Teachers Need More Than Our Appreciation Right Now. They Need Our Support.
PLUS: A review of "Russian Doll" starring Natasha Lyonne
This past week was Teacher Appreciation Week, but “appreciation” is something a lot of teachers may not be feeling at the moment. In February, the National Education Association (NEA)—not only the nation’s largest teachers union but the largest non-federated union in the United States, period—found the pandemic had made 55% of its members more inclined to leave the profession earlier than planned. That number was up significantly from the summer of 2021, when 37% indicated they were inclined to leave teaching early, and the summer of 2020, when that number was at 28%.
It’s fair to quibble with the survey’s methodology; I wonder how many teachers would have said they were thinking about leaving the profession if they hadn’t been prompted to think about it in the context of the pandemic. The survey may also have registered higher than normal levels of dissatisfaction since it was conducted near the end of January 2022, when the omicron variant had pushed many school districts to the breaking point. But still, to find that 1 out of every 2 teachers is eyeing the exits is startling. Furthermore, talk to nearly any teacher and they’d probably tell you the results of the survey reflect a trend they’re seeing in their own schools.
The pandemic played a big part in the loss of morale. While many educators found a way to make online education work, the experience was often frustrating, as it was difficult to engage students through a computer screen. Students were often absent, and many who were present for class tuned the sessions out. Teachers worried about the well-being of their students and longed for a return to a more rewarding, hands-on learning environment.
The return to in-person instruction did not mean everything was suddenly put right, though. As expected, students had fallen behind in their learning, and there was a big push to make up lost academic ground. But in many ways, that wasn’t the major issue teachers confronted. Any teacher will tell you students won’t be prepared to learn if their social and emotional needs are not met first, and the pandemic had put many kids on edge. Having spent months in lockdown, students—particularly the youngest ones—had to either learn or re-learn basic social skills. Additionally, the time away from school left a large number of students anxious, irritable, belligerent, or disengaged. Many responded by acting out, shutting down, or breaking down. Teachers, accustomed to dealing with such issues, anticipated how students would behave upon their return and prepared accordingly, but navigating this challenge in addition to carrying out their regular duties was often overwhelming and exhausting. Teachers with particularly difficult classes soon found themselves needing to either step away from their classrooms or take time off work for their own mental health.
And then omicron hit, leaving schools understaffed and driving up absentee rates. Lacking the political will to shut schools down for a couple weeks to allow the peak of the wave to pass, school boards kept schools open even though there sometimes weren’t enough bus drivers to get kids to school, enough healthy teachers to lead classrooms, or enough healthy students to make instruction worthwhile. A lack of substitute teachers has meant teachers now often cover classes taught by absent colleagues or absorb students from classrooms with absent teachers. In one of the more insulting episodes from the past few months, Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico deployed her state’s National Guard to keep schools open during omicron’s peak. Most Guardsmen had no teaching experience and no training beyond an orientation that lasted a few hours. NPR followed one Guardsman assigned to cover a band class, where students ended up teaching him about music. Many applauded Grisham for her resourcefulness, but to many teachers, Grisham’s move suggested she and the public regarded teachers more as amateur babysitters than professional educators.
Beyond these immediate effects, however, the pandemic has brought other issues that have long affected morale in the teaching profession to the surface. For decades, the big push in education was toward a more standardized curriculum and more standardized testing. Teachers have much less leeway to develop their own lessons and units today than they did thirty years ago. Consequently, teachers frequently end up following curricula they and their students find dull and uninspiring with little opportunity to supplement lessons with more engaging content or activities.
The pandemic seemed to open the door to a move away from standardization. The administration of standardized tests seemed more pointless than ever during and after the pandemic, as nothing about the home test setting was “standardized” and the results generated during this very strange time would likely be dismissed as outliers. Additionally, online teaching led many teachers to develop more creative lessons and methods to better engage students. It was hard work, but it was also refreshing, as teachers were encouraged to rely on talents and skills that decades of school reformers had tried to control for. And let’s face it: People don’t get into teaching so they can implement a set of lesson plans handed down to them by some bureaucrat in the state board of education. Instead, they want to use their talents as educators to find ways to connect with kids who have all sorts of learning styles and learning challenges. That’s where the rewards in teaching are truly found, and there’s little “standardized” about that.
