The History Teacher 2.0: 2016

Fighting Inertia

Oh hey there, dear reader. Good to see 'ya.

My last post was in February of 2016, which by my mathematical calculations is about a lot of months ago. The wife and I have added our second beautiful daughter and have moved to a newer,
larger house (I HAVE A GARAGE!!!) since that last post. So now I'm a teacher and a dad of two daughters under two, which was a really good idea when it comes to keeping up with writing a weekly blog.

I've thought about writing here many times. I'd love to give you some poetic reason about, philosophically speaking, why I've stayed away from publicly writing for 22 months. But the truth is, when my kids are both asleep and I'm caught up on grading and planning and there isn't a soccer game on, I sleep like a slumbering bear.

Except tonight. I'm wide awake. My youngest is starting to only wake up once throughout the night, which is really awesome. You parents out there may have shed a happy tear for me. Thanks for that. So tonight, while my daughters and wife sleep, I've read 30 pages of a good book, I've planned out the first three weeks of my government class, I've deleted A LOT of emails and I'm all caught up on rumor season with soccer around the globe.

I'm still wide awake.

So if I'm going to be awake, and you're going to read this, let's have a talk about inertia. It's a cruel way to be unhappy. I think I am starting to realize that more than staff meetings, more than monotonous grading, more than frustrating students and frustrated peers, more than budget cuts and every single article written about public education in the state of Kansas, it is inertia that is the single biggest cause of educators becoming jaded. It is the slow but steady realization that I complain way more today than I did five years ago. And without some extreme and focused effort, I will complain way more in five years than I do today. So on and so forth until I'm a crabby 53 year old teacher counting the days to retirement, bemoaning the rotten, hopeless generation I'm tasked with teaching.

Meme courtesy of Pintrest

I don't want that future. I think if you're taking the time to read this, you probably don't either, whether you are a teacher or something, anything else. Without fighting the urge to be complacent in one's job and get bitter about the fact that one's job is still the same frustrating job, we are liable to let years pass without ever shaking things up dramatically. No announcement about some big career shift is coming in the next paragraph, but I've started thinking more sincerely about what kind of educator I want to be in 5 years...10 years...at my retirement dinner. This year is my seventh year teaching, four as a history and government teacher preceded by three as a physical science teacher.

I see teachers around the internet who have lost their spark either because it burned out, or because they got so lost in the day-to-day struggle of public education that they forgot that fires need fuel to continue to burn, and fuel doesn't get added without some personal attention. If nothing else, writing these words tonight is me publicly crying out that I will more intentionally kindle my own flame. I will more courageously try to kindle the flame of my friends at Center and friends I have around the world.

How?

Who the hell knows. It's 2:27 AM and the white noise machine in the room next door is screwing up my thoughts right now. Or it's when this is being written. Whatever...

My wife has commented before that she often would use the blog as a gauge for how stressed I was with life, how in control things were. If I was posting every Wednesday, she figured, then surely all of the other things in life were in a pretty good place. As is often the case, she is right.

Looking at the last 22 months, I don't love the teacher that I currently am. I don't hate it either, but something is missing. The inertia of the public education system has pushed me to a more cynical, pessimistic place. I am realizing that if I don't start fighting that inertia, I will end up like so many others before me, beaten by the system, frustrated and ready to quit, be it in 5 years or 25.

I don't want that. I'm going to push back against the inertia. I'm going to be more optimistic and hopeful, if for no other reason then godammit, Carrie Fisher fought against her personal demons so I can fight against my professional ones. I hope to finish my career and life with the same confidence and gusto that she seemed to have at the end of her life.

Someone on the interwebs pointed out that Fisher's last line in a Star Wars movie (not counting CGI recreations of her) was the simple word, hope.

So holding aside the fact that personally, 2016 was pretty awesome, from a societal standpoint, screw off 2016!

