Be the Adults We Want Our Children to Become

(Looking back at my writing during the pandemic.)

In the first piece, I wrote about how to be a knowledgeable citizen during a pandemic.  In focusing on controlling what I can control, I created a list of knowledgeable citizenship compass points I tried to follow during that moment of extraordinary transformation:

• When people tell me not to trust my eyes, ears, or reason, I will look, listen, and study more carefully, and
  
  
• When people tell me not to trust my eyes, ears, or reason, I will not trust those particular people again.
  
  
• I will believe in and support excellent journalism as it is vital to our republic and to our thoughtful citizenship. (Note: the word “excellent” is vital here. Carefully-researched by journalists who are more drawn to produce a clear and complete telling of a story than they are writing or performing for click-bait.)
  
  
• I will find knowledge-based resources of information and analysis. I will also keep in mind that just because someone, or some entity, is a good resource in one arena does not equate to that person or entity being credible in all areas.
  
  
• I will maintain connection to those with whom I may disagree. Civility and kindness do not imply agreement, however.
• I will not accept shoddy rationale or fail to call it out when I believe my voice can be valuable.
  
  
• I will not engage in talk that pretends to be conversation where members of rival groups talk past each other. This has no useful end, and it is a dangerous cultural addiction (though it is a large factor in the financial model of Facebook and Twitter).
  
  
• I will use my voice to emphasize the existential value of scholarship, inquiry, science, knowledge, the arts, and the humanities.
  
  
• I will vote, and I will encourage you to vote.
  
  
• I will seek beauty and write about it, take photographs of it, and share it.

The second piece, “Calling Out and Calling on Myself in the Face of Coronavirus,” feels a bit like an artifact from an archeological dig even though it captures something only four years old. Perhaps this is a result of the fact that it captures such a precise moment in history. 

Schools, school leaders, faculty and staff emphasize topics related to character education because they know strength of character is of vital importance and that it is too often in short supply. I really hope all that talk has worked. It really needs to have worked. Now more than ever, we need the adults that great teachers dreamed their students would become. After years in the classroom, I am confident they are out there. In education, we should always have in mind who our students should become. That vision of who students should become as family members, citizens, colleagues, should drive education far more than test scores and college lists. A moment of crisis, like the one we now face, should solidify this understanding for us.

Recently, I have been thinking about: who are we going to be at the end of this? Knowing that in only a few days the world has changed so dramatically as a result of Covid-19 and that it will change again and again and again in the days, weeks, and months to come, who will we be by the time we get our coronavirus vaccinations? There are myriad signals about the future of the pandemic that taken together create a confusing stew and taken apart either create naive optimism or equally naive cynicism. I have a sinking feeling that if we think that trying to predict the future of the virus and its effects accurately is virtually impossible, understanding what happened when it is over will be no less difficult. If clarity was ever achievable, we may have just seen it pass away with the first fatalities.

So…rather than pull out a crystal ball of specific predictions and hyper-generalize a to-do list for everyone, it makes more sense to me to simply create a list for myself regarding who I want to be during the pandemic. First, some general assumptions:

• What we have considered inconveniences in the recent past will be dwarfed by current realities.
  
  
• Few, if any of us, will escape finding ourselves close to tragic loss.
  
  
• Our neighbors (think of the world and the people in it) will both inspire us and disappoint us.
  
  
• Misinformation will slow our exit from struggles related to the pandemic.
  
  
• Some things we assumed were stable will not be.

While facing the pandemic, I will strive to:

• Be a good husband, father, son, and brother.
  
  
• Never let my disappointment in some people and institutions blind me to the inspiration I should find in others.
  
  
• Choose the hard right over the easy wrong.
  
  
• Hold myself accountable when I fall short, while at the same time forgiving myself.
  
  
• Do all I can to make other people safe.
  
  
• Recognize that I am fortunate beyond measure, and I should not complain about being without things others have been without all along.
  
  
• Take a deep breath (or two) before sharing my opinion.
  
  
• Be a discerning consumer of information.
  
  
• Stay busy and prioritize diet and exercise.
  
  
• Seek out the good in both people and in the world around us.
  
  
• Seek reasons to laugh with others.
  
  
• Look forward to better days ahead at least as often as I look back to better days in the past.

While I was writing things down that I thought were specifically applicable to that moment, I was obviously writing something more, and I have referred to these two lists often even as the worst days of the pandemic faded. For me, two things emerge in these pieces. The first is that they are grounded in hope–not wishfulness–but hope. Hope only exists in as much as it is represented by actions we take in the world. Second, to navigate great challenges we must devote ourselves to our most essential aspirations. For productive adults, particularly educators, those aspirations have to do with the impact we might have on the world to come through our students.