teachers – Southwest Conference Blog

Performance

I love reading Slate’s advice columns. Recently, I read advice from teachers to parents at the start of the school year. The first response involved a teacher asking parents to think through their request for extra information about their child’s school experience. Specifically, the teacher said that parents often tell her, “Share with me everything always.” And of course, this is not really feasible or even beneficial for most families or most teachers.

But it got me thinking: why would a parent even say that? Is Parent X really expecting a daily stream-of-consciousness report from their progeny’s teacher? Probably not.

Here is my suspicion: We say things that we assume others are expecting to hear, and we say things that give others a certain impression of who we are. In this specific situation, there is a special kind of anxiety for a parent when meeting with their child’s teacher. Many parents would admit that it’s important that their child’s teacher have a positive impression. We want to be “good parents,” with all the baggage of expectations that label entails. In all kinds of situations (not just parenting at the beginning of the school year), we’re prone to the same behavior: performance. We humans are always asking, “What is expected of me?” The game of managing, meeting, exceeding the expectations of others around us takes a lot of our energy. It’s exhausting, actually. To make matters worse, the more time we spend on The Performance Game the more difficult it becomes to recognize when we’re playing it.

What if we stopped?

What if our churches became places where people practiced NOT performing? A few years ago, a friend from church talked with me about a Sunday morning struggle. There are those weeks, she explained, when you and your partner are fussing and cranky with one another, the children are slow in getting ready, and the counter top is sticky. So you rush through the routine, pile in the car to get to church… and plaster a believable-enough smile on your face and pretend to be happy and normal.

And then we might wonder why our relationships seem to be shallow and why we carry around a vague sense of malaise and ennui all the time. We might wonder why our churches are so often seen as ineffective or even hypocritical.

What’s the cure for The Performance Game?

As usual, the cures are simple but not easy. Here are my top 3 Performance Anxiety Busting Superstars:

friendship

Have friends and let them really see you. Friendship magic happens when we stop cleaning up before friends arrive to our home. This is also one of the greatest blessings of rough times: when it is obvious (so so obvious!) that our lives are not perfect, we can stop pretending that they are and let our real selves show up. I am writing today all the things I need to practice the most, and this is a big one. Slowly but surely, I’m starting to recognize and appreciate what Real Me sounds like and how she’s different from Performing Me.

I take comfort in the friends of Jesus… how they were continually bumbling and misunderstanding, jockeying for power and getting it 100% wrong. Yet Jesus trusted them with All. The. Things.

2. nature

Get yourself out-of-doors! Let the lovely imperfections of creation teach you.

3. meditation

Don’t be tempted by a special edition of The Performance Game: The Spirituality Expansion box. I’m writing again to myself. The pull of performance and the desire to have others see us as ‘spiritual’ is strong in me.

So I remind us both: Just sit and breathe. Your mind will wander and distract you with thoughts because that is what minds do. Just keep sitting and breathing.

Prayer for Today:

Spirit of Life, You are Reality Itself. I so want to be real too. Remind me of the realness in my faith tradition: the women who sang victory, the boy who shared lunch, the friends who stayed close, the dreamers and the pray-ers and the poets. Thank you for the gifts of friendship, simplicity, creation, and breath. Amen.

A teacher’s perspective on the lunacy of arming teachers

guest post by Samantha Fox

I am a third-grade teacher at a moderately poor school. I deal with troubled children on a regular basis but as Rebecca Berlin Field of Douglas S. Freeman High School in Virginia wrote, “Nowhere in my contract does it state that if the need arises, I have to shield students from gunfire with my own body. If it did, I wouldn’t have signed it. I love my job. I love my students. I am also a mother with two amazing daughters. I am a wife of a wonderful man. I have a dog that I adore. I don’t want to die defending other people’s children; I want to teach kindness and responsibility … and art history.”

I also am a mother of two wonderful children and a wife to an amazing husband and have a dog I adore. I want to teach love and understanding, to discourage bullying, and create opportunities for children that their parents may not have had. I challenge anyone to call me a coward when I teach 25 active and sometimes angry 3rd graders 5 days a week, but I am not trained to fire a weapon nor could I ever fire one even if trained.

It is madness to even to suggest that teachers be armed. New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent. In 2005 a 17.4% hit rate. New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate in 2007 (and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away). Yet our President wants to arm teachers after a simple training course. There is greater likelihood that an innocent student will be shot than an arm gunman. MADNESS at an extreme.

Guns have no place in schools. Cameras, stronger security maybe but the real answer is to eliminate bullying, to teach our children to respect all students. And the place to start this lesson given President Trumps tweets and comments is from the top down.

I want teachers and parents to speak out against this lunacy.

Arizona Education Cuts Amount to a Tax on Women, Children, and Their Families

by Ryan Gear

As a pastor in Arizona, I value one particular book very highly, but I have personally felt the power of education to improve lives. I received an outstanding public school education in my hometown in Ohio, I was the first person in my family to graduate from college, and I eventually earned a Master’s Degree. I believe in education, and even a casual reading of the Bible reveals that the nurture of children is deeply embedded in Judeo-Christian values.

