2024, How Extraordinary!

Featured ~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

From day one, 2024 suggested it would be one for the books, but never could I have imagined just how extraordinary it would turn out to be (and yes, I do realize I am writing this with six whole weeks remaining in this storied year).

Now, when I use the word extraordinary, I am not trying to say it has been wonderful or fantastic. I am sticking with the dictionary definition of very unusual. So much about this year — in my personal life, but also in the public realm — has been extraordinary.

It might have seemed ordinary that my 61 year old husband took his pension after a thirty-seven year long career and began a private practice — lots of people do that. But it was rather extraordinary that within two weeks of his new reality his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer and my stepfather was diagnosed with bladder cancer. We couldn’t have known when my husband decided to make this major life transition that we would be stepping into more supportive roles with our parents for the next many months and that he would need the flexibility that his private practice has allowed.

It is pretty ordinary for an organization to go through transitions when key people leave, but it is rather extraordinary that within two months of my husband leaving his university role, the board of directors of that institution announced that it would be all but closing within the next academic year. It’s rather ordinary for institutions to have a life cycle, of course, but it is rather extraordinary that this life cycle would be ended when the university was as strong — or stronger — as it had ever been.

I could continue…the whole year has been like this. I mean, it’s ordinary to have family drama, and we’ve had some of the ordinary kind, but since it’s 2024, we’ve had some extraordinary family drama. A friend, early in the year made the observation that when families are under distress or trauma, all the dysfunction shows up to an exponential degree, and I can attest that it is so. (In fact, I may have been a little exponential myself on a couple occasions, truth be told.)

We had some extraordinary moments with my mother-in-law — some of the very good kind of extraordinary moments — before she passed away on October 1. And it was extraordinary to see the friends and family roll in to say goodbye and to honor her life.

I had a couple pretty extraordinary moments with my stepfather during his chemo, during a couple hospitalizations, and during his recovery. And since his chances were 50/50 with the type of cancer he had, it might be considered extraordinary that he is now cancer free!

As we ordinarily do, my husband and I prepared our garden in the spring, sowed seeds for lettuce, radishes, carrots, and beets and planted tomato plants and potatoes. And, as usual, the radishes and lettuce thrived, the carrots and beets struggled, and the potatoes and tomatoes gave a respectable yield. But what was extraordinary was that despite the fact that we didn’t plant pumpkins, have never planted pumpkins, we harvested dozens — yes, dozens — of pie pumpkins, many of which are still in my pantry.

I don’t ask questions. It’s 2024. Anything can happen.

I can take a new role and expect to transition away from teaching, only to find two weeks before school that I will be doing the new role and teaching. I can expect this to be overwhelming only to find that I am thriving — loving the opportunity to do both roles.

It’s very ordinary to have a presidential election every four years, but how ordinary is it that both candidates are basically octogenarians? how ordinary that one of them — the actual president — drops out of the race months before the election? how ordinary that a Black and Asian female would take his place? how ordinary that her opponent is a convicted felon under investigation for myriad crimes? how ordinary that she breaks all fund-raising goals on record? how ordinary that her opponent has two attempts on his life while campaigning? how ordinary that his running mate creates a racist narrative and admits to creating it? how ordinary that a candidate campaigns from a garbage truck, spends thirty minutes of a rally playing random songs from his playlist, and still — still — still gets elected?

That’s extraordinary. And then it just gets even more unusual when he selects someone else under criminal investigation for sex-related crimes to be the United States Attorney General and someone accused of “traitorous parroting of Russian propaganda” to be the Head of U.S. Intelligence!

But it’s 2024 — anything can happen!

I can fly to Philadelphia, visit dear relatives, attend a wedding on the Jersey Shore, fly back home, and test positive for Covid all within the span of a week. That might be pretty ordinary in these post-pandemic times, but is it also ordinary to follow a Covid isolation with food poisoning? Probably not.

This year has been anything been ordinary, and it’s not over yet.

What will the next six weeks bring? I wouldn’t dare to guess.

But I am not afraid — a little obsessive about self-care, but not afraid.

After all, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Since the dawn of time there has been disease, death, corruption, immorality. Perhaps the brazenness of 2024 is what is catching me off-guard, but that, too, is not new.

It’s especially not new to a high school teacher. No, we live in the realm of brazenness, of bravado, of actual crying out loud — these are the hallmarks of adolescent behavior. They are intended to intimidate, to gain control, to encourage onlookers on to “pay no attention to what is behind the curtain,” but don’t make the mistake I made in my earlier days of interacting with teens. Any seasoned teacher of adolescents will tell you that behind the curtain is exactly where you need to look. Usually what you find there is insecurity, loneliness, and perhaps even desperation.

Let’s not let the extraordinary of 2024 keep us from recognizing what is truly ordinary in all of this. Each of us longs for connection, for the ability to trust those around us with our most vulnerable parts, but there is no way we can make connection when we are distracted by name-calling, blaming, bravado, the extraordinary.

One by one we have to refuse to be intimidated in the face of bluster. We have to be willing to risk, to get close, to look behind the curtain.

People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.” — Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness

Ten Years Later #10: Evolution of a Voter

Featured ~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

I’m getting ready to head to the polls this morning like I have in every presidential election since 1984. My practices have shifted quite a bit since those early years. I wrote about it in 2020, and I’m re-posting it here now.

In the house I grew up in, we didn’t talk politics. I knew who the president was, and I knew I should exercise my civic duty and vote, but other than my fifth grade teacher strongly extolling the merits of then-candidate Jimmy Carter, I didn’t know that people held strong opinions about elections or politics.

I was a white girl in middle America, the world was working pretty well for me, and nobody told me I should feel differently.

When I recently watched Mrs. America, a re-telling of the early failed attempts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, I was startled to realize that my family and my community had indeed been political in that they had believed an ideology and pushed to maintain a reality that worked for them, even if they didn’t consciously acknowledge or care to discuss it.

I believed from a young age that “those women” who were fighting for the ERA were bra-burning radicals who were bent on destroying Christian values. They were going to destroy the family as we knew it. No one in my family actually said this out loud, but I know I received that message, because as I watched the series, I was transported back in time to interrogate those beliefs and compare them with what I feel strongly about now.

I’ve been doing that a lot in recent years — interrogating firmly held beliefs. As the president’s nominee for Supreme Court Justice awaits a politically-charged confirmation, I find myself looking back on how I became a one-issue voter and how I walked away from that practice.

I remember voting for the first time as a freshman at Michigan State University in 1984. I walked to the neighboring dorm and cast my vote to re-elect President Reagan. It seemed the obvious choice. I’d watched the footage of him being shot as he was climbing into his vehicle, secret service agents swooping in to move him to safety. He’d survived that and resumed his duties. Why wouldn’t I vote to let him continue doing so? I was 18, what did I know?

I don’t think I voted in 1988. I was registered to vote in Michigan and student teaching in Indiana. I probably assumed the vote would do just fine without me for one cycle. I had more important tasks on my list.

In 1992, my husband and I bent over the Sunday newspaper the week before the presidential election, sorting through pages of charts to find the candidates and proposals we would be voting on. We read, discussed, and began our tradition of creating a “cheat sheet” to carry with us to the polls. Sorting through a sea of candidates, many of whom we did not know, we made a decision, as professional church workers in a conservative denomination, that we would vote for candidates who were pro-life.

Our decision to reduce complex candidates and platforms down to one issue speaks perhaps to our trust in our denominational leadership and our commitment to our duty as leaders in that denomination. That commitment to duty convinced me that we had to get things ‘right’. We had to vote the right way, parent the right way, lead the right way, and live the right way.

