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I left my prior institution in June 2020 because, as a Black woman, I did not feel safe.

This was a school that I loved working at and a school that I truly felt that I could stay for a very long time.

A school that, although very far from its end goal of true diversity, equity, and inclusion utopia, was beginning to put together steps to change its very white landscape. I got excited—inspired, even—to be a part of this work. And one man’s words made it all crash down for me.

What happened?

I ended up at this institution after a six month stint as a full time tech consultant. While I enjoyed the work that I did, the organization wasn’t a good fit and did not cultivate a healthy work-life balance with its employees (hence the high turnover rate). I was also commuting four hours round trip. I thought that going back to schools would be better for my physical and mental health. And in all honestly, it absolutely was. I got to do what I love, which is teach math and build up math curriculum. I got to be part of the first cohort of teachers teaching a new integrated math class which aimed to dismantle the algebra 1 – geometry – algebra 2 track. The school was gorgeous and the students were wonderful. I felt respected, valued, and like I had a voice. I felt honored to work there.

When the world went virtual due to COVID-19 my institution was pretty on-the-ball with its procedures. In February we met as a division to figure out what virtual instruction would look like. We got training on Microsoft Teams and allocated time to see how we would take our classrooms online. We met with our students to discuss what a remote classroom was, what our expectations were, and how assignments would change. We made necessary adjustments to our schedule to accommodate student and family needs. I documented my experience with remote learning in my prior blog here (although this is where I will be blogging from now on). Although my institution did a great job at handling it all it was certainly overwhelming to switch from face-to-face instruction to virtual instruction, even with all the planning and preparation.

Managing working during a global pandemic was already chaotic enough but I think it goes without saying that the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests were either a breaking point for folx or a wake up call for folx. As a Black woman, police brutality and dehumanization is a truth that I live with every day, but upon hearing about the death of George Floyd I had a breakdown. I was angry, incensed, hurt; another life taken at the hands of—I’m just going to be real here—police brutality and absolute nonsense. Virtually none of my white friends had initially reached out to me to see if me and my wife, who is mixed but identifies as Black, were okay, save for my friend Devon who has always been one of my strongest allies. The others that did only reached out a few weeks later and the conversations were so steeped in fragility and guilt to the point where a friend was asking me constantly how to breach conversations with his partner of color. I’m talking two to three times a week for about two months (for those that are wondering, I did not entertain these conversations). If you don’t know why this is problematic, consider the fact that Google is free and has trusted resources on how to hold conversations about race (also, doing your homework on whether or not your partner actually understands concepts of race, sexuality, and identity is literally “how to be a thoughtful human being 101”), and that instead of trying to breach a conversation with me he should have been talking to his partner THE ENTIRE TIME. Many people in my life went into what I call the “time out box,” which is where they stay until they do research on how to have an actual dialogue about race and identity instead of just complaining how they had “no idea” it was this bad for people of color. I couldn’t handle it all and just decided to focus on my work.

Speaking of work, around this time nearly every single organization was posting a statement about how they stand with Black communities, people of color, faculty of color, etc…you get the point. Actions certainly speak louder than words but it was a paltry attempt at taking a stand. My institution was no different, and on its Facebook page made a statement about how it was saddened by the recent events and stood in solidarity with Black faculty, Black staff, Black students, and people of color in our community.

I’m admittedly not active at all on Facebook but my wife is a pro. She follows my institution on Facebook and keeps up with all their goings on. While I was recording a lesson on trigonometric identities she busted into my home office and told me that there was drama popping off on my institution’s page. I went into her home office so we could check together. An entire battle had been going on the page about how my institution actually did NOT stand with Black bodies and voices, that my institution did NOT care for Black students, that my institution was steeped in whiteness, and instances of covert and blatant racism occurred on a regular basis. It pains me to say but I knew that at a private, independent institution that is majority white, something was bound to happen and be exposed regarding injustice toward a person of color. What I did not expect was stories on stories on stories that all had the same theme: this institution is not a safe place for us.

The largest event happened when a former faculty member leaked that she was put on administrative leave for wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt to a school event. This happened way before I started to work there, but former and current faculty members chimed in to recount the event. There was solidarity throughout the entire thread on how messed up it was that she was placed on leave. There was a bit of dissent from the institution and in an extremely courageous move that ex-faculty member actually posted the proof that it happened along with a quote from our head of schools that said (paraphrasing): “do you think our full tuition paying, Republican parents would tolerate you wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt to school?!”

My wife and I read every single post and every single comment with my heart sinking after every one. She asked me how I was feeling and I honestly didn’t have an answer. This happened before I started to work there, but I started to question if this school was a space that I felt safe.

Something I think y’all should also know about me is that I am a person who always likes to assume positive intent. I think the best of people and really try to understand the root causes as to why someone might have said what they said or did that they did. However, I could not think of a single reason as to how this scenario could be afforded the benefit of positive intent. To me, this looked like administration silencing an educator in the face of racism and monetary greed.

A few hours later we got an email from the head of schools (like a principal, but for an independent school) that there was going to be a meeting that evening to address what happened on Facebook. It was an optional meeting. I originally elected not to go because this event happened way before I started working there, but my wife (moral of the story: listen to your wife!) really pressed me to attend. She said that even if this happened before I started working there it was important for me to understand the context of the story and ask any questions. Fair. She also said that this could be a turning point: I could decide if I wanted to stay or I could decide if I wanted to look for other opportunities for employment.

We had a meeting via Zoom and it got quite a few faculty and staff members, which was wonderful—remember, this was an optional meeting. The head of schools immediately began to talk and wasted no time mentioning what had happened on Facebook earlier, although he only spoke for about five minutes before turning it over to additional discussion. That should have been my first red flag. He stated that the school has a very strict “no logo” policy which is why the teacher couldn’t have worn the shirt. This would have been an acceptable excuse if there was legitimate follow through. I routinely wore things with logos to work and I was never called out, and had multiple logos and phrases displayed throughout my classroom. The head of schools then went on to say that no political content was allowed at school either. This was something that he had touched on many, many times before; he was a bit of a stickler regarding politics and political opinions at school. But again, this opens questions as to what is considered “political” and what is not. I was about to ask that question and he essentially answered it for me: he stated that if we allowed Black Lives Matter content in schools then we would need to allow Make America Great Again content in schools.

When those words left his mouth, I was beyond seeing red—I was seeing jail. I was incensed that anyone would make my humanity as a Black woman to be a political ploy on the same level as Make America Great Again, which is an actual political statement used in a political campaign. I was disappointed that the two movements were being compared and quite clearly being put on the same level by my head of schools when they are polar opposites. I was angry that he couldn’t see the actual issue at hand. The problem wasn’t that a teacher was wearing a shirt with a logo. The problem was that, when the teacher was put on leave for wearing the shirt, the message it sent was: you cannot stand with Black students, Black faculty, Black staff, and the Black community because WE do not stand with Black students, Black faculty, Black staff, and the Black community.

I stayed in the meeting and had a lot of choice words for not only the head of school but also the institution. I don’t remember all that I said but my wife was with me and watched the entire thing. According to her, I took off my earrings and glasses at one point (?) and was pointing a lot at the screen. I kept my voice calm but I was angry. I asked what the purpose was for us to go through diversity training and enthusiastically invite faculty members to People of Color Conference (which is the BEST conference I’ve ever been to, by the way…more on that on a different post) if we weren’t going to make positive progress and change. I asked what we could do—hell, what we NEEDED to do—so that something like this never happens again, because it never should have happened in the first place.

I, and the other Black faculty (as well as non-POC allies), were met with silence by the head of schools. Besides his five minutes of speaking at the beginning of the meeting he remained completely silent throughout the duration of the discussion. I interpreted this as cowardice. A lot of my white colleagues interpreted this as acknowledgement of defeat. This difference in opinion was not lost on me.

I was appalled and it absolutely ruined my evening. This place where I felt had been so safe for my queer Black self was not. One of my best friends from the school called me immediately after so we could debrief. We were both just so broken. He asked me how I was feeling and I started crying. That was when I knew I had to make moves. By pure luck, a job notification came through on Indeed that evening that advertised a role for a curriculum coach. My masters degree is in curriculum and instruction and truth be told, I had been looking for an opportunity like this for a while. I sent in my resume and immediately (literally, within five minutes) got an email saying that I would be a better fit for the role of a STEM coach and asked if I would be open to discussing the role. After doing research on the company I immediately fell in love with it. Not only is it laser focused on improving academics and academic experiences, but everything is viewed through an anti-racist and equity lens. It values project based learning as a vehicle for equity and had actionable steps toward dismantling white supremacy culture in schools.

I saw my opportunity and I decided to go for it. Within two weeks, I got the job and enthusiastically accepted the offer.

And this is why I am a coach.

I don’t speak much with people from my prior institution save for a few folx who I was always close to. There is new leadership that I think has a lot of promise, a lot of positivity, and a lot of good intent. I sincerely hope that in these next coming years there will be a shift in the tides. I also find it extremely interesting that, upon catching up with someone at the institution, nearly all the Black faculty had left. Whether that choice is directly related to that conversation is something I will never know, but I have no doubt in my mind that those folx had similar thoughts as mine (and, in fact, I know this because we all were the first to speak out against the words from the head of schools).

As for me, I know I’m where I need to be. I’m at a literal anti-racist and equity focused institution that takes no prisoners when it comes to breaching discussions about race, identity, and progress. I love that I get to look at STEM curriculum and instruction through the lens of social and racial justice. My colleagues are so wonderful and I am proud to be on this team.

In this blog, I’ll be detailing my journey as an instructional coach and a technology in education consultant—what I’m doing, what I’m learning, and what I’m working on. I’ll also be writing about seminars and workshops I give on deconstructing curriculum and being inclusive in STEM.

Let’s get to work.

Since I’ve made the transition to be a coach I’ve been asked this a couple of times. As always, I’m happy to answer!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin by explaining what an instructional coach is and what an instructional coach does. This is purely anecdotal, but conversations I’ve had with folx when I reveal that I’m a coach are mixed--there are some that think I’m a “do nothing” administrator who sits in an office all day, there are some that think that I pop into classrooms from time to time and give daisy-chained feedback, there are some that think I’m a positive influence for new teachers, and there are some that think my position shouldn’t even exist (I’ve had quite a few people tell me that the largest waste in educational spending is that of an instructional coach).

In my literal job description, here are the highlights of what I do at my site:

• Preparing and facilitating project planning professional development for all teachers

• Sharing deliverables, timelines and gathering input from teachers in staff or grade level meetings

• Sharing materials with teachers (as a starting point for things that can be altered to fit the needs of their students)

• Collecting student topics, driving questions, and reflections at intermittent points

• Plan alongside teaching teams to determine timelines, student materials, and other support

I’ve had (and interacted with) two instructional coaches in my career at two different institutions, one when I taught in SC and the other when I taught in WA not too long ago. The first one was an extremely open person who made herself a sounding board for the teachers and really supported us. I was a newer teacher at the time so I didn’t really know what she did beyond that (I now know since I’m in a similar role) but every time I spoke to her and was open to giving suggestions, feedback, and resources to how to improve lessons and instructions. She coordinated and held meetings for new teachers to discuss concerns, glows in lessons, and opportunities for growth. I always felt safe communicating with her.

The second was less of a coach and more of a coordinator. My school (the one that I left due to covert racism) was working on building up their math program and she held the job of a math coordinator. She taught classes too, which I really appreciated, and observed us in our classrooms.

My role is kind of like a mix of both. There is quite a lot that I coordinate and organize within my organization, but the coaching aspect is done within my school site (which I’ll be referring to as my site). It’s still a bit of a toss up as to how coaching will look like virtually, especially with the district’s synchronous instruction obligations, but we’re working on details at the moment.

I’ll be modeling this structure after my Monday-Friday, 8 AM - 4 PM new schedule that I’ve enacted since we are a little bit closer to the start of school. And this is modeled after last Wednesday, which is when I go into my workplace face to face.