2017 may not end up much better, but if we don't all have hope that it will be, then we'll never muster the strength to fight the fights that will make it a better year.

Fight the inertia. Fight with hope. I've heard in a galaxy far, far away that hope is what revolutions are built on.

***

Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think!

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have two beautiful daughters, Katena and Emily and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet and fellow educator, Angela. All struggles aside, my life is flippin' awesome.

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Suburban vs. Urban: The Fight Never Seems to End

I am so damn frustrated by something that happened at our high school basketball game the other night, and I'm going to write about it before I make the more diplomatic decision not to write about it.

Center is a high-achieving school with a great graduation rate, an excellent sense of community and a lot of kids going to college and successful careers. We have a lot of black students that attend here. For some mysterious reason* the urban and the black student part of Center seem to be emphasized when we're discussed in the news media or in conversations around the city.

*Just kidding. No mystery at all. We live in a racially divided society.

Oh, Center. What's it like there? Is it safe? Yes. I've seen one fight this year. But no one thinks that Liberty School District is unsafe, even though a kid with autism was beat so badly he was sent to the hospital last year.

How are the kids in class? Do they behave? OK, well first, dogs behave. So I hate that question already. Second, THEY'RE TEENAGERS! Some days they're great. Some days they just went through a break-up and think their world is crashing. Some days there are rumors flying and they cry. And some days they write this.

But wouldn't you rather just teach somewhere less challenging? Like where? Kansas? No.

Then when I got home, I saw this making the rounds on Facebook and I almost blew a gasket.

@siegel_katie has no deleted her entire account. The only silver lining I guess is that something
this stupid, this racist, this offensive, is at least regularly demolished by the social media universe.
So yeah, overt racism isn't cool anymore. But racial prejudice in less obvious forms? America eats that shit up!

So this gets us to the other night's basketball game. It's the third quarter between two teams in conference who are pretty good rivals, so it's intense. Center, the school with a lot of black kids, is down two to an unnamed private school with a lot of white kids. Down the lane goes our star guard for a winding, beautiful lay-up. The whistle blows calling a foul on the private school, giving our guard a free throw to take the lead. The crowd goes nuts. It's a huge swing in momentum.

After a few seconds, we all realize that there is a player on the private school's team down on the ground in pain, looking like she may have hurt her knee. Nothing dirty - she actually was the player who committed the foul - but she fell awkwardly. From what I heard later, she hyper-extended her knee rather than tore a ligament, which is great news.

As the cheers from the home crowd die down from the big play, the mom of the injured player from the private school is heard shouting several statements that, while I may not remember word for word, carry a pretty distinct sentiment:

Do you teach boxing too?

Are you happy? Someone finally got hurt? Are you happy now?

Get these thugs under control.

The mom walks to her injured daughter, and has words for some of our players as she walks by. And yes, you read that correctly. This grown woman started jawing with high school teenagers who weren't even in the game.

When I got home, I saw the tweet about Peyton Manning and Cam Newton that is posted above that is clearly a race-driven commentary on Cam Newton. I mean, c'mon. He's a football player wearing a hoodie and a stocking cap. AND IT'S FEBRUARY!!! There should be nothing wrong with that, but for Cam Newton, a rather arrogant athlete* he becomes a thug. God I hate that word and all of the slime and disgust that comes with it.

*And don't kid yourself. Almost every elite athlete is arrogant. It's part of what makes them an elite athlete. They know they are better at what they do than 99.9% of the other humans on the planet.

Back to the gym.

As the mom walked out of the gym, one of our dads (a black dad) showed some anger towards the mom (a white mom). She had been quite rude, and the dad got defensive. I realized that if someone had caught this small altercation on camera and it had gone viral, the entire world would assume that an aggressive black male is going off on a white mom who is just concerned for her kid's safety.

The life of black people in America - guilty until proven innocent.

