From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

What connection?

This hour was made in the classroom, where teachers across the country are grappling with a new set of challenges in 2025.

The new Trump administration has warned educators to steer away from anything it categorizes as D-I, and their definition is rather broad.

Colleges and universities are having their funding threatened over this issue and now K-Through-12 as well.

The new administration is talking about eliminating the federal Department of Education.

If it did so, it's hard to know exactly the short and long term effects on schools.

And teachers might feel the need to address politics and current events in ways that they hadn't before.

Some teachers have said that students are more engaged in everything feels politically charged.

Other teachers have said their kids are starting to tune out, and studies indicate that teenagers are feeling higher levels of despair, depression and mental illness than any previous generation on record.

Social psychologist Jonathan Hite says the current generation of American children is the least thriving generation of American kids ever on modern record.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of governors is moving to ban cell phones in schools, saying it would help teachers and students alike.

It is spring break week in New York State, and this hour, we sit down with a pair of teachers to discuss what things are like in the classroom these days.

My guests include Abby Fanning, who is a high school English teacher.

Welcome back to the program.

Thanks for being here.

Great to be here.

Thank you.

Dan Hart is a ninth grade literacy teacher at East Upper School.

Welcome.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So a lot of different places to go, and I'm just going to start generally here and ask of both of you.

given your roles as an English teacher or literacy teacher, if current events, perhaps politics is part of the menu of what you talk about.

If it has been in the past, if it is now, and if that's allowed to be the case, or if that's encouraged to be the case.

So a lot of room there.

Let me start with Abby on that one.

So excuse me.

In teaching.

In teaching literature and writing.

current events aren't what I'm supposed to talk about.

That's not what I teach.

But I do teach about the human condition.

And there's no getting away from the, There's no getting away from current events when you're talking about reality.

The kids reality.

Okay.

And does that lead to any parents who feel like material might be out of bounds?

Any students bringing up any administrators?

so I generally get along pretty well with the parents.

I feel like we have the same goal in mind.

So the idea is to to teach these kids.

Right?

And as an English teacher, my job is to teach them to have something to say and to teach them how to say it.

So yes, sometimes that sometimes that crosses, with my opinion or my perspective or my understanding of what's going on.

But I don't think there's realistically a way to avoid that without being a pretender.

Okay.

and so far it's been a few months of a new administration and any changes in what you are instructed or advised to do as a teacher?

Yeah.

My instructions are that I am to avoid preaching what I believe.

and that's reasonable, right?

I do try to avoid preaching what I believe.

I ask questions because, again, in trying to get kids to learn, when I tell them something, they might believe it or not believe it, but they're not going to know it.

In order to know something, they're going to have to come to it for themselves.

So my job really has been to ask questions to lead them through kind of navigating what's going on in their own heads.

Yeah.

Okay.

Makes sense.

And our students talking about current events, even politics more themselves than you've seen in the past.

It comes up, but they're also more scared to bring it up.

Like as soon as somebody brings up something.

ten others gasp.

Why?

Because.

Because it's so divisive, I guess.

And because there's so much pressure to avoid it.

Even among kids, even among kids, they feel that pressure, that this is pulling people apart.

Let's not go there.

I don't know if they're feeling that pressure sincerely, or if they're told often enough to stay away from it.

But as soon as a political statement comes up in a classroom, I feel like everybody else freezes.

And what do you do that doesn't necessarily feel like a healthy thing for kids to be feeling?

Right.

So we don't necessarily explore the political statement, but again, in that if it's a political statement, it has to do with reality.

So do the books that we read.

So do the conversations that we have.

And so what's underneath the politics?

What's driving people to believe one thing or another, to act one way or another?

To strive for something specific.

That is my area.

That is my job.

And so we talk about that.

All right.

Before I get to then one other point on this, because when kids are gasping about stuff and they feel scared to even talk about it, there's anxiety obviously that's underpinning that.

And I suspect a lot of that anxiety comes from observing adults in their world who also maybe feeling tension or stress.

I'm sure they engage with news and of various sorts.

but in general, does it feel to you you've been teaching for how long now?

it's over 20 years now.

20 years.

I started when I was six.

I don't feel okay.

I do believe that, 20 years of teaching.

Does it feel like there is more anxiety among kids in your classroom?

Absolutely.

You know, it used to feel like kids are always kids.

Kids are just kids.

And it doesn't matter where you teach or, what kind of circumstances the kids are coming from.

