Back to School

July has always felt heavy – the air, the heat, the looming approach of school. My entire life, July has been a month I could do without. It’s not as bad as August, but it’s bad.

As a kid, the calendar flipping over to July was the beginning of the end of Summer. The green on the trees started to become less vibrant, the heat became more stifling, and my sense of time became much more acute than it had been the previous month. School was coming.

Honestly, not much has changed as an adult. Aside from two summers (one spent as a social worker and one spent working in a district office), my adult schedule has mimicked my childhood schedule. I’ve found there to be a cyclical comfort in that – a beginning and an end every school year. Rinse and repeat. 

This year feels a little different, though.

I’m not incredibly excited about school starting back, but I’m not dreading it either. I think there’s a feeling of detachment that I haven’t felt until now – an exhaustion that’s usually reserved for the beginning of May, not the end of July. 

Other than a couple trips to Philadelphia and a week in Delaware, my days this summer have been spent co-hosting a local talk radio show with Chuck Walker on Newstalk 96.5. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time. The conversations have been rich and challenging and needed. I’ve also been able to stay very informed on local politics and social issues. It’s been fascinating – and sometimes scary – to hear what people think about certain local issues…specifically the school system. And, like most every issue, polarizing sides bookended a conversation that was and is incredibly complex.

I’ve been a teacher in the Jackson-Madison County School System since 2008. On July 31, I’ll begin my 15th year of teaching English/Language Arts on the secondary level. I’ve been in the classroom under the leadership of seven different principals and six different superintendents. Some have been bad, some good, and a couple have been great. Through all of the change in leadership, the one constant is what I (and nearly every teacher with which I’ve shared a building) want for my students – that they leave my classroom more prepared for the next steps in their lives than they were when they arrived. 

Throughout this summer, I’ve heard radio callers criticize our local education system. I’ve heard callers criticize our teachers. I’ve heard people tell blatant lies about the district as if those lies were truth, without hesitation. At times, the misinformation stretched far beyond simple ignorance and stepped into the vicinity of verbal malice. 

So, to clear some things up, I’d like to tell you the truth – from the ground level – of the work being done. This isn’t some district spin on a complicated issue; you won’t see me mention “Level 5” one time or read the words “Tuition Free” at any point in this article. This is simply the truth from my vantage point as a Freshman English teacher in JMCSS.

• The Tennessee State Educational Standards for ELA in grades 6-12 have little to do with basic reading comprehension and much more to do with complex text characteristics such as text structure, author’s purpose, and in-depth, literary analysis of a given text – fiction or nonfiction.
• Because of the rigor of these standards, a story or text isn’t taught the same way it was when I was in school. In my opinion, the standards the state has laid before us have stripped the joy from reading for reading’s sake. We rarely can view a given story as a starting point for universal truths or personal life applicability – we always have to start from an analytical perspective. 
• That being said, the majority of my students can read and comprehend grade level texts. I know this for a fact. The data collected from standardized tests does not measure reading comprehension; it simply measures how much the students have learned the state standards.
• Our students – across all grade levels – are exposed to more technology than any other group of students in history. This impacts how students consume information. Most information is consumed by students in video clips or through audio sources or in short text bursts. These aren’t excuses. This is reality.
• Since COVID (across the state and in JMCSS), students are struggling to attend school on a consistent basis. This is something that has been acknowledged and is being addressed. It will take time to shift, but the work is being done.
• The school where I teach (JCM) is housed in an incredible building. It’s the same building where I learned from some of the best English teachers in the state – Linda Austin, Nancy Petit, and Donna Tosh. I tell my students this at least once a week. Legacy is important at JCM.
• This upcoming year, the Cougars will be playing under Friday night lights once again, and I’m excited to watch some of the players I had last year in class perform on the field. They were some of my best students this past year.
• Our school district is evolving to meet the needs of a rapidly changing job market; a market that continues to be inundated with technology and 21st century industry models. The LOOP Program and JASA are two prime examples of how JMCSS is preparing students for life after high school.
• My daughter attends Madison Academic High School. She’ll begin her Junior year in a few weeks. She is on pace to score a 30 on her ACT. In fact, nearly 70 students in JMCSS in the last three years have scored a 30 or higher on the ACT. This is something that is life-changing when it comes to scholarships that become available to those students.
• Speaking of Madison, the boys’ soccer team won the state championship this past season. That wasn’t the only state championship team to come from JMCSS. The South Side Lady Hawks also captured the Gold Ball and continued to build their legacy as one of the premiere programs in the state of Tennessee.
• There has been a myopic focus on the district’s standardized test scores when it comes to reading – specifically in the third grade. As much as I can complain about the test, the law, and the effects of both of those things, these are the rules of the game we’re playing, and we have to do better. I can promise you that there’s not one teacher who doesn’t want our students to be better readers and to reach a level of text comprehension and analysis that will benefit them as adults.
• That being said, there are people my age and older who criticize our system and our students and those critics are unable to analyze and comprehend text at the level we’re asking our high school students to do it. If those critics were to take the same standardized tests our students are taking, the scores of those adults wouldn’t be any better than those of our students. In fact, I’m convinced they’d be worse.
• Our district isn’t perfect. Far from it, actually. We could do better with acknowledging our flaws and presenting plans as to how those flaws will be addressed. There is tremendous value in honesty and self-awareness. These are things I try to address in my own life – personally and professionally.
• Our superintendent – Dr. Marlon King – has invested in the staff of JMCSS like no other superintendent has before. He is committed to rewarding brand new teachers and teachers who find themselves in the twilight of their careers. Raising starting salaries and instituting longevity bonuses are tangible pieces of proof of that investment. 
• Dr. King and his leadership have cast a grand vision for the future of the district that seems to align with the growth of industry and population in Madison County. This cannot be overlooked. That being said, critics have suggested this plan could be too ambitious. Personally, I appreciate ambition and vision.

I could keep going, but research has shown that most people only have the attention span for 600-700 words, and I’ve nearly doubled that at this point.  As an aside, our standardized tests ask students to read 2,000 word texts they’ve never seen and then answer complex questions about said text in about 15 minutes. But publishers only think adults can handle 600 words at a time. 

In the end, the sun will rise and set and the beginning of school will be here in several days. All of this is inevitable. I’ll start getting up when it’s dark outside and welcome my students and begin teaching as the sun rises. We’ll embark on our annual journey; a journey that is laborious and challenging and more complex than anyone outside of it could ever understand. And, we’ll all do our best to be better teachers and students regardless of the noise outside of the classroom. And, maybe one day, we’ll be able to show the fruits of our labor.