The game has been rigged for ages, and it's still rigged. I'm so frustrated right now, and I'm just a white dude teaching mostly black kids in a community I've lived in my entire life. I'm not an insert here who doesn't fit in. This is my home. But I'm not black, and it is painfully obvious that this simple fact alone makes my life easier in lots of situations.

This woman was going off on the refs and our team about how unfair this basketball game was. Even if she was right and our team of black kids were getting the calls against a mostly white team, and she's not right about that, that game is not the game that matters. Life matters. Basketball is fun.

And the game that matters has been and continues to be rigged for me and for this mom. Too bad she seems to have no idea.

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have a newborn daughter and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet. Seriously. It's a proven fact.

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A Fun Solution to a Rough Week

The past two works of work have been overall, pretty crappy. First, we had a student commit suicide, which was all kinds of unspeakable terrible-ness. Then we had an anonymous bomb threat, probably from a teen who wanted school cancelled, but kind of freaky nonetheless. This is all in the last two weeks.

The mood around the building is somewhere between meh and screw this. That goes for both teachers and students.

Soldiers wearing the evzone at the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier in Athens, Greece

So I taught my class how to Greek dance* on Thursday. I've always kind of wanted to do this, but have never pulled the trigger since we don't study Greece in either of the courses I teach. I decided that it was needed and it was time.

*Specifically, the kalamatiano for you Greeks reading this.

I related it to cultural empathy, showing the kids a picture of a evzone (pictured to the right) and talking about ways to react to different dress than what Americans are used to in a empathetic way. We talked about cultures from around the world.

And we danced! Not particularly well, but we danced! And we had fun. Lots of laughter. Lots of fun.

It felt really good. It was a fun way to wrap up a tough couple of weeks in my classroom, and sometimes, that's simply much more important than making sure you hit that last state standard.

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have a newborn daughter and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet. Seriously. It's a proven fact.

Follow me on Twitter
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Making a Murderer and Why Students Have to Learn to Think

My daughter is in the middle of a frustrating mix of a runny nose that's trying to turn into a cold and her second tooth coming in. She doesn't want to be put down, she's grumpy, she didn't sleep well last night - basically we're currently experience all of the least fun aspects of parenting a 9-month old.

Ups and downs. Parenting is all ups and downs.

Anyways, she's finally fallen asleep for a nap after not sleeping well last night, giving me some big kid time to watch a few episodes of the Netflix documentary that seems to be blowing everyone's mind, Making a Murderer. The 30-second no spoiler synopsis is this:

A man on the fringe of his community gets targeted by the police, wrongfully convicted of a rape and then framed for a murder that he did not commit. The innocent involved are poorly educated and poor. They either cannot or don't know how to properly fight the forces that are trying to put them away.

I'm not done yet, so I don't know how it ends. From what I can tell reading other people's accounts of the documentary, the main story is that of a wrongfully accused man who is targeted by a corrupt police system. That resonates in 2016. There are a lot of people out there, myself included when I'm in the right mood, who are really pessimistic about the role of police and the arc of our society.

[Update: The kid is feeling better and is on nap #2 of the day. Woot]

The point I'm interested in making with this post is less about the corrupt police, and more about how you can keep from getting screwed over in your life. Of course, I'm thinking more of my students than of you, dear reader, whoever you are. But if this message resonates with you or someone you love, then all the better.

So why not focus on the police? Mainly because shit happens. There have been, since the first community of humans and will be until our wonderful little rock of a planet is destroyed, shitty people who do shitty things. So when you encounter one of these types of people in your life, there are really two directions that your life can go from there.

1. You get away from that person as quickly as you possibly can.
2. You change nothing, and eventually you are swept up in something negative, at which point you've lost control.

My point I try to make to my students is that focusing on the problem is, in essence, the problem. As a teen or as an adult, if you whine and wonder why the world is unfair, then you are likely to not see much of a change in your life. Whatever terrible ill has befallen you may eventually be remedied. Yet magically, there will be something negative waiting in the shadows. The world is full of problems, and they will often find a way into your life.