This whole-hearted commitment to being right made me very judgmental of those who I believed to be wrong. I was not afraid to speak out if I thought someone was going the wrong way or to impose my beliefs on others.

For example, I believed Halloween was decidedly anti-Christian. I was sure to let other parents know that if they allowed their children to participate they weren’t being very good parents. (Yeah, I was pretty fun to be around all of October.)

Similarly, I was firm in my pro-life commitment, so when my husband and I joined our church community to stand on the side of the street and hold signs and pray to end abortion, it seemed fitting that our children should join us, too. And, we continued to vote based on that one issue through many local and national elections.

The intention was good — I stand by that. We believe that life begins at conception, and to turn our backs on the unborn seemed unconscionable. But, just like the ideologies around feminism that my family and community held in my childhood, this belief — that voting for candidates who claimed to be pro-life was an imperative of our Christian faith — needed to be interrogated.

For one, just because a political candidate says he or she stands for something, does not mean that policy will be impacted. Some would wave a banner high just to get a vote.

Also, platforms can be misleading. A candidate may say she is pro-life when talking about abortion, but if she is also pro-NRA, is she actually pro-life? If she believes that American citizens have the right to own semi-automatic weapons, the likes of which have been used in many mass shootings in recent years, is she really concerned about the value of life? Many pro-life politicians have failed in recent months to enact legislation to provide life-sustaining relief to those who have been financially devastated by the pandemic and who are desperate for housing, food, and medical care.

What is our definition of pro-life, anyway?

And then there’s the actual issue of abortion.

I was nine months pregnant with my first daughter, when my in-laws joined us at our place to celebrate Thanksgiving. I sat across the table from my father-in-law, digesting turkey and potatoes, when the topic of abortion came up. I was poised for a fight, to stand firmly on my belief that abortion was wrong, but then he complicated the issue for me. He said, “It’s great to want to stop abortion, but once we protect that unborn child, who will be willing to provide for it? Who will care for the mother? Who’s going to fund that? Are we ready to really be pro-life?”

That conversation has stuck with me for almost 28 years. For many of those years, we continued our one-issue voting strategy, believing ourselves to be right.

But here’s the thing with believing you’re right — you often discover that you are wrong.

You might firmly instill in your children the belief that abortion is wrong, that they should save sex for marriage, and that sexual purity is highly valued by the family and the church, and leave no room for scenarios that you never would have expected.

You might discover that someone you love has been sexually assaulted and is afraid to let you know because you might not value them as much — you might find them broken.

Will they come to you? Will they trust you to have compassion? Will they believe that you love them more than your firmly held beliefs? Or will they feel alone?

You might discover that someone you love has had an abortion. Will they feel judged by you (and by God)? Will they find acceptance and grace?

What is our goal as Christians who vote pro-life? If Roe v. Wade is overturned, will the gospel of Christ be advanced? If in trying to achieve that goal, we find ourselves name-calling and shaming those around us, have we demonstrated the love of Christ, whose name we bear?

Is outlawing abortion the only way to value life? Or is it merely relegating the practice to secrecy where it will be unregulated, dangerous, and further demonized?

For most of my life, I have tried to get it right, but what if I admitted that I’ve gotten so much wrong? What if I acknowledged that I am sorely in need of grace?

What if rather than teaching my children that they’d better get it all right, I ensured them that I’d be with them when it inevitably goes wrong.

Several elections back, I stopped being a one-issue candidate. I found myself taking a long look at the complexity of our society, seeing all of its brokenness, examining the faulty options set in front of me, having complicated discussions with people who matter to me, weighing the options thoroughly, and voting as though I cared not only for the unborn, not only for myself, but also for those who have repeatedly and historically been overlooked, mistreated, marginalized, and forgotten.

I can no longer vote for a candidate who waves the pro-life flag with one hand while using the other to give the finger to millions of already-born humans who long for equality, justice, and a chance to breathe freely.

More than one issue is at stake in this election.

I plan to vote as though I know that.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Embracing

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I’m not really a hugger.. I wouldn’t say I am anti-hug, I honestly just don’t have the impulse — I never think to myself, You know what I could use right now? A hug!

I wasn’t always this way, of course. I remember being quite affectionate as a child. I would run, yelling, “Dad!” and fling myself into my father’s arms when he arrived home from work or a trip or even if I was broken-hearted about something.

I would also, upon arriving at my grandparents’ house, spring from the car and sprint to their waiting arms to get big bear hugs. I was so sure they would be there to receive my affections, so sure they would reciprocate, so sure they would lavish their love upon me.

But life teaches us, doesn’t it, that not everyone loves like a grandparent. Not everyone consistently beams in your presence, overlooks your quirks, or forgives so effortlessly. So, over time, we lose that abandon — that ability to fling ourselves into the arms of another. We learn, instead, to guard, to protect, to hold back.

This is a useful skill for a high school teacher. You have to simultaneously let students know that you love them and that you don’t need them to love you in return. My love for my students is not dependent on their behavior, their mood-of-the-day, or whether or not they even like me.

I’ve grown into this, too, of course. In the early days of teaching, I really did want students to like me. I was fiercely committed to telling them the truth about life, but I was also quite sensitive to their reactions to me. I even, at times, wanted their approval. But over the years, my tough exterior has developed and I am quite impervious to derogatory comments, rude behavior, or the occasional “I can’t stand you, Mrs. Rathje.”

I mean, I’m not going to win them all.

This persona — the I’m fine; you can’t hurt me persona — is effective most of the time. Most days I motor through pretty well accomplishing my tasks, completing deliverables, and managing life without really thinking about my emotions.

Just writing that sentence made me stop for a minute. Is it true that Kristin Rathje, once voted ‘moodiest’ by her senior class because of her inability to self-regulate is now for the most part functioning from a pretty level emotional state? I think it really is. And that is likely true for you, too. Most of us manage most of life — the ups, the downs — from a pretty stable place. Of course we smile when something pleases us. Our eyebrows crinkle up when something doesn’t make sense,. We get annoyed in traffic, and we feel overwhelmed by our workload, but truly, we tend to manage all of that without even thinking about it.

Certainly there are larger emotions under the surface — ongoing hurts that we unpack with close friends or in therapy — but typically, in our daily lives we function in circles that are oblivious to our personal realities because we have developed strategies for keeping them to ourselves.

And for me, the I’m fine; you can’t hurt me persona has worked as a self-regulation strategy. And this persona is not one who would typically want a hug.

When I taught in St. Louis several years ago, some of my students would come into the building each day and hug one another — I didn’t love it. It seemed excessive. You just saw each other yesterday. What’s with the hug? And typically, if students approached me and asked for a hug, the answer was No. I’m not a hugger. They were not impacted by my resistance to hug them. They just found the next dozen people in the hallway and hugged them instead. I felt no shame.

And when I started teaching in Detroit, we were in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic. We were wearing masks, social distancing (remember that?) and having anxiety about being in the same room with twenty other people. Certainly no one was interested in hugging.

And for the past four years, the only students I have hugged have been graduates who have come back for a visit. Feeling sincere joy upon seeing them after a year or two or three, I hold out my arms, they walk to me, and we embrace. I look them in the eyes, ask, How are you? What are you doing now? and then I listen. Other than that — no hugs. Lots of fist bumps, a few carefully choreographed hand shakes, but no hugs. Thank you, I’m fine.

But guys. The last few months have been different. I might be converting to some type of huggable person — even when I am at school!

It started in the most unlikely of situations. We have a new policy this year in which students have to turn in their phones when they enter our building. Phones are returned at the end of the day. Because of this policy, two other staff members and I set up each morning in the gym to receive students. They walk through a metal detector, have their bag searched, and then report to our station. They hand us their phones, and we place them in pre-labeled envelopes. It’s all pretty systematic, just as we expected.

