Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 131

Middle school segregation

When I was in middle school, kids still enjoyed a before-school and after-lunch recess. Two recesses in a single day is uncommon at any school nowadays.

Recess at the middle school level is virtually unheard of in today’s world.

That’s because the world has turned stupid in so many ways. Somewhere along the way, free play in kindergarten was replaced with an obscene fixation on test scores. Recess was eliminated in an effort to extend instructional time in the classroom. Lunch periods were shortened to allow students to solve an additional equation or find one or two more main ideas.

Opportunities for socialization, physical activity, and free play have been minimized in an attempt to squeeze more academics into every day.

It’s all very stupid.

But my childhood wasn’t so perfect either.

Get this:

A.F. Maloney Middle School (formerly my father’s high school and now the site of the town’s library) featured a hardtop playground behind the ancient, brick building that was divided by a thick white line, segregating girls from boys.

Can you imagine? Boys and girls weren’t permitted to play together.

We could stand on opposite sides of the line to chat, but no intermingling of boys and girls was allowed.

In addition, a large strip of grass and dirt running the length of the hardtop  was reserved for the boys as well, since the boys theoretically needed more room for football, soccer, and other such athletic endeavors. This additional space made the boy’s playground more than twice as large as the girl’s and also gave us access to a stream running along the edge of the playground, around which we were also allowed to play.

Children playing in a stream at recess? Can you even imagine such a thing these day? My students aren’t allowed to ascend the mounds of snow made by snowplows in fear that they might fall off and Humpty-Dumpty themselves.

But separating girls and boys at recess? It’s a miracle I was ever able to ask out a girl in high school.

I like to think that I’m still pretty young, but this scenario sounds as if it comes from a different century. Doesn’t it?

I remember thinking as a kid that even the boys and girls on Little House on the Prairie were allowed to play together. Why could Laura Ingalls and Willie Oleson play together, but I had to be separated from every girl in my class?

Still, at least we were allowed to play. We spent time outdoors. We skinned our knees. Played dodgeball against the brick wall. Argued over the rules of football.

Our middle school teachers may have stupidly separated boys from girls on the playground by a thick, white line, but at least there was a playground.

At least there was free play.

At least there were opportunities to run and laugh and learn many hard, important lessons.

Run away

Every year, I teach my students to run away from any and all physical altercations.

Someone wants to fight you? Run.

Someone is threatening you? Run.

Someone just punched you in the face? Run.

Fight with your legs by escaping the altercation as quickly as possible.

Occasionally, a parent tells their child something like:

“If someone hits you, then you should hit them back”

“You have a right to stand your ground.”

“Defend yourself.”

There are parents who have never entered a fist fight only to find themselves faced with a knife or something worse.

I have. It’s no fun. It’s downright terrifying. It only needs to happen once before you realize how stupid it is to stand your ground.

What I tell my students is this:

“You never know what someone might have in their pocket.”

Also:

“If you hit someone – even if they just hit you – and they trip, fall, and hit their head just right, they may never walk or think or speak the same way again, and then you’re in a world of trouble. Is that worth defending yourself?”

Yesterday I stumbled upon this video by former Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Wikllink. A person far tougher and more experienced in combat than I will ever be. His advice for getting into a fight:

Exactly the same thing.

Validation is a beautiful thing.

4 rules for effective leaders (and all good human beings)

If you are wrong, acknowledge your mistake and apologize if needed.If you are right, stay quiet. Allow others to sing your praise.If others are wrong, let them know about their mistake, but privately and with grace.If others are right, celebrate them publicly.

Many people seem to struggle most with rule #1. This one has always come easy to me, mostly because I’ve come to understand its utility.

Apologizing has been a highly effective means of solving problems and avoiding trouble for me. Perhaps I also make more mistakes than most, so I’ve needed to rely on this strategy more often.

If so, I apologize.

Acknowledging mistakes and apologizing are often seen as signs of weakness, but they are actually clear signals of strength. It requires confidence, a strong self esteem, and sometimes even courage to apologize.

Those who struggle with admitting fault and apologizing often see these things as threats to self and ego. Thin-skinned egotists and insecure cowards struggle with apologizing the most. They would rather lie about being right than admit to being wrong.

