To call it a disappointment isn’t quite strong enough.

I’m never a fanboy of futility…I think there’s always something that could be done.

My issue is that the people who seem to me to be the ones who are positioned to really do something don’t, and I’m left to wonder why.

Befuddled, I suppose. Yeah, befuddled.

So sure, Trump won. That’s no surprise to me, I mean the Democrats have been paving his way since 2016 and the haters and racists have seemed really empowered and encouraged by that Elon energy lately. The Trump win is being described as some sort of mandate to roll forward, full steam ahead, with an agenda of deportation and bigotry, while the material needs of and deference to the working class is cast aside. 

Tax cuts for the wealthiest, a seat at the policymaking table for wealthy donors, and crypto, baby. Oh, and deportation and isolationism. Plus rescinding Bidens plan to reduce medication costs for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Trump is making America something, that’s for sure.

It was ten years ago at least. Maybe close to fifteen. I was vacationing with my wife then and we decided to do something Virginia-beautiful. Something that would take us on a scenic drive, along winding mountainside roads that might offer up a spontaneous stop-n-bite meal someplace that serves tasty southern roadkill sandwiches or critter fries.

Or a winery?

Yeah. A winery. We were given an incredible place to stay through a family connection-a place with ceiling-high windows, a “cabin” that was much more than just that, surrounded by nature. A bottle or three of wine would certainly allow one to be left unopened as a thank-you gift. Right?

So off we went in search of, with some loose awareness of where a winery might be found and one of those old Garmin GPS things to guide us along the way. Are they still around? It’s one of those devices that need to be actively updated (or at least it did back then) otherwise new roads, roads that no longer existed, current construction blocking roads you expected to be there… all of that waited as potential confounding variables in your point A to point B plan.

This on top of the fact that I am pretty hopeless when it comes to navigation, with or without GPS.

After some time we came to realize that the roads Mr. Garmin was pointing us towards, and the winery that supposedly awaited, were not where we were being told they were.

I say Mr. Garmin because I’m pretty certain Mrs. Garmin would have known what the hell she was talking about. Mr. Garmin clearly did not. So we were left to our own devices to drive on beautiful Virginia roads on a beautiful, sunny, Virginia day, looking for things to see and wine to drink. Isn’t there a John Denver song about some of that stuff? Not so much the bottles of wine-maybe that’s Rocky Mountain High I’m thinking, not Virginia Mountain Drunk.

Okay, I’m rambling. Let’s get to it.

Some winding roads and a gradual climb, and all of the sudden the trees parted. The sky opened, and out of nowhere, we were plunked in the middle of what looked like a suburban pod community. A few perfectly neat little homes, with perfectly paved driveways in front of perfect little attached garages. Perfectly mowed lawns with nothing out on them except a few perfectly pruned trees and shrubs. No toys, no lawn furniture, no trash bins by the roadside for pickup… No cars in the driveway. And we hadn’t seen another vehicle on the road for quite some time.

It almost looked like a developer’s life-sized model of a planned community. No Real estate signs, though, to indicate that these were model homes for viewing. It seemed these were homes that belonged to actual people, but there were just no signs of people.

Driving just a little bit past these homes brought us to the tippy top of this hill. The homes were gone and there were only a couple of things to see here.

On the left:

A cemetery of sorts. Or, a graveyard? I’m not sure which name should be given to a blank, sterile gathering of bodies and grave markers into columns and rows on a rectangular piece of earth. This was no “final resting place” that would be sold to folks who actually worry about the view their corpse will have from initial occupancy until a future developer buys the property and evicts the residents.

No trees. No meandering paths or drives to take. Little variation in headstones. A four-foot high chain link fence surrounded it with a gate at the entrance, a dirt road that went straight in at the gate and then split in perpendicular branches, for efficient delivery, maintenance, and no-frills visitation, I assumed. From the entrance to the back row, it was about the width of an Olympic size swimming pool.

On the right:

A small stone building that looked like one of those figurines you buy in an artsy gift shop when you’re on vacation. You know the ones I mean. Sometimes the pieces are cute cottages, sometimes lighthouses. There’s that little boy and girl that are holding hands or touching noses all “in love” and stuff. Well, this building was a cobblestone type, maybe leaning a bit towards fieldstone or a collection of stone shapes that varied a little in size. The colors were reds, and purple-ish, the type of stone you see a lot of down south.