What we didn’t expect is the relationship capital this system is supporting. Don’t get me wrong — most students are not happy to hand over their phones, and many are finding ways to sneak them past us and to keep their phones with them throughout the day. But relationship capital is being built by our consistency in the same position in the gym every morning. We greet each student with Good morning and their name, we make eye contact, we encourage students to get a breakfast, and then the magic happens — students tell us what happened last night or on their way to school, they share what is annoying them at the moment, or they come up beside us to get their daily hug.

That’s right — I’m giving out morning hugs. They aren’t theatrical, but a small number of students come to each of us daily to get a little one-armed side hug before moving into their day. Also, I have one senior who stops at my door every day on his way into class to give me a hug before entering. It’s not cheesy; it’s not manipulative; it’s just a hug.

And I’m here for it.

Earlier this month, my mother-in-law passed away on a Tuesday morning after a months-long illness. I helped my husband pack his bag and sent him to be with his father and siblings, then determined I’m fine and went to school. I texted my principal to let her know I would likely need Friday off but that I was good for the day.

And I was good — I participated in a day-long training, I texted with family members who were managing the details of travel, and I interacted with students in the hallways. It wasn’t until the end of the day that reality hit me. My principal saw me, met my eyes, and opened her arms. I walked to her and felt the love in her embrace, and the emotions leaked past my persona and out of my eyes.

I was totally into that hug.

When Friday arrived, so did my adult children, one after the other. Each one of them and their partners greeted me with an embrace that said I love you. I know this hurts. We are here. It’s ok to have feelings.

And I trusted that; I leaned in.

When I arrived at the funeral home, the family had just entered the room to see my mother-in-law for the first time since her passing. I walked in to see my husband stepping up to the casket. I joined him, reached for his hand, and silently told my mother-in-law goodbye. From there, I moved to my father-in-law, hugging him cheek to cheek, whispering, I’m so sorry. I then embraced each of my sisters-in-law and my brothers-in-law.

We each reached for each other, saying with words or without, I love you. I’m sorry. I am so glad you are here.

The hugs kept coming all weekend long — Hello. I’m sorry. So good of you to come. Thank you for being here. I love you. Goodbye.

I treasured each and every one of those hugs. I leaned in. I held on. I breathed deeply. I let go slowly.

I think I’m changing, letting down my guard, beginning to trust the people in my life, and it’s good.

Because apparently underneath my tough exterior is a little girl who could still sometimes really use a hug.

“…whatever is pure, whatever is lovely…think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

Lesson Review

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

Some lessons we have to learn over and over.

Every fall, teachers have to teach students how to enter their classrooms, how to walk down the hallways, and how to raise their hands before speaking in a group setting.

Students, of course, have been taught before how to gather supplies, find their desks, and wait for instructions, but after a long summer of loosened expectations, a short weekend at home, or even just transitioning from one classroom to another, they often need explicit directions in order function in ways that support classroom learning.

They need a review.

Teachers need to relearn every fall, too. Administrators spend much of the first few weeks re-establishing norms like arrival times (teachers must be in their classrooms well before the students), duty stations (every teacher at their doorway during transitions), and procedural expectations (no bathroom passes during the first and last 10 minutes of class).

Teachers know these norms, of course; they haven’t changed since last year, and even if you switched schools, many routines are consistent from building to building. Nevertheless, teachers, too, have had loosened expectations over the summer, have checked out over the weekend, or are simply exhausted and have momentarily “lost track” of the ways we do things around here.

Teachers, too, need a review.

Folks outside of school need to be reminded of the rules, too.. For example, even though we’ve been knowing the speed limit is 65 miles per hour, even though we got a ticket for going 78 last February, even though we had to sit through an online driving course, don’t we find ourselves edging back up to 78? And even though we promised our dental hygienist that we would brush two times a day and floss daily, don’t we find ourselves skipping the floss or (gasp) the brushing from time to time?

I don’t think we [or most teachers or students] are deliberately trying to break the rules or walk a dangerous path. No, I think we are just living in the moment and not considering the impact of our actions on ourselves and others.

My students don’t consider what happens when they walk into my classroom five minutes late announcing, “What up, Rathje?” after the rest of the class has already settled in to our daily routine. They don’t see that they draw every eye away from learning and that they have initiated a series of steps that I wasn’t planning on — first giving them a consequence, then re-establishing the momentum of the class. No, they were merely chatting with a friend in the hallway, trying to grab a last minute drink, or possibly trying to avoid coming to class for as long as possible. They weren’t thinking that they were missing on the first few minutes of learning or stealing a couple of minutes from the teacher and the rest of the class; they thought they were hanging on to a few more minutes for themselves.

Likewise, teachers are not intending to create an unsafe environment when they arrive five minutes past their report time, finish entering grades instead of moving to their threshold during a transition, or allow a student to go to the bathroom five minutes after the hallways have cleared and classes have begun. No, they aren’t thinking of that impact. They are thinking, Surely five minutes is no big deal, or What difference does it make if I stand at my doorway? or But the kid really had to go! But the impact of any one of those decisions could be that students are left unsupervised for just a minute or even five minutes, and without supervision, our students might do something without considering the consequences — shove a friend, initiate a fight, or slip away undetected.

This is why rules and norms exist — to keep everyone safe, to maximize learning time, to create a culture in which people can thrive.

We’ve all got our own routines for similar reasons. I, for example, as you may have read about a thousand times in this blog, have many routines to keep my inflammation in check so that I can continue to be involved in education. The litany includes daily yoga, walking, writing, mental health therapy, physical therapy, Hellerwork massage, acupuncture, a diet that excludes gluten and dairy, intentional rest, and a variety of other strategies. When I follow my routine, I stay safe; in fact, I thrive. Recently, after our teachers had returned to the building and I was leading sessions, helping prepare the building, meeting with teachers, and preparing my own lessons, I remarked to my husband, “I am amazed at what this body is letting me do!” And, I truly was! I had been able to navigate long days and stressful situations including what is the most challenging for me — last minute changes of plans — with minimal stress or impact on my body.

So, I just kept chugging! I was living my best life, oblivious to the potential impact on me or anyone else.

Until last Tuesday afternoon around 5:15pm when I was sitting in a meeting at the end of the day. I’d been at the school since 7:30am — had greeted students as they had entered the building, had read and answered email, had observed two teachers, and had sat through two classes with my seniors who were visited by a college rep. I had helped supervise dismissal and gotten students on their busses and then reported to a meeting with the other leaders in our building. Over an hour into the meeting, I felt something weird in my left eye.

Huh. I thought. What’s that? It was like I had never had ocular herpes, iritis, or episcleritis before. I didn’t think anything of it. That’s a weird sensation, I thought. Probably something with my contacts.

The next morning, around 5:30am, as I was doing my morning writing, I thought, Oh, my eye is still bothering me,. Then, Oh, no! And I ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror. No signs of pink eye — wait, is this an autoimmune response?

Now, I am happy to report that five days later I am still not in a full-blown flare, but let me tell you, as one who has had several full-blown flares, that once I realized that this was a warning sign, I began taking steps.

Step one: Wear glasses. Vanity be damned.

Step two: Bathe the eye in sterile tears at least hourly. I was scheduled to go on a field trip that morning, so I scrounged around the house for every vial of sterile tears I could find. [Picture me on a college campus with 35 teens trying to find a place to discreetly administer eye drops.]

Step three: take Motrin. 800mg every 8 hours.