For a high school student, the problems may seem less vital from the perspective of an adult. One of the keys to connecting with students is giving their issues legitimacy. A breakup at 15 really does feel like the end of the world. A 'C' grade that you have to take home to mom can seem as scary as the monster in the closet that most of us eventually realize isn't real. Problem after problem come up - they are all very real to the student.

As a teacher, I spent several years counseling that the problems were not actually that bad. Looking back, I see why this didn't lead to progress or good relationships with my kids. What I've done now is tried to focus on the solution. What can we/you/I do differently to make this problem get solved? What factors that play a role in the problem do you/we/I control? How can we change our own situation?

These are all questions that shift the focus from problem to solution. Which brings me back to Making a Murderer. Part of why the Avery family has experienced issues with police boils down to two main reasons. One - the family is poorly educated and can't express their wants and needs very well. Two - the family is terrible at minimizing conflict.

For the Avery family, small issues grew into large issues. Arguments turned into fights turned into arrests turned into apparent targeting. It all snowballed, and it all seems to me could have, at some point earlier on, been avoided or reduced.

I started thinking about those two things and how they really related to just about any problem. And then of course I started thinking about my students and how the idea relates to them. There will always be corrupt cops. There will always be terrible teachers. There will always be frustrating parents. There will always be bosses who are, well, bossy.

There will always be frustrations and things that go wrong. If parenting for 9 months has taught me anything, it is this very lesson. An unimaginable number of things go both terrible and great in the span of an hour of being a parent. It can be mind-numbing.

How do I talk to students about this? I guess that's a problem that needs a solution.

I'll get on that.

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have a newborn daughter and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet. Seriously. It's a proven fact.

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The Worst Part About Being a Teacher

It's no secret that being a teacher has its drawbacks. No matter how good I get at my job, there is a ceiling on my pay. That ceiling is almost entirely based on quantity of years taught, rather than quality of teaching.

It is difficult teaching kids with rough home lives the importance of history. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is real. It's legitimately difficult to care about learning when you aren't sure where dinner is coming from that evening.

The planning and grading is not always fun. And even when it is fun, it takes up a lot of time. That's a reality.

This is true in any profession. My brother, the one who travels every week and gets to see the world, is not home as much as he would like to be. When he starts a family, that will make for a very difficult change.

But losing a student* - that is absolutely the worst part about being a teacher. Losing a student to suicide is the worst of the worst.

Teaching is all about energy. And today, I have no energy. I have no spirit. I have no desire to learn. I want to sulk into my couch and yell. At anyone or anything. I want to whine and complain and bitch uncontrollably about how death is unfair. I want to rage on every human being who diminishes someone else because they are too fat, or too small, or too gay, or the wrong skin color, or wear torn up clothes, or whatever makes kids be so damn mean sometimes.

The unfortunate reality of getting to know hundreds of new teens every year is that this will inevitably happen again. That fact is what causes me to have to fight off utter despair. No matter what I and the other incredible teachers at this school do, we will probably lose another wonderful soul to suicide at some point in the future.

I don't know how to reconcile that knowledge. It's like a pendulum of shitty-ness that swings back and forth with frustrating amounts of reliability, no matter how much I don't want to experience the next swing.

***

Today in class, I asked students to tell me stories. I didn't know what else to do. I had plans made about the French Revolution that I had no desire to touch, nor were many of my kids in any kind of emotional state to learn about history.

So I asked for the kids to pick me up. I asked them who they loved in their lives. I asked them to explain these important people in such colorful detail that I could feel their warmth. I asked them who they loved, but needed to reconnect with soon. And I listened. Which was good, because when I tried to talk it just came out as sputtering nonsense.

Today, I hate being a teacher. Tomorrow, we'll start to pick up the pieces. RIP L.