It looked like it could be a cute home even, but here’s the thing: the windows facing the road were too small, dark, and high off the ground to be really functional as windows that would let any light inside. I think they were stained glass, but I don’t remember for sure, and if they were?

They were still small, up off the ground a bit, and dark.

On the ends of this building were small, round stained glass windows way up high where the roof came to a pointed peak. The land it was on sank away steeply from the front to the back so that a small, basement-level entrance door could be put in on either side. I can remember thinking “No way that’s a house. But man, it’s kind of a fancy little mausoleum. I guess if you aren’t spending for landscaping around the graves, givem a nice waiting room, right?”

Then I saw the sign.

Church of the Brethren.

I’m not going to spend too much time on this because religious faith is precious to those who have it. Let’s just say I had never heard of this particular religion, category, sect, or classification… And let’s be honest, “brethren” has a spooky-movie sound to it.

So imagine this eerily abandoned Virginia community, because I had pretty much written the story that way in my mind right then when it happened, and this mausoleum so-called-church that blocks out all the sunlight, which sits right across the road from collected and dutifully arranged graves and bodies…

Okay, let’s just get off that.

We kept driving while I thought “Can vampires sleep their day away in an actual church?”

Eventually, we came to a “T”. The road ended.

Yet Mr. Garmin was saying there was a road in front of us.

There was not.

It was a coin-toss decision. A shared “I don’t know, which way do you think, right or left?”

The decision was for a left turn, and off we went, believing there was a winery somewhere nearby and figuring we’d see vineyards, buildings…a sign of some sort? You know, some blatantly obvious clue telling us a winery was somewhere close by.

There was none of that, and in fact, the road began to climb again and entered into a thickly wooded area. No way there were any vineyards around here and I expected to see posted signs or markers identifying state land, but you know there I was thinking like a Yankee.

Then suddenly through the trees on the left, I could see a clearing set back a little, maybe around fifty feet in, and as we got closer we could see it was a dirt parking lot around a pretty nondescript white building. The building looked something like a small town’s village barn, the sort of place where a plow, dump truck, and other small equipment might be stored.

There was no great big garage door. Nothing around it that gave it that town lot feel. No big bucket loader, piles of gravel, stone, or sand. No sign identifying it as the town of something-or-other property. There was none of that. The appearance of this building was like the “church” in that it was sort of an odd building in this secluded location and one with a purpose that was difficult to determine.

Still, as weird and secluded as it seemed, as we neared the entrance to this lot we saw that there were about eight cars parked around the building. Not abandoned junkers, or cars waiting for repairs, but decent cars that appear to have been driven and parked there for something that was going on. Then we saw a sign. It was a winery, and the sign said there was a tasting that day!

It sure didn’t seem to be the winery that Mr. Garmin was pretending to try and help us find, but after the strange church and cemetery across the road, it was a welcome and kinda quirky pitstop. There may have been that warped storytelling voice in my head that whispered this is where the vampires keep the bodies hung for “milking”, but I ignored that voice.

It says lots of silly stuff.

So in we went, and I was quietly hoping it wasn’t me that would get “tasted” that day.

The entrance was a simple, windowless door, and inside was an unfinished barn-like interior. Overhead there were exposed beams and around there were support posts and small areas that looked like this building might have served its purpose for a small farm. You know, a smaller boxed-in space where a calf could be kept on a bed of straw, another to keep wheelbarrows and some rakes, shovels, and whatnots out of the way, a larger one where bales of hay might have been kept. No fresh folks hung by their ankle for any vampires to drain at their leisure.

The vampires’ leisure, I mean.

There were about a dozen people meandering about that looked to be customers, and a few that looked to be owner-employee types. A couple makeshift serving bar/sales counters were set up, one near the entrance and another across this space on the opposite side. There were plates with some typical “pairing” snacks and some tasting, actual wine tasting, was happening. So it looked like a legit wine-making operation. Small, but legit.

As my wife and I mingled and spoke to a couple of the folks that appeared to be attached to this winery, we discovered that they only open up for tastings like this two days out of the year, and we just happened to come across it on one of those days! An incredible coincidence, right? Moving around we met a few people, took a few sips, and nibbled a cracker or two to “cleanse the palette” or whatever the wine folks do.

While we’re doing this, I notice a thin, white-haired old dude relaxing in a simple wooden chair in an area off to the side, watching.

