Our Nation's Love Affair with Guns

The other day I was looking at the newsfeed on Facebook when I came across a photo of a FB friend of mine (let’s call him M.G., not his real initials) posing with an assault rifle in his hands and a grin on his face.  I tend to scroll right on past all the kooky stuff extolling the virtues of being heavily armed in this day and age (because “a good guy with a gun” has worked out so well…) and the increasing likelihood that the government is just moments away from coming for your guns. 

But when I realized that it was M.G. in the picture, I was taken aback.  M.G. is a former school board colleague, a radio talk show host, and a Christian minister.  Although he and I differ about as far as we can on most political issues, he is a good person who simply wants the best for his community.  On school board issues, we often found common ground as we approached it from different sides of the aisle.

By itself, the photo was the same as everyone else posing with a weapon they have no need for in everyday life.  What was more haunting were the comments. 

“You wear it well, M.G.,”  wrote one commenter. 

“I have more ammo if you need it, M.G., stay well supplied,” wrote another.

Perhaps the oddest thread of comments was the one sparked by this:  "I’m thinking there are no references to this in the Bible!"  The resulting dialogue was a back and forth designed to find the Bible passage that, I suppose, best supports the need for these weapons. 

Of the thirty or so comments, only one (before I posted) takes M.G. to task for the seeming inconsistencies between his messages from the pulpit to what the writer sees as pandering to the positions of the NRA.  All the rest are from those who are either very clearly pro-NRA or are simply looking to add their own quips to the commentary. 

Here is the message I posted on my friend’s wall:

No matter how you feel about the current narrative around the 2nd amendment and guns, and even if you have no concern at all about the proliferation of a gun culture that is having an inarguable effect on American society, consider this question. What effect does one seek by posting a photo like this? To be sure, the photo has prompted comments that make light of guns and gun violence (and even the Bible!). Maybe that’s the goal.

However, countless families in our nation have been permanently shattered as a result of having loved ones killed needlessly by guns, people who were guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., twenty 1st graders in Connecticut guilty only of going to school that December day, many of them killed by a weapon not unlike the one in the photo.)

With this photo now in the public eye and as a result of the comments that have followed, I wonder: How easy or hard would it be to look your friends in the eye to defend all of this if you learned that this unimaginable horror had resulted in the death of one of their loved ones? What would you say if they told you that rather than seeing humor in the photo and the comments, they see only reminders of devastation and grief? If this has already happened to those we know do we even think to post a photo like this and kid around about it?

From our work together on the school board, I think my friend M.G. knows I am not a religious man, so he won’t be surprised that the only thing remotely religious that I can think of is this: There but for the grace of God go I.

Nevertheless, it seems apt at the moment.


Until next time...

PCSS Conference at Millersville University

Today Educator Preparation at Millersville University is hosting the 4th Annual Social Studies Conference.  Kudos to Dr. Sarah Brooks for providing the leadership to make this event happen.  Stayer Hall is full of social studies folks today!  Sarah gave me the opportunity to provide a few words of welcome.  Here is what I told the crowd:

Good morning, everyone.  Welcome to Stayer Hall and to Millersville University.  As most of you know, Stayer Hall is the home to Millersville’s College of Education and Human Services.  We are very pleased to be hosting this event today.

I want to read you a quotation that you have probably heard before.  Then I will ask you if you know to whom these words belong.

"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

Who said these words?  (Thomas Jefferson)

Did he really say them?  Maybe not in just this way.  Jeffersonian scholars at Monticello indicate that this quotation does not appear in any of Jefferson’s writing, although it certainly captures the essence of his beliefs.  It may very well be the case that he spoke those words or at least words that capture that sentiment.

Scott Turow, the American author and lawyer, seemed to pick up on Jefferson’s sentiment when he wrote in 2011,

“Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.”

And then there is this:

“And so here we are, well into the 21^st century and we realize more than ever the importance of a strong system of public education as an essential public good.  We appreciate how important education is to our students’ futures and to the future of our society.  We understand that if our students are to succeed as adults in an increasingly diverse global community, we must ensure strong outcomes in critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, cultural consciousness, information literacy, and the ability to communicate effectively.  And we endeavor to ensure that this work is done within a context of social justice.  “

This is a sentiment, it seems to me, all teachers need to be mindful of, regardless of the subject they teach.  But I think these words mean something more to teachers of social studies.  Social studies teachers, I think you have a special role in all of this.

Teachers who teach (for example) English/language arts, math, science, and the arts provide their students with knowledge and skills they need to be well-informed and successful in life.  Social studies teachers also provide important knowledge and skill bases, to be sure.  But they also provide the framework for all of us to know how possessing all we learn in school in all those other subjects enables us to participate in our society and in our democracy.  Knowing the other subjects makes us a well-informed citizenry.  Knowing social studies helps us understand why that is important.