Wednesday’s Schedule

6:30 AM - Wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, dance around the house to Danity Kane, take out Ren. If you follow me on Twitter you know that my wife and I have very opinionated discussions about Danity Kane. I personally believe they are one of the greatest girl groups of all time and that the best song is Damaged, she believes that they did not live up to their potential and that the best song is Showstopper. Wednesday was definitely a “Damaged” day, so I blasted it through the smart device while I was getting ready in the morning (much to her dismay). It was not lost on me that when I left the house, she immediately changed the song to Showstopper.

Also, Ren is our sweater wearing, blueberry loving dog.

7:15 AM - Leave the house. It takes me about a half hour to get to work, but I allocate about 45 minutes just in case there are (inevitable) bouts of traffic and accidents on I-5.

8:00 AM - Enter work, get settled. I am lucky to work on a team that is so passionate about the work that we do. We are also very jovial and get along with each other very much. This leads to a lot of spirited conversation in the morning while we check our email, get our calendars set, and finish up any communication from the previous day. One thing that I find interesting is that even outside of work talk our conversations are still centered around justice (and the lack thereof). My first conversation of the day with a colleague was centered on the importance of discussing race and identity in relationships. My second conversation of the day with a colleague was about performative advertisements in marketing. I cannot emphasize how much it means to me to finally be in a space that “gets it,” so to speak. These topics are woven into the fabric of our daily life out of necessity, but also out of the path to progress.

9:00 AM - First meeting of the day. I was looking forward to this one because we were addressing exactly what our concerns were for the upcoming school year, as well as what we anticipate coaching will look like. In a traditional coaching model we would be going into teacher’s classrooms to observe/visit and then coordinate with district instructional coaches for next steps and feedback. But since we’re going virtual, we will need to change our system. I can’t give many details but we are still working out the logistics on this, especially since our schools and districts are still releasing details on schedule, expectations, and shared planning time.

10:00 AM - Second meeting of the day. This was an all staff meeting, which I really enjoyed. Our HR director gave space to speak about Jacob Blake and our thoughts surrounding it, as well as what we could do as an institution to move forward and make positive change. It’s a good time for me to point out that the organization I work for is majority POC, particularly BIPOC. Suffice to say, we were NOT okay. I appreciate that space was held to speak about that. We also did our normal roundtable of updates, celebrations, and things to look forward to.

12:00 PM - Third meeting of the day. This was a three hour district meeting via Zoom that only gave us one five minute break throughout the course of the three hours and almost brought a very courageous teacher (who unmuted her mic to express her frustration) to tears. No further commentary needed.

3:00 PM - Fourth meeting of the day. This was the time where my school’s admin team practiced our sessions for the professional development that we were leading the following day. I was co-facilitating the first of many sessions on anti-racist teaching (specifically, what it is, what it isn’t, and how carceral pedagogies harm students) and successful professional learning community strategies. I, as well as my other co-facilitator and I, shared what we were presenting and gave feedback on flow and presentation. The meeting ended around 4:00 PM.

This is what I call a “Zoomalicious” day. Save for the 9 AM meeting, every single other meeting was done through videoconferencing--putting my screen time at about 6 hours STRAIGHT for the day. There was a lot of collaborative time, but there was also a lot of time collaborating through a screen. I anticipate more “Zoomalicious” days in the future.

4:00 PM - Head home. Due to traffic it usually takes me a little less than an hour to get home. If I leave by 4, I can be home around 5. When I get home I definitely try my best to decompress and not look at a screen, so we head outside on an hour long walk with Ren.

And then the next day, get up and do it all again (but from home).

Wednesdays are by far my favorite days because I actually get to have *human interaction.* We all do it safely, of course, but it’s so nice to be out of the house and be in an actual office space with people.

More on coaching in later posts--as details come in and as the nature of the role evolves, I’ll definitely keep y’all updated!

It’s been about a month since I’ve blogged simply because it’s been so busy. To paint a picture of how my last month has gone:

• Wildfires. Wildfires everywhere. As new-ish Washington residents (we’ve lived here since January 2019) my wife and I were freaking out and thought that our home could burn down at any moment. The fact that there was a large brush fire about thirty minutes from our home didn't help. We watered EVERYTHING to the point of it being muddy because we didn’t want brush fires or embers to reach our home. When we went out to go pick up dinner one evening it was literally snowing ash.

• First day of school was cancelled due to power outages and concerns regarding the wildfires. Yup, straight up cancelled. I got up early and was getting ready when I got a call from the other instructional coach after I sent him a text saying “ready for today?” informing me that school was cancelled. I was gutted. Oh, did I mention that we are virtual learning? So the first day of school, which was also remote, got cancelled.

• The second and third days of school were orientation days but there were issues with students not knowing where to go, not knowing where to log in, etc. I spend most of those days mitigating tech issues and still continue to do so (which I don’t mind doing).

• Last week some of the phones were down and Google Drive was acting up, making it really hard for students to call issues in or upload materials.

• We are renovating the main bathroom in our home and are planning on re-doing the flooring in the main bathroom as well as our guest bedroom and guest bathroom. This isn’t inherently a problem but navigating contractors and dates while still being respectful of schedules has been a bit of a challenge, especially considering that my wife is constantly away for work (Air Force) and I am at my school site more frequently. It has been difficult to get everybody on the same page, so to speak.

• I still don’t know how to use my GIPHY keyboard on my computer. This is such a non-issue but for some reason it’s really bothering me.

• My birthday is this Saturday, September 26th, and I have been so busy that I forgot. Literally. We have a short trip planned and my wife was asking me what I was going to pack and my response was "I don't know what you're talking about, we're not going anywhere, we didn't book anything." She had to remind me that I was turning 27 in a few days and yes, we did have a trip planned.

The smoke in my region has also made me feel some type of way, and not in a good way. For the last week and a half here the air quality has toggled between hazardous and very unhealthy. We are finally back on “good” for an air quality reading and during a walk yesterday with my wife and our dog I felt like I could finally breathe again. A parent I was speaking to the other day referred to this as “SMOVID”, a portmanteau of “smoke” and “COVID,” which I enjoyed and will definitely begin to use in the near future.

As you can see it’s been a little hectic. But this weekend I did something really exciting: I presented at EdCamp OCLA!

What is EdCamp OCLA?

EdCamp OCLA was a two-day professional learning experience for educators in LA and Orange Counties. You might be sitting there scratching your head because if you can recall, I am NOT from LA and Orange Counties. I live in the Seattle area and a smooth 11 hour drive from even the closest location for this event. The educators themselves who were participating in the professional development were from the area but the facilitators did not necessarily need to live there, which afforded me the opportunity to be a presenter. I would like to give a gigantic shout out to Kristin Oropeza, a friend and fellow techie for reaching out to me to present after we co-facilitated a rocking Twitter chat on beginning your anti-racism journey in education.

The weekend for EdCamp OCLA (9/19 and 9/20) was split up into two days. Day 1 focused on the areas of Remote Learning, Social-Emotional learning (SEL), Equity and Access, etc. Day 2 was more focused on "unconference" sessions, created by and for the educators attending. I had the privilege to present on day 1 and day 2.

What did I present?

One of my cornerstone presentations is Culturally Responsive STEM Education, which I presented on Day 1. This is something that is super near and dear to my heart because it was built from the truth that we desperately need to create more inclusive environments for STEM. At its core, STEM education already has a ridiculous hierarchy (how many times have you heard teachers and students say that science or math is more important than ELA? How many times has a student been gatekept from a class due to perceived ability and not academic merit? How many times has a student been told that STEM just “isn’t for them” and perhaps they should choose a different career path?) and once we get into analyzing STEM career fields there are not many people of color in them. By doing things like diving deep into STEM discoveries, findings, and achievements in non-Eurocentric cultures and giving students authentic opportunities for agency and voice, we level the playing field for our students and give them a more fair shot. I also specifically define culture, white supremacy culture, and the traits of white supremacy culture via the framework from Dismantling White Supremacy Culture (I HIGHLY recommend you take a look at the linked resource) and how this (unfortunately) superimposes itself onto school environments, as well as how it infiltrates K-12 STEM education as well as STEM careers.

I’ve actually presented this session already this year at Pear Deck’s Pear Fair but was even more excited to bring it to the forefront for our west coast educators. I got rave feedback, one even from someone’s spouse who was listening in!

On Day 2 I facilitated an unconference breakout room and the topic was anti-racism and culturally responsive education. We had a lot of great conversation about what it means to begin your anti-racism journey, especially when you are working in a district and within an institution that still views education as a non-political discipline (spoiler art: it isn’t). One of the biggest talking points I gave was that as educators we simply cannot honor regressive thought such as “all lives matter,” whataboutisms concerning “not all white people” or “this doesn’t describe me,” and fragility concerning the lack of acknowledgement with human rights. It’s 2020 and we should not even be entertaining this, let alone engaging in conversations about this without shutting down the racist roots of these statements. I also blatantly stated during this session that any family, district, or superintendent that is uncomfortable with the phrase Black Lives Matter or Women Are Leaders is uncomfortable with foundations of human rights. We worked through strategies of what grassroots organization would look like with anti-racism and culturally responsive teaching in schools, as well as what to do if a parent or student objects to those concepts.

I really enjoyed presenting with EdCamp OCLA and hope to do the same next year if they will have me. There is nothing better than spending my time with educators who are not only dedicated to making the profession better, but disrupting the concept of “normal” and making “normal” better by any and all means possible.

I absolutely love to cook and bake. If you follow me on my Twitter account you know that I am obsessed with bread--baking bread, eating bread, and trying out new bread recipes. This obsession honestly extends to all foods. I love to try new things and I love to share the joy of cooking, recipes, baking, and good food.

Which is why at my last institution--the one I left due to covert racism--when I was given the opportunity to create an after school club, I decided to go with STEM Cooking.

Why STEM Cooking?

Growing up I was always a huge Alton Brown fan. You can ask my parents, I used to make notebooks out of paper (a hack I learned from my third grade teacher Ms. Tomlin--shout out to Ms. Tomlin!) and literally watch The Food Network feverishly taking down notes and recipes from what I watched, especially from him (and Emeril Lagasse). I must have had dozens of the books by the time I was ten years old. I was so captivated by the fact that science and cooking were so intertwined, but now that I’m an adult it totally makes sense. The heat from the oven doesn’t just come out of thin air. The bubbles that are created from mixing lemon juice and baking powder also don’t just come out of thin air. This all comes from something, and that something is chemistry and science.

One of my best memories from growing up was the way I bonded with my dad. My mother is an...okay...cook. I say that she’s okay because she does do some stuff well (particularly cakes and pasta dishes), but she openly admits that she doesn’t care for food and doesn’t care about food. How she gave birth to me, someone who loves food and literally schedules vacations around the best ranked steakhouse or the best farmers market, is beyond me. Food is just not her thing and neither is cooking it. For the most part my dad was the cook and baker of the house and it was amazing. Steaks! Shrimp! Fajitas! Hand cut french fries! Chocolate mousse! Mudslide cake! Vanilla cinnamon pancakes! I had an interest in cooking and he showed me how with extreme patience (once I accidentally put raw chicken on the same cutting board as cooked chicken). We would also always go shopping early in the morning for groceries which is a practice I still use to this day. My wife jokes that all of my errands need to be done before 9 AM or I don’t do them. And she’s right--I’m an “at the grocery store by 6:30 AM” type of person. Interestingly this is one of the only things that my dad does early. My mom is typically the morning person and I definitely get that from her, which is why you often find me tweeting at 5 AM.

So I love, love, love cooking and I love STEM. This honestly seemed like the perfect opportunity to fuse the two together, and with an after school club too, there would be no academic standards tied to it! It seemed perfect on paper. There have been some challenges--specifically with the wide age range of grades K-5--but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

What do we do?

We have FUN!

That’s it, that’s the post.

Bye, everybody!