Just watching.

A couple of the younger employees stayed close, and they spoke a little to the little old man in the little wooden chair and he to them. While I know the resemblence was not a close one, the paintbrush that is my memory has created a charater that looked like William Hickey. He had played some wonderfully creepy roles in his time but I most remember him as Don Prizzi in Prizzi’s Honor and Uncle Lewis in National Lampoon’s Christmas.

During a conversation with a woman working at this winery, when we shared our “where we’re from stories”, my wife shared that she was originally from Sodus Point, N.Y. Pleasantly surprised, the woman said:

“Why (so-and-so) right over there is from Sodus! She’s been with us for several years!”

Near 500 miles away. Little old Sodus, NY. On the shores of lake Ontario. And here in this open only twice-a-year winery that we found accidentally.

Now how could we not talk to this person.

So, we did. It didn’t take long for my wife to get through the when did you graduate, and who do you know stuff, but most interesting was the where did you live question. My wife grew up in a white house that sat in front of a couple hundred acres of Girl Scout Camp called Camp Beechwood. Her father worked as caretaker of the camp and the house for he and his family to live in was part of the compensation, and of course it was right there close to the job.

Turns out that this woman had grown up in that same house before ending up at this winery.

Her father was the caretaker of Camp Beechwood before my wife’s father had become the caretaker.

It was at this moment my mind replayed that scene from The Shining where Delbert Grady is helping to dab a stain off of Mr. Torrence’s (played by Jack Nicholson) jacket. Torrence confront’s Grady about having been the caretaker previously, having “chopped your wife and daughter up into little bits, and then you blew your brains out,” but Torrence is a little drunk on ghost booze and just starting to realize that the secluded hotel he is in holds a lot of deep dark secrets and restless spirits.

Torrence tells Grady that he WAS the caretaker after Grady claims to not know anything about what Torrence is saying, insistently, in an I know this is true tone.

Grady responds: “I am sorry to differ with you sir. But YOU are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker.”

It is just then that the little old man in the little wooden chair stands and announces that it’s time to go to the basement for a tasting.

Preface:

I tend to bring in a lot through a feelings filter. And I don’t just attach my own personal feelings, sensing my way through some situations when it might be better for me to just take a deep breath and “slow my roll” (as people way cooler than me might say).

My thing is I sense the feelings of others and sometimes think into that a little too much. Sad songs, sad movies…Ohmigod when kids in a movie suffer or struggle in some horrible situation despite their wide-open hearts and hope for a better future?

Shit, I’m crying for sure. Please don’t look at me. Or maybe I’ll just go to the kitchen quick to “grab another beer” or “get a snack quick” (a.k.a. do whatever that excuse I made up was but also quickly wipe the tears away on my shirt before I return).

So many moments like this while watching different movies, and for different reasons. It isn’t always about the kids. Loving Vincent is probably the best most recent example. It shook me. It was one of those movies I walked away from really happy that I saw it but really sure I wouldn’t be ready to watch it again any time soon. It so engaged my love of story, my sympathetic take on what I already knew of van Gogh’s life as well as my passion for art and music… That movie brought paintings to life, made them move and speak and tell that story. And it was heavy. Wow.

I want to see it again. But I think it needs to be with others, on a nice day, with a brief drink and snack plate intermission somewhere. Try to give it a trip to France sort of feel to keep it light. And then do something really fun with those people afterward.

The kids thing, though? That one is tough. The movie My Girl hit me pretty hard and I won’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But even worse, Radio Flyer. I just went to snatch and drop that link there and only saw the briefest of a promotional summary,

“When the younger brother is subjected to physical abuse at the hands of their brutal stepfather, Mike decides to convert their toy trolley…”

…and I’m already feeling it. I loved that movie for how much it made me hate it, and I have gone back to the ROKU a few times over the past few years to see if it’s streaming free on one of the channels. Over a decade and it still hadn’t. Is it that popular? I’m going to check again in a bit just to see, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to watch it again.

Like these movies, the stories I’ve been told or the ones I have lived became powerful life memories, lessons, and reference points through the emotions attached to them. From the ones where I made a righteous Tom Sawyer fool of myself trying to get the attention of my Becky Thatcher (her name is Carla), to the stories I was just witness or audience to… The ones told to me by my family members, stories have entertained me, taught me, altered my perspective, my outlook… These stories affected how I parent and how I teach.