I put it to you that this work has never been more important than it is right now in our nation’s history, if recent current events are any indication.

Again, welcome to Stayer Hall.  I hope the conference is engaging, informative, and fun.

HB 1890 - Pennsylvania General Assembly

On Thursday of this past week (March 10), HB 1890 (here) was referred to the Education Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.  The bill is sponsored by Rep. Donna Oberlander (R–63) who provided a detailed legislative memo with the bill.  I agree with one of her points and disagree with most of the others.  Here are two of Rep. Oberlander's statements from the memo:

• In the aftermath of a number of tragic school shootings, there is a debate across the country on how we can better protect our children.  While most of this discussion surrounds whether or not more gun control measures are needed, I believe we must look at all options when it comes to improving the safety and security of our children, teachers and school staff. 

Agree.  There are very often a variety of possible solutions to problems.

• As we weigh our options, I believe we need to consider providing school employees with more choices than just locking a door, hiding in a closet or diving in front of bullets to protect students.  With the legal authority, licensing and proper training, I believe allowing school administrators, teachers or other staff to carry firearms on the school premises is an option worth exploring. 

Disagree.  Here’s why:

In my opinion, when we give serious thought to permitting administrators, teachers and other staff members working in schools to carry deadly weapons in order to stem gun violence and protect children, we have begun a steep tumble down a very dangerous and slippery slope.  Guns in the hands of law enforcement is a good thing because those women and men spend their entire careers training and re-training on how to react in situations in which they need to make split second decisions about the application of deadly force.  Guns in the hands of administrators, teachers and staff members is a very bad idea because, well…they don’t do this.  

How will someone whose professional preparation and practice is related to teaching and learning - and not law enforcement - react under such compelling circumstances?  How will they know how to make those split second, life and death decisions?  How can we think that asking them to do that when surrounded by children can end well even some of the time?  What kind of incredibly difficult position would we be placing police officers in when they realize, upon responding to a school shooting, that they will need to enter a building in which there are armed teachers and other school personnel who will be making split second decisions about the use of deadly force for which they have not been prepared to the same level as the police?  Can those officers be confident that those teachers will be able to differentiate between them and active shooters, given the harrowing situation in which these teachers have suddenly found themselves?  Is it possible that police officers will encounter other adults with guns in the building and, despite their training, err in their own choice to use deadly force?  That is, will the proliferation of guns in these incredibly stressful situations hinder the ability of the police to differentiate as quickly as they need to the good actors from the bad ones?

I wonder.

Until next time…

Teacher Shortage

The growing shortage of teachers has been on mind lately.  I and a pair of my colleagues were interviewed by the Lancaster, PA paper (here) about the reasons for the local shortage.  And the matter has been discussed in the national press (here, for example) and in the context of national meetings and conferences like this one. 

There are many theories and ideas suggesting reasons for the shortage – disillusionment based on the way teachers have been portrayed in the media, frustration about the over-testing of K-12 students, concern about how teacher evaluations have evolved under Race to the Top, perceptions that the Great Recession would mean no jobs would be available after graduation, the list goes on.

I received an email from a member of the faculty in my college last week.  The content of the email made me realize that in at least one way, we may be ourselves creating a barrier to the classroom for new teachers that exacerbates the teacher shortage.  Before I share the email, some background.

In Pennsylvania, teacher candidates need to pass two rounds of high stakes, standardized tests to become certificated.  One tests their basic skills in reading, mathematics, and writing, and is ostensibly aligned with the 11^th grade high school curriculum.  The other (PECT or PRAXIS depending on major) is a more advanced round of exams that test content and pedagogical knowledge more closely related to teachers' specific responsibilities in the classroom.

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of movement in the basic skills testing program.  New tests have replaced old ones and even newer ones have been added.  One test, the Pre-service Academic Performance Assessment (PAPA), has been particularly problematic over the past few years.  Otherwise intelligent teacher candidates are struggling to pass this basic gateway test and statewide pass rates have reflected those struggles.

Now to the essence of the email.

Just a venting this morning about the basic skills testing: I have a student teacher, who has been my advisee since freshman year, she is outstanding in the classroom, a real natural, she has a 3.66 GPA; participated in the (local special education) Internship; is in the Professional Development School program, completed approximately 55 hours of additional field time during her professional bloc and passed all PECT exams in Early Childhood and Special education.

However, she cannot pass the basic skills testing requirement, she has taken the reading 6 times and the writing 3 times.  It just seems so crazy that a student like this cannot pass the PAPA!

