Civil Disobedience and Uncivilized Diatribes

Henry David Thoreau and a Board of Education meeting from Hell...

I had been teaching for over a decade when I had one of my most memorable parent/teacher conferences. When I say memorable, I mean one of my worst. It was a disaster from the moment a mom shoved a folder across the table and told me, “We are going to get some shit figured out.”

We did indeed.

I figured out that the mom followed me online and found out that I was of a progressive bent. I assume she wasn’t much on progressive folks.

If you follow me on social media now, you know I am an outspoken critic of GOP policies and governance and politicians. If you had followed me on social media in 2017, you would have had a harder time figuring that out.

I was much less outspoken — as a teacher, I had to be. I was very concerned with not being partisan in my classroom and with letting students voice their opinions and have any stance, short of racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism, that they could back up with facts — even if I didn’t agree with that stance. It wasn’t my job to teach kids what to think, but how to think, and how to vet resources to help them come to logical conclusions. I took my job seriously. I loved it.

One of the units I taught was on Transcendentalism and one of my favorite authors to teach was Henry David Thoreau. I especially loved teaching “Walden.” Thoreau wrote:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Isn’t that one of the best things you’ve read today?

My students read excerpts from the book and the assignment was to craft a response on Thoreau’s non-conformity.

I had one student who refused to answer the question, and instead went on a tirade about Thoreau and his “liberal” writings. He didn’t enjoy “Civil Disobedience” and was angry that I had assigned “Walden” and he let me have it in his response. I gave him a zero with the condition that he could answer the original question any way he saw fit, but he would need to complete the assignment and answer the question for full credit. He refused.

His mother was enraged by the time parent/teacher conferences rolled around a few days later. I had no idea who she was or what she was so angry about, but she was red-faced and started off by shoving the folder at me with his zero tucked inside and accusing me of assigning liberal trash. When I found out who she was and that she meant Thoreau was the liberal trash, I could hardly keep from laughing —but, then again, I was afraid she might punch me.

This particular mom was known to bully teachers, and I guess it was my turn. I took the scolding, but the most interesting part of the one-sided conversation was that this parent thought I chose to teach Thoreau because I am a “liberal.” I love Thoreau, but I taught his writing because it was in the curriculum.

In the end, the student finished the assignment and I’m pretty sure he got an A. He could be a pill, but he was smart. His mom was still mad and wrote the board to complain about me, but I never heard anything about it because I was following board policy, and teaching district-mandated curriculum, and because these were the good old days before the insane Board of Education meetings that emerged with Covid.

The BOE meetings from hell didn’t stop after Covid restrictions lifted, though…

Recently, I saw this bad behavior up close and personal when I attended a BOE meeting at a school district outside of St Louis. I was beside myself and uncomfortable. Though I had an awful interaction with a parent or two in my tenure, the Thoreau incident was one, I hadn’t witnessed the decline in civility and the outright disrespect shown in public. The lack of couth wasn’t just reserved for teachers, but was also aimed at administrators, board members, audience members, and community members.

The meeting began with a long list of public comments that were limited to three minutes. As their names were called, each speaker walked up to the podium to speak while the board members sometimes listened and sometimes neither looked up nor reacted. A screen was up to remind folks of the time remaining and to remind them to be civil while speaking. Neither of these reminders worked on many of the folks who stood to speak.

There was jeering from the crowd. It was tense. I kept asking the friend who had invited me if this was normal behavior at the meetings. She said it was typical.

One of the first to speak was a woman who brought her daughter to stand next to her while mom called the Superintendent names and defamed teachers. I was upset that the young girl had to stand there while her mother went over her time, refused to stop speaking when told her time was up, and still spoke, even raising her voice, when her microphone was eventually muted. She just kept going.

How did this young girl learn to treat her teachers? She learned disrespect and inappropriate behavior will be rewarded with a slew of applause from an audience that was growing more rowdy by the moment.

The evening grew even more rude with folks standing up with printed out remarks to throw insults at board members. I am not part of this community, so I don’t know the political persuasion of the folks speaking or the folks they were attacking, but I will say it was ugly. They said nasty things that weren’t in the heat of the moment…the remarks were written down well before hand. These people planned to stand up and attack folks in their community. I was pearl-clutching. Hard.

The final straw for me was when at least two of the women giving public comments referenced the evils of the local teachers union. The union rep had planned to speak on another topic, but used her three minutes to defend teachers and their collective pursuit for good representation on the board.

Lordy. It was a lot.

But, here’s the part I hope you understand; public schools aren’t perfect and teachers will be the first to tell you so. We know it from the inside out.

I have had wonderful and beautiful experiences as a teacher and parent in public schools. I’ve also been very frustrated with administrators and I’ve worked with teachers who didn’t seem to like kids or their job. It’s like any system run by humans — it’s only as good as those involved. And, there is always work to do.

But, just like that mom told me; I did get some sh*t figured out.

I figured out over the years that public schools are some of the last public spaces in our country that have not been privatized. I figured out they are the epicenter of so many communities. I figured out they are the places we learn civil discourse and learn to get along with folks who aren’t like us. I figured out they are (small d) democratic institutions meant to make us better. We are better for them.

I hope that these Board meetings cool down. I hope that folks who think teachers teach to their preferences and not to curriculum will think about it and do a little digging before they attend parent/teacher meetings. But, most of all, I hope that we continue to support our public schools and work to make them even better.

The kids deserve it.

~Jess