On that first day, these steps seemed to do the trick, so I got comfortable and ended up staying at the building until almost 5:30 again. It wasn’t until my phone reminded me that I was supposed to be in an online counseling session at 5:15 that I started planning my exit strategy, removing myself from a meeting, packing my things, and texting my therapist to tell her I would have to meet her via phone call.

I climbed in my car, got on the phone, took note of the growing pressure in my eye and made my confession: I am doing too much, pushing too hard, and my body is waving a warning flag.

And in her kindest way possible, she said, as she’s said many times before: What are you able to do to create some space so that you will be able to sustain this position?

I know all the things. I know to do all the things. I just get so excited about the possibilities of what we are doing that I start running at full speed forgetting that this is a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve gotta pace myself, plan my nourishment, utilize my support team, and visit the aid station.

I needed my therapist to point me to the review.

We are three weeks into school, and I find myself standing at my classroom door telling my students, “Good afternoon, grab your notebook and laptop.; get logged in, and…

They are beginning to interrupt me, “We got it, Mrs. Rathje. We’re already there.”

“Excellent,” I say, “that’s excellent.”

They are remembering what they need to do, and perhaps — for now — so am I.

if you listen to correction, you grow in understanding Proverbs 15:32

Camera Roll: Back to School

Featured ~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

I wish I had a documentary film crew that had followed me over the last 30 plus days, because there is no way I can adequately communicate the amount of training, preparation, planning, sweat equity, and problem-solving I have witnessed and participated in to prepare for this the school year. Nor could I paint a full picture of the first interactions my team and I have had with our students as they have returned to our building over the last week. How could I ever show what I’ve seen with nuance and love and candor? And what is my point in doing so, anyway?

My point, I think, is that I want to both process what I’m experiencing and also share my experience — the ways that my lived reality continues to shape my thinking around education [and educational inequity] and how that thinking connects to my life as a believer in the power of the grace of God to transform lives.

The last thirty days or more has been powered by that belief. I didn’t return to work on July 31 to maintain the status quo. No. I returned with my leadership team a month before my students because this team actually has as one of its core values to be transformative. We all choose to stay with this organization because we believe that the status quo is perpetuating inequitable practices that limit the opportunities for our students and other students in communities across the country. We spent the past month reviewing the data from the past few years that shows us how far we have yet to go to close learning gaps caused by these inequities, situating ourselves within our teaching framework, building strong relationships with one another, and managing the unexpected.

I want to share a glimpse at the intentionality that goes into such work but also to show all the pivots that have to be made to function within and reform a structure that is inherently broken — kind of like trying to re-tool a machine that is continuously in production. The whole works can’t be shut down so that we can fix it. We’ve got to fix it while it’s running.

So I am going to scroll back through my mental camera roll and share a few images to show what this looks like.

In one shot, the teaching staff gathers on their first day together after the summer break. They are munching on breakfast snacks, hugging, laughing, sharing vacation stories, then finding their seats to hear network-wide updates: the fact that student phones will be “away for the day” — collected in the morning at arrival and returned to students right before dismissal — and the “new” dress expectations that students will wear school colors every day — a return to pre-Covid expectations with no hoodies, no hats, no pajama pants, no house shoes. Then, when the large group breaks into smaller teams, our high school teachers hear from our new principal who was once a teacher and then a coach in our building. She shares her vision for the school year — we will activate excellence in all that we do, holding ourselves and our students to a high bar from day one.

I’m seeing our staff show up the Thursday before school starts, many quite early in the morning, to put last minute touches on classrooms and hallways before families start arriving to pick up class schedules, sign up for transportation, obtain supplies and a free haircut, and reconnect with school life. Teachers call students by name, often running to wrap them in hugs. Students, in loud smiling groups, walk through the hallways, fist-bumping, hand-shaking, and laughing.

I’m picturing the hot, sticky day I showed up at our building almost a month ago, dressed fairly professionally because my principal and I were scheduled to interview a teaching candidate. We met to discuss which questions we each would ask and then chatted about other building-related issues while we waited. The time for the interview arrived and passed — still no candidate. Eventually, HR informed us that our candidate was no longer coming. This happened over and over this past summer. It would have been a mere frustration if we eventually found all the staff we needed to fill our classrooms. Unfortunately, it became a necessary pivot point when we realized we would start the school year three teachers short.

Pivot we did. In the last days before school started, we enlisted two ancillary staff to facilitate two classrooms where students will receive instruction in math and science via live online instruction over zoom. We also persuaded a paraprofessional to teach freshman English Language Arts each morning in the same classroom where I will teach two sections of senior ELA in the afternoon [in addition to my instructional coach duties]. In this way, all classrooms are “covered” until we can find certified teachers to add to our team.

The next shot in my camera roll is of students reluctantly turning in their phones in the morning (while some sneakily hide theirs on their person claiming, “I didn’t bring my phone today”).

Another is students struggling to know what to do with their hands, asking frequently what time it is, and clamoring to be first in line when the phones are returned at the end of the day.

In between those two scenes, I’m seeing students attend more to learning. I’m watching them find ways to talk to their classmates at lunch. I’m noticing frustration, resignation, and adaptation. And, I’m also noticing some who are not adapting — they are choosing to transfer to another school, to move to our self-paced online platform that will allow them to earn high school credits from home, or they are staying in the building and acting out. And we’re finding ways to manage each of those scenarios, too.

I’m seeing first-week fatigue — emotional outbursts, heads on desks, and students walking slowly to their busses at the end of the day, but I’m also seeing excitement — when the principal provides teachers with new t-shirts and free lunch on the first Friday, when the football team and cheerleaders wear jerseys for their first game, when the stands at the game are full of staff, students, and families [is it possible that they’ve never been this full before?]. I’m seeing our cheerleaders looking sharp and our team bringing home a win.

I’m remembering the one fight I heard in the hallway outside my room at the end of day two, but I’m also thinking about the three students who were brave enough to demonstrate their singing ability in my class while the rest of the room [instead of jeering or laughing] snapped and clapped along in support.

We aren’t fully staffed, we’ve got a busted up parking lot, lunch doesn’t always arrive on time, and next week our classrooms are going to be uncomfortably warm, but I’ve got a good feeling about this year — about the students who are showing up every day, about little [and big] moments of excellence, and about a front row seat to transformation.

I’ll try to share more snapshots with you along the way.

If you are interested in supporting the work that we do at Detroit Leadership Academy, check out my wishlist.

More than Voting

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a politically charged few weeks — an assassination attempt on a former president followed by the Republican National Convention followed by the withdrawal of the current president from the presidential race followed by the nomination for president of the first women of color ever followed by the Democratic National Convention.

If you missed any of that, you certainly have not been on the Internet.

The country is fully engaged (at least virtually) in the conversation around who will be our next president. I’ve seen mentions on my social media streams supporting Trump, others supporting Harris, others bashing Trump, others bashing Harris. This seems to be the way we do politics in America now. It can leave a girl feeling a little icky, if I’m going to be honest.

I sat down the last two mornings with my journal to do some processing around where I am in this conversation and it turned into a recounting of where I started as a voter, where I am now, and why. When I finished with my journal, I intended to write a post called “Evolution of a Voter”, but before I did, I did a quick search of previous posts to see if I had ever written about voting, and boy was I shocked! Almost everything I had written in my journal yesterday and today I’d already written before the election in 2020, and I’d even called it “Evolution of a Voter”!

I read it through and thought, “wait, has my view expanded at all since that time? Has anything shifted further?”

And I think the main thing that has become more a part of my everyday life since 2020 is a deeper commitment to doing something.