On a serious note, we do have fun but we also explore deeper into why cooks and chefs do the things that they do. Why does meat brown when it is applied to heat? How does cake batter turn into a cake when it is put into an oven? Why is salt added to even sweet dishes? We reviewed recipes, the science behind them, and looked at the process of what it took to cook the recipe before we dove in and did the cooking. I worked out of a school classroom and a tangent kitchen. To my surprise, when I was planning this course there were so many online resources that were already available that detailed how to infuse STEM with cooking. My favorite article is here, which was a real inspiration for me. Also, the Cook's Cook website at large is such a wealth of resources and ideas for how to get started infusing cooking in your STEM lessons. They are a community of authors, cooks, food writers, and recipe testers.

I also specifically created this course with a focus on nutrition and learning about food from non-eurocentric cultures. Food is not just American. In fact, most of the foods that we enjoy as Americans do not even have American origin. It was very important to me that students get exposed to food outside of our state and our nation. Additionally, I wanted students to know how doing different things to food—such as heating it up, adding ingredients, adding sauces, adding salt—impacts nutrition. We spent a lot of time dissecting food labels, talking about the dangers of hidden ingredients in food, and why it is important to check things like calories, sugar, and sodium on things that you purchase from a store before you cook with them.

Where can I find your resources?

I keep the curated sequence of resources, lessons, etc that I have previously taught here, as well as in the resources tab located on my website.

For an example of an asynchronous STEM cooking class that I led, you can check out this Pear Deck on baking brownies. The recipe that I used is included at the bottom of the first slide.

I am a Pear Deck superfan. If you follow me on social media, this is pretty well known. Pear Deck is an add on for Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint that helps transform presentations into classroom conversations. I recently gave a professional development on Pear Deck and the co-facilitator introduced me as a “Pear Deck rock star.” In fact, this is the twentieth professional development I’ve given on Pear Deck since August of this year. Yes, you’ve read that correctly. I tweet at them pretty regularly, and they tweet back to me pretty regularly as well. I presented at their Pear Fair this past summer on Culturally Responsive STEM Education and recently facilitated an early childhood Twitter chat for their platform. I have a Pear Deck shirt and a Pear Deck water bottle. Pear Deck stickers are on my laptop. My dog has a Pear Deck bandana that he wears pretty frequently, and I (and my wife!) have Pear Deck plushies that reside on our desks in our home offices.

So...I kind of love Pear Deck. But one of the most frequent questions I get is: why?

I first heard about Pear Deck when I was teaching fifth grade science in South Carolina. The year was 2016. We had another building professional development day and I didn’t particularly care for building professional development days back then. As a new teacher I would have much preferred that time to work in my classroom, grade papers, and just have a few moments to sit and think...but, alas, I had to follow building protocol. One of my friends at the school was going to a session called Pear Deck 101. I had no clue what it was about and hadn’t even heard of Pear Deck at the time but, hey, my friend was going! So I decided to go too.

What I saw and experienced was mind blowing. The facilitator of the professional development actually set up a Pear Deck presentation for us to create and interact with in Google Slides. It was amazing. The templates were easy to use and even easier to implement within the existing technology. I loved that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel if I wanted to, either--the templates were customizable, yet tailored toward so many subjects and student needs. There were even simple checks for understanding like a thumbs up/thumbs down activity and clarification slides for students. I knew immediately that I wanted to start using the tool.

I’ve spoken a bit about the jobs I’ve had since I moved to Seattle but when I was teaching high school math the projector on my screen in my classroom was actually broken from the onset of school. Like, completely broken--I couldn’t use it at all. It needed to be fixed and my administration (thankfully) put a rush on it, but as someone who frequently does virtual demonstrations and activities I was beginning to panic a bit. How could I display presentations and have interaction on the board if the projector and board weren’t working? But then I remembered...PEAR DECK! With one simple code my students could log on and we could complete the presentations at our own pace.

Projector who?! We didn’t need one! By the time it arrived we were already settled nicely into using Pear Deck, although the projector was useful for displaying student responses in live time.

I’d also like to point out that my students loved the tool just as much as I did, and many said that this was the first time that a teacher had ever used a tech tool with them in math class. Keep in mind that I taught high school. I found it odd that more teachers at the school, especially math teachers, didn’t use tech tools, but I was glad that they were finally getting some experience using educational technology in math. We had a blast. They loved the versatility of the platform, they loved that the responses were displayed anonymously, they loved all of the different colors that you could use to draw and write, and they loved that their screens were mirrored with mine so they could take notes at their own pace. They commented that they would even take screenshots of the slides with their devices and save them into a folder--either a personal folder, a OneDrive, or a Google Drive folder--for later. This was a life saver for students who were absent that day; they would often ask their classmates to share the folders of the slides that they missed. We got really excited when features like Lock Screen were added. My students were just as hyped as I was to the point where the Pear Deck team even videoconferenced in with one of my classes to share their appreciation and how much they loved the tool! This was totally unprompted by me, by the way--one of my students actually suggested it!

When we went remote due to COVID in March I was a bit nervous that the platform wouldn’t work in a distance learning format. I had only ever done Pear Deck with all of my students in the same room. Now we were all scattered, with some as far away as China and Korea. I shouldn’t have even worried though because, as usual, Pear Deck was responsive and on top of it. Student-paced mode meant that students could work on activities asynchronously and I could look at responses with ease. When we used Pear Deck with instructor paced mode my students were able to log on flawlessly and participate in the lesson--even from China and Korea! It worked like a charm and there were no issues with lag or response time. I was impressed; we were all on different continents but it was like we were all together in the same classroom again.

I had almost four straight years of using the platform and absolutely loving it. THEN I got an email explicitly detailing their commitment to antiracism, tackling implicit bias, and making good on their inclusivity statement and I became a fan for life.

When I got this I was jumping for joy. First, this was the only time that an edtech company--to my knowledge--not only OPENLY ACKNOWLEDGED the fact that they are actively working toward anti-racism, but that they are undergoing ongoing training to address these topics and do better within the company. Why other edtech companies did not do this, I have no idea. But I applaud Pear Deck for being perhaps the first to make a statement like this. Second, this wasn’t lip service. Pear Deck puts their money where their mouth is. From the diverse lineup of people at Pear Fair 2020 to their intentional methods of reaching out to POC and BIPOC people to share their voices and expertise, to their up front conversations about compensation, to the creation of their Editorial Board--a group of trusted educators to bring greater awareness of the diverse needs of students and educators including specific needs of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and special needs communities--I am so proud to be using a product that just gets it. They understand why this is important and they are not shy to put these practices into place. At this point I’ve gotten to know some of the people at Pear Deck pretty well and they are as authentic as they appear. Super genuine people who are not only invested in the work that they do, but they’re also invested in making it better.

Most recently, Pear Deck’s sign in codes have changed from five letters to six letters. I interpret this as a sign of progress. Think of Kahoot. Remember Kahoot? When I first started using Kahoot in 2014 my log in codes were only four or five numbers. Now Kahoot has so many numbers that I actually have to write the code down on paper first before I type it in because I get lost in the number sentence (eight alternating 4’s and 5’s in a row...who has time for that?!). This is due to the sheer volume of Kahoots that are being made and shared. I have a hunch that Pear Deck will always keep it simple (no ten letter codes please!) but I am glad that more people are using the platform and taking advantage of what they have to offer. They deserve it.

...and as a token of appreciation for working with them on many different projects and activities, they sent me bread on a whim! Who doesn’t love that?! It was the perfect surprise!

Pear Deck has saved my instructional practices and my general peace of mind in more ways than I can count. Not only that, but they care. This is a company that sincerely cares for educators and wants the best for students. To me, it embodies the best about educational technology: creating authentic learning moments for students in a way that doesn’t overwhelm teachers.

Thank you, Pear Deck. I’ll continue to use your platform for as long as I can. And if you want to send a little bit more bread my way...you know where to find me.

First and foremost, the definition of a microaggression is the kinds of remarks, questions, or actions that are painful because they have to do with a person's membership in a group that's discriminated against or subject to stereotypes. For context, I am a Black, gay woman, and I am no stranger to microaggressions. To me they’re usually done in the form of questions (“who is the man and who is the woman in your relationship?”) or remarks (“I had no idea that a woman of color could get as far ahead as you!”). And, yes, those two examples are things that people have actually said to me in 2020.

I’ve learned to hold my head up high and not fall victim to the nonsense. Usually when I am a subject of a microaggression it comes from a place of the other person projecting their insecurities onto me. For example, the person who told me that they didn’t know that I, a woman of color, could get so far ahead is more than $350,000 in personal loan debt and over $20,000 in credit card debt himself due to too many evenings ordering bottle service and too many moments renting out large homes to impress potential partners. If you follow me on social media, especially Twitter, you know that I’m pretty vocal about whenever I feel like I have been wronged, especially when a microaggression happens to me. My response is never vindictive or vicious--my approach is that I lay out all the facts and explain how I perceived an event or something that happened.

About two weeks ago, I tweeted this. It got a bit of attention and, as per usual, the 280 character on Twitter just doesn’t do the situation justice. I’d like to use the time and this space on my blog today to explain the backstory, how it happened, how I felt, and just how ridiculous it is that it even came to fruition.

What happened?

As many of you know I am not a Seattle area native. My bio goes into detail about how I was born and raised in Marlton, NJ, and then went to South Carolina for college. Upon graduating with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education I immediately began working at a middle school in a suburb of Charleston, SC, teaching sixth grade science. My first year of teaching I met someone, a white woman, who I will refer to as Mrs. Z and we immediately hit it off. She was *also* teaching at the school. We were both elementary education majors in the throngs of middle school. I was a first year teacher and she had many years of teaching experience, but we found commonality in the fact that this was both our first years teaching middle school. Although we enjoyed our jobs and our students it was a bit of a tough transition for us and we found solidarity in our emotions and instructional practices. I was elated--I had my first friend in my new career!

I left the school in December 2018 because my wife and I were moving to the Seattle area for her job. Although I was sad to leave Mrs. Z and didn’t know what it would mean for our friendship, I found out that she was actually leaving as well to take a sabbatical, spend some more time with family, and try out some potential job changes. Upon arriving on the west coast I had a few jobs before my current one as a full time STEM Integration Transformation Coach, and for the past few years I have also been fully immersed in consulting for educational technology companies and tech firms as well. She and I didn’t talk much but every once and a while we would send each other a funny meme or message checking in and seeing if all was well.

And that’s how this all started--she messaged me a funny picture with the follow up of “hope you’re doing okay in this crazy world!”. I responded back letting her know that I was fine, that I was married now--Kourtney, my wife, and I were just in the early phases of dating when she and I first met--and that I hope that she and her family were staying safe. I also inquired what she has been up to since she left the school that we both used to work at and hoped that she was staying safe as well given the pressures of COVID, an election year, and the weather (it’s still hurricane season in South Carolina).

Before mentioning what she was actually up to, she professed that she could not support the Black Lives Matter movement because her husband was part of the police force and how she also “guesses” how it can be hard for me right now in life as a person of color. This should have been my first red flag. Not only did I find it absolutely nuts that she was centering her white self and her white husband alongside an ENTIRE MOVEMENT meant to shine a spotlight on police brutality amongst Black lives, this is not an “either/or” situation to me and can certainly open up opportunities to be “both/and.” If you stand for Black lives but are working in a systemically problematic environment that may make it hard for you to fight for Black lives, you (or in this case, her spouse) can be part of the good fight and use your influence to fight for internal change and positive influence within. Hell, my wife does this all the time! As a member of the military she has fought consistently for equality and positive change within her squadron for the many years that she has been involved. Perhaps he is working toward positive internal change, but that single exchange told me everything I needed to know on a surface level. For Mrs. Z to say that she straight up can’t support Black Lives Matter because her husband was part of the police force seemed like a cop out to me (no pun intended).

Notice that she hadn’t told me what she was actually up to yet and that all of this conversation seemed out of left field. I didn’t ask for her opinion on Black Lives Matter. This was purely a touch base, “hey, how are you doing?” message that was appearing to go off the rails. So I had to ask her again...what is going on??? What have you been doing? She eventually mentioned that she was taking a break from teaching outright, but was doing some other work including starting a small creative business for peace of mind. She sent me the website and I told her that her website looked beautiful and that I would check out her work.