Because kids are kids, you can sense that difference in the adults very well.

But kids are just kids.

And no, that's precipitating into the kids now much more than I've ever seen before.

We'll talk more about that coming up here.

But what can be done about that.

Dan Hart teaches ninth grade literacy at East Upper School.

I've been teaching for how long?

This is my 10th year there.

10th year.

are you seeing more anxiety now?

yeah.

For sure.

I think that we as a school are dealing with, the fallout of things like project 2025, dealing with the executive orders and the fear about immigration.

those directly affect our community and directly affect the students that I have in front of me.

I'm thinking about last week, even there was a scare, that you might have saw on the news that people thought that they were immigration agents on Webster Avenue.

That turned out to be New York State Patrol officers.

And even though it was, turned out to be not a legitimate ice scare, it still impacted the students in my classroom at that moment.

And I had to talk to them about it and remind them that the school is the safest place for them to be, that they shouldn't just try to leave, you know?

so those things permeate throughout the classroom, and it's impossible not to talk about them.

Are the kids bringing them up themselves often now?

Yeah.

And in typical ninth grade fashion, not always the most thoughtful or, serious sort of way, but you can tell from the undertones of some of the jokes that they might make, or the comments that they might make, that there is serious anxiety and legitimate concerns underneath.

it also stems into things like mental health and how communities are impacted by these sorts of, things that are happening in our society.

It impacts the mental health of the students in front of us.

Have you had any pushback or concerns raised by anybody in the school committee?

Parents?

administrators?

Others?

Colleagues?

No.

One thing I'll say about East and about the rest is that we've focused on culturally relevant, responsive pedagogy.

significantly.

And so we're encouraged to have these kinds of conversations and to have them responsibly and to integrate them into our curriculum.

You know, as a literacy specialist, we start the year with an identity unit because so much of reading is personal.

You are reading to find windows and to find doors, but also to find mirrors.

You're trying to see yourself in literature.

You're trying to learn about other people.

You're trying to develop empathy over time.

And so we take an identity focus at the start of the year so kids know where they're starting from, know what they want to seek out and think actively about how the reading experience can help them develop their understanding of the world around them.

So when and this is really for both of you, when we see that the Trump administration actually just let me let me read from this.

Let me read from NPR's reporting on this.

So everyone's up to date on where things are.

Quote, the Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funds from public schools that have diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

In a letter to state leaders across the country, the US Education Department said that title one funding, which is targeted to schools with a high proportion of low income students, would be threatened if schools failed to follow its interpretation of civil rights laws.

Any violation of civil rights laws, it says, including the use of diversity, equity and inclusion programs to advantage one's race over another, is impermissible.

School and state officials are required to sign a certification letter attached to the memo and return it to the department within ten days, proving that they are in compliance.

End quote.

So does that come up at all?

Anybody talk to you about that?

And anybody said in the school community like what do we teaching we should we take a look.

Should we maybe not teach this book.

Should we not do this unit.

Does that come up at all?

It hasn't come up directly for us.

I can't imagine the pressures that the superintendent and the administrators are facing, because they do a lot to shield us from that sort of thing and, protect what we do in the classroom and what they know to be best practice.

Okay, so steady as she goes, for the most part, for you in terms of what you're doing.

I'd say so, yeah, in terms of what you're teaching and how you're teaching it.

Yeah.

And steady as she goes.

Plus.

Right.

Like we have a responsibility to handle these issues responsibly with students, for students, for the benefit of the community.

And to shy away from that is sort of to, I mean, let the oppressors win, right?

That's not what we're trying to do as educators, I would hope.

And so the administration respects that.

listeners this hour, you know, if we've got teachers in the audience, I understand that this is a little fraught.

The two guests we have in studio with us today, are very highly regarded for the work that they've done for years, not only among students parents, but among their colleagues.

And it's not easy to talk about these issues.

Sometimes I want to recognize that.

And I we reached out to a number of teachers that we've been in touch with privately, who just didn't feel like they could come on really wanted to, didn't feel like it was safe to do so.

So I understand that.

But if you want to communicate with us, however, is best for you, especially if you're a teacher.

But you have to be a teacher.

You can do that multiple ways.

You can send us an email connections at KCI dawg.

Connections at York.

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So every fanning that report from NPR about the Trump administration saying, hey, districts, we want to know that you're in compliance.

We don't want any D-I stuff or you're going to lose your funding.

Has that prompted any internal conversations in the building about, hey, what are you teaching?