For a long time, I was a citizen who voted. And, full-disclosure, I voted almost exclusively pro-life. Other than that, I carried on with my life not really making the connection between what I do with my time and my money and how those choices impacted those in my community. Politics seemed very removed from my daily reality. I voted in every regular election and typically even primaries, but I was not making intentional moves that aligned with my vote, other than to once a year attend a pro-life march in my community.

It was probably in my graduate studies from 2002-2004 when I began to question some of the choices I was making. I started to dig into my motives and to begin to understand the impact of my actions. For example, our decision to place our children in parochial schools was intended to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), but an unintended consequence was that they were isolated from children from different backgrounds — not only religious, but socioeconomic, racial, and cultural. We wanted our children to be raised in the Christian faith, but we also wanted them to have a diverse group of friends. We wanted to have a diverse group of friends. Our choice to work for the church and send our children to a Christian school was keeping us in a silo, oblivious to the complexity around us.

Our move to St. Louis in 2004, where our children attended public schools — both in an affluent suburb and in the city of St. Louis itself — and also two parochial schools, and where I taught in the St. Louis Public Schools and then a racially diverse suburban Lutheran high school, exposed us all to more complexity — a broader view of the culture within which we lived. We regularly interacted with Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths or no faith tradition at all. We had friends, classmates, and colleagues who were white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian. We encountered people who were in the top 1% financially and those who struggled to feed themselves from day to day. Our church was attended mostly by white people who drove in from neighboring suburbs to the mostly Black neighborhood in which both our home and the church were situated.

Our ten years in St. Louis were transformative. If we had once been siloed, we no longer were. We regularly witnessed financial and racial disparity and the ways in which those disparities were tied to education, health care, crime, and the general quality of life.

That exposure and my current role teaching in Detroit and residing in Ypsilanti have broadened my view of the sanctity of life. If all life is holy, why are some lives devalued and others elevated? And why are those valuations tied to income, race, education, and gender? I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way I can continue to vote “PRO-life” is to get behind candidates that support ALL life.

Now, I hear some of you shouting at me, “What about the lives of the unborn? They can’t speak for themselves! We must speak for them!”

Well…

First, we must speak up for ALL of those whose voices cannot currently be heard — the orphan, the widow, the sojourner (Deuteronomy 14:29) — but also the immigrant, the child in foster care, the homeless, and the felons who are no longer able to vote.

But also, outlawing abortion doesn’t necessarily protect the unborn, in fact, since the Dobbs Decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions in this country have actually increased (source). I suspect a better way to decrease the number of women who obtain abortions, 75% of whom are low income (source) is to do a better job of providing sex education, affordable (or free) mental health care, affordable (or free) child care, and other resources such as paid maternity leave.

If the goal is demonstrating that every life has value, perhaps simply voting pro-life isn’t the best strategy.

Maybe we need to go beyond voting to taking action. Some donate to a local food bank, to women’s shelters, or to pregnancy clinics, and that’s a great start! I wonder what is next. Are any of us committed enough to valuing the lives of others that we might be willing to advocate for policy change, to participate in a demonstration, or to write a member of congress? Even more, are we willing to engage with communities of need, to come alongside those who can’t find affordable housing, who struggle to put food on the table, or who can’t go to work because they can’t afford child care?

I’m wondering if we are willing to go beyond disparaging remarks on social media to actually doing something with our money, our time, and our lives.

I’m just wondering. I’m not doing a great job at the moment. I’m not really going out of my way.

I vote, of course, and we’re making contributions to support our preferred candidates and their initiatives, but I think its time to look for ways to increase my political engagement, my activism, my involvement in the community that might demonstrate my belief that ALL life is valuable.

It’s a little scary. Most things worth doing are.

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
    for the rights of all who are destitute. Proverbs 31:8

Ten Years Later #10, What World Do We Live In? Part 2

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

On Monday I wrote a post about inequity in schools. It’s not the first time. In the fall of 2020, I wrote a piece called “What World Are We Living In” when I first started commuting from Ann Arbor to Detroit to teach in a small charter school and began to daily witness the disparity between the two communities. In the spring of 2023, I wrote the following after a day spent in a suburban school district. I’m posting it again because I’ve spent the last three weeks facing the realities of life in my school — inadequate staffing, building issues, and a paucity of resources — and I feel compelled to share these realities and to call for change.

Last Wednesday, instead of driving to Detroit first thing in the morning, I drove to Oakland County to participate in a day of professional development along with a dozen other teachers who use the Adolescent Accelerated Reading Intervention. I’ve been using the program for a little over a semester with great results, but I have been aware that I might not be crossing all my t’s and dotting all my i’s. Having the opportunity to be a fly on the wall of two separate classrooms as other teachers implemented this intervention would hopefully help me see what I’ve been missing.

The beginning of my commute looked largely the same as it does on my daily trip to Detroit — interstate highway merging onto surface streets. However, I noted that while my regular route takes me past fast food, gas stations, minimarts, and older working class neighborhoods, this route into Oakland County took me past Starbucks, Trader Joes, and nicer restaurants before it led me through residential sections with large suburban homes. And then, when I took the final turn, I saw the school where I would begin the day.

It was a sprawling two-story building on a large piece of property surrounded by multiple well-lit and freshly-lined parking lots. I found a spot, grabbed my stuff, and made my way to the guest entrance at the front of the building. I approached a door, pushed a button, and looked into the camera before I was buzzed in to a glass-enclosed foyer.

There, a staff member looked me over and buzzed me through the second door. She knew why I was there and directed me to room “two-oh-something or other”.

“Which way is that?” I asked.

“Up those stairs and follow the signs.”

I walked up the open carpeted stairway in the expansive atrium to the second floor, also carpeted, and found the group of teachers already in conversation.

They sat in a semicircle in the [also] carpeted classroom. I found a seat in the back of the room in a bar stool height chair next to a tall table. The students had not yet arrived, and the teachers were discussing what was on the agenda for the class this day — one of the final steps of reading a book in the AARI program, mapping the text.

I heard the bell ring in the hallway, and the students started coming in, finding their resources in a strategically placed filing system, then making their way to the table where I was sitting. I relocated myself and began to observe.

Right away I noticed a t I hadn’t been crossing when I looked at the big piece of butcher paper where they had started their text map. My students and I had mapped our own text the day before, and it looked somewhat similar to, if noticeably messier than, the one I was looking at, but there was one big difference — ours was written all in black on white paper. The map in this classroom was color-coded to illustrate its organization — sections of the book written in sequential order were outlined in pink, those written in a compare/contrast format were outlined in green, etc. I mentally thunked my forehead with my palm and said, “the colors! why do I always forget the colors!” And then I noticed the posters hung on the wall in this spacious classroom. At both the front and the back of the room, the teacher had full-color posters representing each of the eight text structures. Oh, I’d like to have those, I thought. If I had full color posters in my classroom instead of the black-and-white print outs I have, I might remember to use the color coding system!

One teacher asked, “Where did you get the posters?”

“Oh, I just printed them on our poster printer!”

Oh, I thought, they have a poster printer.

The class functioned mostly as my class does. The teacher had seven students around the table; one was absent. I have ten on my roster right now; typically one is absent. She used the socratic questioning that I use, and her students engaged as much as mine do, if slightly more politely, but then again, when I had a guest in my room last semester, my students were on their A game, too.

The second building was a literal carbon copy of the first, down to the same double buzzered entryway and carpeted stairs. We gathered in a classroom that “isn’t currently being utilized” where we found flexible seating — restaurant like booths, chairs on wheels at tables, and the one I chose, a rocking pod-like chair, where I noticed I could quietly shift my weight and stay better engaged in the discussion we were having before our second observation. Wow, I thought, I have some students who would benefit from chairs like these.