She then asked me what I was doing and I gave her the full story: I left my last institution because of covert racism, I recently started my dream job as a role of STEM Integration Transformation Coach, I signed on with Ignite EdTech--an international educational technology consulting firm--and I have multiple independent projects that I am working on myself for fun. Her response?

Oh, no! Stay strong, friend! You are such a hard worker and I hope that you find one spot that can pay you what you deserve so you just have one job!

When I got this message my mouth dropped. What?! No! That is not what is happening at all! While I assume that she sent this with positive intent and wishing me to find a place that pays well, my wife and I do not struggle financially and the work that we do is not evidence of that. In fact, I’d argue that the amount of work that we do produces the exact opposite effect. It’s also interesting that when she mentioned she did something on the side my immediate reaction was to be supportive. I did not assume that she, her husband, and her family were struggling at all. I thought that it was a cool creative outlet and I told her that I would check out her work. Yet when I mentioned my side projects, successes, and activities her immediate reaction was that I and my wife were struggling. Keep that in mind.

The worst part of this is that my parents were in town visiting when I received this message. We were getting ready to go out for an early hike and breakfast. My parents, sitting in the house that my wife and I have paid for as 27 and 30 year old women without familial assistance in a custom kitchen that we designed ourselves. As two Black adults in their 50’s my parents have undoubtedly seen some nonsense, but seeing my father’s face twist into pure confusion and disgust as I read the text message out loud to him and my mom said it all. My mom, always the more vocal one, immediately started to go in about how she would respond to the message. She and I approach situations similarly when it comes to microaggressions so I opted to take her advice: lay out all the facts and correct her. My father agreed.

I took a deep breath while I began to type on my phone. I told Mrs. Z flat out that I make over six figures as a coach and a consultant. I told her the raise that I got by simply moving from a red state (South Carolina) to a blue state (Washington) even when I was still in the classroom was more than enough to even provide for Kourtney and I on one salary itself. I let her know that the projects, curriculum boards, and activities that I take a part of are not because my wife and I are struggling financially, but because we have financial goals that we would like to hit extremely early and we take pride in the work that we do.

The response I got?

Girl, you’re going to have to show me how you make all of this extra money and get all of these extra projects! My husband and I can barely make our mortgage payment!

Anddddd there it is. Projection, party of one!

Why is this problematic?

As I mentioned on Twitter, this was an incredibly frustrating microaggression to have to deal with before 5 AM PST.

To go back to my original point, it is interesting that when she mentioned she did something on the side my immediate reaction was to be supportive, and that when I mentioned my side projects and activities her immediate reaction was that I was struggling. This could be for a few different reasons:

• Race. This is the big one and seems to come up all. the. time. Let’s look at the facts: Black people earn, on average, less than white people. I’ve found that many white folx internalize this to mean that ALL Black people automatically earn less than white people do--regardless of what career fields both parties are a part of--and have even encountered this line of thought with people who I consider to be friends. A direct example of this is when I went to an acquaintance’s birthday party (pre-COVID) and her husband (white) remarked to her (white): “Why don’t you make more money than Victoria? That seems impossible.” She was a dog groomer at a mom and pop shop nearby and, at the time, I was a full time technology consultant. She only has her GED and I have my master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. See where I’m going with this? With all due respect to dog groomers, why the hell would he think that his wife would (and should!) make more than me?! That statement doesn’t even make sense on a tactical level, even typing it out is making me shake my head in disbelief that someone would even say such a thing. The reason those words came out of his mouth is because I am a Black woman and, to him, I should have been making less. Before you jump on the “how do you know that?!” bandwagon, I asked him DIRECTLY what he meant by that statement and after hemming and hawing for about 10 minutes he revealed that he thought Black people *always* made less money than white people. Hearing the direct opposite from me was a wake up call for him and he was definitely embarrassed after the fact (as he should have been). But, I digress. Based off of my conversation with Mrs. Z, possible translations of her statements include:

  • How can you, a person of color, not be struggling when I, a white woman, am?

  • How can you, a person of color, be making more money than me, a white woman?

  • You, a person of color, are working what essentially amounts to three jobs because you are hard up for money. I, a white woman, work one job because I am financially secure.

  • I can’t believe that you, a person of color, make more than me, a white woman! You’re going to have to show me how you make your money! (which is ALSO problematic and puts the labor on me to teach her how to do something while she just committed a microaggression toward me. Not cool.).

• Age. I am 27 and whenever I tell people they are usually shocked. After all, 27 year olds don’t own property in one of the highest cost of living areas in the United States! 27 year olds don’t consult for international companies and travel every month! 27 year olds should be living in their parent’s basement crying because of student loans and eating avocado toast! Jokes aside, I am 27 and Mrs. Z is around 40, maybe a bit older. So perhaps she was making assumptions that, since I am younger, I was not on the same salary level as her, or perhaps just based on my age alone that I could potentially be struggling financially. After all, the cards are stacked among us as millennials. However, her response back to me was that she and her husband could barely make their own mortgage payment. Financial stability is hard to come by these days and although Kourtney and I are very blessed to be in the position that we are in, we definitely don’t take kindly to the default "young person = struggling" narrative when we work incredibly hard for everything that we have and are very proud of our successes. Especially when the person giving the microaggression is perhaps struggling financially themselves. Again, not saying that was her default, but I’m throwing around possibilities as to how or why the microaggression happened.

• Geographical location. The Seattle area is expensive, y’all. I was at a restaurant last week that tried to charge me $8 for a SLICE of bread. At first glance Seattle is more expensive than where we lived in Charleston, SC. However I do find it interesting that my mortgage for my 1500 sq/ft home with four bedrooms on a 5000 sq/ft lot size in Tacoma, WA is actually just $400 more expensive per month than my rent for a 700 sq/ft apartment was in the Summerville, SC area. Plus, I’m near a real metropolitan area with jobs that have wages higher than $7.25/hr, actual infrastructure, and I live only 40 minutes away from an IKEA! Perhaps she thought I was working this much just to “keep up” with Seattle appearances, Seattle real estate, and Seattle prices? Either way, that’s still not the case, and an assumption that she may have made about me.

In closing words, it’s all wrong. Don’t make assumptions. Assumptions--especially when speaking with marginalized and disenfranchised populations--lead to microaggressions. Microaggressions lead to discomfort, and not the kind of discomfort you want to lean into to learn from. It causes discomfort because you made someone uncomfortable due to preconceived notions of race, gender, or identity. Not only is this not cool, but the discomfort may never go away and may never be rectified.

As for me and my wife, we’re going to keep kicking ass. I’ve got three exciting projects coming up that I can’t wait to share with you all and I’m pleased to announce that Kourtney has started her prerequisites for her degree program in nursing, which will lead to (many years down the road) her doctorate in nurse anesthesiology.

As for Mrs. Z...well...I wish her the best.

Part 1: How Did This Begin?

Note: This is part one of a five part series.

My wife and I usually like to unwind at the end of the day by walking the dog, watching The Real Housewives of New York, and having a glass of wine or a cup of tea. We both had tough days so it was definitely a wine night. As we began to talk about our days we both noticed something: our work lives, which used to be parallel to each other, were starting to merge in an unusual way. Without giving away too much information my wife is currently in the Air Force but is beginning to transition out for a degree in nursing, then her certified registered nurse anesthetist degree, then her doctorate in nurse anesthesia practice. I’ve pretty much stayed in the field of education for my entire adult career in many different ways, but most recently as an instructional coach and education consultant. We both remarked how both the nursing profession and education are largely dominated by women and how her new change in career is in contrast with the very male dominated world of the military.

After lamenting about a meeting where she spent a full 15 minutes learning about unpaid internships and volunteer opportunities before immediately learning about the paid opportunities that are available to gain more experience in her field, my wife dropped this line:

“Right now I’m feeling like they’re trying to use the fact that I’m a woman in the middle of a career transition to suggest that I do unpaid work. They even said that volunteering makes people feel good. I noticed that the women in the class were taking notes the entire time and asked a ton of questions about the volunteer work where the men actually turned off their cameras and muted their microphones during the volunteer work piece.”

I immediately told her that although they probably have positive intent with mentioning these opportunities (Get your foot in the door! Make connections! Get some experience in the field!) I refer to this practice as exploitation of empathy (a term she has not only heard before from me, but immediately resonated with) and that feeling that way is understandable, but can also be disappointing. Not to knock unpaid internships or volunteer opportunities but why not lead with the paid opportunities if they already exist? I was especially intrigued by the fact that the men in her class not only muted their microphones but also turned their cameras off when the unpaid opportunities were mentioned.

She dove deeper and talked about how although she has certainly encountered her fair share of nonsense in the military she never felt like her empathy was being exploited. She cannot pinpoint a time where she was asked to do volunteer work as a legitimate job. She never felt like she needed to take on unpaid work for the good of the group. She never felt the need to stay late to help pick up the slack for another employee. She has never, to this day, paid for a material for work or school besides maybe a pencil or pen here and there--all materials, activities, and resources are readily given to her, even now that she is in school (mostly due to her use of the G.I. Bill, but also because of the program that she is in). She has also always received per diem for travel and, if she has to pay out of pocket, has always been reimbursed. Overall she is happy and over the moon to be starting this new journey but this particular moment regarding even the sheer mention of unpaid work and the expectation that unpaid work would give her a leg up in the field gave her pause. She turned to me and said:

“I mean, is this how it always is when you’re a woman in a field dominated by women? I feel like you dealt a lot with this when you taught in South Carolina.”

What happened next was like that scene in Ratatouille where the food critic tastes the dish and is immediately transported back to his childhood; however, instead of being transported back to my childhood I was transported back to memories of complete and utter nonsense. I was surrounded by colleagues who would not only stay late but give some serious side eye if they saw a teacher leaving on time and even talk behind that teacher’s back about how they were just in the classroom for a paycheck, colleagues who would use hundreds of their own money to make their own classrooms look like something out of a Pinterest fever dream, colleagues who would take on after school clubs for what would literally be the equivalent of $1 per hour of pay...you get the point. Although I never gave in I definitely felt as though something was off. I had to set strict boundaries for myself to protect my energy and my bandwidth when I taught there, some boundaries being set later than I would have liked for them to be. Even my wife was able to recall multiple instances where she felt as though my administration was either going too far or asking too much of me and my colleagues to the point where during my second year she asked me if I wanted to quit.

After an hour or so of reflection with my wife I wondered if others, especially in the field of education, shared the same experiences. Distraught, I did what I always do and I took it to Twitter. The thread spread like wildfire and although the solidarity is comforting it is also very concerning to me. Exploitation of empathy runs rampant in education and there is a need to call it out. I feel especially pressed to call it out now given the unreasonable demands that some teachers are being put through right now given the pandemic. This is a conversation that is worth more than 280 characters.

Tomorrow I will be laying out exactly what exploitation of empathy is and how it deliberately harms folks. Stay tuned.

Part 2: What Exactly Is Exploitation of Empathy?

Note: This is part two of a five part series.

Welcome back, everyone. It's time to define the exploitation of empathy.

I use the term "exploitation of empathy" a lot on social media and also in my personal life and although it resonates with people I find that they seldom know what it means. So, let's define it! The definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person or being. The definition of exploitation is the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. Therefore, I refer to exploitation of empathy as leveraging a person’s emotions, attitude, or wellbeing for benefit or gain.

In layman's terms/if I were to be completely candid, exploitation of empathy is when folks repeatedly take advantage (or attempt to take advantage) of someone who is good-natured and wants to help.

A direct example of exploitation of empathy would be exactly what my wife described for me in yesterday's post: paid positions are open at a clinic to gain experience, but volunteer positions are recommended heavily in a meeting because volunteering makes you feel good. Volunteering does make people feel good, but you know what else does? Getting paid for work that they have done, especially if there is a paid position that essentially offers the opportunity for someone to do the same work. When it is explicitly stated that “volunteering makes you feel good” in contrast with the actual paid position that is open, it is implied that the “feel good” feeling a person receives after doing the job is supposed to be the compensation instead of actual monetary compensation.

