Productive Paranoia

Doing teacher observations isn't my favorite part of my job. I don't mind talking to teachers about their lessons or even spending time in classrooms, but there's just something about the formality of the process that isn't engaging for me. Many of you, at some point, have had to remind me that I owe you an observation as we get near the deadline for the quarter. And as we are at the deadline for this quarter, I'm rushing to get my observations done. One of the classes I visited this week was Jennifer Edwards's English 3 course. After some silent reading time and breakfast was out of the way, the lesson started with a Ted Talk about fear. Karen Thompson Walker told the true story of a shipwreck that inspired the novel, Moby Dick. (You can listen here) The sailers were over 1,000 miles offshore and had to determine which way to get to safety. Their shortest route led them to Tahiti, however, they feared that the inhabitants there were cannibals. Paralyzed by fear, they took a much longer route, ran out of food and water, and even resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Fear made them act irrationally and ironically, they became what they feared most.

Fear builds a story in our minds of what we believe is the worst thing that can happen. And while fear can often help us make bad decisions, it's hard to turn off. But there's another option that Walker discussed, Productive Paranoia. Instead of being afraid and doing nothing, productive paranoia means working hard at being ready for what you fear most. Then if it happens, you are as ready as you can be. I had never heard this term before the classroom observation this week, but I don't think I can forget it. In many ways, this is exactly what we have been doing in schools for the past two years. When we reopened, I'll be the first to admit that I told a few people privately that I didn't think it would work. Our threshold for COVID cases was low and our fears that we would all be sick were high. In a lot of ways, we worked exceptionally hard not to let that happen. And it worked. Then we realized how much learning loss and absenteeism our students had. We were afraid that a generation of students would never catch up. We are working hard to engage them and are doing things we have never had to do. And it's starting to work. In my job, I talk with other principals about our fear of a massive teacher shortage. Our fears have made us think about how we appreciate teachers that do a great job and we have advocated for them to be adequately paid for it. They are starting to listen and new ideas about teacher compensation and licensure are getting a lot of attention. I sincerely hope that it works.

"Don't be afraid" is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot, but I'm going to try to remove it from my vocabulary. It's ok to be afraid of the worst because sometimes, the worst does happen. But when we can use that fear to be productive in preventing the worst from happening, we become stronger than the fear. I'm not sure if Mrs. Edwards's students got all of that from the lesson that I observed, but I was happy that I showed up that day. I think I learned a lot.