A Few Bad Apples

I had a few really bad teachers growing up.

-I was called stupid by a teacher in fourth grade.

-I was called redneck a few times.

-I was bullied on the playground in third grade until I fought back. I had told the teacher numerous times and was told to get over it.

-I had one mathematics teacher in high school who showed up drunk daily.

-I was a voracious reader and was accused by a librarian of checking out books to make myself look smarter than the other kids.

-One of my daughters was being bullied in the classroom. The teacher kept her in from recess and let the bully play outside to keep Naynuh “safe.”

With all of that said, I am a teacher.

I do not judge my profession or the people in it by those ignorant, rude, incompetent, judgmental, racist people.  Because I had teachers who loved me, encouraged me, equipped me, taught me more than stuff on the page and gave me lessons on life, caused me to question and consider and explore, and inspired me.

A few bad teachers do not call for defunding education.  It’s asinine.

Make better guidelines. Weed out unproductive staff. Require more training and evaluations to ferret out weakness. Interview students about the teachers. Get peer reviews. I’m sorry, but you don’t just trash the profession because you don’t like the actions of a handful of people. Now apply that to any organization you deem fit to defund. Ditto. 

Gone with the Wind and other minor tragedies

The next film I’m adding to my classroom...

Gone with the Wind.

Because My Fair Lady, Robin Hood (with Errol Flynn), The Enchanted Cottage, The Little Princess, A Knight’s Tale, The Chronicles of Narnia, Ender’s Game, The Giver, Gattaca, Lord of the Flies, The Scarlet Letter, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliette, Pride and Prejudice, Watership Down, Animal Farm, etc., don’t always teach easy lessons. They have hard truths. But how else do we learn but from reading and seeing things that change our perspective?

Books that were painful and uncomfortable to read but changed my perspective or impacted my worldview in some way. Some are fiction. Some are biography. Some are autobiography. All are impactful (and I'm not talking about films or TV shows--it's the books or nothing): 

Beloved, Toni Morrison 

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCort

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou 

Watership Down, Richard Adams 

1984, George Orwell

The Color Purple, Alice Walker 

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Fifth Chinese Daughter, Jade Snow Wong

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitgerald

Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger

Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

I Am the Cheese, Robert Cormier

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

The Lottery, Shirley Jackson

The Book Thief, Markus, Zusak

The Giver, Lois Lowry

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

The Stand, Stephen King

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck 

They Died with Their Boots On, Thomas Ripley

The Covenant, James Michener 

The Film Club, Jesse Gilmour

Blindness, Jose Saramago

The Road, Cormac McCarthy 

And that list is hardly exhaustive. It's barely scratching the surface of what I have read and what has impacted me as a person from my limited worldview. Iron sharpens iron, and I am raising and teaching thinkers, challengers, warriors, doers and not just hearers of the Word. And sometimes your comfort zone has to be challenged in order to grow.

The Color Purple is a million times more racist (going in all directions) than Gone with the Wind and yet I firmly believe you need both on the library shelf. 

How about this—include a massive history and context lesson with the movie and explain the plight of people of color rather than deleting the movie and pretending it doesn’t exist? If we start pretending things didn’t happen then it’s only a matter of time before we forget they actually did happen. And that is terrifying.