The gain that is derived from exploitation of empathy can be directed to one person or it can be directed to multiple people (typically within a group, organization, or system). In the case that I just described, the “gain” is that the clinic receives free labor while the clients/patients still get serviced. However, this gain comes quite literally at expense of the person who is doing the task and therefore is giving the empathy--they are not being paid for their time, effort, or contributions.

A direct example of this in education (and we will be doing a freaking UNDERWATER CAVE DIVE into this tomorrow, I promise) is a teacher being tasked to be the supervisor of an afterschool club. Upon asking if there will be compensation, administration will tell the teacher that there is none but she should feel good about doing it because it might "look good" on a resume or "you stay late anyway, what's the problem?" or "the kids will really enjoy the club." And, yes, these are actual things that I have heard administrators say to teachers. So, in this case, the “gain” is that the school is attempting to guilt the teacher into receiving free labor so that the students have an after school club and the parents have an additional place to put their kid for an hour or so. However, this gain comes quite literally at expense of the teacher, who is not being paid for her time and labor regarding club hours, creating materials for the club, and (potentially) cleaning up after the club is finished.

You can see why this is problematic.

With exploitation of empathy the work done is often paraded “for the good of the group.” It is often unpaid work, or work that is done for very little, under the guise of “caring” and “kindness” and “helping” and “being a good person.” While caring and kindness and being helpful and being a good person are not necessarily negative attributes, they become convoluted when mixed in with exploitation of empathy. This is because the entire practice of exploitation of empathy dilutes the concept of empathy to a transactional practice for artificial gain when it is so, SO much more than that. When you think about empathy, it takes time and deep consideration to even interpret situations, let alone respond to them. When we take on tasks as human beings we often evaluate our empathy and general feelings regarding the task (is this something that we care about? How can we add value to this project? Is this worth our time?) and whether or not we actually have the bandwidth to complete it. Empathy is not just a bandage that you can slap on, parade around for a few hours, and call it a day. Empathy considers the emotional, physiological, and deeply interpersonal experiences that shape our world and how we see it (and also how others see the world as well), which in turn relates to how we respond to situations. To be an empathetic person and to lead life with empathy is a serious skill.

The issue is that this serious skill can be a double edged sword when you encounter the wrong person or the wrong institution. When you are an empathetic person--or a person known for exhibiting empathy--some people will take note of this and try to use it for gain, which is deliberate exploitation. Instead of actually helping people--including the giver of the empathy--it is harming all that are involved because the empathy is not being used for good. In stark contrast, empathy is being leveraged to exploit people’s needs in order to receive cheap or unpaid labor for “stuff” — stuff that, sometimes, the receiving party may not actually need, nor perhaps even want.

In tomorrow's post we'll be exploring how exploitation of empathy shows up in the fields dominated by women, particularly in education.

Part 3: How Does Exploitation of Empathy Show Up in Education?

Note: This is part three of a five part series.

Within the field of education exploitation of empathy becomes even more damning. To be completely frank, the entire concept of exploitation of empathy runs rampant and has almost become the default expectation for teachers; the vast majority of teachers being white women who have largely been socialized to care for others and not think much about taking on extra tasks for the good of the group. As a woman myself I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve been expected to zip up jackets, tie shoes, settle a playground fight, or cook food just because of my gender--and this wasn’t even in a school building. This has literally happened when my wife and I were at a local park in the area walking our dog; two young children came up to us and asked if we could help them zip their jackets, tie their shoes, and play with them. Even from a young age children are socialized to view women as “helpers” and givers of empathy. Research backs this up. So, it only makes sense for the field of education--which is largely dominated by white women--to constantly feel the need to use their empathy to help students, colleagues, and the community.

Speaking of children, as a teacher this exploitation of empathy is usually veiled under the phrasing of doing things “for the kids.” While this initially has positive intent, “for the kids” has taken on to essentially mean neglect your own wellbeing if it means that you create positive experiences for children in your classroom. I have never seen “for the kids” used in a positive way. I’ve only seen it used as a cop out excuse for why someone is busting their backside at their job at the expense of their own health and peace of mind. For example:

• Stay at the school late and skip dinner...you’re creating an awesome lesson for the kids.

• I know that you just spent $500 of your own money on school supplies. This makes money tight for you and your own family...but you did it for the kids.

• I’d like for you to run an after school program. You won’t get paid, but you’ll be doing it for the kids.

• Grading until 1 or 2 AM? You’re losing sleep, but you’re doing it for the kids.

• We won’t reimburse you for the fees you paid to attend that conference, but you went to get some more strategies to make you a better teacher for the kids.

In what other profession would this be acceptable? Seriously, think about this. Does a nurse purchase his or her own needles for the patients? Does a software engineer buy his or her own technology for the clients? Does a construction worker buy his or her own hard hats for the field site? I think not. Education is one of the only professions I know that allows for this to happen under the pretense of “caring” for the kids. While do we care, I fully believe that we are also being exploited if we partake in this practice of giving and giving and giving with absolutely nothing in return other than a pat on the back, a hug from a child, and a mention at a staff meeting. While these things might bring joy and warm your heart, they are not compensation for the hours of time that you just put in grading until late at night and it’s certainly not a reimbursement check for the money you just spent on extra supplies.

I’ll give a personal example. When I was a student teacher my cooperating teacher would get in every morning at 5:45 AM. Because she got in at 5:45 AM I was also expected to get in at 5:45 AM (expectation from my teacher preparation program). School started at 8:20 for students so when I first started out I was very confused as to what merited almost an additional 3 hours worth of working time before the day actually started. She did tell me that she used that time to prep for the kids, but I can candidly say that she didn’t really do much of anything during that time. She made copies, she talked to other teachers, she chose a book for a read aloud, etc. It was work, for sure, but nothing that couldn’t have been done in 30 minutes. It certainly didn’t merit an additional two and a half hours worth of time. On top of that, she would also stay until 6:00 PM, which means that I was also expected to stay until 6:00 PM. The school day ended for students at 2:45 and for teachers at 3:30, so, AGAIN, I was interested in what merited more than 3 hours worth of working time after the day officially ended. It was more of the same: she ran an after school club (running club) for no additional compensation, she prepped lessons for the following day, she did even more talking with teachers in the building, she would go hang out in the principal’s office...you get the point. There was a lot of “nothing” going on during these before and after times that, to me, definitely seemed like exploitation of empathy and time. On the onset it looked like she was choosing to do this but I quickly learned that this was the culture of the school. Many teachers didn’t just leave after the final bell rang. Instead, they stayed after for hours on end, doing hours of unpaid work.

Remember, contract hours in teaching start and end at certain times--anything outside of that means that the employee is utilizing their own time and resources to do work that is going unpaid per the contract. So, since I love math, I decided to do a little bit of math! Let’s estimate that my cooperating teacher was working about 12 hours per day (6:00 AM - 6:00 PM) when her contract explicitly stated that the district would only pay for the hours of 7:30 AM - 3:30 PM. After looking up her salary via the salary scale, factoring in her years of experience, and breaking it down on a day-to-day basis, she made around $300/day pre-tax. If she were to actually follow contract hours and work within the 7:30 AM - 3:30 PM time frame this would mean that she would make around $37 per hour pre-tax. That’s a solid wage...but, again, she had been in the classroom for more than 20 years. I know folks that make more than $37 per hour who are my age. Hell, I make more than $37 per hour. And, remember, she worked more than 8 hours a day--she was actually working closer to 12. When you factor all of the extra time and lollygagging she was doing around the school, that hourly wage rate drops to $25 per hour pre-tax. But, again, exploitation of empathy led her to believe that was an acceptable amount of time to spend at the school, as well as that this is an acceptable amount of pay for more than 20 years of service and time...because it’s for the kids.

A fun fact about this cooperating teacher is that, on my final evaluation, she made a snarky remark that I started to leave earlier than she did (I straight up told her at one point that I’m not sure why I needed to be in so early or be in so late, and that I was going to begin to set boundaries for work/life balance) which meant that I wasn’t “cut out” for the teaching profession. Yeah. But, I will repeat: exploitation of empathy leads people to not only believe that putting in hours over contract and salary expectations leads you to be a “team player” and “star teacher,” but that it is an exemplar to be upheld and anyone who challenges that is automatically “not fit” for the job.

Speaking of salaries, another way that exploitation of empathy appears in education is through the abysmal state of teacher pay, which has more or less been linked to the thought that teaching is “women’s work.” Let’s lay out the facts: the average teacher in the United States makes around $58,000 a year. While this might seem like a solid amount, this is the average, meaning that most educators start out way lower and would be lucky if they saw a high five figure salary (70K+). Incremental pay increases are often measly and do not reflect a proper cost of living and this is only exacerbated in states known for low teacher pay and minimal union support. But again, exploitation of empathy leads teachers (and, at times, the public eye) to believe that this is an acceptable amount of pay for multiple years of service and time due to being in it “for the kids.”

If I were to think back to my experiences teaching in South Carolina--a red state that had virtually no teacher’s union--a fellow educator was in the field for 33 years and had her master’s degree. She was in her 50’s. By the time she exited the profession she was making a whopping (sarcasm) $58,000. Read that again. $58,000 after 33 years. And we weren’t in the boondocks of South Carolina, either. We were in a suburb of Charleston where the average home is currently costing around $330,000 and much more if you are interested in living closer to downtown Charleston or the beach. I am asking you: if you were a person in your fifties and looking to purchase property in the area, would YOU be able to purchase a home on a $58,000 salary, and in what other profession would $58,000 be an acceptable amount of money for THIRTY-THREE YEARS of service and time?!

Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

For additional transparency I am going to link the salary scale from where I taught in South Carolina here. This was recently updated to reflect the new calendar year, but notice that if a teacher just stayed at the bachelor’s degree level they would be making less than $50,000 even after 28 years in the profession. That is downright criminal. In order to make over $80,000 in that district you’d need at least 20 years and your doctorate degree. You might look at this and immediately jump to thinking that this would be an incentive for teachers to get more degrees and certifications to increase their pay, which might be true, but then who bears the burden of paying for that? Some states (such as South Carolina) do not outright pay for advanced degrees or certifications, and you’d be hard pressed to convince someone making just $30,000 per year to take out another $30,000 in loans to get a pay bump so insignificant that they might not be able to pay off that loan.

In contrast, I’ll also link the salary scale for my new “home district” in Washington state (not where I work, but where I live) here. The first thing you’ll notice is the length of the document because, look at that, we have an ACTUAL UNION and an actual collective bargaining agreement! The second thing you’ll notice is that there is a literal $30,000 difference between the initial pay for a bachelor’s degree here and of that in South Carolina. Folks will argue cost of living and whatnot but when I moved to the Seattle area my salary literally doubled but my cost of living increase was only 4-5%. Yes, you are reading that right.

Interestingly enough, I’m not a parent but my mother has always been extremely open about how this exploitation of empathy in education also flows into parent groups, PTA meetings, and classroom activities. Every year in elementary school my mom was offered to be a “room mom,” which was a mother that volunteers to bring snacks and host the holiday parties, but she declined every single time. The first thing I’d like to point out for you is how that language is not inclusive. It’s not “room parent” or “room grown-up.” The direct terminology being used was “room mom,” and she still has documentation from when I was in elementary school on this. Second, she and my father would often sign up to bring napkins or paper plates to class parties or after school clubs instead of baking brownies or baking cakes; their reasoning was that they would not allow for their time and empathy to be exploited. As a working couple--one in health and one in government--neither of my parents had the time of day to bake elaborate cakes for bake sales or volunteer at the auction, but somehow all of this responsibility was expected to be leveraged onto my mom. I know this because nearly every report card was addressed to my mother, every classroom request was addressed to my mother, every parent-teacher conference notification was sent to my mother, and every bit of communication was sent to my mother first before my father even had a chance to lay eyes on it. My parents are not divorced and they do not live in separate households. They have been married for 29 years (I am 27). When they send me letters and cards both of their names are on their postage seal--they do not appear separately! And yet, my mother was often considered to be the “default parent” when people and systems wanted to communicate about me and my brothers, and my dad was not.

