Hey, can you breathe like that?

I played baseball growing up. I played mostly because my friends did, not because I liked it. Nowadays, baseball is a good way for me to fall asleep. As a first baseman, I did my job and tried not to yawn. As a batter, I was a consistent double and triple hitter. One day though, I got smacked right in the back. The pitch had gotten away from the kid, and I reacted much too late. It was bound to happen at some point. The problem was, I stopped swinging after that.

At first my coaches thought it was probably just for that game, that week, that month. No. I was just done. No explanation really. Give me a break, I was like 11, and not necessarily processing my actions coherently. I wasn’t swinging because I was spending more time assessing if the ball was going to hit me instead of me hitting the ball.

One day, my friend’s dad comes up to me at practice and says, “You gotta get your head out of the sand, kid.” I looked up at him, no comprehension is happening at this point. “You lost your swing. You gotta stop avoiding that reality. You gotta own it and work with it. I’m taking you to the batting cages this weekend. Let’s get that swing back.”

The plan was set. On Saturday I was going with my best friend and his dad to the batting cages to get my swing back. Sounded easy enough. But I didn’t get it back, and I ended up quitting baseball after that season. What I did get was advice that I apply all the time at my job. Get your head out of the sand. And I learned it from someone other than my parents. I don’t know about you, but those were some big lessons to conceptualize at 11.

I teach high school. Most days it is my favorite thing in the world. Young minds are brilliant. That’s not something that’s said too often. We seem to find it easier to chastise the younger generation than give them credit for being the future of awesome. We also don’t seem to realize that we are simply regurgitating the same lines that our predecessors said about us.

Some days though, teaching sucks. And I promise you, it is rarely the kids’ fault. Inappropriate behavior, ignorant comments, sexist t-shirt choices, these are easy fixes. What makes teaching suck from time to time is parents digging into curriculum. Disclaimer: I’m positive there are examples where people questioning a teacher’s curriculum is 100% justified. This is not one of those examples.

A fellow teacher of mine has been pulled into meeting after meeting this year over content she has in her classes. Parents are afraid. We shouldn’t talk about sex. We shouldn’t talk about rape. We shouldn’t talk about race. We shouldn’t talk about gender identity. Translation: We shouldn’t talk about anything that’s not white, heterosexual, and cisgender.

These meetings, along with the corresponding emails, rumors, whispers, and tweets have all led to tears, unnecessary tears at that. For the record, I get the argument. Parents want to “protect” their kids. It’s natural to feel that way; heck, I’m an adult and I still catch my mother feeling that way.

But it’s unrealistic. In her essay The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion Roxane Gay addresses trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are usually brought up in progressive and liberal circles, but in my community, a small, conservative, Christian community, trigger warnings (if that’s what my community would call them) are being used in an extremely conservative sense. I don’t even know if we should call it a trigger warning, but it’s a comparison that allows us to push the discussion forward. Gay states, “Instead, I am surprised there are still people who believe in safety and protection despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” Gay is a person who knows her triggers, yet she takes a stance that isn’t always popular.

Safety is an illusion.

In English, we talk about life. That’s what literature allows us to do, mirrors and windows. We talk about reality. Our reality right now contains discussions on race, sex, gender identity, sexuality, and much more. What do you want to accomplish by not exposing your student to these topics? What will they do when they leave this town for college, a job, or the military? Oh, they’re going to a small Christian college and then moving back here? If that’s not the creation of a conservative safe space, I don’t know what is.

Here’s what families don’t get to do to an English class:

• You don’t get to hijack curriculum to fit your agenda
• You don’t get to claim religious persecution when the school decides not to take your advice
• You don’t get to say your school district is being unfair to you because they won’t accommodate your religious beliefs

Ironic side note: the same group that feels justified in changing curriculum in public education to fit their religion would throw a fit if a Muslim community tried doing the same.

The tail is trying to wag the dog in this case, and to some degree, it is succeeding. The hijacking of the curriculum always feels one step away from being a school board topic, a place where I can’t guarantee it would fail. I guess some of these parents didn’t have a best friend with a father who told them they can’t put their head in the sand.

A close friend put it into perspective as we discussed this topic. He pointed out that there are certain privileges you give up when attending a public school. One of those privileges being the control of what you are exposed to. This connects back to parents wanting to protect their children or even people wanting to protect themselves from life’s content. As previously stated, you can’t. You are not in charge of what your child absorbs, but if you’d like to educate them on how to properly take in this information, great. If you’re actively trying to shove your child’s head in the sand, please don’t visit my classroom. You won’t like me prancing around breathing all this beautiful open-minded air while you self-suffocate and commit filicide.

If you don’t approve of the education that your child is getting at the public school because of the content that is being discussed appropriately and professionally in the classroom, then there are alternatives for you at parochial schools or charter schools that fit your wants. We wouldn’t let an atheist student at a private Catholic school dictate the practices of school wide mass during the day. The atheist is dissolved of that privilege once they, or their family, decide to attend the school. Apply the same logic to the public school.

This is not something trivial like a sport. It didn’t matter that I lost my swing when I was 11. Willful blindness leads to whitewashing, hetero-washing, and ciswashing school curriculum which leads to serious negative implications that can and will eventually play out on an individual or societal level. Some effects are overt, some are covert. (If you want to see a projection of what can happen when a society goes down this path, check out my short story titled The Parable of Sam). Reality is out there, and we as educators seek to confront it. We expect our students to do the same because the world is changing. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening, but the only response you’ll receive from me is, “Hey, can you breathe like that?”

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