*I have intentionally left the students' name off of this post in respect to the family. Please refrain from using the students' name in the comments section as well, as this is a public blog read by many outside of our Center community. Thank you.

About Me:

My name is Alec Chambers. I am a high school history and government teacher at a small, urban public school in Kansas City called Center High School. We regularly kick tail. Among many awards, we were named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2014. I don't just teach at Center- I also graduated from Center in 2006 after attending Center Schools K-12. I have a degree in Political Science, a second degree in International Relations, a third degree in Education and a Master's of Arts in Teaching. I have an unofficial degree is soccer. All of those degrees have led me to the high-paying teaching profession! I have a newborn daughter and am married to the most awesome woman on the planet. Seriously. It's a proven fact.

Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Google

Why Me?

Chrissy Chandler

I am happy to introduce Chrissy Chandler as a guest blogger this week, and hopefully in the future! Chrissy works at Center Alternative School (CAS), which serves students who are going through some challenging obstacles and helps them to persevere anyways. Not enough stories are told about the teachers and students at CAS, so I'm very happy to have Chrissy sharing her story here this week!

This is the really fun part of keeping a blog - the chance to interact with other teachers and educators. Often I will get an email or a Twitter message that will spark a conversation, and those are certainly fun and definitely worthwhile. But I really enjoy when a conversation turns into a guest post on this blog. There is something special about taking the time and having the courage to put yourself and your classroom out on the web for all to see.

***

Lately I have spent a lot of time asking, why me? That’s the first thing I thought when Alec invited me to write on his blog. Why me? Now you’re probably thinking who is this teacher with this lack of confidence writing this post? I should probably start off by telling you my story.

This year I began my second year of teaching. I have spent most of my working career in the Information Technology industry doing IT support and web design for various companies in the Kansas City area. When I had a child and realized that an industry dominated by men was not always the friendliest towards working mothers, I took a leap of faith and decided to stay home with my son. I wanted to help out other working mothers so I ran a small in-home daycare. Those was some of the best years of my life. I got to watch my son grow, take his first steps, say his first words and help other children do the same.

That’s when I was bit by the teaching bug. When my son was four, I closed my daycare and went to work in the Center School District in one of the offices of the elementary schools. I loved my job and loved working with and getting to know all of the kids in the building. However, I missed the challenges that working with and on computers gave me.

Eventually a job opened up in the IT department in Center and I took it. I spent five years in the IT department falling in love with the Center School District and technology and how it integrated into the classroom and the idea of teaching millennials how to apply this technology in authentic, effective ways that would impact their futures.

The next logical step was teaching. I chose Graceland University and eventually received a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis in Reading and a Certification to teach Kindergarten through 6th grade. I was going to be a great elementary teacher!

Well, as always, the universe had different plans for me. I was approached by Sharon Nibbelink, who at the time was the the principal of Center Alternative School, about teaching a career pathway in technology to alternative school students. The students at the alternative school had a reputation of being particularly challenging. I had heard rumors of them having all sorts of mental and emotional problems and sometimes even being violent so I’m listening and looking at this lady thinking…

Why me?

She is crazy.

I can’t do this.

Those kids will eat me alive!

I’m done before I even start!

Dr. Nibbelink, as many at Center know, can be very convincing. As I said before I love Center and I will do what’s best for its students. I will be where Center needs me to be and it seemed that it needed someone to give these students an alternative pathway to the future that they hadn’t had before. So I took the job.

The cool thing about it was I got to build the program and the curriculum from scratch as there was no previous program or precedent. I figured I would create this, stay for a year and pass it on to someone else. Again, I was going to be an EXCELLENT elementary school teacher.

I figured out pretty quickly that these students weren’t going to do well writing long papers, being inundated with worksheets or reading textbooks. They had to be up out of their seats, moving around and engaged in projects and tasks that they could apply to the real world. It turns out I accidently landed myself in a place that made the kind of instruction I offered in my classroom an example of the kind of teaching we needed to be doing in Center.

