisions made by other power centers outside our building. The Lincoln staff under Pat was the best teaching staff in the state of Washington and it wasn’t particularly close. He assembled a great team and gave them a sense of ownership–every student deserves that in their school.
Flowers for Excellence and Professionalism - I have an amazing pair of colleagues in Abu Dhabi, to protect their privacy we’ll call them LeBron James and Minnie Driver. My admiration for them is bottomless. Jord… er… LeBron might be the hardest working person I have ever taught with. She leaves me in the dust when it comes to organization and long-term planning. I love to sit with her and revise unit plans and assessments. She’s a good thought partner, principled but also pragmatic. Our collaborative sessions are efficient, productive, and (I think) we maintain a good distribution of labor and responsibilities. I can be honest with her if I think a task is wack and needs to be redesigned; she is honest with me, if she thinks I am being ridiculous (which I often am).
Minnie Driver is perhaps the most efficient person the Lord has ever created. She is the consummate professional–she knows when a meeting should be an email–when she has a meeting they are brief and focused. When I go to her with a professional dilemma or seeking a sounding board, she provides nuanced takes that are grounded in best practices and her deep experience in the classroom. She's the only person in my professional life who regularly makes me go "man, I gotta get my stuff together." She is organized in ways that I don’t even bother to aspire to, because there’s no way I’ll ever be on that level. Minnie is that dude. If she decided to leave our school, I’d start shopping around myself.
Flowers for Courage - Anti-Blackness is real. Sexism is real. People who hold anti-Black and sexist views online are often very loud about their opinions and travel in rabid digital packs. Few people I know have faced more abuse from online mobs than Shana White. She is the moral compass of the faction of justice-centered educators that I view as my fellow travelers. She is courageous–I am constantly in awe of her dogged commitment to speaking truth to power. In the face of threats, waves of harassment, even a months long suspension from Twitter for fighting back against a particularly egregious right-wing troll, she remains unbent and unbowed. If everyone in our profession had her courage, our schools would be a much better place. We need more people like Shana.
Who would you give flowers to? Shoot me a note and I’ll share some responses in next week’s newsletter.
Recommendations for the Week
If you’re in Tacoma, Hope and I are coming back for winter break and will be hosting the first Nerd Farmer Live/Adult Civics Happy Hour since the start of the pandemic. We’ll be gathering at the Press Room in downtown Tacoma on December 22nd. Tickets are free but first come, first served and available here. We will have two panels, one about the trial of Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer and one about the upcoming 2023 State Legislative session.
I originally set out this week to write about the half-panic/half-broughaha in academia about AI, machine learning, essay writing, and things of that ilk, but my friend Randy knocked it out of the park, including some AI images he was able to quickly render that are dazzling.
There will be unintended consequences from this. I’ve said this before, but let me reiterate it. Technology is amazing, but creating tech just because it’s amazing shouldn’t be the goal. We need to look at this tech for not just what it is, but what it might become! That’s a big problem with this. We don’t know what we can do with it.
Will we be able to do this with video? Well, they’re working on that right now. Will they be able to provide us with images that we are sure are real? Absolutely. What will that mean? We already have a public who views the truth as being relative. Bottom line: People are stupid. They’ll believe anything. When this kind of tech is loose on the world, anything could happen.
On Nerd Farmer this week, I talked with NY-based real estate adviser Nikki Beauchamp. We talked about the current US housing market and how despite falling prices in many places folks’ are still losing buying power due to rising interest rates.
The best thing I listened to this week was the most recent episode of Radio Open Source, The Maelstrom of Geopolitics, featuring Ambassador Chas Freeman. It is a discussion of the decline of American power abroad. Particularly how the US influence is waning on India, the Gulf States, and Turkey.
See you next week!
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.