D20 Strategic Plan is Ineffective
DEI does not press Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Science, and History into classrooms
Looking through the D20 strategic briefing package and D20 Structure Doc, several things strike me.
I don’t see tactics and strategy for driving dynamic learning in classrooms. Frankly, we educate in D20. That is our mission and what 20,000 D20 citizens elected the new school board to do. In the next strategic plan – and the current one stinks – I want to see strategy and tactics for teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, Science, and history.
I know… So old school.
My teachers pounded those in my head up to flunking out of HS in 1977 then finally graduating after summer school in 1977. I know all about being excluded, mocked, and ridiculed in the Montgomery, AL school system in the middle of federally ordered bussing that exacerbated racial conflict. I was too big to be bullied and my Judo classes and offensive lineman perspectives solved those problems rapidly.
Scroll forward. Today, I’m a retired Army LTC, a retired Microsoft Digital Architect, I’ve led young soldiers in combat in Iraq, built and designed server farms and IT backbones down the axis of the Euphrates, in Southwest Asia, along the Rocky Mountain front range, and was one of the Digital Architects who moved 700,000 Air Force users and their systems into the Microsoft Cloud. And I’ve written and published 16 Futurist, Science Fiction, and non-fiction books. Number 17 is coming soon.
My apologies for leading with that, but I want you to know why I think the way I do. At 63, I love kids, teaching, writing, hard work, and technology, placing those in a framework of imagination and innovation infused with God’s Scripture Revelation.
Mental Health.
My aunt was a counselor in the Oklahoma prison system. She dearly loved her convicts. Most of her patients were fatherless, often drug abusers, and aimless… Products of impotent public-school systems ramping into free lunch programs, federally ordered bussing, and hand wringing over the cruelty of unchallenged youth.
My grandfather ran the Industrial Arts program in a tight security Juvenile incarceration facility for the worst Juvenile offenders in San Antonio. Each school year, he taught young criminals how to build houses, do carpentry, and wire electricity in homes.
Both told me, after my own adventures that had me aimed at a future prison date, that challenging kids with knowledge, education, skills, and work ethic is what turned their patients and student convicts around. Between my mom and my aunt, I learned to love reading. My gandpa taught me to love history and worked my tail off on his small east Texas ranch. I could escape into Science, history, westerns, pushing cows, and Science Fiction – that’s what helped me do very well on the SAT and ACT in spite of my C and D level grades up through High School.
The things I see in the D20 strategic plan are NOT reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history in dynamic teaching environments. Claudia Graver’s message is a poignant and awesome critique. I’ve dialoged professionally and in civil exchanges on many of the same things with Microsoft senior leadership as they lean hard toward WOKEness.
ZDNet reported 10 July on Microsoft research discovering what's happening in employees’ heads and souls. No, not to sell a little more software, but to help its employees realize what's really happening.
The most pungent conclusion from this Microsoft study is a philosophical one: People have stopped to consider the meaning of life. Our D20 students, that constitute the generation that follows Millennials, are heavy into trying to work out the meaning of life. It’s in their generational DNA.
I suspect our D20 parents and students are leaning into this because the vote counts in the last election reveal this.
A substantial number in the study -- 38% -- admit they're not entirely clear about the point of an office anymore. The deeper problem is that many confess they're missing the ability to build real human relationships at work in dynamic technical engagements. That same metric can inform us about D20 classrooms.
The most moving, and perhaps even hopeful, parts of this Microsoft study, however, show people have actually stopped, thought, and wondered about how work can affect their lives. In a not good way, you understand. Are those the ruminations of our D20 students? Place yourselves in the hearts and minds of D20 students to see if they are in the same place. Most Microsoft employees, after all, are products of public education systems around the world.
Is it the Power Of Money? No. It’s the Power Of Peace in a challenging environment.
How long will the employment environment – or the public-school environment in D20 – suit those who prefer self-preservation to self-immolation? How long before a recession, or some other trigger toward greater financial need, infects the human soul? Especially ill-equipped students not infused with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history?
At Microsoft, according to ZDNet reporting of the study, the happiest employees are ones diving into the rigors of technology. Until I retired from Microsoft in May, that defined me and so many others. Instead of leaping into agendas of “equity”, “diversity” and “social emotional learning”, D20 must challenge students with specific goals of education in – you guessed it – reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history.
For those enamored of the DEI agenda, it's easy to wallow in your own comfort and forget those who aren't. Like the irritated 20,000 D20 citizens who elected the current school board and their families.
Epoch Times reported 8 July that at Uvalde, and the last six school shooting incidents that killed more than ten people, the shooters were male and fatherless. Alex Berenson, author of Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence, pointed out that the New York Times had curiously removed from an article about the Uvalde school shooter a former co-worker’s recollection that he complained about his grandmother not letting him smoke weed. These social problems are brutally simple in the calculus of ‘Why’. DEI won’t solve those problems, but maybe we can lean into rigorous education solutions in D20.
Jay Inman