When the hysteria about recent math and reading scores kicks in, we must be ready to defend whole child education. We have a great deal to teach in the near future, only some of it academic in nature. Math facts and vocabulary are essential — but our emotionally buffeted students will need more from us. We have to prevent test score hysteria from preventing vital social/emotional learning.

Parents and teachers often end up discussing feelings with young children. How do you feel? Are you angry? Are you sad? Why did you throw your books on the floor? Feelings are naturally part of an early and sometimes later elementary curriculum, whether formally recognized or not. Here is a visual aid from the Gerard Aflague collection on Amazon, a poster adorning many classroom walls. Various feelings’ posters can be found to help young children link expressions to emotions to words.*

I stumbled into this post this morning, a stray thought in response to a Facebook comment. Yes, we talk about feelings with small children often. But I think it’s easy to fail to realize that sometimes kids don’t have the right emotion connected to the appropriate word when they are conversing with us. Our sad may be their lonely. Our angry may even be their sad, especially if mom says a behavior is making her sad when her face is conveying anger instead. Maybe mom is about to be late to work due to an unexpected kitchen mess, and she is verbally managing her anger but not quite keeping the exasperation out of her tone and expression. Sad can be very tricky.

Kids learn to connect the right words to matching emotions, but trial and error are part of the process. Making the right associations may take years. Kids often begin using words on the feelings poster before they have recognized and internalized true meanings. My take from this fact is simply that what a child said may not be what they mean or believe when a topic as complicated as emotions comes up.

That was my first morning thought. My second thought was that the masks will be making social/emotional learning harder. People are getting good at smiling with their eyes, creating that small crinkle that says, “I really do hope you like that latte and have a good day,” but masking up will slow emotional learning down, as kids try to associate partially-hidden expressions with feelings.

Readers of this blog know that eduhonesty.com is 100% pro-mask, with the understanding that rare exceptions must be made. Children with autism, for example, may be unable to manage a mask. Generally, though, classrooms must put student, family and employee safety first — and the most reputable research does show masks help.

My last thought was that students in 2021 have a great deal to process. The youngest kids may be the luckiest ones. Our kindergarten and first grade students have only known pandemic schools. Older kids are adapting to changes that mostly make their lives tougher, both intrinsically, because those COVID-19 protocols are demanding, and extrinsically, because once they socialized freely and they remember a time when germ-awareness was almost nonexistent in their lives.

So amid all the educational issues on the table right now, why post about teaching feelings? I am trying to get out front of the panic likely to come at us as educational leaders stare at their fallen test scores. As we plan remediation for COVID-related learning loss, social-emotional learning may easily get lost in the mix because of the sheer amount of catch-up to be done. I want to encourage parents and teachers to keep the spotlight on social-emotional intelligence. How do you think Woody feels? Why do you suppose Buzz did that? Is Mary Poppins really upset? What makes you think she is (or is not) upset?

The social-emotional work I am talking about is already being done by parents and teachers everywhere, but I thought I’d pull that work into the foreground right now. The tests are going to come back showing learning loss from the last two years — maybe a great deal of loss in our hardest-hit schools. I can easily see fear pushing districts to work on mathematics and English almost entirely, to the exclusion of other topics. That would be a huge mistake — another version of the same mistake we have been making since the inception of No Child Left Behind nearly twenty years ago.

Our children are children — not merely sources of data that must be prepared for an annual test. Yet year after year, we keep stealing children’s time as we replace instruction with testing and test-preparation, all while depriving children of helpful remediation because “that topic is not on the test.” See “Opting Out: Because Your Child’s Teacher May Get NO Useful Information from that Test | Notes from the Educational Trenches (eduhonesty.com)” for this blog’s recommendation on that testing.

Yes, the missing words and math facts from interrupted instruction matter a great deal. However, so do the direct and indirect emotional impacts from our broken instruction. These last two years have been the wildest, weirdest years many of us have ever seen, and ignoring that strangeness helps no one, especially children who desperately need us to help them understand and process what is happening in their lives.

