A Soundproof Steel Box, Revisited
Three years ago I wrote a soon-to-be viral Facebook post. The question I still get is, “Do you stand by this?”
I do, 100%.
Putting aside what it became, a referendum of how school boards, nationally, were disregarding the welfare of their teachers, ESP, and staff, I wrote it about our community, frustrated by how our school board, rather than make a decision about whether or not to start the 2020–21 school year virtually or not, abdicated that responsibility to the families in this gross, “vote for what works best for your household, majority wins” model.
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If you were paying attention, you could see that trainwreck coming in slow motion. Early in the pandemic FCPS made the decision there would not be the traditional, formal graduation for the class of 2020. Some schools took it upon themselves to organize car parades with their graduates as a ‘best we can do given the circumstances’ option. From my point of removal, and not having a graduate that year, it sounded like a good idea to me.
This came up in a Board meeting, watchable online. I was half watching, half reading off another monitor, when the car parades became a hotly contested issue, over 45 minutes spent arguing (and I do mean arguing, not debating) the privilege of car parades when some school populations, the students and their families, do not all have cars. Those students may feel left out, therefore no school should have a car parade. And, after 45 minutes of (verbal) blood and brains on the walls, that argument won the day, mostly because no Board members came prepared to debate the “pro car parade” position, and were even less prepared for the bare knuckle brawl so they just threw their (virtual) hands up.
Say what you will about privilege, I listened to this and thought, “Wait? What?”
In that same meeting, there was the opening salvo in the “are we going to start the year virtually” debate / war. Three groups of students were immediately identified as needing to be onsite:
Students with physical, mental, and / or emotional challenges; homes where all parents / caregivers worked outside the home during the school day; and students who were already identified as physically at-risk in their homes.
All three on the nose, no argument, we need to figure out how to support these students, groups.
And the people who needed to figure that out were the same people who had just been at each other’s throats, publicly, over the car parades.
And I, to no one, said, out loud, “We are fucked.”
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So they came up with the vote, which was really a poll. It created this maelstrom across our community where people debated virtual vs. hybrid while there wasn’t enough concrete information to plant a flag for either, and we were being told by our elected leaders that we, individually, needed to make that decision, and that it was going to apply to the entirety of the school year.
In that maelstrom this collective voice emerged, and started talking over all others, that was just angry, people who wanted the school buildings open, no matter what, and if you weren’t in lockstep with that you hated America, you were a coward, you were a traitor.
All of that was disgusting, and sadly it drowned out real issues in support of open buildings, particularly the support needed for those three student groups.
So I started clicking on the maelstrom people profiles.
You all remember who they were.
I couldn’t take it anymore, so I copied a bunch of their ‘arguments’ and, as I wrote on post day, “Sometimes I’m just punching back at the void.”
That day, a Friday, just before 8 PM, I published my post. It was “Friends” viewable, targeted as it was to our school district. Less than 20 minutes after posting a friend, an FCPS teacher, asked if she could share the post in her teaching social media groups. I updated the settings to “Public” and answered her, “Yes.”
When I woke up the next morning, my post had been shared 6,500 times. As I started going through my DMs I was already receiving threats. By the afternoon, people were, on sites like DC Urban Moms and Dads, sharing my work history, my salary history, even my softball stats, which are, admittedly, not where I would like them to be.
Rather tedious arguments of math notwithstanding, it took off because people around our country were dealing with the same maelstroms in their communities, and my post, while never intended for such purpose, became a list of talking points people started using to fight back against said maelstrom.
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I know what I wrote. It’s not perfect. It is at times condescending. It triggered a visceral, emotional response. It’s a glorified listicle with an eye-catching, incendiary graphic and a thunderclap closing line.
And its middle section, about reducing life to a calculus, struck a nerve with the maelstrom. So they posted, publicly, about how I was bad at math. How my Facebook post was reportable ‘fake news.’ Some freelance journalist tried to coattail the post’s 15 minutes by writing a counterpoint, as the Ivy League educated voice to reason, before being mercifully, and thankfully, tamped out.
Privately though, in the DMs, their tone was different. There, their collective message was, “Choosing between virtual or hybrid was brutal, we don’t want either, and your post makes me feel like shit for choosing hybrid.”
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I never wanted anyone to feel like shit for choosing the hybrid option. What I wanted was for people, mostly good people in trying times, to stop saying things I hope they really didn’t mean, such as, “Dude, if they close the schools because only 47 kids die…”
That is an actual quote, in a thread about my post, that is still sitting on DC Urban Moms and Dads today.
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I would write back to the “feel like shit” folk, sometimes cutting and pasting my responses, which were all akin to, “Hey, I didn’t make you read it.”
What I thought then, and what I think now, truly, anyone who read that and felt guilty, they brought that feeling of guilt into it. I didn’t make them feel something. I don’t have that kind of power over people. They already felt it. Whether they should have or not, that wasn’t me either.
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Three years on, I stand by the post. I believe they were salient discussion points for that moment in time.
To the best of my knowledge we had zero COVID fatalities in our school system. Did the virtual start play a part in that? We’ll never know.
I still take issue with the vote / poll. We do not elect people so they can push the most important decisions back out to their constituents.
Did it ‘accomplish’ anything? It did for me. It jump started a broad conversation in our immediate community, and quite honestly, I found that conversation, while not respectful, at least more respectful to and by all parties after the post. That was a win.
There was an element that credited my post with moving school boards in our and the surrounding counties to start virtually. While it is true I was in conversations with a handful of Board members after my post, I believe I get far too much credit and blame for that decision. I mean, who the hell am I?
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I still hear from people who read and who commented, and others who read other things I’ve written and say, “Wait. You’re the 302 guy.”
The 302 guy. Evidently, that’s who the hell I am.
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The original post, A Soundproof Steel Box 1.0– “302”
The first thread response, A Soundproof Steel Box 1.1– “A Note Regarding Math”
The final thread response, A Soundproof Steel Box 1.2 — “Here Endeth the Lesson”
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P.S. (thirst alert)
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