What's on your reading list?

How are you doing things?

Not yet.

No.

And?

Well, like my colleagues said, silence is always on the side of the oppressor.

So I don't think.

We can be instructed to state.

Well, what am I saying there?

We are being instructed, right?

Federally speaking.

Yeah.

but there's no way to teach literature without talking about what matters and what doesn't, without talking about who gets treated better than other people and what there is to be done about it, about who wins and who loses.

So maybe we're not talking about a specific program that's been cut, right?

Or we're no longer using the terms that we used a few months ago.

But bottom line is we are always talking about humanity.

We're always talking about what's right and wrong, and we're always talking about who we are and what we believe in and what we stand for.

So, yeah, I'm not supposed to talk about politics.

You're not?

No.

And and I don't.

But I do talk about whether or not laws matter.

I do talk about whether or not.

Things.

Everything can be known.

Right?

We talk about the difference between knowledge and belief early on in the classroom.

So it's kind of to set up the culture that's interesting headed here.

Yeah.

And so yeah I'm talking about the same things in different terms.

I would love to be in your classroom.

When you talk to students about how do you think you could know something, what's the difference between you knowing it and you believing it?

You get some interesting conversations there.

Oh, it's the best I can tell you what Aristotle said.

At least I'm pretty sure it touched on, that knowing something is understanding the reason why something cannot be otherwise.

Right.

So that takes a lot of things out of the running right away.

There are things that are not knowable.

You know, you cannot know why the prettiest color cannot be something else.

You cannot know what a tattoo signifies about a person.

Right?

There's no understanding the reason why it can't be otherwise.

And so that's relegated to the, to the beliefs.

I really want to go to your classes.

Please.

It's okay.

These teachers at the time felt these teachers and, and then the other thing that comes to mind for me when, when you say, you know, we're not supposed, I'm not supposed to talk about politics in class.

And generally speaking, you don't.

But that the, the definition of what is political is itself, first of all, not really knowable.

I think it's pretty subjective.

and it changes, I think, with the climate.

So everything sort of feels politically charged.

And I do think that exhausts people.

But it's not like to speak about what's knowable or believable.

No one can come to you and say, well, here's the ten things that are political that you can't talk about, and everything else outside of them is fine.

Everything can be seems to be.

A lot of things can become political, right?

So I mean, those boundaries are quite vague and murky, aren't they?

Sure.

Well, but the thing is, we've always handled all these things.

This is what.

That's what we've been talking about, okay?

We've always been talking about what's right and wrong.

We've always been talking about what people are and how they treat one another, and how they see one another and what they do to or for one another.

These are very difficult subjects and they're difficult to talk about.

And that's what we've always done just now.

We call it political.

Right.

And I think what's frustrating is that this current administration wants to characterize things like social emotional learning and empathy as political, because to care about your neighbor and to care about somebody whose experience is different than yours is apparently a political, political thing now.

But when you look at the laws that are being enacted in certain states, it's it's taking away teachers ability to help us develop empathy and help students who are young and impressionable develop empathy.

Like I think about don't say gay in Florida, I, I actually have a really good example of how the administration supported me when I had some vandalism on some classroom supplies.

Somebody wrote the F word, the gay slur on some of my classroom materials, and so I asked the principal if it was okay for me to send an email to the school, sort of charging everybody to have conversations with students to interrupt hate speech when they hear it.

I put people in, I plugged our local histories work because they had just done a professional learning on how to interrupt hate speech, and the principal was very supportive.

I was able to speak to each of my classes in a in a circle and say, this is what happened.

This is why you don't do this stuff.

This is how hateful this kind of language is.

This is why I'm going to be very adamant, interrupting other hate speech that I hear in this class.

And if I were a teacher in Florida, I wouldn't even be able to have conversations like that.

It's not about indoctrination.

It's not about trying to recruit people.

Right?

It's not about that.

It's about actually teaching people how to interact with other humans in ways that are healthy and in ways that don't create divisiveness and hatred in our country.

Yeah.

And then it's the notion of how to respond to hate speech.

It's obviously delicate.

You reference our local history squish, James Shane Wiegand, their organization.

They've been on this program a number of times.

Interesting.

I know they've been to Pittsburgh.

Are you aware?

I'm sorry.

No, I, I'm not sure.

I I'm sorry to say I don't I don't know what that.

Yeah, that.

I don't know if they have been in Brighton or Gates or Greece.

I don't know if they've been in Newark or Wayne.

