Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

It Matters How We Show Up

Do your work, not theirs — Seth Godin

Shanna Peeples
Jul 21, 2017 · 5 min read

I’m a bad reporter — that’s why I was a features writer for six years. Facts, the 5WH — I never did them well. For instance, in my piece about meeting Betsy DeVos, I didn’t answer these obvious questions:

What did we talk about? What did I ask? How was she? Do you think she listened?

This post is my attempt to answer these questions (and some more that weren’t asked). Also, I need to clear any misconception that I was there because of my social media-fueled obsession with speaking to the Secretary. The meeting was the result of others’ hard work.

We — myself and nine other teachers — were there because of the Teaching Ambassador Fellows (Anna Baldwin, Sean McComb, Patrick Kelly, Melody Arabo — and others) who work in their districts and in the US Department of Education. They pitched the meeting, got agreement from the Secretary to hold the meeting, and facilitated it.

My friends and colleagues, James Ford (who wrote about the meeting here), Jed Dearybury, Matt Presser, Lisa Hollenbach, and three others argued for equity in teacher pay — especially for teachers of color, positive messaging for teaching and the need to share positive teacher stories, and against fear, shaming, and scripted curriculum. It was a heavy lift: We had 4o minutes to discuss teacher recruitment and retention.

But we’re teachers, so I think we did a good job of team-teaching.

Other people think…

My approach to the meeting was to be who I am: a teacher. I often taught teenagers who couldn’t read above a second grade level, students from vastly different cultures, beliefs, and languages, and students who would’ve argued with me if I said the sky is blue. Tempted as I might be to write them off as “unteachable,” I had to at least try or what kind of teacher would I be?

To me, this meeting was no different. I used the same strategies I fell back on in my classroom:

smile (especially because I saw the anxiety in her eyes)
be kind (everyone is doing the best they know how until they know better)
show respect (use the correct title)
explain with words that are easy to visualize (Teacher recruitment is the house that’s on fire right now)
connect to prior knowledge and praise targeted performance (I like how you connected empowerment and systemic change)
grant the benefit of the doubt (I appreciate that you listened to us, let’s keep talking)

I hope she heard the two specific statistics I shared with her to illustrate what I know about teacher shortages:

Out of 10,000 incoming freshmen to the pipeline in our tri-state area for teachers last fall, only 67 wanted to teach

Touring colleges of education around the country, I spoke in auditoriums built to hold 200 that held only 15 students — the entirety of the school’s student teachers.

I wanted her to hear me when I repeated a message I’ve hammered in Texas (and anywhere else someone invites me)

“We can argue about public, private, charter, vouchers and all that, but if no one wants to teach, we can’t have school.”

DeVos ended the meeting by saying more than once that she hoped it was the beginning of a conversation. When I shook her hand to leave, I held it, looked her in the eye and said: “Thank you so much for inviting us and for listening so attentively. I take you at your word and want to continue the conversation. Please call on me at any time.” I sent a follow-up email to her staff and a handwritten thank you with my contact information in it to her.

But listen, I’m not naive. I’m a lifelong Texan. If I didn’t understand how graciousness can cover stubbornness and irrationality, I wouldn’t know how to talk to any of the members of my state legislature (or my Governor). So I don’t hold any illusions, just faith.

We’re for kids and we show up for them. In the words of Friday Night Lights: clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

At a conference last week, my friend Maddie told me this and now I want to get a tattoo:

Teacher leadership is resistance.

It’s true. And it’s doubly true in places like Sierra Leone, Palestine, and Beirut where teachers resist more than political opponents. My friend, Mike Soskil and I talked recently about how those teachers show us what it looks like to do life-giving work in places haunted by death, disease, and destruction.

He reminded me of meeting Dr. Wafa Kotob in Beirut two years ago. She taught me that those of us who teach don’t have the luxury of despair or the privilege of cynicism. “I’m a teacher,” she said. “So I have to have hope.” She said it with a big sigh that seemed to communicate that a teacher is fated to hope. It’s in our bones.

A poem I’ve had on my wall for several years reminds me of what to be about when I’m tempted to despair. I’ve looked at it over and over since November. It explains the mission I’m called to right now:

The Gates of Hope

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope —

Not the prudent gates of Optimism,

Which are somewhat narrower.

Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;

Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,

Which creak on shrill and angry hinges

(People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)

Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of

“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”

But a different, sometimes lonely place,

The place of truth-telling,

About your own soul first of all and its condition.

The place of resistance and defiance,

The piece of ground from which you see the world

Both as it is and as it could be

As it will be;

The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,

But the joy of the struggle.

And we stand there, beckoning and calling,

Telling people what we are seeing

Asking people what they see. — Rev. Victoria Safford

Finally, I hope you’ll follow each of the people I’ve named here (links embedded in the names). These people give me hope. It is a privilege to know them, a joy to be around them, and an honor to do this work alongside them.

If you like this, please click the little clapping hands below so it’s more visible to others. And if you really want to make my day, please visitwww.shannapeeples.com for all kinds of links and resources.

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Shanna Peeples

Written by

Pursuing learning as a doctoral student @Harvard | 2015 National Teacher of the Year | Author: Think Like Socrates | Otter enthusiast

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