Answers to Ponder

On this March for Our Lives day, I thought it fitting to write about our realities, choices and opportunities to grow. One reality is, people argue. A lot. (Yeah, I used “a lot”. We could argue about that, too.)

Even teachers don’t all get along in one big happy.

Disagreements are expected and can be a healthy source of learning, but how do we find common ground? I write about the need to do so...a lot. I also write about how much we actually do share in common (good and bad) and how we can grow...a lot. My book, Dear Teachers, is an example of that.

Alas, there are HUGE HUGE HUGE differences in our experiences, even within the same country. People have much in common. We all are born, love, fear, get angry, laugh, and die. 

How we live...now, that’s another story altogether.

We're doing a poor job today in working together and respecting our differences. With my writing, I seek to connect and explore what "together" really means. Some may scoff at my goals. Others may sneer at me and call me newly “woke” to the problems. Maybe. Better late, than never? Perhaps. Still have a long way to go? Probably. Always looking to learn something new and change? Always.

I think we all have an obligation to do that.

I wrote the following questions out a few months ago when a teacher pointedly remarked that his needs and experiences didn’t match what he saw in Twitter’s education world. He expressed frustration that he would love to have what other teachers moaned as “problems”. 

He felt alone.

These questions are based on my desire to help bring us together in understanding of each others’ experiences. From blindness, we can start seeing. From seeing, we can move to doing. By doing, we can shift gears to change. I’m trying to do the same in other projects on healthcare and mental health because I have immensely personal experiences with those two subjects, too. We have much in common. We have different experiences. We can reduce that gaps and our societies can benefit.

If we don’t reduce our gaps, we’ll all soon be living in tiny mental and physical forts, protecting our resources and unable to tap into others. That teacher feeling alone? To me, that’s an outsider looking at a fort he can't enter. Right now.

I imagined asking a variety of teachers and members of different communities to answer these questions and then allowing them to look at the overall responses.  I was hoping to build some empathy. I’m dancing a dangerous border, apparently, as can be seen in the recent problems at Oconomowoc High School when students were given the opportunity to take a privilege aptitude test.

My intention is to simply remind people (including myself) of what kids are facing in their personal lives. As the H. Jackson Brown, Jr.  quote I selected summarizes, children reflect the care they get. This problem and its consequences were also pointed out in a recent Education Week article, entitled This Map Shows How Much Is Stacked Against Students in Your State.

Our children are our future, so if they have it unnecessarily rough or inherit a world where their peers are viewed as enemies...That’s one ugly garden to consider.

I posed this questions to give a tiny glimpse of the range of experiences kids have in the United States. I was inspired by what I learned in Matthew Desmond’s Evicted. I welcome edits or additional ones to further clarify if you have any suggestions based on your experiences. Imagine the different futures available to different kids based on the answers. Imagine the immensely different present realities these kids are living.

All in the same country. Today.

We can and should do better. It’s not teachers’ responsibility to fix everything. It is teachers’ responsibilities to be voices and cultivate voices. It’s administrations’ responsibility to advance those stories outward, connecting to communities. It’s communities’ responsibility to amend the systems to reduce these differences in experience.

See. Do. Change. Grow. Together.

Answers to ponder. Most of my students have at home:

1)     at least enough nutritious food for a week

2)     1-2 days worth of nutritious food

3)     a few snacks/soda

4)     no food

5)     what home?

Answers to ponder. Most of my students personally:

1)     don’t have a family member or friend who’s been jailed, shot &/or violently killed

2)     know of someone personally who has told them they have experience with family or friends getting jailed, shot or with violently killed

3)     has a close family member or friend who was jailed, shot &/or violently killed

4)     has multiple family members &/or friends who have been jailed, shot &/or violently killed

Answers to ponder. Most of my students have at home:

1)     high-speed internet & multiple electronic devices 24/7

2)     high-speed internet & 1-2 electronic devices to share w other family members

3)     no internet but have devices & access to a public library wifi

4)     no internet, no electronic devices or public library services

5)     what home?