Yeah, in Yates County.

I take it back.

I know they've done real work.

They haven't just done the city.

I I'm certain they have.

I don't have the list.

but they have done stuff far and wide.

I know that, and, I know that the reaction isn't always the same.

So if they are in opinion, if they're in Geneva, if they're in Pittsford or Brighton or Gates, they say that the lessons are essentially the same.

But when you work in the city school district, we know it's different socioeconomically.

We know there's different racial components of teachers.

We know there's different racial backgrounds in students.

And I know that it is challenging when you want to suit the lessons for that.

Dan, when they came in, did you have any colleagues who didn't like what they were bringing?

Did you have any colleagues who said, hey, this feels politicized?

So this was not them coming in to do certain trainings, so to speak.

It was them offering a professional learning to anybody to sign up.

But it was offered to Ccsd teachers as our professional learning credit.

it was interesting being there on the zoom and, sort of watching White Fragility in action, like people reacting to certain things and like turning their cameras off after they were gently corrected.

you know, it's it's it's tough to try to make change for people who have certain understandings of what they've been doing for so long.

and they do it really well.

I got to say, our local history does amazing work, and they do very sensitive work because it is difficult.

It's really hard to work with adults who need to confront certain truths about the way that they've been moving through this world that might need to be unlearned.

And I don't, you know, I would love to hear.

And maybe that's a separate conversation for the team at our local history.

But in sort of this new during this new administration, if their work has changed.

And again, teachers, if no matter what district you're in, I would love to hear from you.

As we talk about how different districts are handling this.

So, but generally speaking, Dan, it sounds like you feel supported.

people got your back.

I do, I really do.

I think that, you know, I, I don't think that any school district is perfect.

I don't think that where I work is perfect.

I think that there's definitely room for improvement in a lot of areas, but that's that's part of the journey of any institution.

That's part of the journey of any large organization that's trying to make meaningful, impactful change.

I think something sometimes it's frustrating that schools and large organizations move slow, and this current political climate is demanding us to move faster.

I mean, the advent of AI is showing us that, just right in the face, we can't slow down.

We have to be adaptable.

And our systems are not necessarily the most malleable.

Well, did you hear?

Did you hear what?

The Department of Education secretary, Linda McMahon, referred to?

A1?

Did you hear this?

You didn't hear this?

Seven A1 And not one time repeatedly, repeatedly.

Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, has referred to AI as A1, like the steak sauce.

And I don't know that that means everything.

Everybody has malapropism in, you know, you teach English, we can all misspeak.

Right?

That's not impossible.

You can all misspeak.

But no matter what you teach, you should be aware of what's happening around you.

Like, I'm an English teacher, I know addition, and I know World War two.

And you know the goal there is to just not be a fool.

I mean, seriously, I don't want kids.

Kids learn from people.

You learn from people.

We don't learn from a worksheet.

We don't learn from from a syllabus.

We learn from a person relationships.

And we're never going to learn from somebody we don't respect.

And we're not going to respect a fool who is okay.

So when a permanent when a person in a prominent position doesn't seem to have much facility with a really important concept that is affecting everything in the world, but especially education, how kids can learn information, they can access, what they're presenting in class, which we've talked about, which you've got some interesting and sometimes heterodox opinions on.

No surprise, but do you think it's indicative?

I mean, when you hear Lynne McMahon keep saying A1, are you worried that she's not in touch?

Well, of course it's indicative.

You know, I tell my students that they have to capitalize their name on their paper so that they don't undermine their own credibility in whatever it is that they have to say.

If you make a mistake like misspelling the title of a book.

Now, I don't believe anything you say about that book anymore.

Right?

I read your essay and I dismiss it because you have just undermined your own credibility.

There.

Okay.

Then the A1, I think.

Did that bother you.

Yeah.

They were I mean but if people say come on you're overreacting.

It's now a problem.

It's, it's tough because of all the things to upset me.

That's not the one that's highest on the list.

Honestly.

Linda McMahon just being the secretary of education in general and her being installed in that post with the intention of her working herself out of a job, that's what really bothers me.

I mean, the fact that she didn't know what, the Americans with Disabilities Act was about, that she's not trained for this job.

She's not qualified for it.

I mean, I did not see that particular.

Yeah, that was the first gaffe.

Okay?

I didn't see that.

So.

So you feel like she's not qualified?

Not at all.