Again, why in the world are they looking at me? Trust me, it was a total accident and I can’t take all of the credit. I had some excellent guidance. Graceland did a wonderful job of emphasizing the importance of project based learning. I also had the opportunity to speak with and learn from other experienced teachers in the area. Some taught the same thing I taught, some had just seemed to master this teaching game! Like Lisa Oyler who teaches Technology classes at Summit Technology in Lee’s Summit. Lisa seemed all about implementing those authentic tasks into her curriculum. We didn’t have the same tools in Center that Lisa has, but she gave me good ideas on how to use what I had to make sure our students were getting the hands on learning experience that they needed. Then there’s Devin Strahm and Derrick Prewitt who taught me everything there was to know about classroom management and building relationships.They are elementary school teachers but kids are kids, and as it turns out their strategies apply across the board. Tyler Shannon, the principal at Red Bridge Elementary (where I did my student teaching) taught me the importance of constant engagement. Now, I have to admit that initially I thought this idea was a little wacky I mean who can be constantly engages, but once I got into the classroom, I realized that if I am always engaged with my students, it gives them little to no room for bad behaviors and my engagement means they are engaged!

Another thing I think helped was not being a traditional teacher. I spent all those years doing the job and was fortunate enough to land a job teaching what I spent so many years doing as a career. That made it really easy for me to think about the skills the kids needed to get a job and implement authentic tasks to teach them those skills they needed to function in the real world. I have watched these students learn skills and apply them and I am amazed everyday by what they are capable of.

I started to think, let’s take this a step further and really, really prepare them for the real world, let’s get them to college and get them career ready!

Needless to say, there was a little push back as some looked at the purpose of the alternative school as being just to get the kids graduated from high school. A lot of our students were behind on credits, had discipline problem and not always the best attitudes. Career readiness - maybe. College readiness - NEVER! Then I started reading It’s Being Done by Karin Chenoweth and I learned about all these school that were facing impossible odds and they did it! That made me think,we can do it too! We just had to change our attitude, be ready to try new things, fail miserably, try again and teach our students to do the same.

I now have a Career and Technical Education certification and teach 4 different college and career readiness business and technology classes at Center Alternative School. I am pursuing my graduate degree in Career and Technical Education and hoping to teach Project Lead the Way at the alternative school next year. In other words, I don’t think I’m going anywhere.

CAS High school students teaching 6th graders about hardware! My students never cease to amaze me! #CenterSD pic.twitter.com/iLtXsAaQQ8
— Christina Chandler (@kcchrissy) March 12, 2015

Don’t get me wrong. The alternative school is not always easy. However, it is not as difficult as the impression I was originally given. Yes, our students have some unique sets of challenges, but don’t all student? I took the advice of the very wise Anthony Hall who was the Dean of students at the Alternative school at the time, and spent a lot of time building relationships with my students. Once those relationships are built, even if I lose them for a moment to anger or frustration, they always come back.

I’m forever grateful to Dr. NIbbelink who had faith in me and my abilities when I didn’t have faith in myself and to the teachers and professors who have put me on the path to being a great teacher. I still have those doubts about myself. When someone asks me to sit on a committee or teach a class to other teachers I still ask myself, Why me?

I mean, I was going to be an excellent elementary school teacher, but I think I’ll settle for being a pretty good Alternative High School Technology and Career readiness teacher! I’ll probably always have those doubts and ask why me?, but I wonder if it is those doubts that will make me always want to learn from those who came before me and find new and exciting ways to engage my students.

Red Bridge Elementary 5th grade PLTW showing off their VEX robots! VERY cool! #centersd #thehiverobotics pic.twitter.com/9Vpy9cOppZ
— Christina Chandler (@kcchrissy) November 8, 2015

Why me?

Here’s hoping that I never truly figure out an answer to that question!

Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think!