My belief is that for people, emotions attach themselves to our lives events and that makes those events become “stories”, making them more indelible and retrievable for information that can be used later on. It’s why oral histories and oral traditions are so important. It’s how we share who we are and become aware of who others are. It’s how we convey lessons, successes, failures, culture, and so much more. It’s how families and communities connect and spread that feeling of belonging, of commitment, of shared purpose.

What follows is going to be a bit of all of that, along with the suggestion that we try to push for public education to be a tool for true engagement of learners with their world and the others who are in it through more engagement with stories. Real-life stories, made-up stories, stories from the page, or stories on stage… The current trend to measure, label, and dehumanize the goals, purpose, and process of education has had negative impacts- especially in this age of screen addiction and perpetual distraction and misinformation. I’m saying we need to slow down, come together, and share more stories. And I’m saying there are great reasons to do it, and great ways to do it.

Just went to check. Radio Flyer is still in the pay extra to get it category.

So click here, and it’s on to storytime.

It is a good idea to read Part 1 (an event from the Spring, of 2022) before this piece if you haven’t. Even though this post is about an event that happened prior to that (the previous fall), the setup of the two is me providing this one as a backstory for Part 1. IF YOU HAVEN’T, GO READ IT NOW.

Fall, 2021

The return to live and in-person learning in the fall of 2021 was sure to be an exciting, challenging, energetic, almost combustible experience.

I had written clear directions on the board and had materials and prompts and discoveries in their locations. I had prepared a scavenger hunt of sorts to reacquaint the children with each other, and placed name tags at seats around the tables I had switched to years ago, having realized that for me student desks were a far greater pain in the ass than they were a convenience. It was one more thing to manage, including all the things a desk ends up holding-things that should be in a desk, and things that should not.

The four rules for my classroom were posted in at least eight different locations. Finding these rules was, in fact, one of the find-it-if-you-can items on the scavenger hunt. I had those rules all over the place on purpose, and every year I point them out. But by the time I do, on day one, the students already get that those are the rules. I mean, they’re everywhere and they just really seem like rules when you see them and see that they are everywhere.

I created this four-rule list early in my career, one that now spans over two decades. They came to me after having participated in at least a couple “hug the children and make them feel respected” type professional development offerings. These were largely focused on a classroom discipline approach that pretends to put students in the driver’s seat when it comes to establishing classroom rules by involving them in a leading conversation-one where the rules land pretty much where the teacher wants them to begin with.

I hate wasting time that way when it comes to rules.

The foundation for an effective lifelong learner, a great part of which is structure and rules, needs to be simple and easily understood so it can be generalized to more early-stage learners. I have rules when I teach. Pretty much the same rules I had as a child myself, the same rules my parents had, the same rules my daughters had… I think the same rules most decent people I know have had. They rarely needed to be listed the way I’m about to because the words might be slightly different but when you see someone succeeding either in school, at work, or in life in general, chances are they learned and internalized a similar set of all-purpose rules. My rules are:

1. Listen
2. Follow Directions
3. Be Polite
4. Do your Best

What we’re really struggling with in school is less about gaps in ELA and Math achievement and more about gaps in student experiences with structure and with basic rules like that, as well as appropriate rewards and consequences attached to those things. The lack of character, responsibility, and respect that are the products of structure and rules are the hurdles standing in the way of their achievement. Educators are perpetually directed to and held accountable for achievement in discrete skills and standardized assessments, away from long-established, understood, and researched-based developmental progress and practices.

Remember that scavenger hunt?

Maybe not. I ramble and go off on tangents but let me just say that my goal was to watch how these children would handle getting tossed back into the crazy, hectic, smelly, noisy salad of the classroom, as well as the rules that exist in the structures and confines of in-person, down-and-dirty learning.

Well, they were thrilled. They were happy. They were getting back together with friends and peers they had seen little or nothing of since the beginning of the pandemic and now here they were! Most couldn’t give two shits about rules, directions on the board, or any of that type of stuff. Oh their seat, sure. The novelty of a teacher that had tables instead of desks, yes. But what was written on the board?

Psssht. There were maybe three who got right to the tasks described on the chalkboard while still engaging in the more social aspects of this reunion and the “work” of day one/morning one, which was mostly social anyways. Most mingled and bounced around the room oblivious to any direction clues or cues that attempted to guide them toward a routine or requirement.