So have you in your mind, does something is there a cascading set of effects if, for example, they actually eliminate the Department of Education because, I mean, that feels like kind of political murkiness that I'm not even sure what the dominoes falling would be there.

So I'm not sure either.

And here's why.

To look at it, to look at education that way as a top down kind of thing, where decisions are made at the top, and then they and then they come down to districts and superintendents and administrators and I really, honestly feel like the reality is the opposite.

What matters is what happens in my classroom.

And so all I need is to be empowered to do my job.

And whether the Secretary of Education knows how to spell her name or not is going to affect somebody somewhere, but it's not going to change the literature that my students are reading.

And the way that they see themselves in the characters in that literature.

So I'm not really involved in the in the politics of it.

And, and most of what I do most of the day to day routine, most of what my students learn from me isn't decided by the administration.

But but this is where if I could, and I know Dan wants to jump in, let me just follow this point on what you have your students reading.

This is where I think this administration could eventually either impact you or try, because they are defining what is inbound next hour.

We're talking about the Kennedy Center and the president himself put himself on the head of the board because he said, I've got better things to do, but the arts got out of control and that we need control over what the arts are saying on stage.

And they've indicated books and things like that, you know, so so when you say it, that's upstream.

I'm downstream of it.

But what matters is in the classroom, they could very well try to say, you can't teach these books anymore.

And then I'm out of a job right then my work is, well, they would say, you're not out of a job.

There's a million books.

There's I'm sorry.

There's a lot more than a million books.

There's lots of books.

And that you don't have to teach certain books anymore.

And that's fine, because there are so many books.

And as long as I'm allowed to teach literature, the same things will be taught in my classroom.

Now, if we replace that literature with propaganda from the Secretary of State or who's our cultural, the head of our cultural affairs now, is it our president?

I don't actually don't know.

regardless, if I'm allowed to teach literature and writing, then I will still always be telling, teaching my students to have something to say and to teach them how they can say it.

If literature altogether is taken out of my hands, and I instead have to teach things that that aren't truly speaking literature, and where those lessons don't exist, then teaching English doesn't exist anymore.

One other note it's kind of a fine point, but I can hear listeners thinking it when you say part of your job is to teach kids that they have a voice.

Yes.

And how they can use it.

Just to be clear, I don't hear you saying they have to have the voice that I want them to have, and they have to say what I want them to say.

I hear you saying I'm helping them find their own voice and learn how to refine it, even if it's in ways that are different than mine or yours or anyone else, that it's true to them.

Yes, absolutely.

And that's by no means a minor point.

And that's what makes great literature great.

It doesn't teach you a moral.

It asks you questions.

It shows you examples.

I think there are critics who say teachers are a lot of critics right now on the political right or the political right that supports this administration.

Their claim is that too many teachers are teaching kids.

You have to think one way and it must be the correct way, and this is the correct way.

Yeah.

So those aren't great teachers and that's not what we do.

That's not what we're tasked with.

Do you think that's happening?

Not that I've seen.

No I see you don't do this job, especially for a lot of years.

Unless you love it.

It's difficult.

And so those of us who are in it are in it because we believe in it.

And if we believe in it, then we believe in the people that we are teaching.

And I don't know who could possibly tell me what the right way to think about hamlet is, you know, Shakespeare's dead.

And so I couldn't even talk to you about what he intended or they or they like how many?

Shakespeare.

And we're not going to do the whole Shakespeare debate.

Yeah, it could have been a group of women.

I've read that if we were able to indoctrinate kids, they would be reading a lot more books and turning their work in on time.

I'll say that.

Okay.

Where are your kids turning?

They're working on time.

No.

Nobody cares about turning their work in on time.

to be honest, I don't particularly care about handing work in on time.

I want it handed in, and I want it done the best that it can be done.

And however long that takes you, you take the time I don't want.

I don't want something you cranked out by deadline.

Same I have, I've got a few things that, that have come in that I want to talk about with listeners, sharing their thoughts as we talk about the, the climate in the classroom.

Before we get to break, let me ask, Dan, if you want to weigh in on some of what you were just doing here.

Yeah, I would love to talk about the Department of Education because the politics of education in our country right now is one of the most distributed systems of politics in terms of its goes from the national level to the state level to the county level, to the district level.

And there are school boards in each school district for a reason, because the community should be the ones weighing in on on what is or isn't taught.

And it's very rare that the national level impacts what actually goes on in the classroom with the Department of Education, really is, has to do is to make sure that people's, modifications for special education are protected, is to make sure that the right number of special ed teachers are allocated to districts based on what number of students are designated with IEPs in those in those districts.