The disruption caused by the pandemic gave school districts the opportunity to reimagine their educational model. That didn’t come to pass, though. Instead, when school resumed in-person, the educational system largely reverted to its emphasis on standardization even though it was clear the old ways of teaching weren’t designed with current student needs—particularly social-emotional needs—in mind. Schools doubled-down on testing, which revealed to the shock of no one that students were behind, which in turn led teachers to wonder why they were spending so much time testing students rather than teaching them. Whatever innovations or insights that emerged from months teaching online were quickly sidelined. Belle Chesler, a secondary teacher from suburban Portland, described how disappointing this was in an article in The Nation:
Having proved capable of building an entirely new system in just a few weeks, many of us hoped that, when we returned to our schools, we might be able to make necessary and positive changes there, too. Instead, fears of learning loss from the previous year coupled with calls for a “return to normal” forced all of us back into well-worn and established patterns of how schools do school—a complete denial of our experiences of the previous year. The first bell still rang at 7:45 AM with hour-and-a-half-long classes stacked up one after another. Back were the same old too-large class sizes, the frenetic and unrelenting pace, the usual standardized curriculum and testing, traditional modes of assessment, outmoded graduation requirements, and the general drudgery of the secondary-school routine.
The pandemic exposed shortcomings in America’s school system. The moment called for a review of the way this country educates its children. Yet to the disappointment of many teachers, the return to in-person learning marked a return to a stale and stultifying educational system, one that often underserves its students and leaves educators professionally unfulfilled.
So the pandemic did not jumpstart a movement aimed at reforming education in America. But it did generate a protest movement that put teachers in its crosshairs. In the months after in-person learning was halted in March 2020, parents opposed to the shutdown began pressuring school districts to reopen. Teachers were often blamed for the closures, as unions pressed school districts to remain shuttered until it was safe for teachers and students to return.
A strong case can be made that schools—particularly elementaries—could have reopened safely in the fall of 2020, but following that line of argument involves a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking. What’s often forgotten today is that over the summer of 2020, the United States did not manage the pandemic in a way that would have minimized the risks associated with reopening. Many political leaders emphasized the reopening of the economy over schools and did not implement policies like contact tracing that other countries used to keep case numbers down at a time when vaccines were unavailable. It was hard to trust those advocating for schools to reopen when they made safety such a low priority and at times didn’t even take the threat of the virus seriously.
Anger over school closures and (later) mask mandates fed another protest movement that gained steam just as the 2021 school year began. “Parental control” advocates began pushing back against what they claimed were attempts by schools to “indoctrinate” kids with a liberal agenda, focusing on what students were being taught about race and sexuality. That movement quickly morphed into a broader assault on multicultural and LGBTQ-inclusive education. Groups began targeting books for removal from school libraries, leading some administrators to preemptively take books out of circulation. State legislatures passed laws prohibiting the teaching of certain topics related to race and sexuality and imposed penalties for doing so that have the potential to end a teacher’s career and inflict significant financial damage on a school district. Teachers have yet to be punished under such laws, but the threat of running afoul of this legislation has led many teachers to avoid subjects that could raise parents’ ire and potentially land their school in court. Lawmakers have also passed bills requiring teachers to post instructional material they intend to use during the school year months ahead of time so parents can review it, which has only added to teachers’ workloads.
In the process, public schools have become ground zero in the nation’s culture wars. It’s hard to know how many teachers have been directly affected by these new laws or confronted by parents over something they taught in their classrooms, but in areas where this is a hot button issue, educators have to be worried about how they might handle sensitive topics related to race and sexuality. This is particularly true for instructors responsible for teaching lessons about this nation’s fraught racial history or who have created safe spaces in their classrooms for students from historically-marginalized backgrounds. While it is not unusual for schools to get caught up in political disputes in the United States, what is unique about this moment is that one side in the debate has portrayed teachers not only as a public menace but as a group actively involved in corrupting our nation’s children. This isn’t just a debate over the scope and direction of our educational system; it’s turned into a direct assault on the integrity of the teaching profession itself, a smear against those who have dedicated themselves to educating and caring for future generations of Americans.