Now, as kids can and will, they DO notice the things you sometimes hope they don’t.

I set it up so that someone might because I wanted to see if any would, and sure enough one did: the package of Oreo cookies barely peeking out from a semi-bad hiding spot high on the shelf. That was Eva who announced it loudly to the class. The other item that got noticed by Eva, again loudly, was a little jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise sitting tucked back a bit on the top level of a bookshelf that sat behind his chair in his little teacher’s corner of the room.

“Hey, why do you have that jar of mayonnaise?” Eva shouted.

Having already started to realize that this group would have to be eased gradually back into civility from their largely feral existence during remote learning, and having already noticed that Eva was the sort to notice, think about, wonder about, and ask about everything except what she should and should not be doing, I decided to use a strategy mastered over the course of my lifetime.

I decided to wing it and throw out some confusing bullshit, just to get kids thinking.

“Oh, that mayonnaise?” I said, gesturing back to the jar. “Because… you never know.”

Here I nodded wisely as if having some experience knowing that keeping some mayonnaise around might come in handy. I told them how I had kept it for years and years, and just never gotten around to using it or throwing it away. They got curious and wanted a closer look. There was a little bit of investigation to find the expiration date (about three years earlier). I cracked the crinkly plastic seal around the rim of the jar and wondered aloud how old, expired mayonnaise might smell.

I realized a majority of the students were still caught up in the excitement, less focused on the activities he had set up for them, and knew I needed their attention. I also knew that kids are always watching and listening, especially to the adults who are near and are just waiting for something interesting to latch onto. Especially if it’s tasty, naughty, off-limits, privileged information, and so on.

So instead of yelling for their attention and demonstrating weakness and frustration in the face of adversity, I simply skooched my puffy, comfy green chair to front and center, facing the room to sit down and pretend to have a think.

I then put on my best, helpless, what am I to do now face, leaning forward with an elbow on one knee, reaching into a pants pocket with my other hand.

From my pocket, I withdrew a small, black, rectangular object. It was black, and it was a dull, flat black. It was about the size of a Zippo lighter. The whole reason I had it was exactly because it looked like a Zippo lighter. During the summer break before the beginning of the school year, I had done a brothers-get-together to help one move day, and one of my brothers had an object exactly like it. He had never been a smoker so I was a little stunned until I saw him carefully pluck and pull a pair of folded-up emergency readers from under the flipped-up lid, open them up, and then put them on.

“I could really use a pair of glasses like that,” I thought. I figured that having them in my pocket might come in handy if I walk to someplace in the building while forgetting my regular pair of glasses. Also, I almost immediately thought:

That looks enough like a zippo lighter, I can mess with some kids’ minds with that thing in my pocket!

A hush began to fall as kids noticed and some whispering began “Mr. McConnell’s got a lighter!”

Of course, it was one of those kids-notice-what-you-hope-they-don’t moments, but it was one where I knew they would and I wanted their undivided attention. I kept a somewhat perplexed look on my face as I absentmindedly flipped and clicked closed the cover of this Zippo-like thing to accentuate the lighter-like characteristics.

When the kids had gone quiet, except for you-know-who (Do you remember her name?) who shouted “Mr. McConnell-why do you have a lighter???” I pretended I was woke from my at-my-wits-end trance.

“Oh, this? It isn’t a lighter. Check this out.”

Very gingerly, like a street magician doing some kind of up-close trick, I carefully pulled the glasses out and unfolded them much as my brother had. There were some “ooohs” and some “ahhhhs”, and Eva yelled:

“Why do you have those???”

I got to deliver the message I would go on to deliver at least a hundred times from that day up to nearly the end of the school year.

“Well, I know I’m forgetful and tend to leave my real glasses (I take them from the top of my head) here or there and walk away, and end up needing glasses to read something. Having these in my pocket keeps me covered for those situations because, hey…you never know. You know, like that mayonnaise back there. Don’t forget, you never know.”

Now, you read Part 1, right? You know what’s going to happen with that mayonnaise after the state tests are done, right? What the students didn’t know in this moment we are in, or the one that will be after those tests is this:

I planned to play this “you-never-know” mayonnaise bit all year long, tweaking it occasionally, until the night before the day after state tests were all done. The stress, the ridiculousness, the scripted and onerous nature of assessment as it is currently done…All would be apparently eased out of my teacher’s soul by a big, sloppy, nasty spoonful of old, expired mayonnaise shoved into my mouth the day after tests were done. You’ve read about it so you know.