When the bell rang, we walked down the hall where our second teacher met us at the door and invited us first into her classroom and then across the hall to another room that “isn’t currently being utilized” so that she and her students could map their text.

Like me, she had a projection system where she displayed a slide that she used for her gathering — the time when we engage with our students to set the climate and build community. Her students were seated, much like mine are, around the room at desks. The difference I saw was, again, the carpeted floor, the colorful text-structure posters, and stacks of resources in every corner of the room.

In the room across the hall, we again found flexible seating — bar-height chairs with optional attached desks, lower seats on wheels, and one other form of desk-like seating. Again, full-color posters on the wall illustrating each of the text structures and some key questions to ask during the AARI process.

The students again were on their A-game, and I wondered if that was the case every day, even when they didn’t have a dozen teacher-y observers. I mean, what would get in the way of their learning in an environment like this?

As I drove home, I continued wondering, why do these schools look so different from my school? Why do students in Oakland County walk into a brand spanking new building every morning, pick what kind of chair works best for them, experience the warmth of carpeting, the advantage of full-color visual aids, and, when it’s hot outside, the benefit of air conditioning, while my students just thirty minutes down the road are bussed onto a crumbling parking lot, walk into an aging building with an inadequate gym, some windows that open and some that don’t, no air conditioning, no rooms that “aren’t currently being utilized”, one seating option whether it is appealing or not, and a jillion other obstacles to learning on any given day.

Is it just a case of money?

I spent some time this morning trying to figure out Michigan’s formula for school funding that might explain this disparity — why one child’s experience is so different from another’s when they both reside in the same state. But guys, I don’t understand the model.

It’s complicated and based on per student funding from the state, property taxes, income taxes, and even cigarette taxes! Low-income (and underperforming) districts like mine are supposed to get supplemental funding from the state — which is earmarked, but historically not always allocated. And even when it is allocated, why are most Detroit schools in disrepair, lacking in resources, and understaffed when schools in higher income districts are well maintained, richly resourced, and fully staffed with high quality instructors?

Why do they get the cool rocking pod chairs and my students don’t?

Is it because those students deserve better?

No! All students deserve better! Yet these disparities continue to exist — for going on centuries now.

And why?

The simple answer is systemic racism — in education, yes, but also in real estate, in health care, in hiring, in so many sectors of our society. It’s the historical practice of separating those who have from those who don’t to ensure that those who have will always have and those that don’t never will. And the remedy is anything but simple. It begins with recognizing that selfishness and greed have created the structures in our country that enable some to have a lovely experience and to guarantee that others do not.

Now, if you are in the camp that thinks I am completely off base and that the difference in schools is sheer economics and not based in historical racism at all, I ask you why the establishment is so up in arms about our students learning African American history or looking at history through the lens of Critical Race Theory? If there is nothing there to see, why not let our kids take a look for themselves? Maybe you’d like to take a look for yourself. If so, I recommend you check out the 1619 Project* which is available through The New York Times, on Apple podcasts, or in video form on Hulu. And if you still think I’m out of my mind, come spend a day with me at my school. Get to know my students and decide for yourself if you think they deserve more.

Yes, I feel pretty strongly about this.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that my seniors and I just finished learning about systemic inequities in preparation for reading Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, where we see through the lens of his experience the structural racism of Apartheid and how it impacted his childhood experience. We learned terms like unconscious bias, prejudice, racism, and systemic racism, and my students created posters to illustrate disparities in health care, generational wealth, criminal justice, and education.

When I returned to my students on Thursday and we started our class with a review of terms, I saw that not everyone understood that Apartheid was like the systemic racism we see in the US. In order to help them fully make the connection, I asked them to recall examples of where we experience inequities in our community. As they started to list them off, I told them about my experience in the Oakland Schools.

I wondered if it was necessary — to point out the details I had experienced. Would I be rubbing it in their faces?

But then I thought, Don’t they deserve to know what the experience of students 30 minutes away is like? especially as we prepare to read this book? especially since some of them are about to go to college and may study beside some of these very students who are walking carpeted hallways, sitting in rocking pods, and enjoying an air conditioned full-sized gym? (Let alone taking AP classes, music, and other electives we are unable to offer.)

I described what I had seen, and I could see their faces register the reality — the reality that their experience is not equal to the students I observed just 24 hours before.

“This is educational inequity,” I said. “It is one aspect of systemic racism. And why do you suppose it’s not easy to change?”

“Because,” one student answered, “it’s part of so many systems — not just education. And they don’t want it to change.”

“Who doesn’t want it to change?”

“The people in power.”

“Yes.” I gulped. “I suppose you are right. The people in power don’t want it to change.”

Pretty astute observation for a kid from Detroit? No. Kids from Detroit have this down, folks. They understand disparity; it’s the world they live in.

And the people in power can do something to change it. We are the people in power, my friends — people who vote, people in education, people in the church, white people — we can make choices that begin to make a difference for my students and their children and grandchildren. If we do nothing, this pattern will continue for more generations, and we shouldn’t be ok with that.

It’s not enough to fight for what’s best for our kids; we have to do what’s best for all kids.

As we established in my last post, I have “an insufferable belief in restoration.” The first step in restoration is acknowledging that our stuff is broken down, dilapidated, and no longer working, so I’m gonna keep talking about what’s broken to those who have the power and resources to fix it.

I hope you’ll start talking (and doing something) about it, too.


Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it. Proverbs 3:27

*The 1619 Project is one of many places to start learning about historical systemic racism in the United States. For a list of other resources check out Harvard’s Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Antiracism Reading List.

**You can support underfunded schools wherever you live, but if you’d like to support mine, here is my current wish list

***Since the first time I posted this, someone donated the funds to pay for full-color posters for my classroom.

Thank you for reading!.

Inequitable Education

Featured ~ Kristin ~ 3 Comments

Across the country, students are returning to school. My social media feeds are beginning to fill with first day pics of kids (including my own granddaughters) in new clothes and bright smiles, ready to launch into another year.

And teachers, like me, are putting last touches on their classrooms — arranging desks, putting up posters, checking supplies– and preparing to share the school year with their students.

And what will that experience look like? It varies widely. All American schools are not created equal.

Some students are born into families who have the means to spend any dollar amount on their children’s education. These students might find themself on brick and ivy campuses wearing plaid uniforms with jackets. They might spend their mornings with highly qualified teachers in experiential labs mixing chemicals or gathering eggs from the campus micro-farm. They might dine on one of many selections prepared by the campus chef for lunch, then work in an outdoor creative writing space before moving to the art studio for some time throwing pots. After the final bell, they can choose to dabble in fencing, interpretive dance, Japanese club, or any of dozens of other extracurricular choices. They can certainly count on an air conditioned ride home at the end of the day.

Many students have parents who send their children to public schools in districts with a strong tax base — the kind of areas that realtors refer to while driving their clients around looking at homes, saying “Oh, the schools here are excellent!” In these schools, students stream in by car or bus, walk through clean, well-lit and spacious hallways, and choose from a variety of electives taught by certified teachers — multicultural literature, environmental science, personal fitness, or Chinese. Further, they can enroll in cooperative programs such as cosmetology, auto mechanics, or computer-aided design, and choose from a variety of lunch options — pizza, salad bar, sandwich station, or hot entree. After school, they might participate in any number of pursuits — chess club, soccer, swimming, musical theater, or the model UN, and then catch a bus or ride home with their parents or friends.

This is America, after all, where the children are our future, where we provide the best education possible, where the sky is the limit — unless you are poor, or live in a less than desirable area.