There are plenty of measures suggesting that this candidate possesses basic skills, right?  But if she doesn’t pass the basic skills tests required by the state, she cannot gain PA teaching certification and she cannot take her place in the classroom.  By the way, special education is one of the areas in which we are facing a shortage.

See what I mean when I ponder the idea that we are creating ourselves some of the barriers our candidates face on their quest to become teachers.

Until next time…

Rebirth after 10 Years

I launched this blog ten years ago this month, and it has languished for eight of those years.  It is time for a resurrection – a revival that will be the result of the fact that I am in an altogether different professional place now than I was in 2006.

I started this blog when I was a member of the faculty in the College of Education at West Chester University, a member of the Board of School Directors of the Kennett Consolidated School District, and a member of the administrative staff of Camp Treetops, a progressive children’s summer camp in Lake Placid, NY.  As a result, the few blog posts I posted during the last decade centered around topics related to my work in those educational organizations – activities going on in my college classroom, musings related to the school board, and the great things going on at my summer job.

I am in new positions now, ones that likewise influence my thinking and inspire me to want to share those thoughts, but now the topics will be different.  Over the course of the next few blog posts, you will get a sense of my new affiliations and undoubtedly see why I am revitalizing the blog.  There is lots to write about.

It is important to note that my opinions are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations with which I am now affiliated. 

Until next time…

Kennett High School Graduation 2008

Last Friday my son, Dylan, graduated from Kennett High School.  As president of the school board, I had the honor of speaking at the ceremony and of giving my son his diploma.  Here is the text of the remarks I made at the ceremony:

Members of the class of 2008, seated around you are an extraordinary group of people who have loved and supported you longer than you can remember.  If you turn and look you should see parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins—family members whose love for you is unconditional.  Can you find them?  See if you can find friends and members of the community who have known you and watched you grow.  Do you see them too?  They’re all here tonight to support you, so why not give them a big round of applause to say thank you for all they have done for you.  

Thank you seniors, I’ll get back to you in a moment.  First I want to have a word with your parents.

If you are the parent of one of these seniors, then we have something in common because I’m also the proud parent of one of the graduates here tonight.

Fellow parents, let’s consider a few things:

The pomp and circumstance of tonight’s ceremony symbolizes the fulfillment of the preparation of our children for life.  They sit here tonight as young adults, ready to make their way into the world.  To this point they have followed similar paths, at least in terms of many of the things they have done so far.  They have grown up in the same community, played together as toddlers, and gone to school together as children and teens.  They’ve ridden in the same shopping carts at Giant, been to birthday parties together, and sat next to each other on field trip busses to Harrisburg and Washington.  As their parents, we hope that they will experience great happiness and success as adults, but also we hope they’re prepared to face the trials and tribulations they are sure to encounter. 

We hope for these things because it is clear that, beginning tonight, the paths our children take will most certainly diverge from those of their classmates.  Think about it.  Beginning tonight they will start to accumulate experiences that are unique to them—they will head off to different colleges, they will establish themselves in a variety of different jobs and careers, they will move away from Kennett Square to different parts of the world, they’ll get to ride in shopping carts at grocery stores other than Giant…no, wait, I mean they will push their own children in shopping carts at grocery stores other than Giant.  This, my fellow parents, is a good thing, because it suggests development of a human spirit that is independent, adventuresome, and adaptive. 

Our students have also followed similar paths through their formal preparation for this event.  The building behind me is not only the actual place where much of that formal preparation took place, it stands here tonight, as it should, as the unique local version of the institution of  public education that has touched and shaped their lives.  Whether these graduates spent all 13 years in this school district or just a portion, they arrive at tonight’s ceremony having fulfilled all the expectations and stipulations placed upon them for the granting of high school diplomas so they can be ready for whatever college or career or whatever they have chosen for themselves.  This my fellow parents is also a good thing, something each of us should be thankful for.

And so, members of the class of 2008, this brings me to you.  I want to show you something I found.

This…is my high school diploma.  I received it 33 years ago this week in a ceremony in front of my high school in Pennington, NJ on a warm June evening, an evening, as I recall, that was punctuated by torrential rain.  And while this little leather hinge is cracked from old age, the diploma inside seems to be just as pristine as it was the night I received it.

I got to thinking about what the diploma inside means, what it stands for, how it helps in life, and what it might get you.  Here is what occurs to me:

• First, and most obviously, perhaps, this diploma is a certificate that verifies that you have completed, as mine says, the “course of study prescribed by the board of education.”  It tells all who need to know that you are ready for whatever is next—careers, community service, college, whatever.  Your intellect, your affect, and your physical being have been developed according to what has been prescribed by the collective effort and wisdom of the Kennett schools. 

