I live in two worlds.
One side is pictures of smoldering rubble and bombed out concrete buildings in Iran, Ukraine, Gaza. The other is a 320-foot rocket hurtling into space for a trip around the moon. The first makes me sad, promotes nihilism in my students, leads to a world of hate, fear and uncertainty. The second gives me hope, promotes a future of exploration and discovery, reinforces the importance of being a teacher, riding my little Schwinn cruiser to work, creating and deploying interesting curriculum.
It’s Animal Behavior week in science class and my learning objective is simple. Why, if all animals need just four things to survive – food, water, air, shelter – do humans still wage war? Now, because I enjoy making learning matter, I also weave in philosophy, psychology, sociology and a pretty heavy dose of current events (environmentalism, Iran, Trump, capitalism, wealth distribution) because it keeps students interested and fights that nihilism I spoke of earlier. Plus, I want to hear what they are thinking because, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really get it, like why do I not care more about the ex-student who lives under the Verano bridge?
Because it is my fault. I pay the taxes that buy the bombs. I am a registered voter in the political organization that currently prioritizes profits over people. I perpetuate a system of insider ball where who you know is at least as important as what you know. Sure, I might rage against the machine sometimes, but then I take my little REI camp chair to the Plaza with a good book and think to myself, “Well, it’s not so bad.”
But I know I can do better, which is why I have been showing up at 8:35 for the last 26 years, ready and hopeful that what I will say and do in the next few hours will have enough impact to get my (often disillusioned) students back on the track of realizing what miracles they are.
The science lesson turns into a discussion between three students and myself. There are 17 students in class and I wonder how many are just waiting to get back to their screens, to check their Tik-Tok feeds, to disengage because that is where they are most comfortable – no challenge, no failure and no real learning. I write a journal-prompt exit ticket on the board so that every one who wants credit will have to at least write something. Not in Google Classroom, on paper, with a pencil or pen, and using complete sentences with punctuation and capitalization and maybe a little deep thinking,
“Aliens have landed on earth and are threatening to kill the human race unless we can work together. You are in charge of organizing the species; what are your four priorities? Are they the same as what all animals need to survive? Why or why not?”
I’m not winning any awards for my curriculum (In my world, getting students back to baseline is the reward) but the results are better than expected.
“Honestly, we have a broken system which rewards conformity and alligience (not spelled correctly but nice work, now I know it’s not AI) to that broken system. Kids just want to make as much money as possible because that’s what they think success is. Humans should be like other species, protecting clean food, water and air and providing shelter for all members of their species. Oh, and if I was in charge, I’d tell the aliens to go ahead and kill the humans and start over.”
Dark, but deep. A-plus.
I want to live in one world, where smoldering pictures of destruction are captioned, “Why did we ever think this was a good thing?” Where it doesn’t take us 50 years to land someone on the moon a second time because we are always exploring and discovering and moving forward. I want nihilism to go away. I want bad people to go away and good people to take their place. I want a system that works for an entire species. One world should be enough.
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