I have great difficulty with #2, particularly in circumstances when I was right and someone else was wrong.

The problem is simple:

“I told you so” are four of my very favorite words. They are also petty, stupid, and oftentimes counterproductive, but I just can’t help myself.

But like most people, I’m also a work in progress.

I’m coming to you, Ohio!

I’m coming to you, Marathon Center of Performing Arts in Findlay, Ohio!

Wednesday, April 13, 2022.

When I showed my kids this photo – my name is lights – they expressed the same level of excitement that they do when being asked to put away their laundry.

Hopefully complete strangers are more excited than the small people who love me.

Open letter an ignorant superintendent

Perhaps you’ve heard about the vice principal who was recently fired in Mississippi for reading “I Need a New Butt” to second graders.

If you haven’t, here is the story.

Below is a letter I dropped in the mail yesterday, addressed to the superintendent, expressing my opinion on the situation and offering my recommendation.

________________________________________

March 14, 2022

Dear Superintendent Martin,

It’s come to my attention that you terminated a vice principal for reading ” I Need a New Butt” to second graders during Read Across America week.

As an elementary school teacher of 24 years, an author, and a former Teacher of the Year, I naturally assumed that the reporting on this incident was inaccurate, and I would soon learn that the vice principal had done something far more unfortunate or disturbing. But it turns out that you fired the vice principal for nothing more than reading a book that I have read to my students and my own children for years and a book that elementary school teachers across America routinely read to children.

So I wondered:

Why? Why would you terminate the employment of an educator with more than two decades of experience for doing something that teachers across America view as innocuous, commonplace, and noncontroversial.

A written reprimand would’ve seemed excessive to me, but it would at least be more measured than terminating the vice principal’s employment entirely.

So why?

Then it occurred to me:

You’re an ignorant coward.

Please understand that I don’t mean this as a prerogative. I intend no offense. It is merely a statement of fact.

I managed to find your profile on LinkedIn, and I see that as far as I can tell (which is to say, as much as you chose to list), you began your teaching career in 1996 at Denman Junior High in McComb, Mississippi, and you ended your teaching career in 1997 at the very same school.

So you taught in a classroom for 18 whole months. Not quite two academic years. You somehow landed in that school in January – midway through the academic year – then completed that year and one more full year of teaching before you began your ascent up the administrative ladder, culminating as superintendent for the past nine years.

So when I say that you’re ignorant, I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just pointing out that you don’t know anything about teaching, particularly in elementary school. You’ve never taught elementary school. You barely taught junior high school. You taught in one school for about 270 days, then you moved on.

How could you possibly understand teaching? Or elementary school?

When you were last teaching in the classroom, for that exceptionally brief period of time, you probably didn’t use email or have access to the internet yet. Cell phones did not exist. Social media did not exist. Google didn’t exist.

We were still worried about Y2K.

You’re not ignorant because of a lack of brain capacity. You’re ignorant because you don’t know how to teach.

Maybe you were once a great teacher – a long time ago for an exceptionally short period of time – but today, you know nothing. You can’t possibly fathom how a book like “I Want a New Butt” makes kids laugh, and when kids laugh at words on a page, they fall in love with books. They understand that books can speak to the things that they find amusing and hilarious. Books, in short, can be for them, too.

You don’t know this because you don’t work directly with children. You’ve actually never taught young children before. You’ve never felt the obligation of convincing two dozen third graders that books are just as amazing as Netflix and Roblox and TikTok and Snapchat.

You just don’t know. You’re not dumb. You’re ignorant. The same way that I am ignorant about beekeeping, gastroenterology, and astrophysics.

You’re also apparently a coward because one of the reasons your fired this principal was because you were worried that parents might complain. If true, this makes you a coward simply because you are making personnel decisions, at least in part, based upon a fear that some parents may voice concerns about the choice of a single book on a single day in the course of an entire academic school year.

You’ve upended the life of a person who has dedicated two decades to education simply because you were afraid that some parents might say mean things to you.

When leaders make decisions based upon fear of public opinion – especially when there have been no complaints thus far – they might as well be replaced by voting machines. Rather than relying on expertise, insight, and wisdom, you responded to fear of public opinion.

Thus my claim of cowardice. Not a pejorative.

Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps your LinkedIn profile fails to mention the decade spent teaching first grade. If that’s the case, then I’m admittedly wrong. You’re not ignorant. You’re stupid.

Either way, my suggestion is this:

Restore this vice principal to his position immediately with an apology. Simply acknowledge that you were barely ever a teacher, and even though you’ve spent lots of time in schools, it’s not the same as spending time in the classroom. You don’t understand what it’s like to teach children to read and love to read. You haven’t fought in the reading trenches day after day after day. I know some administrators feel like they spend time with kids on a daily basis and therefore know them well, but unless you’re actually teaching children, oftentimes spending more time with them than your own children, day after day after day, getting to know them truly as well as you know your closest friends, you don’t really know them.

Your response to this situation has made that abundantly clear.

So please, for the sake of this dedicated professional and the children in that school, restore this person to the position of vice principal position immediately.

Nothing wrong with making a mistake as long as you’re willing to correct it. As I tell my students every day, mistakes are valuable. But not if you fail to learn from them.

Learn, grow, and do better.

If you’d like to speak to me directly about this or any other matter, feel free to contact me directly.

Warmly,

Matthew Dicks

Philosophical CAPTHAs

I saw these two philosophical CAPTCHAs on Twitter and fell in love. If you don’t understand the jokes, look up “The Ship of Theseus” online. It’s a fascinating thought experiment. Then look up Rene Magritte’s “Treachery of Images” (for the image of the pipe). You’ll understand it right away. Best of all, I made one myself, based upon the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment from physics. I’ve very excited about it. 

Lead Tasso

Elysha and I were watching Ted Lasso.

Onscreen, the soccer team was failing to work hard and reach its full potential, so coach Ted Lasso decided that it was time to deploy Lead Tasso, the alter-ego version of the nauseatingly wholesome, relentlessly optimistic, inexplicably charming soccer coach.

Lead Tasso is the Bizarro Superman version of Ted Lasso. An angry, impatient, insulting jerk face.

As we watched Lead Tasso insult and berate the team, I paused the show and asked Elysha, “Do you know what he’s doing?”

“Of course,” she said. “He’s doing what you do.”

“Exactly,” I said.

I’ve always fostered an environment in the classroom where I am the bad guy who needs to be defeated. I don’t berate my students, flip desks, or kick soccer balls at their heads. Instead, I do things to annoy them. I talk excessively about my greatness. Argue that my birthday should be a national holiday. Complain that my students have yet to recognize me as King  of the Classroom.

I draw sad faces on their oranges in marker. Write “Mr. Dicks is better than me!” on their whiteboards when they go to the restroom. Claim that absent students remained home to build shrines to me. I torment them so often that students can win “No Teasing” passes – an invention by a former student – to protect them from a day of my nonsense.

I do these things and one million other ridiculous things. It’s all done tongue-in-cheek, awash in false sincerity and humor, but the result is always the same:

It creates an environment wherein my students want to defeat me. Crush my spirit. Destroy my life.

In doing so, they must band together. Support one another. Operate as a single, strategic, determined unit.

They also rarely have the time or inclination to be unkind to one another.

When there is a single enemy to be defeat, people – even fifth graders – will rally to a cause. They will pull on the rope as one. They will become a hardened, supportive, unyielding team.

My nonsense results in humor and fun in the classroom – which are both incredibly important if you want children to love school – but more importantly, it creates a villain that they must survive and perhaps defeat.

Datt Micks may not have the same ring as Lead Tasso, but I’m using the same strategy with decidedly less violence and anger.

But even more importantly than all of that, Elysha knew instantly that Lead Tasso was following my script. I asked her a simple, innocuous question – “Do you know what he’s doing?” – and her response was immediate and certain.

She knows me.

I can’t tell you how happy and joyous it feels to know that the person you love most in this world knows you so fully and completely.

That’s something even Ted Lasso doesn’t have.

Great advice that I have always followed

I agree with both of these suggestions with equal ferocity.

I’ve always felt so sorry for people who refuse to dance. As a wedding DJ, I’ve met many grooms, a handful of brides, and thousands of guests who don’t dance. In each case, I wanted to shake them from their stupor. I wanted to scream, “No one cares if you dance well! No one will remember how you danced! They will only remember that you didn’t dance!”