I want to add a note that my mom would immediately shut that down. My parents run a fairly egalitarian household. My dad is awesome, by the way, and has helped with his fair share of homework and attended many recitals and activities for my brothers and I. And as I’ve mentioned before, he was also THE cook in the house. I just think it’s extremely telling that, when exploring exploitation of empathy, multiple systems automatically defaulted to my mother as the primary caretaker. I also do not feel like I had less of an upbringing because my parents brought plates and cups to school instead of a dozen cupcakes.

In the fourth installment, tomorrow we'll be discussing the abysmal things that happen when exploitation of empathy becomes an entire school philosophy and how this directly relates to teacher burnout.

Part 4: How Does Exploitation of Empathy Impact School Climate and Culture?

Note: This is part four of a five part series.

Yesterday I spoke about what happens when exploitation of empathy is leveraged upon an individual, so now it's time to talk about what happens when it is leveraged for an entire school or institution.

When an entire school runs its climate and culture strategy on exploitation of empathy to get results out of its students and teachers, this can quickly turn into toxic positivity. Via The Psychology Group, toxic positivity is the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience. Think “good vibes only” and “be kind” ad nauseum.

Exploitation of empathy is the cousin to toxic positivity.

It’s why you see teachers touting “be kind” to children yet snarking in the teacher workroom about a teacher who decided to take off for the day to care for his or her sick child. It's also why administration can try make you feel guilty for taking a sick day in the first place. It’s why principals and instructional coaches claim that teaching is a “calling, and not a career.” (side note: in what male dominated career will you ever hear that it is a calling, and not a career? When I worked full time in tech, I never heard it. My wife is in the military and she has never heard it. But yet, you hear it all the time in female dominated careers such as teaching, nursing, and social work. I interpret this to mean that this “calling” is an exploitation of empathy to lead me to believe that although wages are low, we should feel good because it’s a “calling.”) It’s why administration will openly say statements like “if you’re not putting in at least 12 hours a day, you’re not working hard enough.” It’s also why some teachers believe that if they’re not putting in at least 12 hours a day then they’re not working hard enough. It’s also why some teachers believe that the teacher who comes in on time and leaves on time every day and doesn’t stay late isn’t doing their job. It’s why growth mindset posters adorn school halls like wallpaper but legitimately no follow up is done to explain to kids exactly that growth mindset actually is--the heavy lifting is put on the teachers, not on the administrators, to explain this to students. It’s why administrators set ridiculous precedents like that all emails will have a 24 hour turnaround time for an answer, and why parents think that sending a teacher an email at 9:00 PM will receive an immediate response at 9:05 PM that same evening, and if it doesn’t then an angry email will follow in the morning.

Think back to the experience that I shared when I was a student teacher. My cooperating teacher, quite frankly, had no business working twelve hour days, and neither did any of the teachers at that school. The additional time spent working, while definitely not required, was encouraged and spent lollygagging. They were talking with each other, they were taking turns at the copier, they were laminating something they could’ve gotten one of the many parent volunteers or a student to do...you get the point. Besides the talking these are all tasks that could have gotten done in 30 minutes, maximum. Because so much time was spent talking, there wasn’t a lot of time doing actual work. However, it was kind of a school expectation for teachers to hang back and talk about their days. If they didn’t, something interesting would happen--teachers would do what I call “empathy bombing” where they would ask question upon question under the impression of “caring” about that teammate when they really weren’t. I saw it happen all the time: they were constantly asking why somebody wasn't going to be attending, they were insinuating with clear sarcasm that some folks must have had somewhere better to be or something better to do than to be at the meeting, and overall they were just piling on the empathy in an attempt to get the teacher to stay ("aww, I can't believe you're going to miss it! I'll be so much fun and we really want you to be there!"). It was all under the assumption that the team was caring about their teammate and they wanted them to come, but it was really that trap: it was exploitation of empathy. They wanted the teacher to come because they wanted them to be stuck there like how they were all stuck there. How dare a teacher have to go pick up their kid from day care or go to a doctor's appointment, right? We'll be gossiping in the work room and clearly that takes priority!

I’m not entirely sure if the “hey, let’s all hang back and talk” initiative was meant in earnest and as a way to build camaraderie, and seeing some of the behavior from the teachers when folks didn’t want to stay back gives me genuine pause. However, I do know that it shouldn’t have been a tacit expectation and there certainly should have been food or drinks provided since it was happening after mandated working hours (I do this now with every workplace and organization I am involved in--if we want to have a debrief session or meeting and it is after working hours, there WILL be food and there will be lemonade!). Also, if I were to also reflect back on my cooperating teacher's external duties, she definitely should have received compensation for the running club. Yes, it was a bunch of fourth and fifth graders running around a neighborhood in the back of the school, but still. She did it for the kids because somebody had to run it and they picked her, but she should have still received money for her time.

Another really fun (narrator: it was, indeed, not fun) example of exploitation of empathy that I experienced is that when I was on my engagement trip to Walt Disney World with my wife, Kourtney, I got an email from my principal asking me where my substitute teacher was for the day and wondering what should be done with my students since there was not an adult in my classroom. When I got the email I froze. First, I wasn’t there. I wasn't even in the state of South Carolina. How the hell was I supposed to know where my substitute teacher was for the day?! I had just gotten engaged and this was literally the last thing on my mind! Second, it was completely inappropriate for her to be messaging me on my time off, especially given the circumstance that it was my engagement trip. But she was trying to leverage empathy to get me to respond for the kids--due to the fact that I did not have a substitute teacher, the students would either have to be split up amongst the other teachers in the building or an administrator would have to come in and teach my class for the day. It was a total “won’t somebody please think of the children?!” move from their end. I get that this was part of their problem solving routine, but good grief--texting teachers on their approved time off should not be the problem solving routine at all. Y’all are the administrators and get paid the big bucks. You can figure this out while I go ride The Peoplemover, eat a Dole Whip, and admire the new sapphire on my ring finger.

When you have an administrator or work in a school that runs on the exploitation of empathy sometimes you are asked to do things that are unreasonable or downright unsafe in order to provide educational experiences “for the kids” as well. While the experiences I had when I was teaching in South Carolina were fairly benign (annoying, but benign), I never felt unsafe. A mere two hours away, though, I had a friend that taught in a crumbling building with no heat or air conditioning. A tile from the ceiling actually fell down during one of her lessons. Students were coming to the school she taught at in the winter in thick, heavy jackets, and her windows were so old and dilapidated that cold air frequently flew in. She put in multiple requests through her school leadership and also through district leadership but not much was done besides giving her a space heater in her room. There have been teachers that do things like purchase all school supplies for their students themselves because their school refuses to give them any, not even pencils. Things like running an entire science lab on two graduated cylinders and one bottle of iodine for the year because “the budget didn’t allow for anything else,” yet the football team just got new jerseys and helmets and the chess team just got new boards. Things like paying for conferences out of pocket because the school budget won’t allow for it, yet the superintendent gets a $2000 per month clothing budget. Things like being asked to run an after school club with no compensation on their end or available materials to build from.

Why do we put up with this?

No, seriously. Why do we put up with this? I know that we love our jobs, but come on. It’s got to be better than this.

Unfortunately, this is allowed to happen because many folks do not believe that exploitation of empathy is a problem. For every teacher that refuses to have their empathy exploited, there is likely one that has no idea that their empathy is being exploited or--even worse--a teacher who acknowledges this but will gladly perform these unreasonable actions under the pretense of being there “for the kids.” My cooperating teacher did not believe that her empathy was being exploited, the same as the hundreds upon thousands of teachers who also do not believe that their empathy is being exploited when, at times, it very clearly is.

A different example that I also encountered of this phenomenon was with a different teacher--30 years in, making around $56,000, who told me that she spent over $1000 of her own money on decorations to make a paper mache volcano for her classroom and some other volcano themed things. I was so shocked that the first thing I asked her was: "...$1000 American dollars? Not monopoly money or anything?" She confirmed that, yes, she spent over $1000 of her own money. So I decided to ask her, why did she need a paper mache volcano for her classroom? Her response was that it would look nice. I pushed her even farther--there are a lot of things that make your classroom look nice that don't cost you $1000 of your own money (hello, Target dollar section!), so why did she feel compelled to spend that type of money on something that would likely be taken down from the classroom after a year? She revealed to me that, as a first grade teacher, it was an expectation from her principal to have her classroom look like what I refer to as a "Pinterest fever dream." She wanted her classroom to look as nice as the other teacher's rooms, but her district only gave her $250 in money for supplies and materials for the entire year. Because she didn't want to let her principal down, she took matters into her own hands and just decided to pay out of pocket. I was shocked. When I pay for something out of pocket for work it might be $10 for a pen I've been eyeing. An additional $750 out of pocket is downright wild. I was even more shocked when she revealed to me that one of her co-teachers spent $2000 of her own money to make her classroom also look like a Pinterest fever dream, the theme being "into the wilderness." I asked the teacher if it was worth the money and she smiled and told me that she would "gladly do it again" because it made her classroom look good "for the kids," and also that her principal was happy with the look of her classroom as well.

As long as this mentality persists with them it will persist within the profession as a whole.

In tomorrow's last and final installation, we'll be exploring ways to squash exploitation of empathy and strategies to protect our own empathy within the profession.

Note: This is part five of the a five part series.

I do not apologize for the path that I chose for my career. I love my job and I love working in education. I did make a deliberate choice to leave the classroom and become an instructional coach and educational consultant because I knew that, within the classroom, my opportunities were limited directly due to this lack of empathy; I’ve worked in institutions where positions like team lead or department head amassed a $100 stipend for the year (which, to me, is not worth it for the amount of time and work that you have to put in). At the same time, I am recognizing something has got to give--exploitation of empathy, especially now, is NOT sustainable. I also know that I can only control myself and what I do. If another educator wants to spend $1000 on his or her own money for supplies or feels the need to answer an angry email from a parent at 10 PM because they are afraid that their administration would be mad at them if they didn’t, I have no agency over that. It fills me with rage, but I still have no agency over that.

As an instructional coach in a school district that is currently 100% virtual I try extremely hard to not replicate the systems, practices, and toxic positivity that I have seen in previous environments that I’ve worked in. I directly advise my teachers that we all have to protect our empathy, especially in a remote learning environment. However, this is easier said than done, especially if you are in a school that has a culture of exploitation of empathy (thank GOODNESS I am not, but my heart goes out to all of the folks that are).

Here’s my advice:

• Do the math - calculate to see if your empathy is being exploited. This is probably the most concrete thing that you can do. Remember, folks, we are only paid for contract hours. To do this, you take your daily pay pre-tax and you divide it by the amount of hours that you are working each day. Then, take your daily pay pre-tax and divide it by the amount of contract hours each day that your district or school is actually paying for. When you’re done, compare the two. Sometimes the results are shocking. To copy and paste the example from Part 3: let’s estimate that my cooperating teacher was working about 12 hours per day (6:00 AM - 6:00 PM) when her contract explicitly stated that the district would only pay for the hours of 7:30 AM - 3:30 PM. After looking up her salary via the salary scale, factoring in her years of experience, and breaking it down on a day-to-day basis, she made around $300/day pre-tax. If she were to actually follow contract hours and work within the 7:30 AM - 3:30 PM time frame this would mean that she would make around $37 per hour pre-tax. And, remember, she worked more than 8 hours a day--she was actually working closer to 12. When you factor all of the extra time and lollygagging she was doing around the school, that hourly wage rate drops to $25 per hour pre-tax. $12 per hour is lost in just that scenario from exploitation of empathy. In a typical 190 day school year contract this amounted to nearly $20,000 lost in theoretical wages and pay for her.