In that case, you might experience school differently. You might wait for a bus that arrives late or not at all. You might then walk a mile or so to get to school or, more likely, walk the few blocks back home and simply crawl back into bed. If you do arrive at school, you will probably walk through a metal detector, have your bags examined, and then wait in a common area. In that space you will have access to a free breakfast, if you call a cold bagel and a packet of cream cheese breakfast. When the bell rings, you will be released into the building to find teachers of varying skill and experience, some trained and certified, some not, who have been assigned to teach the classes required for you to earn a high school diploma — English Language Arts, physical education, financial literacy, and United States History. Your schedule has been pre-built for you, because there isn’t the funding or staffing for enough electives to provide a choice. You get what you get, and you have learned to not throw a fit. You assume this is just the way it is, because you have no idea what students are experiencing just a few miles down the road — it couldn’t be possible that just one zip code over you could be choosing African American literature instead of the standard ELA III that everyone at your school takes. Surely that kid you sometimes run into at the mall doesn’t have a different lunch than the lukewarm burger and fries you were just served in your gym/lunch room.

I mean, how would you feel if you knew that not every school has a parking lot with a huge crater in the middle that has flooded into a lake for the past four school years? What conclusions would you draw if you knew that not every school has inoperable windows in every classroom or that some schools have air conditioning? How would you process the reality that for many students in America, having a fully-staffed building is just…normal?

I know how I feel about it. I feel angry.

Every time I pull into the parking lot, I have to dissociate just a bit so that I don’t go off on a rant about the crumbling asphalt beneath my feet. Each morning, I shake my head when I see the tax-payer provided “meal” such as a Fruity Pebbles bar and a child-sized juice box. Daily, I ignore the window in my classroom with “do not open” written on a piece of notebook paper that’s affixed to it with Scotch tape. I have to look past all these realities because I have to convey to my students that they are valuable, worthy, and full of potential even when their physical space is telling them differently.

I don’t fault my administration or our school network. They are working their asses off to provide instruction that is trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and well-prepared inside of a system that is, at its heart, inequitable.They are doing everything they can to find teachers, but that is difficult when schools like mine are stigmatized as unsafe, failing, or insufficient because they exist inside of contexts that have been historically underfunded, underserved, under-resourced, understaffed, and undervalued.

How can this be in a country that pays lip-service to the credo that “all men are created equal”? How can teenagers growing up in neighboring counties have such vastly different experiences? How do we let this continue? How can we hope for a better future for our children if we allow these inequities to persist?

The way things stand, wealth begets wealth and poverty begets poverty. Those students with the best resources will matriculate to the best post-secondary programs followed by the best job opportunities. Students with a substandard experience will go on to less than stellar programs and be afforded less impressive opportunities.

Nothing will change until something changes.

I know, I know, you’ve heard all this from me before.

And, if you continue to spend time with me or my blog, you’ll hear it again.

I will continue drawing attention to these inequities until those who have the power and means to do something about it — do something.

Many of you partner with me by providing snacks and needed supplies for my students. Please, continue to do that — you are making a tangible difference in the lives of the small group of students that I interact with each day.

Also, please, please, look around you. Where do you see similar inequities in your community? How can your voice, your vote, your labor, your dollars make a broader impact?

It is very easy to look past inequity, but we must begin to turn our eyes directly at it. We must see how devastating it is to the people it impacts, and those of us who are able must act. Period.

I don’t see an easy solution to the systemic inequities in our country, but I do know there will be no solution until we are willing to admit that we could do much better. We can, and we must.

do justice, love mercy, walk humbly (Micah 6:8)

10 Years Later, #9 Transformation Ready

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

I wrote this post almost two years ago when I was preparing to go back to school. It’s good to remember the why behind the intentionality in our instructional model as I transition into the new role that I wrote about in my last post. As I begin to support teachers in their classrooms, I want to remember to articulate how important each strategy is and why.

Over the past week I’ve participated in quite a bit of professional development with the other members of my team. The main focus has been on the brain science behind trauma-informed instruction. We are using a book called Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain to learn the why behind some of the strategies we use in our school. A guiding principle in our community is that a large number of our students have experienced trauma or adverse childhood experiences (ACES). Our population is predominantly students of color who qualify for free or reduced breakfast and lunch and who live in the Detroit metropolitan area. Many have experienced racism, poverty, and various other traumas, but even if they hadn’t before 2020, they have certainly experienced trauma (loss of schooling, loss of family members, financial hardship, etc.) because of Covid. Because we know this about the students we serve, our network of schools uses a whole suite of practices that fall under the umbrella of trauma-informed instruction.

We understood from this week’s training that the brain’s ability to think and process information can be interrupted if it feels the body is in physical or emotional danger or if it doesn’t feel a sense of belonging in a community. Brain science teaches us that the brain stem is continuously searching for danger; if danger is perceived, all of its energy goes to reducing the threat through actions many of us know as fight, flight, freeze or appease. So, before we can hope to build community or engage our students in learning, we must first create a space that is safe, predictable, and consistent.

Slide from Champion Education Network, Summer Summit 2022

With that in mind, we have always emphasized common building norms and expectations such as teachers standing at our thresholds to greet students, having a strategically arranged classroom, and using consistent instructional practices such as Do Nows, Exit Tickets, and other practices of the No-Nonsense Nurturer model. We also use the first week of school to set culture and behavioral norms across all classrooms through common slide decks that the instructional coaches and I have prepared for use by ALL teachers. The first period that students are in the building, ALL teachers and students will review the same community guidelines which are focused on ensuring our students that they are safe in our school. The second period that students are in the building, ALL teachers and students will review a second slide deck that communicates school-wide behavioral expectations which focus on ensuring our students that they are partners in keeping our school threat-free for all. Throughout the first week, teachers will ALL play community-building games and review classroom systems that they will use throughout the school year so that students, who are hopefully beginning to feel safe, can begin to feel engaged within their classrooms.

That’s the second function of the brain, the limbic system’s focus on finding relationships and belonging, also a prerequisite for learning. Our network, with the understanding that the highest functions of cognition cannot happen until students’ safety and belongingness needs are met, has initiated the school-wide adoption of a social-emotional learning curriculum that was piloted last year. This program, Character Strong will be used in every classroom every Wednesday. Its content focuses on self-awareness, goal-setting, and community building. The hope is that the more safe, the more connected, the more self-aware our students feel, the better they will be able to engage with rigorous curriculum.

And they do need curriculum! Our standardized test data from last year is not great — I’m not sure that anyone’s is post-Covid! This makes sense! The whole world was collectively in survival mode — our brain stems were at high alert!! It’s no wonder we suffered socially and academically — we were all collectively fighting, flighting, freezing, and appeasing ourselves into a tizzy! This is evidenced by the ways that we treated each other — not as the collective that we are, not as members belonging to each other, but as freaked out individuals trying to scratch our ways to survival.

But guys, it’s time to return to our right minds, and the only we can do that that is by taking actions that remind ourselves (and our brain stems) that we are safe, held, loved, supported and part of a community.

In my classroom, that looks like order and predictability. It looks like standing at my door each morning, greeting each student by name, smiling, and tracking their language (verbal and non-verbal) so that I can attend to any signs of distress and minimize any further triggers. It also looks like an orderly room. I have desks facing one direction; seats will be assigned, but those assignments are flexible based on student feedback. Everyone has adequate space, all can see the screen where I project the goals and content for the day and the white board where I display my students’ learning data so that they can track their progress. We track this progress as a whole class — where are we together? what do we need to do so that all of us can succeed together? We set goals together; we work together; we celebrate together. We are a community.