Hugs and thanks to all my readers, Jocelyn Turner

*Not all feelings posters are sufficiently diverse, I’m afraid, but I trust my readers to look out for their classrooms.

The bus drivers are falling by the wayside. They are disappearing, walking off the job, and leaving behind crazy online posts about how “teachers should drive them.” Readers, I always take the aged 2004 Acura instead of the too-voluminous Toyota Sienna van if I have to drive downtown Chicago. I sense my limits.

Bus driving requires real skill. There’s a reason that US states regulate truckers and bus drivers, requiring regular health checks. Here are a few interesting particulars about bus drivers from “Licenses, Certifications, and Registrations” at Passenger Vehicle Drivers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov):

“All bus drivers must have a CDL (Commercial drivers license) … Qualifications vary by state but generally include passing both knowledge and driving tests.

…”All bus drivers must have a passenger (P) endorsement, and school bus drivers must also have a school bus (S) endorsement. Getting the P and S endorsements requires additional knowledge, which is assessed through passing a driving test administered by a certified examiner…

“Federal regulations require interstate bus drivers to pass a physical exam every 2 years and to submit to random drug or alcohol testing. Most states impose similar regulations.”

Driving that bus doesn’t pay well. According to Hourly wage for School Bus Driver | Salary.com, the “average hourly wage for a School Bus Driver in the United States is $17 as of August 27, 2021, but the range typically falls between $14 and $21.” Restaurant and retail places around me don’t pay much less and some pay noticeably more once tips are included.

Near me, the Chicago Public School system has been hit hard by missing drivers. (Bus Driver Shortage Throws Wrench Into Start Of School Year For CPS After 73 Drivers Quit – CBS Chicago (cbslocal.com)) The numbers been climbing, too, and is said to be around 90 absentee drivers now — which is more than 10% 0f the total number of drivers for the district. CPS is offering money to parents to drive their own children. Other districts are doing the same.

Eduhonesty: I’ll skip the impact of vaccination demands except to say that personal evaluations of job risk may include that vaccination, whether accurately assessed or not. Some drivers don’t want to vaccinate. Conversely, some don’t want to be exposed to unvaccinated or unmasked kids. Controlling kids’ mask usage — well, kids who may take an hour to get dressed in the morning can strip off a mask in a millisecond.

The far-reaching question I want to take on today only peripherally relates to vaccinations and masks, however. That question affects much more than busses. We have been feeling the effects of my question since 2019.

THE RISK/REWARD RATIO FOR EVERY JOB ON THIS PLANET CHANGED RECENTLY. This has been traumatic for millions of people. But it’s also an opportunity, as the focus has recently shifted to the need for a higher minimum wage, as well as recognition that essential workers are … well, essential.

Working in public contact jobs has become so much less desirable that restaurants around me are even sometimes randomly closing during regular business hours because they can’t find anyone to work those hours. My Nextdoor app is filled with complaints about restaurant service, along with kinder responses trying to bring uncomfortable new truths home: Management doesn’t have enough people to cover all its tables so tables will sit empty while patrons wait. A waiter who used to cover 7 tables may now be covering 12 tables, and service will naturally falter, especially when the kitchen is short-staffed.

Eduhonesty: I don’t claim to fully understand what is happening in my world, but I do know that retired friends and I discuss sub pay and then buy yeast to make bread instead. I also know the forces of economics push up pay in times of scarcity, at least eventually. (For an interesting read on this topic, see Where Did All the Nurses Go? •  Nursing, History, and Health Care • Penn Nursing (upenn.edu) I am afraid that RN shortage may be coming at us again, as COVID fatigue drives increasing resignations.)

I’d like to suggest this may be a time to stand up and stand together. Bus drivers and paraprofessionals are not optional. I expect teacher shortages to boost teacher pay as well. In this time of increased risk for decreased reward — those bus drivers are likely to end up with more kids and more issues with kids than they had the year before. We should expect shortages. We should also understand that there’s power in deteriorating working conditions.