I’ve been worried about the state of the teaching profession for a long time. People become teachers to serve students. The kids are the reason teachers return to their classrooms year after year. But the heavy emphasis on canned curricula, standards, and testing has taken a lot of the joy out of teaching, and teachers seem valued more for their ability to follow a state-mandated lesson plan than as individuals who use their talents to connect with kids, create teachable moments, and inspire students to learn. Many teachers find the job isn’t fulfilling anymore or not as personally rewarding as they had expected. Additionally, as a wave of anti-intellectualism has built across the country, respect for teachers has declined. The pandemic has only made these problems that much more apparent. Burnout, disenchantment, and demoralization are real issues in the profession. If these issues aren’t addressed soon, we’ll quickly find ourselves dealing with a shortage of teachers.
So as teacher appreciation week comes to a close, do more than appreciate a teacher. Find ways to support them. Contact your school board and state and national legislators and encourage them to scale back their emphasis on standardized testing. Urge local administrators to make sure teachers not only have adequate time to prepare for the day and complete their work but regular opportunities in class to let their talents shine. Let administrators know that you trust teachers to know what students need and how best to support them, and that the teacher-student relationship should be placed at the center of the educational system. Expect schools to be fully staffed with plenty of support staff on hand to assist regular classroom teachers. If teachers are struggling, get them help.
Finally, remind yourself that schools aren’t warehouses but academic institutions, and that teachers aren’t babysitters but skilled professional educators. If more people shared that mindset, teachers would begin regaining the respect and recognition they deserve.
Signals and Noise
The big news this week was the leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which, if officially released by the Supreme Court, would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and allow states to regulate abortion any way they see fit. After the Court heard oral arguments in the case back in December, I wrote I expected the Court to jettison Roe, so seeing an opinion doing just that doesn’t come as a surprise to me. But I see no point commenting on an unofficial draft. The final draft may reach different conclusions or contain different rationale, and the point of leaking Alito’s draft may have been to provoke public reaction ahead of the opinion’s official release. (I can imagine why different players across the political spectrum may have leaked the draft.) So I’ll wait to comment on Dobbs until the Court makes their opinion official in a few weeks.
If you’ve noticed, Republicans have not said much about this leaked draft opinion. Why? Former Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer thinks it’s because even though Republicans appear to be cruising to a big victory in the midterms, they know they’re on the wrong side of these culture war issues: “The Republicans are in the driver’s seat despite pushing one of the most unpopular, extreme agendas in modern political history. For all the handwringing about how Democrats can win the culture wars, it’s the Republicans who should fear a high-profile conflict on those cultural issues….On issue after issue, Republicans choose to adopt extreme positions. Not only are these positions unpopular and outside of mainstream American values, they are also disconnected from the issues that demand focus.”
Teddy Cancun is at it again:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) complains about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg taking paternity leave “in the middle of the greatest supply-chain crisis of our lives.”Not only is it pretty rich for this guy of all people to complain about someone not doing their job in the middle of a crisis, but to criticize foster parents for taking paternity leave the day after the country learned the Supreme Court is probably going to overturn Roe v. Wade is something only the smuggiest of dipwads could pull off.
But Teddy Cancun has nothing on Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who may just be the nuttiest member of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. This week, a Colorado attorney told Johnson on a Zoom call that COVID vaccines caused AIDS. Johnson replied, “Everything you say may be true.”
Five Republican senators recently sent a letter to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board asking them to create a TV rating for shows that contain LGBTQ+ characters. Are we still arguing over “The One with the Lesbian Wedding”?
Republicans keep smearing Democrats by insinuating liberals are trying to sexually groom children. It’s an entirely unfounded accusation. What I would like to know, though, is why federal agents seized video discs and other items during a search of the home of North Dakota’s longest-serving Republican state senator after he had exchanged numerous text messages with a man currently jailed for child pornography. And why Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller has allowed a man convicted of soliciting sex from a minor to drive her to campaign events. What’s up with that?
Let’s get this out of the way first: Lots of us carry wallets. Lots of us carry wallets full of money. The fact that we are carrying wallets full of money does not give other people permission to assault us and steal our wallets. In fact, that whole scenario doesn’t even have anything to do with wallets, because no one ever has the right to assault anyone else. Makes sense, right? Well can someone explain that concept to former North Carolina Governor and current Republican candidate for senator Pat McCrory, who said the following this week: “There was some, the dress, the stuff that these young women — liberated women — are wearing [at the Grammys]. They wear this stuff and then they talk about #MeToo. It sends a mixed signal, that’s for sure.” No, not at all, Pat! Nothing mixed about it! The fact that a woman is wearing revealing clothing does not give a man permission to sexually assault her. The fact that a woman is wearing clothing of any kind does not give a man permission to sexually assault her. Why? Because men do not have permission to sexually assault women ever. This creep is 65 years old. How has he not figured this out yet?
