Frank Thoms, Teacher in the Rye

I discovered these three wondrous questions by Leo Tolstoy from Thich Nhat Hanh in his book The Miracle of  Mindfulness.

What is the best time to do each thing?

Who are the most important people to work with?

What is the most important thing to do at all times?

Hanh recounts Tolstoy’s story of an emperor, who after receiving no satisfying answers to the three questions, sought out a hermit said to be enlightened. Upon arriving and after he asks the three questions, the hermit puts him to work in his garden.

In these turbulent times, spurred by countless executive orders and the Muskovite invasion, We wonder what we can do. It’s happening so fast, a month now, and we can barely keep up let alone comprehend. Perhaps we are tempted to think “It’s over, we are done, what could I possibly do now? Too much happening, too fast, so many firings, deportations, agencies cancelled.”

But they, the oligarchs, are few. We are the majority. They can act fast, we gather our responses slowly. So, what can we do, readers of this Substack, for teachers and public schools?

I don’t think I need to convince my readers that reading is an integral part of our lives. We read books, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, newspapers, magazines, because we want to. Many read to stay in touch with what’s happening. Reading gives us a framework to understand our world.

Having information, truthful information, has been a foundation of humanity. Early hunter gatherers informed each other about their hunting and gathering skills and sat around campfires sharing knowledge, feelings, and understandings. The ancient Greeks memorized wisdom, e.g., the Iliad and the Odyssey; Socrates was miffed when he learned of writing…

Many of us thought the coming of television in the mid-20th century would spark armchair entertainment for hours on end. Children would succumb to its charms. But we seemed to have gotten through that times somewhat unscathed, well not unscathed but still a people who talk to each other.

The 21^st century is taking us down a new path, a path of continuous entertainment. We have become a culture that prizes being entertained above all else. Not only in the home but everywhere we are. We have phones and all of its inputs, beeps, blings, alerts. 24/7!
When clicking…

The classroom is the backbone of every school and teachers are an integral part of the backbone of the country. Where students can be who they are, discover their gifts, and learn to become agents in society. It offers multiple ways to engage, connect, to be with students. Despite the glitz of social media and its ubiquitous role in our culture, the classroom can be––must be––a safe place without devices where students can be face to face, listen and talk together, trust one another, and understand who they are, and discover their agency to bring into the world.

From my study in Mexico, now in my mid-80s, I often think about teachers. From my earliest years in the classroom in the 60s, I saw myself as part of a cadre of liberal arts graduates who were going to reform public education. But as the years past, we blended in with teacher-college graduates. We were teachers, ‘just teachers’ as some would say.

But I never accepted being’ just a teacher.’ I believed––and still do––that teachers are essential to America, part of the backbone of who we are. We take credit and blame for our performance.

I wrote this piece for my Substack, Teacher in the Rye. I am publishing it nearly verbatim.

Some of you may remember when the newspaper boy (it was boys), who either walking or riding his bike, flung his paper onto your porch or stoop. When I was a paperboy for the North Adams Transcript, I placed the paper on the porch or doorstep and sometimes knocked when I wanted to visit and did with my girlfriend halfway through my route. So what does this have to do with the classroom?

In a conversation with a handyman in my home in San Miguel de Allende, he told me that he and his wife and family moved here from Oklahoma, because the schools were poorly funded. Enough of a reason until he added that the legislature intends to put Bibles into all 55,000 classrooms––and Trump Bibles were being considered. Schools with few funds, the State spending money at nearly $60 a pop for Bibles! The final decision on placing them in classrooms with the added Pledge of Allegiance, the US Constitution, and other historical documents has not yet been resolved.

I ask myself, Can I return to a middle school classroom after twenty five years away? I often imagine returning despite what I have learned about the challenges facing today’s teachers from the far right, from coddling and angry parents, unruly students, and restrictions on what to teach. I wonder, for example, how would I handle teaching a topic like slavery and not being allowed to tell the ‘truth’ and being threatened with losing my job if I did. Well, I have a plan for that.

We’re in a new year, a time reflect, see patterns and observe the changes. Step back and look into our childhood and retrace our steps into adolescence, how we were with ourselves, our peers, our parents, teachers, and community.

I remember my childhood, full of play with neighbors and friends. Without parents. We walked to and from school, played games in the neighborhood like Red Rover outside and Monopoly inside. And choosing sides in play, arguing whether one of us was ‘safe’ or ‘out,’ in games or ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ when playing guns. No parents. I see a different childhood today.