Teachers, bus drivers and others should seize this moment in time. Essential workers? The people holding up our beleaguered school districts have never been more essential. The achievement gap has grown another row of teeth; learning this year has already been deeply impacted by a sad lack of learning during the last year and the year before. That learning loss is hitting the kids hardest who had already fallen behind, too.

There’s no secret pipeline of qualified men and women waiting to step into those bus driving, aide and teaching positions, at least in most geographical locations.

There will never be a better time to seek economic fairness and justice for the workers holding up the US educational system.

In the background on the news, Arne Duncan is describing a new classroom model we could use, inspired by the pandemic. Instead of a large group of teachers with small classes, we take that “Albert Einstein” of a teacher and give that teacher 1,000-some students, taking advantage of the technology that allows us to stream lessons to huge groups. Then schools add tutorials to enforce that learning. Instead of the set-up below:

I will not say that this Einstein model cannot work. I am taking a neuroscience class right now that operates on a similar model — me, along with over 2,000 other people.

But my first thought as I listened was, “and THAT will sure widen the achievement gap.”

I’ve expressed this idea before: I can easily teach algebra to a group of 60 students who are all (or almost all) certain they intend to go to college. Those students believe they require a good grade from me for their college applications. They may even believe they need to learn algebra. In that class, behavioral problems are likely to be minimal and class participation high. Conversely, if I have a class of 22 students, 10 of whom intend to drop out, I may be in for the pedagogical ride of my life. Reader, just try to get an aspiring drop-out off his phone when he WANTS to be thrown out of class. Or try to get Tom to quit talking to Iliana when Iliana is the only reason Tom came to class in the first place.

Who we have in our classes should determine how we teach. Huge, online classes like the one described require a great deal of personal motivation. It’s easy to drift off. If a student doesn’t have to be on screen, that student can play phone games the whole hour, just drifting in for long enough to document he or she logged in, even if the closing activity shows a spectacular lack of understanding of the day’s content. The lack of any real relationship with “Albert Einstein” factors in, too. I have taught many students who did their work for ME, not for themselves. That’s not what teachers want, but I’ll take that algebra homework any way I can get it.

As to the supporting tutorials, the student who never listens to the lecture in the first place won’t have many questions. That student may even try to duck most of the tutorial to avoid revealing how little he or she absorbed from Super Lecturer’s stream of thought. First, a student has to listen. If tutorials are done remotely, lack of student engagement can ensure that students who did not listen to Round 1 manage to miss most or all of the benefits from Round 2.

As I listened to Arne, I found myself having one of those tear-my-hair-out, it’s-definitely-time-to-quit moments. So many people planning educational policy seem to start with the assumption that eager, willing students will be sitting at their laptops just waiting to be let into their virtual classroom so they can begin an exciting day of learning. So many of those planners want to “innovate,” despite the fact that NCLB, Race to the Top and the Common core worked about as well as the average concrete life jacket.

Those eager, waiting students are out there. But we have to figure out how to teach their less enthusiastic counterparts too. A less personal approach seems highly unlikely to work. I wish people generating ideas like this latest one would take a few minutes to visualize a real student. I understand something that Arne has often seemed to miss through the years: Many kids are only barely hanging on in school, often thanks to a teacher or paraprofessional in the classroom who is providing a listening, caring ear along with emotional support and praise.

If we want proof that some students don’t want to be in our Einsteinian classroom we might consider the fact that the “U.S. Department of Education says enrollment in public schools during the pandemic has dropped by more than 1.5 million students. Some have switched to private schools or at-home learning. Others have just vanished from the system.” (Public schools have seen a massive drop in enrollment since the start of the pandemic – CBS News.)

The problem with remote learning is that it is… remote. Being remote, that learning becomes avoidable. I could completely duck my neuroscience course and learn nothing if I chose. I’m sure a lot of informal, haphazard home schooling is taking place in America right now, unsupported by any overarching curriculum. All across the country, parents obviously signed off on children not signing in.