The New York Times reported this week that American intelligence has provided Ukraine with information that has helped them kill a surprisingly large number of Russian generals. NBC followed that up with a report that U.S. intelligence helped sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. That news has Thomas Friedman worried, though: “The staggering takeaway from these leaks is that they suggest we are no longer in an indirect war with Russia but rather edging toward a direct war — and no one has prepared the American people or Congress for that. Vladimir Putin surely has no illusions about how much the U.S. and NATO are arming Ukraine with material and intelligence, but when American officials start to brag in public about playing a role in killing Russian generals and sinking the Russian flagship, killing many sailors, we could be creating an opening for Putin to respond in ways that could dangerously widen this conflict — and drag the U.S. in deeper than it wants to be. It is doubly dangerous, senior U.S. officials say, because it is increasingly obvious to them that Putin’s behavior is not as predictable as it has been in the past. And Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground — or even a face-saving off ramp.”
Make of this what you will, but Shannon Vavra of The Daily Beast reports Ukrainian intelligence has learned Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own tanks. (“Russian fighters have been sharing tips with one another about how to deliberately damage their own equipment and hamper Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans in Ukraine, according to recordings of alleged Russian troops’ phone calls that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intercepted. In one regiment, one Russian soldier allegedly said they’ve been pouring sand into the tanks’ fuel systems to clog them up.”)
Former Secretary of Defense Mike Esper writes in his new memoir that Donald Trump was interested in launching missiles into Mexico to destroy the country’s drug labs. If anyone asked about it, Trump would have just offered a denial. “No one would know it was us,” said the president.
From Ewen Callaway, in Nature: “Are COVID surges becoming more predictable? New Omicron variants offer a hint”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2022 inductees. The performers set to be enshrined this year are Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, and Carly Simon. Musical Excellence Awards were given to heavy metal band Judas Priest (who was also nominated as a performer) and New Jack Swing producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (who produced Janet Jackson’s records.) Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Cotten were recognized as early influences. The Ahmet Ertegun Award for non-performers went to attorney Allen Grubman, producer Jimmy Iovine, and record label executive Sylvia Robinson. I predicted 6 of the 7 inductees correctly (I only missed Benatar) but was unenthusiastic about Benatar, Parton, Richie, and Simon’s merits. Parton caused quite a stir a few months ago when she announced she didn’t want to be considered for induction because she didn’t consider herself a rock and roll artist, but changed her tune a few weeks ago. All-in-all, it’s a fairly underwhelming class. Eminem was a lock, and I’m glad they got Judas Priest in even if it meant bringing them in through the sidedoor rather than via the actual ballot. It’s also good to see Duran Duran and Eurythmics get honored even though I would have prioritized other acts on the ballot. At least the class was a big one, which helps clear up the backlog. Hopefully that makes it easier for the RRHoF to start honoring major snubs and more recently eligible artists in the coming years.
Vincent’s Picks: Russian Doll
People have been wondering lately if we’ve reached peak Netflix. The streaming service, which had expected to add 2.5 million subscribers over the first three months of the year, reported a few weeks ago it instead shed 200,000 subscribers. Its stock has lost all the value it added during the pandemic, when people stuck at home made the streamer one of their primary entertainment options.
There’s more than one reason for Netflix’s slide—people spending more of their time away from their homes, increased competition from other streaming services, inflation—but I suspect one of the biggest reasons that has led people to unsubscribe is the generally poor quality of Netflix’s programming. It’s not just that a lot of big name content that used to be on Netflix like Friends and The Office have migrated to other providers. It’s that Netflix people are beginning to realize Netflix is not a quality brand name. Its splashy productions—think Red Notice—are pretty formulaic and forgettable. That’s not to say Netflix hasn’t produced its share of quality entertainment; it’s still the place to go for shows like Stranger Things, Dead to Me, and The Crown. It’s just that you’re more likely to find better, buzzier, more reliable programming on other streamers.