• Set boundaries. This is the big one. Set boundaries, y’all! For example, even as an instructional leader I have a HARD boundary that I do not answer work emails from my district before 8 AM PST and after 4 PM PST, Monday through Friday. I do not answer work emails or phone calls on the weekends. That is family time for me where my wife and I can continue to watch The Real Housewives of New York and see Ramona make a fool out of herself while Bethenny mentions it all. At any rate, you totally have agency to reinforce boundaries if you so choose, especially if you’re getting stressed at the mere mention of doing something. Think about this: if you were working in an office, calls after work hours would be directed to voicemail and emails would be left for the following day for people to answer. Education and teaching should not be any different. I tell this to my teachers as well: synchronous instructional time is 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM PST right now. If simultaneously checking your email and teaching is distracting during that time, answer them after. If clock hours are done at 3:00 PM, clock hours can be done at 3:00 PM--you don’t need to stay working until 9:00 PM. My feelings will not get hurt if you choose to turn off your computer at 3:01 PM. Hell, I wouldn’t even notice, and my computer even turns off at 4:00 PM! If you are working harder than your administrator, that is a red flag and I usually meet with folks to see what I can do to take off some of the workload for them. Boundaries are healthy and we all need them.

• SAY NO. If an administrator asks you to do something that you feel uncomfortable doing, say no. If someone (a parent, a colleague, a school member) tries to guilt you into doing something, say no. You are well within your boundaries to say no. I know that this is easier said than done, but here’s my framework. Take this situation from a few months ago:

Admin: You’re going to need to stay late tonight. We have an impromptu Zoom meeting with the board and I’d like you to present data.

Me: No.

Admin: But...it’s a meeting with the board.

Me: That’s not going to work for me, so no. It’s last minute, I have nothing prepared, and I already have family plans.

Admin: All of the other administrators will be there.

Me: That’s great for them, but not for me. I look forward to seeing the notes afterward and will follow up with you later.

Admin: You’re really not attending?

Me: That’s correct. I’ve already said no. I look forward to seeing the notes from the meeting.

There were about four different ways that I said “no” in that scenario. One was a straight up no. The other was a “that’s not going to work for me.” The other was a “that’s great for them, but not for me. And the last one was “I’ve already said no.” I try to give folks just one answer, but if someone continues to press then I do get a bit creative with the no’s.

I’ve been lucky to have administrators and colleagues that respect these boundaries that I have for myself, but I do know that this gets complicated if your administrator or colleague is--I’m just going to call it out--a bully. I have unfortunately been in this situation before--not with an administrator, but with my gem (sarcasm: she was not a gem) of a cooperating teacher. She tried to guilt trip and bully me into coming in early and staying late after I told her that wasn’t going to fly with me. If you have an administrator or colleague that will try to bully you into doing something or guilt trip you into doing something, this task becomes even harder. However, I do find that this strategy still works, and I usually arrange time to talk to them later as to how my boundaries felt disrespected and how I did not feel valued in that moment. Here is my framework for that:

Admin: We missed you at the meeting last night.

Me: As we discussed earlier, I couldn’t be there. It was last minute and I had family plans, although I do look forward to reading the notes. I’d like to talk to you for a moment or two when you have the time not about what happened at the meeting, but how I felt when this request was sprung on me and you kept pushing for me to attend after I said no. I set boundaries for myself to maintain a work/life balance and at that moment I felt like that boundary was being disrespected. To maintain our relationship and to make sure that everyone is on the same page, let’s find a shared time to meet so we can discuss this.

I’m not going to lie, folks are usually stunned when I tell them this. I don’t think that they expect for me to push back. However, I am a huge fan of self-advocacy and now that I’m an administrator I don’t see nearly enough of it; I chalk it up to systemic bullying in the entire system of education and the fear of going to your superior or even a fellow colleague and speaking up for yourself. While I know this entire practice of self-advocacy might make some uneasy, it is paramount when we consider protecting our empathy. People do not know that our empathy is being exploited until we tell them directly.

• To organize yourself, consider creating a checklist--either the night before or the morning of--for what you need to do. I’ve found that creating a checklist helps to keep me organized with what my tasks are. I am a HUGE fan of Microsoft OneNote so I keep all of my to do lists in there and I separate it into three different sections: coaching responsibilities for the day (how many teachers am I visiting today? Who am I meeting with to discuss lesson planning?), consulting responsibilities for the day (how many statement agreements am I writing? Who do I have to contact or follow up with?), and personal responsibilities for the day (did I call that contractor and let him know that we’ve decided to go with another company for our bathroom remodel? Did I order that new pair of shoes?). It helps to keep me balanced and organized.

• If you don’t have the mental bandwidth for it, don’t do it. This goes hand and hand with the checklist. Sometimes it’ll be 6 PM PST, I still have some personal items to take care of on my checklist, and I am just done. I don’t try to push through because, truth be told, that would make me even more exhausted. I just push it off to the next day. There are some exceptions to this rule (like bills being paid) but for the most part if my brain can’t handle it at the time then I just won’t do it. In teaching this looks different because it’s not like you can just show up to class and say “hey, I don’t really feel like doing anything today. Thanks, all! Go play Nintendo Switch!”, but there are tech tools like Kahoot and Quizizz that assist with student learning (and many have pre-made templates and activities!), as well as platforms like NewsELA, Desmos, and Geogebra that have pre-made lessons. Y’all also know that I am a huge Pear Deck fan; their premade templates are amazing. Buncee also has a wonderful template library. If you’re in a pinch and you really don’t have the bandwidth to plan a lesson, don’t hesitate to use one of these platforms. Your Algebra 2 students won’t be at a loss if the entire class period is spent on Desmos completing an activity on parabolas and--here's a little secret--I won't ding ANYONE on an evaluation or visit for using a tech tool for the entirety of the lesson.

• Take care of yourself. This goes hand in hand with mental bandwidth. How are we taking care of ourselves, and how are we making sure that our empathy is not being exploited? I feel like the unofficial slogan of 2020 has been “give grace,” however, it seems like none is being extended to us as educators. We deserve grace too, and sometimes we have to give it to ourselves if nobody is giving it to us. When we give ourselves grace we are actively taking care of ourselves. Personally, I have a spa membership and it is the best money that I have ever spent. My wife and I take periodic screen breaks throughout the work day and a long screen break when we are done to go walk the dog. We’ve taken day trips to national parks on the weekends just to be out in nature. Whatever it is that you do to take care of yourself, do it.

If I were to go back to the talk that I had with my wife, I mentioned in my Twitter thread that I walked away from our conversation feeling extremely disappointed. There are so many layers to exploitation of empathy, especially in education: the fact that the profession is dominated by women, the fact that many teachers willingly partake in it, the fact that those who don’t are sometimes looked down upon, the fact that teacher burnout is VERY real and exploitation of empathy has a direct hand in this...I could go on and on. And every single one of these layers is absolutely unacceptable.

She asked me what I needed, and my direct response was:

“What I need is for the profession of education to stop exploiting teacher empathy under the guise of caring about students.”

I mean this with my whole heart. I desperately need for the profession of education to stop exploiting teacher empathy under the guise of caring about students.

Thank you for reading, thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next week.

So, my school changed its schedule in two different--yet significant--ways.

First and foremost, it's a pandemic. Because of the pandemic, the parameters had (initially) changed for the dates/times that folks can come into the school to do work if they chose to do so. Up until this point there were designated times and days for people to come in (particularly teachers) in case they wanted to teach from their classrooms instead of at their homes, but as an instructional coach I was able to set my hours and days to come into the building myself. I enjoy working outside of the home so I set my hours to be in the school on a literal day-to-day basis. At first I was there Tuesdays and Thursdays all day (8:00 AM - 4:00 PM), but the other instructional coach was not in at that time and I wanted to adjust my hours to ensure that we were there at the same time to collaborate. In turn, my hours were adjusted from Tuesday-Thursday to basically daily. This might seem mundane but I was in there nearly every day--I spent my Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in the building from 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM (instructional time) in case teachers or administrators wanted to speak with me face to face or if an emergency happened. I conducted all meetings and class visits during this time as well, since this was my school's synchronous instructional time. When I met with the instructional coach we met in a conference room with all of the windows open with our masks on. The Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday was my routine literally up until last Thursday when I got a message informing me of a new shift: effective immediately there were very strict and specific times for teachers, administrators, and staff to come into the building, meaning that as an instructional coach my schedule and "face time" in the building would have to change as well.

I completely understand the need for this. Cases are up in my area, a stay at home order was rumored to take into effect at the time (and, at the moment, is CURRENTLY in effect from November 15th to December 14th), and this is in an effort to keep everyone safe and healthy in the midst of this pandemic. However, I am currently questioning what this might mean for the long term. I was not given a definitive date as to when I can resume my regular schedule, and teachers (and students! and families!) also do not have any sustained information regarding the status of school besides the fact that we will be remote until at least the end of December 2020. Teachers weren’t routinely in the building anyway (I saw two on a frequent basis face-to-face, all the others I saw remotely), so most of my time was spent in an office space visiting virtual classrooms, conducting meetings, and drafting communication. It’s no substitute for the typical school environment but I did enjoy being an admin “on duty,” if that makes sense. Now I’ll still be “on duty,” just in a very different way--I’ll be conferencing in from my home office. While my dog, Ren, will be happy that I am home more often, it does make me wonder what the state of teaching in my building may look like in the spring.

Another way that they’ve changed the schedule is the elongation of “passing time,” meaning the time that it takes for a student to go from one digital class to another. Initially all passing time was only five minutes. Now, the first passing time (from school’s start to first period) is ten minutes, the second and third passing times are five minutes, and the passing time from third period to fourth period is ten minutes. Interesting, right? While I am a HUGE fan of more passing time between class periods, I would assume that all passing periods would be the same (preferably at 10 minutes), but not in this scenario.

It’s too early to tell exactly how this will play out, but I am anxious (yet optimistic!) to see the changes.

It's been a smooth two months since I've last posted. Sorry, y'all! Things have been busy and heavy. If you're in the United States you likely feel the same. It feels so hard to stay grounded right now because of the events surrounding us, which are largely led and cultivated by white supremacist groups and propaganda. It's even harder to stay focused on my work--which is largely focused on equity and anti-racism in education and educational technology--when it doesn't seem like there's much to look forward to right now. Also, my family and I are based in Washington state which is still on so heavy of a lockdown that gyms are still closed and the stay-at-home order seems to elongate every day (for our health and safety, of course, but I'm definitely feeling like I'm at the end of my rope with these constant non-updates). Most days I feel like I don't even have the words to explain my emotions. I feel anxious, nervous, worried, and frustrated after the largely wasted and chaotic year I feel like 2020 was. However, I'm also cautiously optimistic for what 2021 will bring, and it seems like it's already looking up.

The other day my wife and I sat down to make a list of budding positives and "wins" to ground ourselves in positivity in gratitude. Our process was the following:

• Take five minutes to independently think about the positives of last year, as well as potential positives this upcoming year (either actualized or imagined).

• Take five minutes to write down those positives.

• Then, discuss these positives together. This had no time limit. We mostly reminisced on the positives of last year, but with regard to the potential positives this upcoming year we began to talk about what we can do to make those a reality or--if they're already on the horizon--continue to ground ourselves in gratitude and support each other as we start various new journeys.

I thought I'd take the time to update you all on some major ones for us--perhaps this is something you may consider to do as well.

Looking to The Positives

• We made it out of 2020 healthy and intact. Honestly, we're just happy we're still here.

• My wife and I celebrated one year of marriage on November 23rd, 2020 in Sedona, AZ. If you're looking for a place to travel once you feel safe enough to, I highly recommend it. We had a blast and it was nice to just be in a quaint desert town and relax. Great food, great wineries, great parks. 10/10.

• Upon returning from Sedona, my dog's daycare said that he earned the title of "Best Dressed." Not surprised. If you follow me on social media, particularly Twitter, you know that my dog (Ren) loves his sweaters.

• In December of 2020 I presented one of my cornerstone sessions, X, Y, and Devices, at ISTE. This year's event was 100% virtual, but nevertheless I loved every single second of it. I've updated my "Seminars and Session" at the top with a list of every external professional development I've given (if I also included internal ones I do for work on the list it would be a novel, so I decided to keep it to external).

