optimism isn't optional.

Nothing bothers me more than being in a classroom full of disaffected education people. It is beyond frustrating to listen to folks who are responsible for educating children bitch and moan about the field that they are in, as if they aren't in the position to do something about it. Umm, you chose to be an educator! If you don't like it, please leave. Kids don't need negative adults in their lives. Sometimes I want to tell these people to change jobs... And sometimes I do.

I get it though. It is really easy to become pessimistic about changing the education system for the better when so much research shows just how difficult that is. Study after study shows how so-called "reform" efforts don't work, and serve only to highlight all of the roadblocks that make real systemic improvement so difficult to achieve instead of showing how change can be possible. Couple this with the fact that many of the people in the classroom are former (or current) educators who have been beat down by the whole 'educators are worthless and should all be fired' line of thought that figures prominently in the media and mainstream "reform" efforts.

Speaking from experience, it is truly demoralizing to work hard for your students and their families all day, only to turn on the news and have some politician or pundit who has never worked in a school saying that you're the problem with the education system. It is even harder to hear and read the comments from community members who don't think that your students deserve a quality education in the first place because they are poor, not white, and, in their opinions, won't amount to anything anyway. In my last year in Philadelphia (a district that probably won't be a district for much longer), it became very clear that many members of the public, even those who worked for the public schools, were not supporters of public education. After spending hours helping kids do things like pick colleges, get over divorces and breakups, cope with the deaths of loved ones, come out safely to parents and friends, learn to study better, etc., hearing that I was a waste of taxpayer money was, to say the very least, tough.

So yes, I get where the negativity comes from. Really. But really, education folks, get over it. It's not about us, it's about the kids. We know they deserve better, and unless we keep our chins up and hearts open, we know they won't get it.

Everything looks bleak when all you know is bleakness. But we know that things can be better. We wouldn't be pursuing this line of work if we didn't think that. Optimism comes from the ability to both imagine better options and believe that these options are attainable. If you know that something is possible and work with that goal in mind, then it will happen. Pessimism, on the other hand, comes from helplessness. When you don't believe that things can change, you don't imagine things changing, and guess what? They don't change. Pessimism is easy because it requires nothing. Optimism, on the other hand, requires agency. Optimism requires blind (or at least naive), awareness. It requires an 'I don't give a [crap]' attitude about what you're up against, and the tenacity to see it through.

Optimism is hard, but it isn't optional. Without a belief that the education system can get better, it won't.