All of which makes Russian Doll, whose second season is now available to watch, a pretty remarkable Netflix show. The series isn’t aimed at a casual, middle-American audience and doesn’t star any major celebrities. It’s pretty high concept and, despite moving at a fairly brisk pace through half-hour episodes, demands a lot from the viewer. Its characters are constantly trying to figure out what’s happening to them, why it’s happening to them, and what it means, and the show doesn’t work unless you’re actively engaged in that process with them. In other words, you can’t check your phone or doze off for a few minutes and assume you haven’t missed much.
I don’t want you to think, though, that the show isn’t any fun. It’s actually pretty funny and often outrageous, and you’ll get a real kick out of it if you’re willing to follow it down its philosophical rabbit holes. (I’m not promising it all makes sense, but it’s a good ride regardless.) Russian Doll stars Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black) as Nadia, the sort of New Yorker who keeps the city from sleeping. She’s brash and acerbic, warm enough to draw people to her but also prone to pushing people away with her cutting sense of humor. Nadia was raised by a single mother with mental health issues who committed suicide before reaching the age of thirty-six. Nadia fears this will be her fate, too, which helps explain her pessimistic, devil-may-care outlook on life. While Nadia’s black wardrobe acts almost like armor, her eyes—buried beneath shadowy eyeliner and a bushy mane of curly, flaming red hair—are the viewer’s portal to her inner self.
In season one, we meet Nadia as she is staring into a bathroom mirror on the night of her 36th birthday party. We follow her over the course of the evening until she crosses a street to retrieve her missing cat, is struck by a cab, and killed. As soon as that happens, though, she finds herself back at her party staring into the same bathroom mirror. At first, she assumes this very weird situation is the result of having smoked a joint laced with a hallucinogen, but after experiencing a series of deaths that always bring her back to the bathroom mirror, she begins to suspect something else is going on. I won’t go into anymore details, as the viewer needs to work through this puzzle with Nadia to get at the show’s deeper meaning, but I think it’s suffice to say the lesson of the first season is that people can’t save others until they save themselves.
Season two doesn’t revisit the Groundhog Day concept. Instead, we encounter Nadia stalking the streets of NYC as Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” plays in the background before boarding a subway that takes her not to the next station but to 1982. (This is the version of New York City Nadia was meant to haunt.) Nadia takes this development in stride. In the first season, this sort of cosmic meddling would have frazzled her. Now she sees it as therapy, and she’s here for it, ready to play along to see what sort of lesson the universe has in store for her this time.
Eventually in 1982, Nadia gets a look at herself in a mirror and discovers she’s inhabiting the body of her very pregnant mother Lenora. (You know that saying about Chekhov’s gun? The same rule applies when it comes to time-travel stories involving the bodily possession of pregnant women, meaning if you watch this show, you are certain to see something happen that I’m pretty sure has never happened before in the history of television.) Nadia is elated because now she gets to play Being John Malkovich with her mom but over time, giving her the chance to set all the things that have gone wrong in her family’s life right. She immediately tries to make sure Lenora does not lose the gold coins Lenora’s mother Vera gave her as a down payment on Nadia’s college education.
Why is the family’s wealth invested in a duffel bag full of gold coins rather than in a bank account? Because Nadia’s grandparents are Holocaust survivors who no longer trust others to safeguard their wealth after their possessions were stolen from them by Nazis. Turns out if you have a time-travelling train at your disposal, you may be able to fix that injustice, too. (Consequently, season two is not only about exorcising personal demons but cultural demons as well.) But you can probably guess where this is going. Maybe it’s possible to better understand the past, but you can’t change it. You can only come to terms with it. We may have regrets or look back on regrettable events, but if we are to live with ourselves going forward, we must accept that the past has made us who we are now without allowing ourselves to become trapped by it. Fixing the past also will not free us from our problems; doing so would instead saddle us with completely different ones. Even if we had to power to alter the past, we also need to acknowledge that much of what happened in the past wasn’t the result of choices we actually made. (As you watch season two, listen carefully to the advice offered by Nadia’s surrogate mother/therapist Ruth, played by both Elizabeth Ashley and Annie Murphy [Schitt’s Creek]. She holds the key to understanding the show.)
It’s easy to get lost in a show like Russian Doll. Its main idea is developed over the course of three-and-a-half hours, and it isn’t afraid to take weird detours or explore loose ends. Part of the show’s message, though, is that there isn’t a straight through line to the source of our traumas. That would be too easy. We are complicated people whose depths can only be discovered by peeling away one layer at a time.