• My two proposals for the Northwestern Council for Computer Education, otherwise known as NCCE, got accepted. This was a huge win for me--last year I was scheduled to co-present at NCCE, but I was not allowed to go for a very good reason: COVID had just hit Seattle, NCCE is hosted in Seattle, and my administration did not feel that it was safe for me to attend. Fair and valid. However, this year's event will be 100% virtual and I am so, so excited.

• My wife got her first choice for clinicals (if you're read other blog posts, you know that my wife is in school to be a nurse). It's at a beautiful hospital AND we do not have to move. I'd also call that a win!

• Our main bathroom renovation is ALMOST complete. It's taken a bit longer than we expected but we're already really pleased with the product and we figure we'd rather have a beautiful bathroom that takes longer to finish than a somewhat-okay looking bathroom that got finished in a hurry.

• We also got a new LEGO set to work on after work. I'd consider this a win as well!

Let's talk about that last positive! Completely unrelated to education and educational technology, but if you need a stress release or are just tired of looking at a screen for 8+ hours a day I've found LEGO to be extremely beneficial to my mental and emotional health, and a great stress release. It feels so great to be working with something tangible in a world that is so largely digital right now. There are also multiple cool and elaborate sets for if you'd like a larger LEGO project (my friend swears by the Harry Potter one), but I'm a fan of just getting a bunch of the LEGO bricks and creating something by myself. So far my favorite piece I've built has been a flower shop. We keep them in bins in our hall closet for easy accessibility, and it's definitely become an end of day highlight for us. It's to the point where I'm trying to see how I can incorporate LEGO into some of my coaching demonstrations, as well as a suggestion to staff as a healthy outlet for stress. I swear I wasn't asked to write this--I just love LEGO (always have--I think my parents still have all of my old ones from when my brothers and I were young) and if you're interested in a new stress release at the end of the day, definitely check it out.

Here's to 2021. May our aspirations and goals manifest!

The other day I made a thread on Twitter about how it's almost contract season for teachers and that, if you’re not comfortable with your workplace, then it’s time to plan your exit strategy. If you're not an educator, "contract season" refers to the time when teachers receive their teaching contracts for the year. A contract essentially states that, yes, you are still an employee of this school/district and, yes, if you’d like to continue to work here we’d absolutely love to have you. It's exciting. but also a bit nerve wracking for teachers.

I have fond memories of contract season, which are solely contained to the first school I ever worked at in South Carolina. I remember the day that I got my first contract during my first year of teaching, extremely excited that I had “made it” and was hired back for a second year. I remember when I received my first continuing contract (like tenure, but for non-union states) and was jumping for joy. I had finally made it to the big leagues! Plus, job security! I also remember this meaning that because I was on a continuing contract they could essentially move me anywhere and not necessarily keep me in the position I had been in, which was frustrating (and something I talk about at length in my upcoming book). I also remember some colleagues not getting contracts at all and being a listening ear to help them with the next part of their journey, specifically with writing recommendations and being a positive colleague reference.

A common thread I found with my colleagues that did not get contracts is that they claimed that the work environment of that school, to them, was an abusive or toxic work environment. The days were too long and the expectations were too high; there was little to no discipline or administrative follow through. The compensation was too low. Some of them believed that administration played favorites (which I definitely saw during my time there). To them, not getting a contract was a blessing in disguise: they believed that they were not a valuable member of our teaching team, and the lack of contract signalled to them that it was time to move on. Some of them have moved on from teaching entirely and are thriving, and some decided to stay in teaching but are doing fantastic in their new school environments.

This got me thinking: what exactly is an abusive workplace? And, when do we cut our losses and decide that it's time to go?

First of all, let's say the quiet part out loud: you do not have to stay in an abusive workplace. You are worthy of respect and being treated like the professional you are. If you feel unheard or undervalued, it's time to plan your exit strategy.

Second, I think this requires a deeper dive, so this will be in two parts. Today we’ll be covering exactly what an abusive workplace is and how to spot if you’re in one when you’re a teacher, and later we’ll talk about exit strategies. Buckle up!

What is an abusive workplace?

There are a lot of general definitions for an abusive workplace. However, I like to refer to this one from Nancy Rothband that sums it up perfectly: “The toxic work environment is one where people at the bottom are experiencing corrosive pressures, and these corrosive pressures are draining them and making them want to leave.”

I'll talk specifically about the first school that I worked at with regard to the concept of an abusive workplace: I experienced abuse while I was there (more on that in a few moments), and I was a first year teacher when this abuse happened which honestly makes it even worse. This was my first introduction to working within a team and while most of it rocked, whenever I had to meet with my grade level department it was awful (which, now that I’m thinking about it, sounds like textbook abusive language: “it’s great most of the time...sometimes it’s bad...but for the most part, it’s dynamite!”). Aside from that, going back to the definition of an abusive workplace, where I personally felt pressure was not in the school’s leadership or my job duties but the general culture surrounding teaching when I worked in South Carolina, a solid red state with no union. Many teachers fell into the trap of exploitation of empathy (which I’ve talked about a length before on this blog), as well as bullying others into being exploited by way of empathy and time as well. I find that to be more of a symptom of the system instead of the school itself and, being in an administrative-adjacent role myself, I know how hard it is to truly break those systems. It was pressure, but it was pressure that I could deal with and did not lead me to think that I should leave. I’m a pretty strong person and whenever someone would try to guilt me into staying late or doing something extra I would straight up tell them that I wasn’t going to participate. As long as I was deflecting that, I was good. However, I did have an instance with a workplace bully that made my life a living hell for a little while. On the flipside, my colleagues at that school did experience other forms of abuse firsthand to the point where during the first two weeks of school a newly minted teacher literally left and cited an unsafe work environment as the reason.

Just because I *personally* did not experience the abuse they went through or see it with my own eyes does not mean that the abuse in the workplace did not happen. The same way that just because they did not experience or go through what I went through, it does not mean that it did not happen. Workplace abuse, while situational, is also universal. If it happens to one of us in a particular workplace, it can happen to all of us.

It’s also really important to point out how workplace abuse shows up with the concept of workplace bullying, which I find to be (unfortunately) commonplace in teaching. Via UC Santa Barbara, workplace bullying often involves an abuse or misuse of power. However, many bullying situations involve employees bullying their peers. In some cases, subordinates may bully “up.” An individual may bully one or more other employees. A group may also bully an individual. When I think about workplace bullying in my first school, I was absolutely bullied by one teacher in particular. I was a first year teacher and they were a second year teacher, although they had definitely amassed "veteran" status at the school by being a part of many clubs and being buddy-buddy with the administrators. They honestly had more pull and say than some of the teachers at that school that had been teaching for 20+ years, which was astounding to me. I’m not sure exactly how or why this bullying started from them but it was during my first year of teaching and really put a damper on my job at times. Let’s take a look at some things that happened, shall we?

• I was excluded from grade level department meetings. This was the most frustrating thing. I was teaching science at the time as a first year teacher and we were scheduled to meet every Monday in the morning. It was a team of myself and the other two science teachers (who I will refer to as X and Y). X and Y taught on the same team of students while I had another team of students, so X and Y took it upon themselves to have informal meetings where they would lesson plan and create materials...without me. When we met on Mondays it was clear to me that X and Y had already met and I was basically just there to confirm plans that had already been created beforehand. It was to the point where I would receive emails from X stating “Victoria, here’s what Y and I planned without you. Y, please continue to go along with what we had originally planned.”

• An unwritten expectation to show up to “after work” events. Regardless of where I work, this concept drives me nuts. I *hate* being “voluntold” (my portmanteau of “volunteer” and “told”) to go to an after work event because it “looks good.” I had my fair share of these when I worked in tech full time but they were always benign happy hours and we all usually left after the first thirty minutes to get home to our families or to get back to work. At the first school I worked at they called this “cookies and milk” where we’d go out for drinks and food, usually on a Friday. However, I very much operate from the standpoint where if I form a friendship within the workplace organically, we will be friends. I don’t care for forced social events and I certainly don’t care for forced social events with people that are hostile to me in the workplace. I went to a couple of them in the beginning of the year but it was all relegated to work talk which I also found to be frustrating--the last thing that I want to talk about at the end of the work day is more work. I stopped attending which they felt was a slight towards them, when really all I wanted to do was go to the beach, watch the sunset, and and relax with friends who didn’t want to talk about work. And, when I did not attend, I got questioned about it upon my return to work on Mondays. Interrogation first thing in the morning: you hate to see it.

• An adjective used to describe me by X and Y was “silo-y.” To “silo” means to be by yourself and to keep to yourself. My administration leaked to me that X and Y claimed that I was “silo-y” with information, which brings up a question I still think about to this day: why were X and Y speaking to my administration about me instead of...you know...just speaking to me? And if they felt that I was withholding information or keeping to myself, wouldn’t that be an opportunity for us to sit down, talk, and figure out how to collaborate moving forward? I came to find out that they had been going to administration behind my back and bringing up gripes about me, which has MAJOR mean girl energy on their side. If y’all follow me on social media or have followed along with this blog you know that I’m a very vocal person and I love to collaborate. I really don’t like to keep to myself at all when it comes to sharing ideas and lessons. I think this was more of a symptom of being excluded from meetings and conversations than anything else, which speaks volumes. I wanted to collaborate, but the avenues available to me were shut down. And being told that I was “silo-y” when they did not even attempt to bring me into conversations made me feel awful.

• X, in particular, went to the principal for everything--she did not prefer to communicate with me directly, but rather through the principal. This is one of the largest signs of a workplace bully in schools: when they do not communicate with you directly and prefer to go directly to administration or a superior, therefore minimizing your role and your voice. X went to administration for almost everything and did not communicate with me directly, to the point where during a school science fair she complained to my principal for allegedly taking a table that belonged to her for student displays (by the way, this could have been something that would have been resolved by looking at the table spreadsheet--not going to the principal). I often got emails from my principal asking me what the heck was going on and I would be blindsided--since X almost never spoke to me, I had no idea what she was saying, feeling, or thinking. Her lack of communication felt like it, in turn, minimized my role and my voice. Even typing it sounds ridiculous--why couldn’t she just communicate with me? Why did this merit going to the principal? When we had the meeting to discuss it, even my principal knew that it was ridiculous.

While I did feel respected by my administration and my school at large, I did not feel respected by my team. I made this very clear in further meetings with my administration. I figured that if I needed to leave, I could leave, but I was more than willing to explore other options within the school as well to see if there could be a better fit both with academic instruction and also with the team that I worked with. In a school of 48 educators I was only having issues with 2 of them. This ultimately ended with me being moved to a different grade level entirely at the end of the year (which I was extremely happy about--I moved to a lower grade level which was more within my wheelhouse and proceeded to stay there for three years) and X being moved to a different team, with Y staying where they originally were. However, X chose to move schools the very next year. I believe that Y is still at the original school.

Here’s the issue with workplace bullies, though: breaking them up doesn’t necessarily mean that behavior will disappear. The behavior may diminish, but the precedent is still set. Just because I’m not on that team anymore does not mean that it can’t happen again. As I’ve mentioned, workplace abuse, while situational, is also universal: if it happens to one of us in a particular workplace, it can happen to all of us.

In teaching specifically this becomes even more ridiculous. We are the adults in the building and this is how some of our colleagues are acting? This is how we are modeling respectable and appropriate behavior for students? On top of this, this is how we are deciding to have conflict resolution?! Hard pass. I remember thinking at one point: "do I teach middle school, or am I in middle school?!" Workplace bullying is often the sign of a person who may be hurt or projecting, or perhaps struggling, or perhaps just down on a hard time, but it's the explanation for the behavior rather than the excuse for the behavior. However, sometimes folks try to spin it as a straight up excuse, and that's not okay.

If you find yourself in an abusive workplace or an instance with a workplace bully that you cannot tolerate, it’s time to work on your exit strategy. You are work respect, you deserve to be a valued employee, and you deserve to protect your peace in the midst of nonsense.

In our next edition we'll talk about exit strategies: what they are, what it means to plan one, and how to keep yourself safe as you find a new job.