Yes, the kids need a great deal of reassurance, some more than others, depending on where you teach. You can be sure that some bilingual and immigrant kids are terrified, even those too young to understand the issues.Suddenly, we are living in uncertain times. Racism has crawled out of the woodwork in a few venues and that ugliness has to be shut down fast and hard. Trump himself said, “Stop!”

The agenda may be about to shift under us rapidly. But before my teacher-readers get too scared of this change, I’d like to continue a theme from a few posts back: Has education been going in a direction that you like? Meeting, meeting, meeting, data, data, data, teacher evaluation rubrics over 20 pages long? Have you been watching lesson plan preparation, grading and even tutoring-time yanked out from under you for yet another paperwork requirement?

During the last year before I retired, I tutored in McDonalds on Saturday mornings because all the other rational, in-school time kept getting sucked up by meetings. That worked — for the kids who were willing to get up on Saturday and come to McDonalds. If I’d held that tutoring in the library, I doubt I could have ever gotten more than three kids, but middle-schoolers will get up if breakfast tacos and frappes are thrown into the mix. A lot of kids never got up, though. They also got very little tutoring. We did have a couple of afterschool classes slated for this purpose but sometimes twenty-plus kids were seated with friends in a room with only one teacher. I could send them for tutoring, but in a setting like that tutoring only happens if you are an extrovert willing to force your way to the front of the line. I would walk in with classwork for my kids to do, look at groups of chatting girls, silently curse and run off to my meeting.

I know I worked in an NCLB-reformed, academic disaster of a school. I’m sure most scenarios out there would look better, often much better. But those kids needed my time, time stolen away by government intervention and oversight.

Eduhonesty: We are living in scary times, but I’d like to ask readers to give the Donald a chance. Honestly, if he starts returning schools to local control, will we be worse off? Centralized, government control of education has not helped the kids in Manley (See previous post.) to get on the college bus. Some kids in Detroit might get a better education if they lived in a rural area in a developing nation. And let me go out on the big limb: Maybe charter schools are not always bad. I am a union supporter — oh, do I think teachers need unions – and a public school fan. But if all the public schools where you live genuinely offer a substandard education — then you need a choice. I have had many parents tell me that local schools were not intellectually demanding enough or even physically safe. I believe those parents, and desperate times may make people believe they need to take desperate measures. I have not looked at the statistics, but I’d be stunned if Flint, Michigan, did not vote for Trump.

Please, please, readers. Let’s notch the fear back. Trust each other. Trust that the vast majority of people remain basically decent and kind. The election is over. We must come together for our kids. Rather than taking to the streets, let’s get started fighting for the amendment to make America a true democracy, a simple democracy where the one with the most votes wins. Let’s get started working on the social studies lessons that were preempted to make more room for math and English for No Child Left Behind.