But the reveal is that the night before, I took that jar home and thoroughly cleaned it out, and filled it with vanilla pudding. Back onto my shelf it went the next morning, ready to play a starring role in that other piece I hope you already read.

Little Danny stepped up to get his sled. His cousin Brian stepped up with him onto the other track as the two prepared to rocket into the record books on the “Alpine Slide”. And to think that only an hour ago they were getting ready to just run around Gram and Gramps whacking the bee tree and waiting for someone to get stung.

This was way cooler than that.

Not that the bee tree thing wasn’t interesting. Every year that giant pine tree was humming with hornets, and they were all around the house, and everywhere in the yard. There were no popsicles in peace or ice cream cones in the occasional calm. The sugar would bring-em. You’d be stung for sure.That’s why it was starting to get interesting. Someone was probably getting stung, and each boy was pretty sure it was going to be the other, but neither really cared. It happened every year, a few times anyway.

It had started with “Go run around the tree twice and then back to the porch,” progressed to three-times around, and even to the next difficulty level: taking the thin, yellow, wiffle-ball bat and whacking the tree before dashing back to the porch. That’s when the hornets became more interested. Up until then, whichever waited on the enclosed front porch would see a wisp of hornets pull away the way smoke above a candle does when your hand passes through. A few hornets would trail after briefly and then return to the tree. The bat was another story. A handful came all the way to the door and almost made it in before the runner closed the door. It was a whack-run-watch as hornets tapped and bounced off the glass of the porch door.

Still, it just seemed not quite dangerous enough for a couple men like them. They climbed onto roofs. They dumped entire pixie sticks into their mouths and washed it down with the sting of ice-cold Coca Cola. They snuck beers and cigars. They let Grandma drop them off at weekend bible camp, but only because it was a chance to sneak away from campfires and songs and into the woods with church girls.

So they decided the real danger from bees and such might only be elevated to the level of their courage if they smelled more flower-like during their assaults on the bee tree. Before they could thoroughly douse themselves with their grandfather’s green, Skin-Bracer aftershave (that being the most smell-good thing a couple stinky boys could think of) the call to load up into the family wagon came. They were heading to Song Mountain and the Alpine Slide!

Which brings us forward in time to Little Danny, atop his sled, at the top of the mountain, ready to ride that Alpine Slide.

People have had to be airlifted away from this ride! Little Danny thought. Which is probably why the teenage kid at the top did the safety thing he did every single time to every single person, probably every year Little Danny had been coming. How to stay on the track, don’t stop in the middle, how to push the lever forward to go faster, how to pull back to…

Little Danny pushed off fast before Safety Boy could finish. Sure he was probably five or six years older, 18 tops, but he clearly didn’t know how big boys played!

As an educator, I saw an opportunity in the return to school after that COVID-induced stretch of remote learning.

Not that COVID is really over, as much as people want to pretend it is. Right now it feels like we are fudging our way through the positive tests and the obvious illnesses. Back to knowing that if a parent has no daycare options, a sick kid might be sent to school. Onward, implementing the merest measures as a society in order to keep people at work, and students in school, protecting economic interests first.

The pandemic revealed our society for what it really is.

Regardless of what political party holds the reins, it would appear that a market-driven strategy that defers to efficiency and easily quantifiable outcomes wins out over the human endeavor of educating. If a truly educated and capable citizenry were the goal, how we design and implement the systems that allow us to educate would reflect that. There would be more honesty in policy language coming down into our schools and classrooms from above, and it would be more about learners and a comprehensive, whole-child look at their needs, less about the limiting boxes on spreadsheets filled with standardized test scores.

The opportunity I saw in the return to in-person learning was a chance to rethink our priorities regarding the goals we are setting for students.

A reach for our better selves and a higher purpose in our service to students and communities is needed, and I feel we are in a make-or-break moment for choosing to do that. The data we are mandated to collect officially is far different than the data we are compelled to collect by the multiplying realities in the moments instruction should be happening. Those “confounding variables” keep popping up to get in the way of better outcomes.

What data educators collect matters. How we use it to build understanding about the learners as developing human beings with needs and inform our educational decisions matters more. Empowering the people actually doing the work matters most.