Bullies, Trespassers, and Armchair Experts: Teachers and Social Media in the Age of Coronavirus
It’s been almost fifty days since I saw my students. My school district closed for four weeks on Friday, March 13th. Two weeks later the governor shut down the state for the rest of the academic year. The intervening days and weeks have bled together, coalescing into a patchwork amalgam of anxiety, emails, and existential confusion. Some days are better than others. Yet through it all, one thing remains constant: teacher bashing on social media.
No matter how I’m anxious I’m feeling about what I’m doing with my students, or how confused I am about the best way to meet their needs while still honoring my own, I can always count on someone on social media telling me I’m not doing enough.
The voices of contempt come from three main sources: bullies, epistemic trespassers, and armchair experts. This post takes a look at each of the three categories.
Bullies
Hey, bullies. The ones stalking school message boards and polluting Facebook groups, I see you. I’ve been reading your posts excoriating teachers like me for “not doing enough” and “just sitting around.” You see yourself as someone who “isn’t afraid to back down.” Someone who “says what’s on their mind” even if it makes you come across as an asshole. Especially when it makes you come off as an asshole. You wear your willful ignorance with pride, a mantle of misguided aggression and toxic masculinity.
Many of you are parents, and the apple never falls far from the tree. I see your children trying the same learned nonsense in my classroom. I’ve watched them use their voices, bodies, and unexamined privileges to dominate conversations and trample over anyone who refuses to submit. The meek and the merciful shrink in your children’s presence.
I love working with your children. I try to help them understand the content as well as push them to examine their actions, their values, and how the former connects to the latter. I extend a level of compassion and unconditional love to your children because they’re kids. It is part of my civic and professional duty to care for your child’s emotional, cognitive, and spiritual growth. Not spiritual as in religious, but spiritual as in the visible and invisible connections weaving us together. I don’t have to extend that to you.
I would tell you how many of my teacher friends you’ve demoralized, but that would make you gloat. “Good way to cut the wheat from the chaff,” you’d probably say. Or maybe you’d utter something about the “survival of the fittest.” I need you to sit down, stop talking, and take up less space. Listen more to the experts in the room; you’re not one of them.
Epistemic Trespassers
If you find yourself pontificating on education policy with statements that start out like, “In the business world…” or “in my profession…,” then you might be an epistemic trespasser. Maybe you’ve found some success in your profession. Perhaps you’ve even risen to the top of your industry. Good for you. But if that industry isn’t education, then be quiet. If you’re not involved in the day to day work of teachers, students, the classroom, and the school, then I don’t care what you think you know about education and how to make it better.
People like you have always taken advantage of crises. You speak the language of “disruption,” “innovation,” and “entrepreneurship.” Schools need to be fixed, and you’re just the guy to do it! Except you’re not.
This IS a great time to “rethink school” and “think outside the box!” Just not the way you think. You probably think today’s classrooms remain unchanged from “the factory model.” You’re wrong and here’s why. Your vision of personalized learning often involves plopping kids down in front of screens and asking them to plow through expensive software programs.
People like you have been wielding undue influence on my profession for too long. You’re not adding anything new to the conversation. You’re not contributing to our community. You’re trampling over the voices of front line teachers. You’re a leach.
Armchair Experts
The final character I want to discuss is the armchair expert. Maybe you have a couple of kids in the system. Maybe your best friend is a teacher and you’ve seen them lounging around. You think your second-hand experience makes you qualified to pontificate on the finer points of teaching. Let me disabuse you of this notion now; it doesn’t.
I am gatekeeping. This is what I do for a living. This is what I have dedicated the last decade of my life to. I’m knowledgeable about learning theory and pedagogy. I attend education conferences. I read books about the history of education. I am intimately familiar with what goes on in the classroom. You’re not.
Public school teachers are used to having their voices trampled on and drowned out by folks outside of education, especially educators of color. From school boards to superintendents, the folks calling the shots have rarely been teachers. This is, of course, by design (a different topic for a different blog post). We’re not martyrs. We can’t pick up the slack from this country’s documented and irrefutable history of anemic social programs. And we can’t push ourselves beyond our limits. I’m not intimidated by you. I know my worth as a teacher.
What you can do is trust teachers. You can ask your elected officials why teachers aren’t the ones calling the shots. You can amplify the voices of teachers of color. Your respect for me shouldn’t be contingent upon my ability to cater to your incredibly individualistic and ignorant vision of what you think teachers should be doing right now.
None of you is being iconoclastic or irreverent or innovative. You’re just using a crises to repeat the same stale narratives about public teachers and public schools. Ask teachers. Follow teachers. Trust teachers.
