Christian Nationalist agenda in Oklahoma Schools
Oklahoma says all public schools must place the Bible in every grade 5-12 class and every teacher must teach from the Bible. Not sure how that’s going to work in Calculus. But that’s not their point. Their point is pushing an agenda of Christian Nationalism. Which is antithetical to the religion freedoms on which our country was founded.
Ten Commandments in School
a·dul·ter·y - noun - voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse.
Proud Parent
Good grades are great, but let’s also brag about the other reasons we’re proud of our kids.
Teacher Appreciation
Our unwillingness to adequately fund teachers and school for children across the US is one of our most shortsighted policies.
If we really appreciated teachers we’d remove the barriers to effective education.
Stop Vilifying School Librarians
Florida Gov. DeSantis has continued his crack down on books in Florida schools, leading to empty shelves where school libraries once stood and school librarians vilified and fearful they’ll be charged with felonies.
It’s awful, authoritarian, and dangerous.
Social Media Myths
Perhaps you’ve heard the story going around social media. Perhaps you’re lucky and haven’t. But the story goes that schools are installing cat litter boxes in some bathrooms to accommodate kids who identify as cats.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Because it is. Yet it’s been shared widely across social media. Worse, several political candidates (almost entirely Republican) have repeated it in the press, on social media, at rallies and meetings. Joe Rogan - essentially an Internet troll with a big platform - repeated it on his show.
And it’s not true. A team of investigative journalists looked into each named accounting of the story. No truth to it.
How an urban myth about litter boxes in schools became a GOP talking point
Instead it spreads as part of the fear mongering over the gender identity debates and LGBTQ+ issues. It’s a way to ridicule and stoke fears of “the others” and legitimize laws to restrict rights of minority groups.
The saddest part is that the only kernel of truth in the cat litter story is some schools (from the same district as Columbine) that stock cat litter do it for “go buckets;” buckets of materials for kids locked in a classroom by an active shooter.
Way to go, America: do nothing about the real, horrible thing that happens repeatedly in our country and instead focus on some fake, imagined fear.
Please don’t spread this stupid cat litter nonsense. People who do should take a break from social media.
Teacher Shortage
America’s schools are facing a huge shortage of qualified teachers. There’s no clear data on how many teacher shortages we have nationally, but it’s massive.
The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state. Illinois reported in January >2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting 200-1,000 open teaching positions.
To combat this, counties and states are trying different approaches. Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.
And who loses in all this? Obviously the kids, who won’t benefit from experienced and skilled teachers.
Teaching is hard. And under immense scrutiny these days. Few other professions have so many people who seem to think they know how to do the job better than those who’ve studied and gained hands on experience. Because teaching isn’t just about subject knowledge, but how to help others learn, how to build curriculum, how to adapt learning styles, how to engage different students, and a huge amount of empathy.
But it’s not just the kids who will suffer.
To compete in the economy of tomorrow, we need educated citizens. Education has long been one of the things that attracts people to the US. And yet again we are failing our kids and ourselves.
It’s time we learn to invest more in ourselves and our communities to build better for tomorrow. Starting with investing more in our teachers and our schools.
School Year Fears
Schools are starting back up and kids are trying to figure out what supplies they need or don’t need. Unfortunately some fears are more overwhelming than others.
More children have died from COVID in the past 2 1/2 years than school shootings in the past 50 years.
But shootings bring a visceral reaction and will get a lot more funding and attention, just likely not in the right ways.
Both are complex, scary, low likelihood, and high consequence issues. No easy answers. But we shouldn’t let unfounded fears dominate our actions. We need data and science and research to show us how best to address these issues and make our kids feel safe and secure in school.
And remind ourselves and our kids that for both issues, the overwhelming percentages say they’ll be ok.
Schools
A county in North Carolina has approved a plan to put AR-15s in all schools for security reasons. Who can imagine anything going wrong with this plan?
Having two kids in public schools, I see every year how desperately underfunded our schools are. I’ve been PTA President; I’ve seen the receipts of what teachers have to self fund for their classrooms.
And that’s on top of teacher salaries that are mostly not near what they should be.
The dearth of public school funding is one of the most short sighted policies in America. Few things will pay off better for our country than investing in education.
So it’s sickening when funding then goes instead to guns or hardening schools. Which statistically has been shown to do more harm than good.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2776515
“The rate of deaths was 2.83 times greater in schools with an armed guard present”
The winner in this, of course, is the gun industry, as people just keep buying more guns. And now schools are, too.
I’m shaking my damn head.
