Grading papers at night and getting ready for class in the morning is hard enough, but one thing this school year left me particularly bleary-eyed: October baseball.
I imagine that for most local readers the baseball season wrapped up in September (sorry, Red Sox fans), and it finally ended for everyone Wednesday night with Milwaukee’s World Series victory over Tampa Bay.
However, Cleveland is my hometown, and my baseball dream crept on just long enough to break my heart. The late nights, unfortunate distraction, and all hope ended when the Guardians gave up the American League Championship two weeks ago. Now we all just wait for pitchers and catchers to report in February.
Yes, rooting for Cleveland leaves me open to mockery. Even my youngest freshmen have seen their local heroes win two World Series and three Super Bowls. Yet, I believe it is far better to suffer some sneering than to commit the far graver sin of abandoning one’s hometown team. Such suffering builds character, people say – and, well, if not character, at least a hardy stick-to-itiveness.
Sticking to the things we believe in is also a useful philosophy for educators. Fads and fashion come and go in education, often for seemingly no other reason than their novelty or the vested interests of those promoting them. As stakeholders make plans for the future of the Newton Public Schools, we might keep consistency in mind.
Next week, on Election Day, my colleagues and I will attend Thrive26, our annual full day of professional development. Students will get the day off and hopefully their parents will go vote, if they haven’t already. Teachers will go to school themselves with the ambition of learning useful new things. It is a good time to remind ourselves that if a thing is useful, it’s worth sticking to.
There was a brief phase when simply sticking to things was the new thing. About a decade ago, “grit” was all the rage in public education and Newton quickly hopped on board. Leaders identified teaching resilience as the mission of our schools.
Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit, had topped the best-seller lists and psychologist Carol Dweck introduced us to the idea of “growth mindset.” That last phrase became so pervasive in our schools that third graders could recite its definition by heart, high schoolers would roll their eyes at its every mention, and teachers would use it wryly with each other to quell any complaint.
Then COVID came and put an end to all that.
Like all decent ideas that come down the professional development pipeline, grit and growth mindset had their promise. For every two parts cynical “what’s old is new again,” there remained at least one part inspiration.
Neither grit nor growth mindset appeared terribly original. We hoped to build in students the wherewithal to learn from mistakes, but life teaches that lesson sooner or later.
I had always assumed Newton would just never employ a teacher who thought intelligence was fixed. Yet grit and growth mindset were important reminders. They spoke to a real student need of the time, as teachers struggled with increasingly anxious kids, snowplow parents, and the temptations of grade inflation.
Teachers will encounter a panoply of new things at Thrive26, practices pitched as innovative and original. Some of the offerings can legitimately make those claims, but the most insightful ideas are often just good reminders. Some reminders from Thrive’s first edition from three years ago included such bold sounding initiatives as “culturally responsive classrooms” and “the science of reading.”
That last set of buzzwords is illustrative. Reading wars seem to have been going on forever, boiling down often to phonics versus books, or sounds versus sight words. Teachers with any experience have always done it all as the tides shifted, resisting canned curriculum that forces children into one box or the other. They stick with students until they can read and teach them to hang in when frustration takes hold. If there’s a better way, they’ll give it a shot.
Fresh insights can bring greater clarity to our work. Recent rethinking of the flawed math we sometimes use to grade at the high schools, for instance, has changed the way I mark up papers. Teachers should keep an open mind to new ideas, and school leaders are obligated to seek them out.
However, we should stick with our initiatives long enough to know if they work, and understand that sometimes it takes a while to know what’s long enough.
We need to take the time to discover the value of the things we try and to recognize the practices that have consistently worked over the years before giving up and moving on to the next shiny new thing.
Teachers, like baseball fans, know that there will always be next year. That knowledge comes with the expectation that things will change but with the hope that they will change for the better. It also comes with the grit to stand by the things we say we believe in.
Tom Fabian is an English teacher at Newton North High School and faculty advisor to its student newspaper, the Newtonite. He can be reached at tfabianteaching@gmail.com.