Answers to ponder. Most of my students personally:

1)     were read to regularly at home from birth to at least age 5

2)     were occasionally read to at home in early years

3)     were never read to at home

4)     do not have a steady home, let alone books or time to read

Answers to ponder. Most of my students have at home:

1)     enough to pay for housing, utilities & necessary expenses, with leftovers for fun

2)     just enough to pay for housing, utilities & necessary expenses

3)     need support to reach enough to pay for housing, utilities & necessary expenses

4)     overwhelming debt, & have been evicted & services cut at least once in last 12 months

5)     what home?

Answers to ponder. Most of my students personally:

1)     Are happy and have hope for themselves and the world

2)     Are usually satisfied but worry about their own and the world’s future

3)     Are regularly anxious about their future

4)     Are regularly anxious and dealing with real hazards in their daily lives

5)     Are constantly battling direct dangers and severe feelings of anxiety and hopelessness

We're in a Multiplayer Game

“Societies can easily talk themselves into conflict and misery.

But they can also talk, and act, their way out.” 

- Geoff Mulgan, author of Big Mind

It’s the day after the big school walk-outs. Time to reflect.

This week, I read Fred Guttenberg’s raw story, I Am Dedicating the Rest of My Life to Fighting Gun Violence—For Jaime,  about his daughter’s life and her death as a victim of the Parkland shootings, as told to Rachel Epstein of Marie Claire. I also read several articles, including one by Dakin Andone and Tina Burnside of CNN, relating to the shooting death on March 7 of 17-year old high school senior, and would-be nursing school student, Courtlin Arrington, in Alabama.

In total, there have been 20 high school student shooting deaths in the United States this year. In addition to these deaths, we must remember there are many other children and adults with physical and/or mental injuries as a result of these incidents, too.

We’re all asking why. There are piles of responses. The walkouts, the student-led advocacies, and the many March For Our Lives marches planned on the 24th are a few. Why all the shootings and what can we do?

I’m going to toss out a single word that might explain much of it: misery.

One Merriam-Webster definition of misery is “a state of great unhappiness and emotional distress”. Another is “a state of suffering and want that is the result of poverty or affliction”. I’m talking about GREAT unhappiness. GREAT distress. GREAT affliction.

Can you imagine this many deaths in a world where most people are happy and hopeful? Where most people feel like they have a place and aren’t lost? Where most people feel valued? I can’t. Just as I wrote about suicide in Regret: A Look Back, people don’t kill when they are happy.

Misery is a single word, but reducing it, let along removing it, will take many approaches.

Misery is a tool for the people within organizations like the NRA. Their messages rely on the cultivation of fear and hostility between people. They paint pictures that guns are sexy and necessary. They argue that the world is a place of “us” versus “them” and it’s critical to “defend yourself”. That all breeds misery.

We can address it.

We can read today what Fred Guttenberg, as the dad of a shooting victim, plans to do in order to stop gun violence. The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are building extensive social media presences and have been interviewed and featured on many news reports. We only have bits and pieces of Courtlin Arrington’s story, and this is from the efforts of a few reporters. There’s a big difference in how our society responds to different shooting deaths. MSD students are noticing this in their own tweets. Courtlin’s death is no less horrific or tragic than those at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. That fact and our responses, which must be clearly declared as racist, are another cause for misery.

We can address them.

There are a number of other things our citizens experience on a daily basis that breed misery. How about the stress of getting treatment for and paying for chronic diseases? Or the stigma about and difficulties in obtaining treatment for mental illnesses? These conditions and our responses to them as a nation are also causes of misery.

We can address them.

There are more sources of misery. How about the growing understanding that our rules don’t apply equally across genders, ethnicities and economic levels and that those differences are getting bigger as time goes by, and not smaller? The ways our laws are being manipulated and interpreted are causing huge amounts of misery.

We can address them.

My WoW Rogue. Great DPS but needed others.