I can’t imagine living a life absent the joy of dance.

If you can find the courage to dance like no one is watching, even better.

As for my email, you’d find it quite business-like and boring. I’ve always despised email drama and animus. If you’re angry, upset, or disappointed with someone, pick up the damn phone or speak to the person face-to-face. In just the past six months, I’ve responded to someone’s written complaint with a phone call or in-person meeting at least three times.

It went well every time.

Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s the strategic move, too. It is rare for someone to be as biting, insulting, or cruel in person as they can be via written communication.

The only time this rule does not apply is when your attempts to garner the attention of someone in power has failed. If you can’t get someone to respond to your request, acknowledge your concern, or address your criticism, I use written communication as a means of poking the bear out of their sleep.

In the past (and perhaps the present), I have used email, physical letters, feedback forms, unsolicited, personally designed feedback forms (a personal favorite), Twitter, and my own performance reviews as a means of getting someone to pay attention to my concerns.

But in all these cases, my first attempts were always in person or over the phone.

Be lively on the dance floor and boring in your email, and your life will improve dramatically.

Time wasters of the past

I’m currently working on publicity for my next book:

Someday is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life

Available in bookstores everywhere on June 7, 2o22.

Preorder now wherever you get books. Or even better, join my launch team.

I’ve been thinking about all the things that have hindered my creative life, so I made a list of my life’s most regrettable time wasters, in hopes of avoiding as many future time wasters as possible.

Happily, this list does not include obvious stupidity such as Farmville, Candy Crush, or color coding for the sake of color coding.

Still, I have regrets.

My list of time wasters of the past:

Fantasy sportsCommercial televisionMy commute to and from work from the ages of 16-25Meaningless college assignmentsSheila ManganoUnnecessary and poorly planned meetingsIneffective, utterly forgettable training sessions

Sun Up

I know how to read.

I know how to read thanks in part to Mrs. Dubois, who taught me to read in kindergarten.

It wasn’t easy. The word “the” confounded me for quite a while. No matter how many times Mrs. Dubois or my mother would tell me how to read the word, I would continually read it as “TAH-HE.”

I was five years old at the time, but I can still remember and even feel the frustration. I also remember my three year old sister being able to read the word before me, which did nothing for my ego.

Little did I or anyone else know that I would eventually grow up to become the author of eight books and counting.

The book that I first read in that kindergarten book was called “Sun Up.” I was a basal reader about Bing and Sandy, a cat and dog, and their many adventures. As a child, I read the book so often that decades later, I still have large portions of that book memorized. Curious, I decided to try to find the book online.

It didn’t take long.

I purchased two copies on “Sun Up” and sent one to my sister, who shares the same intense, nostalgic memory of our childhood as me. Opening the book was like stepping back into the past for me. The very first page, containing the very first sentence – “The sun was up.” – hurtled me back to those kindergarten days. I suddenly saw the classroom in my mind’s eye with incredible clarity, but even better, the memory of reading those words and the feelings they engendered landed right back in my heart.

On page 25, Sandy meets a “big bug” and is frightened by its size. Sandy runs away and the bug gives chase. As I read those simple words, I so clearly recalled reading these words as a small boy, feeling both frightened and excited by the moment.

The enormity of the bug. The size of its mandibles. The flight of Sandy in the opposite direction.

Today it’s a couple simple sentences. Back then, it was suspense, excitement, and thrill. Breathless adventure that I adored. One of the first moments when I fell in love with reading.

Finding this artifact of my childhood, from my very first year in school, has been one of my best purchases in a long, long time. The opportunity to hold the book in my hands that first helped me learn to read has been amazing. To be suddenly and unexpectedly reminded and even filled with some of the joy and excitement of those kindergarten days was better than any gift I could imagine. Remembering the pride I felt in finally being able to read that first hard-to-read word – “the” – filled me with happiness.

Every time I pluck this book off the shelf and flip through the pages, I am transported to Mrs. Dubois’s perpetually sunny, always happy, constantly exciting kindergarten classroom. Having never attended preschool, kindergarten was a big step for me into the wider world, and this book, “Sun Up,” was oddly an enormous part of that step.

It was my first step to becoming a reader, and as a result, my first real, no joke step to becoming an author.

I’m so happy to have it by my side once again.