If Einstein says, “the Occipital temporal gyrus and the parahippocampal gyrus extend down into the occipital lobe, and at some point in the occipital lobe, we define a region that is a boundary between the lingual gyrus near the midline, and what remains here of the occipital temporal gyrus,” I can bail. I can decide to listen to a mystery novel or play Words with Friends instead of making my way through that sentence. Many of our students are in the same position. With 1.5 million students who simply left the US educational system, we should be asking one question: How do we get our students back?

We are going into our third pandemic school year and that year has begun with a disquieting number of closures, quarantines and reverses to remote instruction for unlucky students. We can’t afford to add any educational experiments to a mix so explosive that it has already taken a million and a half students out of the theater.

“Masks are too hard for little kids to manage.” My last post with the snorkel snark inspired more than one person to “agree” with me that masks are just too hard for the littlest ones in our schools. Oops. That’s definitely not what I intended to say.

Small children often struggle with masks. They also struggle with pants, shirts, backpacks, hats, coats and gloves. In early elementary grades, winter gloves can come at teachers in a tiny foretaste of the zombie apocalypse, a nightmarish agglomeration of confused, waving, tiny fingers. Then, while the classroom teacher holds the glove out, those children stick two or more fingers in one hole and she has to pull the glove away and start all over again.

My first winter subbing day in a kindergarten classroom, I ended up alone with 20-some kids at day’s end. A number struggled into their own coats and a few even managed gloves. But the majority expected me to get them ready for the snowy winter in Illinois. I had not left close to enough time. Hands, hands everywhere, a sea of hands, gloves, hats, boots and zippers galore! The crowd was a little loose on the concept of taking turns, too.

I’ll frankly confess I ended up with a small pile of random winter clothing that I simply left on the regular teacher’s desk. I looked at the clock, looked at my group, realized they all had their coats on at least, and clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention. Little arms froze in the air.

“Quick!” I said. “You have to get to the busses. We can’t do any more gloves or hats now. C’mon. We have to get out of here!” And I practically ran those guys to their bus locations.

I’ll give myself a D- in “First Day as a Kindergarten Sub in Winter.” Yes, the busses should wait. That’s too many busses to trust, though. Plus I didn’t want to be the sub who slowed down the whole end of the school day.

Trying to shove forty or fifty small hands into tiny tubes that only sometimes match the fingers takes more time than I had left that day. I trusted the kids to identify their belongings. I left the teacher a note to help her sort through the mysterious pile on her desk upon her return.

She let me teach that class again. The second time, I got the timing for those gloves … well, better anyway. As time went by, the kids were getting more adept at handling their own gloves, hats and coats too. They also listened when I told them, “I need you to help me and do as much as you can on your own.” After that first performance, I am sure they had identified me as someone who needed a little extra help.

We can handle masks. Our kids can handle masks; teaching is all about reinforcing desirable behaviors, and masking has become simply another metaphorical hill to climb in classrooms. Teachers learn. Kids learn from their teachers, from parents, from each other and from their own experience. As the meme goes,

Masks are no problem unless we make them a problem. If we purchase the right masks, masks are much easier than winter gloves and zippers. And if everyone is wearing masks, kids won’t mind wearing masks unless adults influence them otherwise. From a very early age, children somehow grasp that they should dress like their peers — even if that leads to tantrums because plain brown backpacks are much less fashionable than Paw Patrol, Spiderman or Disney princess equivalents.

Eduhonesty: Spiderman wears a mask. Captain America wears a mask. Ironman is trussed up in full body armor. I truly don’t get the fuss over masking. Kids can do this. If it makes some or most people feel safer to be masked, the cost is so small and the benefit a genuine kindness to the worried well. Besides which — the research overall says masking is safer, an imperfect method of controlling viral spread which is better than just blasting germs freely out into the air.

Please share this with anyone who might need a nudge to get behind masking. I acknowledge that as children enter adolescence the picture becomes more complicated, but at all ages we can stand up for the idea of kindness toward all.

Hugs to all my readers and anyone who stumbled into this post! Jocelyn Turner