In Arizona, the Unbound Academy, academic subjects two hours a day taught by AI. No teacher in the room, only a ‘guide.’ No interactions. No responses. No asking questions. No answering them. No creating context. No seeing another’s eyes. No teacher expression. No conversations. No distractions. No noticing squirming classmates. No one complaining.

Teacher as algorithm.

That might be true for all education someday. Who really knows. An unknown future awaits. Who saw the coming of the telephone? The horseless carriage? Email? The Internet? AI? If we project out, can we imagine ‘school’ happening only in the home?

Teachers and professors give higher grades today well above the average gentleman C’s I experienced. Where not too long ago a 4.0 was the highest average in secondary schools, 4.0+ now appears on some transcripts. This blog is another take on this issue.

I was about new ideas. In my fifty years in the classroom, once freed from textbooks I was able to generate my own approaches. And I was free to invoke methods I believed would stimulate my students to learn and want to learn. I would often offer the unexpected. One such moment happened in September, 1964.

When AI went ‘public’ (but it had been here for a longtime already), a lot of us in education, including me, saw it as a potential threat, a nightmare for teachers. It would insert bias clandestinely, spread numerous inaccuracies, and promote plagiarism. It would write students’ essays! And we would never find out whether the essay was theirs or not! But calmer heads are beginning to prevail.

Here’s a fact: Today’s AI is the worst that students will interact within their lives!

I am distraught about the threats to our democracy. The upcoming regime is focused on ‘the enemy within. We are entering a time when “We the people…” is being relegated, to become an outlier. After more than 200 years of growing our fragile democracy (with many interruptions) another awaits. I, well retired from the classrooms, ask myself, What can I do? My answer is I am on a mission to advocate for teachers to reclaim their classrooms, to resist directives that steer them towards spreading propaganda rather than supporting them to educate.

As a consultant, on October 13, 2006, I observed fourteen new teachers with whom I worked before the opening of school. We engaged in a variety of activities designed to stimulate their students. On that day, all of them talked at their students, no questions, just talked. That night, I wrote a six-page letter to encourage them to engage their students, to make their classrooms come alive. The next morning, I began to write.

Four years later, I published my first book, Teaching from the Middle of the Room: Inviting Students to Learn (Stetson Press, 2010). In the next ten years…

July 8, 2024, a Saturday in San Miguel de Allende, where I live.

I turn and see her coming, the yellow dress. I am locked in. She immobile, leaned-back immobile, in her yellow dress, her body tilting to the right. Her head immobile, further right. I stand on her left. She, oh so alert. Her smile, her upper teeth gleaming. I’m mesmerized.

Her father, lean, older, guiding her chair now paused. In front of her, her mother, lean, glasses, red lipstick, gentle.

But for a moment it’s me and the girl in the yellow dress in her wheelchair. I’m feeling a deep presence, mesmerized, speechless, she immobile, such presence.…

I‘ve been engaged writing four manuscripts, which I will share at a later date. In two of them, one directed to teachers, the other to the public, I have 99 entries that are designed to bring solace, calm, reflection and inspiration; you decide if that’s true for you. Here's one, “It’s Turtles All the Way Down,”: 

“There’s an old joke about a King who goes to a Wiseperson and asks how is it that the Earth doesn’t fall down. The Wiseperson replies, ‘The Earth is resting on a lion.’ ‘On what then is the lion resting?’ ‘The lion is resting on an elephant.’ ‘On what is the elephant resting?’ ‘The elephant is resting on a turtle.’ ‘On what is the…’ ‘You can stop right there, Your Majesty. It’s turtles all the way down.’”

On the opposite page are commentaries, one in general (we), one for the reader (you). If interested, read on.

My website went down but has returned. When I started my blog in October, 2022, (Wow, that long ago?), I named it “A Teaching Life: In the US, England, & Russia.” It was just after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, hence my first entry “People, Not Putin and Other Thoughts.” Many of the early entries focused on my thoughts about that war, about my understandings coming from my experiences in the former Soviet Union. For a while, Americans appeared eager to support Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people. While I believe the support is still there, even after the Republicans craziness in withholding aid, national politics has come front and center and for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile I continue to write. Having published six books, all but one focusing on teaching, I have now completed a manuscript about my life as a teacher, a memoir of my life in the classroom from my first day at Hanover NH Junior-Senior High School in September 1962 to my last class at Bancroft School in Worcester MA in 1999. I am calling it “Teacher in the Rye: Doing It My Way.” Why that title?