• Second, it represents a set of experiences that will forever bind you together as the Kennett High School class of 2008.  No matter where you go or who you meet, it is very likely that the bonds you have developed and the experiences you have shared with each other will be some of the most important of your lives.  I hope that as you make your way in life you will strive to come together with members of your class as often as possible to celebrate and commiserate all that life is throwing at you.  For me, doing so with my high school classmates over the years has been a very satisfying thing to do indeed.

• Third, without this diploma, the “congratulations graduate” shrine on the mantle in your living room will be lacking it’s center piece.  Your parents need this diploma for later when your family and friends gather around to celebrate your accomplishments.  You, of course, will wish you were at parties with your classmates, striving to create the sorts of bonds I talked about before.  But, back at your house, many people will pick up your diploma, read its contents with pride, and place it  back in the display as carefully as possible.

• Finally, the diploma represents your ticket to the next ride in life.  The fact is, you will likely use it to gain entrée into whatever comes along next.  And then as you embark on these next endeavors, whatever and wherever they are, you will gain new knowledge and expertise, and add new experiences all of which will gain you access to the chapter in life that comes along after that.  The high school diploma you are about to receive is the document that gets that whole ball rolling.

So graduates, you are about to receive a document that will certify you to the world and solidify you as a group, one that gives your family and friends cause to celebrate and your community assurance that you can fit in and contribute.  That is as it should be.  As an official of this school district, I am proud of all of you.  As a parent, I am particularly proud of one of you.

Least Restrictive Environment

The other day I participated in a least restrictive environment (LRE) needs assessment in the Kennett Consolidated School District (click here). I was invited to participate (a) because I am the parent of students in the district, (b) because of my role as school board president, and (c) because I am a professor of special education. It was attended by special and general educators from the district as well as administrators and other parents (including a mother of a young man with autism), and was facilitated by two inclusive practices facilitators from the Chester County Intermediate Unit.

We spent the first portion of the day examining data on how well the district does with regard to including students with disabilities according to criteria associated with the Gaskins ruling in Pennsylvania. Put simply, Gaskins uses, as a prime consideration of inclusive education, the actual percentage of time a student with disabilities spends in general education settings, ostensibly working on the general education curriculum. The second part of the day allowed us to develop an action plan to address needs we identified as a result of our earlier examination of the data.

During the first hour or so of the data examination phase of this process I bit my tongue off nearly a dozen times as I listened to comments made about inclusive education, vis-à-vis Gaskins, that ranged from humorous to ridiculous to downright inaccurate.

On the humorous side was a question about whether or not we ought to count the time students with disabilities spend in the hallways moving from one class to the next as inclusion. More ridiculous was the notion that somehow it is more inclusive to have students with disabilities, regardless of how severe, sitting in high school academic subjects alongside their peers without disabilities. And the reason given for why we send some of our children to out-of-district placements is because it is impossible to provide them in district schools with specially designed instruction that is appropriate for them was, well, just plum wrong.

We have a legal requirement to place students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. This has been a cornerstone of all the iterations of the federal law pertaining to special education (as of late, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, originally the Education of All Handicapped Children Act—PL 94-142). The model that has been used to operationalize this requirement is the “continuum of services” described by Evelyn Deno back in the late sixties and early seventies (for a time reference, PL 94-142 was signed into law in 1975).

In a nutshell the model suggests that we maintain a linear array of educational services and placement options, ranging from regular class placement to institutional settings, so that we place student in an inclusive a setting as possible, on the one hand, but so that they get the services they need on the other hand. The problem is that one doesn’t have to move far down the continuum from the general education setting end before one is removed totally from the general education classroom or even the neighborhood school building. The reality for students with severe disabilities who are placed along the continuum is that, since the more intense services have become associated with the more restrictive settings, they almost always find themselves clustered in far-flung, segregated, center-based school settings.

The reason I bit my tongue off so often was that the continuum of services with its implicit acceptance of a deficit-oriented approach to human disabilities will always be incongruent with inclusive education. Think about it.

Rather than a continuum such as Deno’s, we ought to consider a model in which we support students with disabilities, not along a continuum of any sort, because that would always mean pigeonholing students with unique needs, but by designing and implementing idiosyncratic supports for students with disabilities within the context of the general school community.

This isn’t easy. It means we would need to change many things about the traditional way we go about public education. We would need to re-think a lot about the way we conceptualize schools and schooling. How will things need to change for us to move away from the continuum of services, a decidedly linear model, and towards one that is more three dimensional?

Take a stab at that question and I will tell you why we shouldn’t measure inclusive, supported education by timing students with disabilities in the hallway, or why inclusive education isn’t necessarily about students with more severe disabilities spending time in high school Biology, or why it is wrong to think that we can’t support the needs of our students with more severe disabilities at home in our own district schools.

What do you think?