White Rabbit

In the world of education, we often feel like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. We are always hustling to meet some deadline, rushing to a duty station at lunch or professional development on our planning periods, or sometimes even to the bathroom when our bodies don't always line up with school bells. Personally, I had hit the funk of March just before COVID-19 hit us. I was discouraged and I found it tough to try to maintain my usually cheerful disposition. Literally overnight, I watched you all go into action with our school community. My usual request for documenting parent contact became a joke of the past. Our problems of student conflict or lack of parent support were gone. But for many educators, the first two weeks of the COVID-19 school shutdown put us into a time panic. How will we finish our content now? Will they move the state test? How can I get kids to learn this stuff at home?! The hustle of the regular school day had stopped but the minds of educators everywhere went into White Rabbit mode. And on Monday, that changed.

With the Governor's announcement that our school year would be delayed until at least May 15th, our minds shifted. For once, educators now have too much time on their hands. We had nowhere to rush to or no quick deadlines to meet. And from where I sit, I saw something very interesting happen. When you give educators time, they don't shut their brains off. Instead, that brainpower turned into innovation. I have seen so many of you figure out solutions to helping students, use new tech tools together in VERY interesting ways, and take the time to be purposeful in what and how you plan to teach next year and beyond. When the White Rabbits of our school stopped running, it seems that they had a lot of good things to say and do.

If I haven't said it enough, I'm going to say it again now. Thank you. Thank you all for rushing when you need to, but also for keeping that mentality to do the very best job that you can do, despite whatever life throws your way. While the homeschool memes make light of the struggles of parents to do your job at home, the reality is that everyone in America woke up and realized that being a teacher is hard work. This is your time to shine. And not because of what they can't do at home, but because of what you keep trying to do while they are there. Good job White Rabbits.

Voting Behavior

My absolute favorite class in my undergraduate degree at ECU was called Voting Behavior. The class fell under one of my political science requirements and we spent the semester studying why people vote the way that they do and what influences a person's vote to change. The class mixed a bit of history, a bit of psychology and a lot of data. I was hooked from day one. So much of this class has influenced my natural interest in social studies and politics. The class taught me to look for my own natural biases and to challenge my thoughts and feelings about a candidate that had nothing to do with issues that affect us. Since then, I have never been one to support a candidate simply based on party affiliation.

My work with the Greene County Board of Elections allows me to try to use that unbiased viewpoint to get more people out to vote. That job can be pretty frustrating at times though. Despite our best efforts, turnout for this week's primary was only at 34% of registered voters. And while it may be easy to write that off as people simply not caring enough to vote, that's not always the case. You would be amazed at the phone calls and questions that we get about voting that come from completely false misconceptions. This week, several people asked if they voted in the primary would it keep them from being able to vote in November. And if you hear that once, it's funny, but when you hear it multiple times, it becomes concerning. It's all proof that education matters and that we always need to reinforce civic responsibility at every grade level.

While that issue of voting left me frustrated and confused, another vote made me quite happy. This week's nominations for Teacher of the Year warmed my heart. To keep outside people from voting and to keep people from voting twice, your email address is recorded in Google Docs. (Sorry, it's not a real secret ballot). Only I get to see who nominates whom. Despite past professional disagreements between teachers or the fact that some teachers work all the way across the building from one another, many of you nominated other teachers because you recognize professionalism and dedication to student learning. Your voting behavior in this event restores my faith in the system. Thanks so much for acknowledging the great work that you see in one another. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing who will represent us this year.