The History Teacher 2.0

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.

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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
Follow me on Google