Thread by @TracyNovick

At this point, I have the beginnings of several blog posts and several unsent tweets responding to a lot of the nonsense around schools right now.
I keep reopening them, re-reading, getting overwhelmed with exhaustion, and closing them again.

There’s been a recent renewal of the “why won’t anyone think of the CHILDREN” line #onhere, as if somehow it has escaped the attention of local leadership of districts that we don’t have children in buildings and that has consequences. #ThanksWeKnewThat

I think folks need to be super super careful (and I would use stronger adverbial descriptors here if I spoke that way) when speaking about the children of others whose life and experience aren’t theirs (and I speak here from inside my own glass house, as it were).

It is wrong to say that children who are not in buildings are not being educated.

That is simply not the case.

It is also not the case to say their education is the same.

It would be wrong to ignore that there are losses by children not being in buildings, if that were happening.

Since it isn’t, however, being ignored, that’s rather a moot point.

Attaching ourselves too strongly to a particular format, though, seems to me to miss that what we are supposed to be about is educating children.

Since we know—yes, we know—that the K-12 public education system only works *so* well for *so* many kids, the assumption that the best and only answer is to march as many kids back into buildings “for their own” good seems based on unfounded assumptions of what that “good” is.

I’m also frankly exhausted by the “but why didn’t you blow up the K-12 education system and start over when you had the chance?”
We did? Because I was busy being a part of folks making plans that were predicated in state and federal levels doing their jobs which...

...was mixed, let’s say. I didn’t notice a lot of time, space, and money for innovation these past months.

And frankly, this seems of a piece with the “I’m going to write the Great American Novel during the pandemic” plan.

That’s a lovely thought. We’re living in several levels of crisis here, so the energy for that is a myth for most.

And I swear that anyone who comes out with anything about city schools that hasn’t had a good sit down on urban education and school funding should never be called again.

To write about Baltimore sending kids back into buildings without mentioning that Baltimore was where we saw schools that were 50’s degrees in the winter a few years back due to inadequate heating systems seems an oversight, to put it mildly.

And don’t you’d dare—don’t you DARE—laughingly suggest that kids “can just put a sweater on!” when you talk about air circulation in school buildings.

Do you think we have coat drives in school systems for our AMUSEMENT?!

I said it again in a meeting today: school systems find ways to cope.
We always do.
It’s our job.
It’s not going to be a perfect answer, and sometimes it isn’t even a good answer for some kids.

But the kids are ours. And so we cope.

If you’re not likely what that looks like, then maybe look beyond the district level, to the points that districts have been making since March.

But stop always and forever with thinking money is “an excuse.”

So help me, if I read another “it’s about priorities” directed at the DISTRICT level, as if the HVAC for fifty buildings was somehow loose change in a district budget...

Stop thinking that mistrust of systems isn’t earned.

You think it is an *accident* that higher levels of Black and Latino families are saying “no, thanks”?

And stop thinking that the typical K-12 classroom experience is the best thing for every child.

It isn’t. That was true in February. It sure as heck is true now.

Everyone is really, really stressed right now, and we’re hitting walls all over the place.

(As a friend noted to me this week: ‘is it them, or is it the pandemic?’ is a good question to ask oneself before reacting)

But I could do with a whole lot fewer think pieces and speeches from folks whose experience of education was well-funded and well-suited to them (and yes, there is a lot of subtweeting here)...

And more actual constructive ASSISTANCE around the gaping holes in yes, funding, but also how we think best suit education to kids.

Because I think we can learn things from what we are doing now, but only if we stop throwing up our hands in horror at the thought, and start from where we actually are.

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