Sadly, Arizona children may not have the same educational opportunities I received. Repeated state budget cuts to public education have knocked Arizona to near the bottom of the country in education funding.

As Arizona voters know well, the most recent budget cuts came after a four-day budgeting process ending in a budget passed in the middle of the night. Arizona has cut total education spending by 32% since the recession of 2008, more than any other state in the country.

The cuts have reduced education resources for Arizona’s children, from kindergarten to college. According to the Arizona Education News Service:

In Arizona, 41 mostly small, rural districts were on a four-day school week this school year. Next year, Apache Junction and Coolidge Unified will join them in an effort to cut costs, while Peoria Unified decided against it in early April and approved a plan at their board meeting last week to reduce expenses in other ways.

The effects of these cuts on our children’s education are devastating, and the cuts were not limited to elementary, junior high, and high school. From the Arizona Republic:

According to the report released Tuesday night by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Arizona is spending 47 percent less this year per college student than it did in 2008, adjusted for inflation. That’s a larger percentage cut than any other state, equating to $3,053 less annually per student.

The budget cuts further reduced funding to college students and actually eliminated all funding for Arizona’s three largest community college districts. In response to the cuts, Arizona college and university tuition has risen more than any other state since the Great Recession, placing the financial burden squarely on lower and middle class students and their parents who were already struggling to afford college anyway.

In addition, the repeated budget cuts have led to a teacher shortage in Arizona. The 2013-2014 school year saw a 29% increase in the number of substitute teachers, as 62% of school districts reported open teaching positions in their schools. Last school year, 74% of Arizona schools had between one and five teacher positions open in September. This school year, a member of the church I serve who is a principal in the Southeast Valley of Phoenix lamented that it was very difficult to hire enough teachers. As to the cause of the teacher shortage, 42% of former teachers reported that the primary reason they left teaching was to pursue a career offering higher wages. Already underpaid Arizona teachers simply can’t afford these cuts.

These budget cuts disproportionately affect women. In 2012, over two-thirds of all public school teachers in the U.S. were female. When public teachers pay, women pay. Not only are the budget cuts impacting Arizona students and their families, the cuts are directly affecting the jobs of thousands of Arizona women.

It may come as a surprise to some Arizona voters that the deep cuts to education coincided with tax cuts given to corporations. In 2011, while Arizona was still recovering from the Great Recession, lawmakers passed a bill giving a 30% tax cut to corporations, amounting to $270 million, more than K-12 received in funds. Prior to the 2011 tax cuts, nearly two-thirds of Arizona corporations reportedly paid almost no state tax. While I understand the need to lure new businesses to create jobs, Arizona’s excellent cities, abundant sunshine, and natural beauty can still help to attract corporations and employees, even if corporations foot something at least in the ballpark of their fair share of the tax burden.

Ironically, the education cuts may actually reduce the number of new jobs produced in Arizona. Phoenix Business Journal recently reported that two companies that would have added 3,000 new good-paying jobs in Phoenix chose to expand to other cities instead. What was the reason these companies took their 3,000 new jobs elsewhere? One manager explained:

My key managers didn’t want to relocate to Arizona despite the golf and the weather,” said one decision-maker. “They were afraid they would not find good schools for their own children. They also felt that the state’s reputation for poor education would affect the ability to recruit talent from outside.

Along with slower than recent migration to Arizona, the tax cuts actually created the deficit that the education cuts remedied. In 2015, however, the corporate tax cuts remained in place, while the education budget was further reduced. When tax cuts create a deficit, someone has to pay the bill, and the ones paying now are Arizona women and children. So much for “women and children first.” Speaking as a pastor, both the Jewish and Christian scriptures call this an injustice.

While Arizona cut its education budget more than any other state, it is not the only state to drastically cut funding for public education. Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Kansas have instituted deep cuts as well. Voters should be aware that the governors of these states seem to be following a shared pattern of behavior and also share a well-documented connection to the same donors and influencers. The education cuts appear to be part of a multi-state agenda.

How does our faith inform our treatment of vulnerable women and children? The prophet Isaiah does not mince words, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” Arizona students may or may not be orphans, and teachers may or may not be widows, but they are now both vulnerable. Forcing them to bear the burden of state budget cuts is unjust.

It turns out that this injustice comes at a price. Arizona voters are practical enough to know that there is a difference between fiscal conservatism and fiscal irresponsibility. Instead of asking corporations and those with means to pay anything close to their fair share of the cost, the repeated cuts to Arizona public education amount to a tax on Arizona lower and middle class families, and especially on women and children.

Ryan Gear is the founding pastor of One Church in Chandler. Ryan is also the founder of openmindedchurch.org, a growing national directory of churches willing to thoughtfully wrestle with questions and doubts. He is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, OnFaith, Beliefnet, and Convergent Books and has been featured in Real Clear Religion.

Follow Ryan on Twitter @ryangear77