Stay Cool

Written for Chico Enterprise Record: North State Voices

Welcome to the tail end of the dog days. Sirius is just about finished rising with the sun, and, according to the ancient Romans, that means we’re just about finished with our hottest days of the year.  We can hope, but I’m not sure the summer heat will be quite done with us when the Dog Star moves on. What will indeed be over, however, is summer as defined by the local school calendar.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be teaching my students about those ancient Romans and other cultures from antiquity, and we’ll be reading and writing, and I’ll do my best to get some grammar instilled in them as well. It’s no small feat getting 12 year olds to think that what happened a gazillion years ago matters, and the key to their academic success is getting them to care. I have to say over the last few years it’s gotten harder, although I’m selfishly glad that it’s not just my take: across the nation, elementary school teachers and college professors alike are bemoaning a pervasive lack of engagement from their students. Everyone connected to education is trying to figure out how we got here and how to fix it.

Much blame is placed on Covid and the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The gaps in learning and the lost social opportunities indeed took their toll, and the trauma of losing loved ones can’t be overstated. (In California alone it is reported that there are 32,000 Covid orphans- children under 18 who lost one or both parents.) It’s readily understandable that performance in the classroom is impacted by that experience, but the fact is students were already struggling. 

In my experience and opinion, academic and even social participation has been in steady decline for about a decade, essentially coinciding with access to smartphones and the rise of social media. The entire world of information is just a Google search away, so toiling at a desk with a book– in pursuit of good standardized test scores– seems a tedious waste of time. Moreover, the instant gratification of dopamine hits from digital “likes” makes it that much harder to value the delayed gratification of conclusions drawn through thorough research and critical analysis.

It makes sense to point to Covid and technology as reasons for student apathy, but it’s not just disruptions and distractions that have derailed our kids. Perhaps even more consequential is the fact that they are growing up in uncertain times within a polarized environment. My sixth grade students were born into the aftermath of a deep recession, they have witnessed climatic destruction on a massive scale, they play in parks where ever increasing numbers of unhoused people live, and they have little confidence in their own ability to afford college or find a job that AI doesn’t take. They undergo yearly active shooter drills, they’re exposed to daily news reports broadcasting violence large and small, they see their own communities torn by social and political differences. These kids are trying to navigate their own trauma while learning to become adults in a highly polarized world. Is it any wonder that they check out?

Here’s the thing though: students might be checked-out, but they’re still showing up. Recent statistics released by the National Center for Education count the current high school dropout rate at 5.2%. For comparison, in 1960 the dropout rate was 27.2% 

Why are they coming to school if they aren’t going to participate? I think that they don’t know what else to do, and they’re hoping that somehow it all works out. 

It’s not that the kids don’t care. Far from it. It’s that they think that we don’t care enough about their futures to put aside our differences and work together to solve our  problems.

We’ve got big problems no doubt; they’re complex and not easily fixed.  We need to remember what we all have in common: we all want a roof over our heads and enough to eat, we want the people we love to be healthy, we want to feel safe, and we want to have the opportunity to be successful. Maybe if we start from there we can make progress together, because in addition to English and math, history and science, our kids need security, a sense of belonging, a reason to hope. And that has to come from the adults in the room.

So, I hope we can show them that it matters to us. They matter to us. As our community grapples with changes and challenges, I hope we can consider that our kids are watching and keep it civil. We may not have any control over the temperature outside, but we can turn down the heat in our own relations. And for the sake of the kids, I hope that productive collaboration in pursuit of a healthy future is in our stars.