In my personal life, it looks like continuing my practices of healthy eating, regular exercise, and plenty of physical and mental self care and adding community practices such as a ride-share with a colleague, which will ease the driving burden for both of us and provide time for building relationship in our 25-minute drive each day. We will both have heavy loads at work, so we are intentionally building in support because we are caring for ourselves while caring for each other.

As we move through the fall, using these safety and community-building practices, we will increasingly become available for academic challenge. After learning about brain science and viewing our student data, I identified a couple areas of focus for this year. I will, with everyone, focus in those first two weeks to build safety and community so that I can increase the rigor of instruction and the independence and agency of my learners. I met with my instructional coach (everyone in our building has a coach!) who agreed with my goals and to thought-partnering, challenging, and supporting me as I work toward them. I am very excited about this partnership.

Some teachers I know go back to their classrooms two days before school starts. They arrange their rooms, they make a seating chart, they pull out supplies, and that is enough for them to feel ready. That is not me.

I need every minute of the past week and the coming week to fully shift my mind from the relaxation and freedom of summer to the intentionality and rigor of the school year. I need to remember the traumas my students have endured; I need to be mindful of how my attitude can make or break the culture of my classroom; I need to remember the importance of every moment of instruction and the potential impact it might have on the futures of my students.

My principal says — and she’s dead serious — “We are saving lives here, team.” We are the potential last educational stop for many of our students. What we do and how we act can change or solidify the trajectory of our students’ futures. Our practices, our climate, our culture might just create the safe space in which our students can try to trust, begin to believe, and turn toward a life of transformation — one for themselves, but also one that impacts everyone they touch.

And isn’t that the most powerful thing we can give one another — the space, the safety, the confidence, the support, and the encouragement to be transformed?

I am looking forward to transforming right along with my students.

be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

**I have an ongoing wishlist. If you’d like to support my students check it out here.

Instructional Support

Featured ~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

When I got my first teaching position back in 1989, the principal showed me my classroom, pointed to some textbooks, provided a spiral bound lesson plan book, and said, “Good luck.”

Ok, it probably wasn’t that bad. However, the expectation was that as a college graduate and a certified teacher, I should know what to do. Never mind that my degree was in Secondary English and that this job was a self-contained classroom for students with learning disabilities. Sure, I had had a few special education classes in my undergraduate studies, but was I prepared to teach all subjects every day to a group of seventh graders with specific needs?

Not at all, but I’m sure my naive self thought, “how hard can it be?” and got busy.

Other than the morning devotions we were encouraged to attend and chatting over the lunch table with the other middle school teachers, I don’t remember much interaction with anyone who had more experience than I did. I think the principal dropped into my class once. I had to report a few incidents to the vice principal, of course. And there was that one time when a couple of my colleagues pulled a prank on me, placing my teacher’s desk in the boys’ bathroom.

I felt like I was part of the team, but I definitely had no indication that anyone was supporting me in my instructional strategies other than the time I asked for help ordering a film and someone said to make sure it was relevant to what I was teaching.

The following year, I was moved to a high school resource room, which was a totally different experience! In fact, I was at one high school in the morning and a second high school in the afternoon. I supported my students the best I knew how, but other than a few instructions on a tour of both schools, I wasn’t given much support, and certainly no coaching. In fact, I only found out I was doing a less than stellar job in the spring when my supervisor dropped by and observed one student who was refusing services. She seemed rather upset that I wasn’t forcing him to learn.

What can I say? I was young, inexperienced, and not yet aware of when and how to ask for support.

This pattern continued as I moved next to a residential treatment facility where I taught English Language Arts, social studies and even a little math to a self-contained group of students with severe emotional disturbances. There, I at least had a full-time aide in the room with me– another adult to bear witness to what I was doing. I also had a principal who would meet with me to share new curriculum or updated expectations. I remember one day I was sitting in her office and she was sharing the latest change when I just started crying. She asked me what was wrong, and I had no idea! Looking back, I’m sure I felt overwhelmed and unsupported. I needed someone who would thought-partner with me, who wasn’t so busy that I felt like I was bothering them every time I showed up, who had as part of their job description the mentoring and coaching of teachers.

But that was in the early nineties when we had a surplus of teachers, If I didn’t cut it, they would find someone who could. The pressure was on! I’d better figure it out, or I wouldn’t have a position!

It wasn’t until after a break to stay home with my young children, after I’d earned my Master’s degree, after I’d taught in a couple of community colleges and one public high school, that I landed at Lutheran North in St. Louis. In many ways, LHSN was a pioneer — it was operating with a block schedule, was stocked with Apple products, and even had a projector and SMART board in every classroom. Not only that, they had a dedicated position, the curriculum coordinator, who not only oversaw curriculum adoption and implementation but also had as part of his job description observing teachers and providing objective data on engagement, teaching strategies, and the behavior management of the classroom. In my first year at LHSN, he visited my room several times and provided me with the kind of feedback I’d been looking for: this strategy seemed to work, did you notice that you speak mostly to the right side of the room and the left side disengages, how are you measuring mastery of this skill?

His questions and comments caused me to examine my practice, and when I reflected, I saw small changes I could make that would impact my effectiveness. Inside this model, I grew! Eventually, I became the curriculum coordinator and did my best to provide for other teachers what I had received. The only problem was that in this new position I was on my own again. On his way out the door, the previous curriculum coordinator gave me some pro tips, and I could reach out to him with questions, but I was not observed in my role and did not receive feedback, so I truly don’t know how effective I was or what moves I could’ve made to improve.

After my break from teaching, I re-entered the educational space at Lindamood-Bell, where coaching was the norm. We implemented two very prescribed programs that dramatically improved the reading and comprehension of our students. Parents were paying high dollar for these programs, and if instructors didn’t implement them with fidelity, the results would be less significant. I was regularly mentored in the moment — a mentor would observe my practice and sometimes jump in to model something that needed a tweak. I learned so much in this role! In time, I became a mentor and then a coach for others on my team. One added layer was that I continued to receive support from my supervisor who had held the role before me. She checked my data, followed up on my coaching, and nudged me when I needed to move in a slightly different direction.

You’d be amazed the confidence you gain when you know you are being supported so specifically toward a common goal.

In my interview for the ELA teaching position at Detroit Leadership Academy, when I was 54 years old, the principal looked me right in the eyes and said, “All of our staff members have coaches. How do you feel about having someone in your classroom on a regular schedule providing you with in the moment feedback?”

I think she thought I was going to push back. I mean, I’d been an educator for decades! I can see why she’d think I would resist coaching, but my response was the opposite, “I love it! I’m coming from a culture of coaching, and I am always looking to improve!” I don’t know if she believed me, but over the last four years, she has seen me receive feedback, reflect on my process, and make changes to improve the effectiveness of my teaching over and over again. I have had three coaches in the last four years, each of whom has had a coach to support them as they execute their role. Their coach has had her own coach. This organization believes in investing in the continuous improvement of all of its staff members.

Obviously, I love it.

So, when my coach moved in to the principal’s position over the summer, I applied for her position. I interviewed, shared my experience, answered the questions, and got the job.

So, this fall, I will continue to have a coach, but I will also be supporting eight other teachers in my building. The past two weeks I’ve been learning the tools and bonding with the team who will support me in this new role. I’m a little sad to let go of my seniors, but I will be coaching their new teacher, so I will still have my hand in their learning. And, I’ll have my hand in the learning of students in other classrooms.

Everything about my work at DLA seems to be a culmination of my journey in education. All the threads seem to come together in this space. I look forward to telling you more about it as I move into this next chapter.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1: 17

**While my needs are slightly different this year, I do still have a wish list. You can find it here