That’s quite a list, and there are probably more. It seems overwhelming. For an individual, it is. However, we have a fact in our favor: life’s a multiplayer game. A massively multiplayer game. If you’ve ever played a game like World of Warcraft, you understand the power (and difficulties) of group work. As Chief Executive of the UK’s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Geoff Mulgan points out in the above quote, we can get ourselves out of tight spots by working together in new and creative ways.

Throughout history, people have come together in times of need. Today, the multiple causes themselves need to come together. No one person can fix any of it, but by linking and networking efforts, we can move the proverbial mountains.

If you’re interested in a cause to help a specific group, whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, criminal law, corporate law, healthcare, gun violence, etc, go for it. Look at it in terms of misery- don’t just scream in outrage. How could things be changed to lighten that misery currently experienced by those within that group? Focus and campaign for that. My guess is, those changes, if they truly relieve misery, would benefit others as well.

While you follow that passion, reach out to other interests, too. If we stay in isolated bubbles, we lose opportunities and strength. Show in concrete terms that you see others. Build alliances. Look for common ground. Respect each other. Collaborate. Build trust.

If we play this multiplayer game together, we can battle misery. Big or small, let’s do something.

Together.

Old Places & Tired Things

I’m showing my age.

I catch myself remembering places. Homes with creaking floorboards and woodwork caked with thick layers of paint. Basement shelves festooned with cobwebs and garages with untold treasures tucked away in tattered boxes and old tin cans in the half-lit gloom. The visual memories tickle my smell memories. If I breathe in, I my mind could trick me into believing that the dry, odd funks I recall would again fill my nostrils. Dust, age, grit. Lives lived hard, going back decades. Generations.

I didn’t understand what that all could mean. There’s a value in those worn things.

Having the latest and greatest things isn’t important. Having what you need is.

Being seen with the “right” people isn’t important. Giving love and support to and receiving them from others are.

Seeing all the current shows isn’t important. Being able to enjoy a good story with someone is.

Being The Best isn’t important. Having the opportunity to be a good and genuine YOU is.

Our ancestors were no angels. They worked hard. They suffered much to survive. They screwed up. They had to start over. They used and reused. They fought. They improvised. They made deals. They shared with their family and friends. They practiced skills they hoped would benefit both them and their loved ones over the long-run. They defended what (and who) they thought of as “their own”.

We have more resources today and have more complex tools, but we also have bigger problems. That’s not an excuse. We should be able to devise ways to ensure we all have a chance. We claim we’re more advanced than those who existed 500 years ago. We should show it.

We should be able to expand our circles and include more of each other in solutions to our problems. It’s not “us” versus “them”. Today, we have more and more ways for things beyond our own immediate control to affect us directly, painfully and perhaps catastrophically.

Our own country’s founding documents include 3 “inalienable” rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I wrote of this recently in Personal and Public Ikigai in the United States. What amazingly constructive things could occur if we revisited those ideas in our world today? I’m reading that piece again in light of the March For Our Lives campaign. To do, “that which the world needs” and “that which you love”. I believe they may be embracing this idea already.

“What the world needs.” Powerful notion.

Sure, we could hide from each other. Sure, we could try to protect “ours” in smaller and smaller buckets. But, there are other possibilities. What if we take what we’ve learned from out past and apply those concepts of what I defined earlier as what is really important. 

What if we worked towards everyone having what they need (wages, health & mental care), everyone giving & receiving love & support (volunteering, networking, focusing on positives, not focusing on defending), everyone being able to sit with someone else (collaborating, not yelling and blaming), and everyone having the opportunity to be a good and genuine self (respect the other’s sex, sexual orientation, color, ethnicity and religion)?

If we have hope, we can try. Today we can reuse and improvise in brand new ways. We can work from “I can” and “We will” instead of “We can’t” or “I won’t”.

The kids of today’s kids will have the same opportunity as I had to walk among the bits and pieces of what will become the stuff we left behind. They should be able to discover truths and connections with their own lives and futures. Hopefully, they will both be bright.

They may be, with our help.