And what dismantling that organization does is essentially sub out that work that was done pretty streamlined at a national, centralized level to 50 different state governments.

And what I worry about is sure, the New York State Department of Education might be able to handle that influx of work, but other states will not.

And other states are going to have students whose protections are removed.

Other states are going to have students who are not getting the right kind of services that they need, that they deserve, and there's going to be no recourse.

There's families who are already worry about who do they contact, who do they contact if their students IEPs are not being met in the classroom, what is the legal recourse if their students modifications are not being delivered?

And we already have sort of a system that does that work in ways that could be improved upon.

And so to remove that, that oversight, that level of national just systematizing of that work makes it that much harder.

And we already know that the current administration doesn't care about people who are already marginalized, being further marginalized.

And that's what's going to end up happening again, what you just said right there, some parents and in a lot of different places would say, well, that's a political statement from a teacher.

Does that sound like a political statement to you?

I think anything is a political statement.

If you say that learning matters, that's a political statement.

You know, like, yes, it is.

And I think that that's okay.

I think that we should be encouraged to make political statements when we're making statements about justice and what's right for students.

Greg Mills to say how lucky students are to have these two teachers, cheers to teachers during the spring break.

I hope they are willing to go back to work next week.

I think they're going back to work, Greg.

They're all going back to work.

I mean, it's just how they go.

You're probably go.

You're probably.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, we'll probably go.

You're probably going, Dan, you're going back to work.

Yeah.

It's just spring break.

That's okay Greg, but Greg says cheers to these teachers.

Sheila sends a lot.

You know, Sheila sends a really interesting note as a retired English teacher, which I'm going to read after the break coming up here.

So, Sheila, thank you for that.

and, John, thanks for giving teachers and students a voice during break week.

Always up for more of this, please.

I'm with you there, John.

like I said, it can be difficult.

and we appreciate all voices who are willing to join this conversation.

John says I'm concerned that students are quickly becoming desensitized to political violence, political instability, and damaging rhetoric.

Teachers are an important bulwark, but they can't be expected to shoulder the burden alone in the face of a fractured media and news landscape.

I wonder what other opportunities exist to help keep young people informed and engaged.

That's John.

What do you think, Abby?

I think that's a great point about students getting desensitized.

students getting desensitized.

I it seems to me sometimes, like kids don't know how to take something seriously.

And that's partly because there's so much information around them and so much of it is inaccurate.

And and part of it is accurate, and so much of it is irrelevant.

And so they're used to fishing among, you know, a sea of information for something that matters.

so I think that there's a struggle to understand when something actually is serious and, and reacting to it appropriately.

Dan, do you want to add to that?

Yeah.

I think that we're living in highly traumatizing times.

I think that it's hard for any young person growing up and confronting climate change, confronting police brutality that's readily accessible on the internet, confronting our president, the highest elected person to office, saying and doing and being convicted of the things that he's said and done and been convicted of.

And it's it's hard to be a young person to discover how you can exist in this world, let alone make an impact for for the positive.

Let's take this break, relate for it.

John, thank you for that note.

We're going to read Sheila's email next.

I've got more to share with you.

I want to ask our guests what they think about this proposed cell phone ban.

If they think that helps at all.

you know, I know it's not perfectly related, but it's it's right there in the wheelhouse of how teachers are dealing with changes in their classrooms.

And if you've got more to say or add, you can email the program connections@c.org.

Or you can call the program toll free 844295 talk.

It's (844) 295-8255.

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The new head of the board is President Trump, who installed himself.

He said he has better things to do with his time, but he felt like he had to do it because the arts have gotten out of control, he says.

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We're going to talk about control of the arts next hour.

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Edu.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Sheila sends this.

She says Evan loved this topic.

When your guest said correctly, we don't teach politics.

She is correct.

I'd add outside of teaching context in a novel.

As a former A.P.

English teacher, I used to have students analyze the rhetoric used in speeches and statements across the political spectrum.

This used to be a fun way during an election year, to look at the arguments a candidate was making, and lots of students learned about things like ad hominem, ad nauseum, and strawman arguments.

Sadly, it's been over a decade since we've been able to do this because current rhetoric in the past two elections has been so divisive, all we can ask students is why?

Why the division?

Why the name calling?

Why are speakers doing this?

What's their purpose?

This is how we teach critical thinking.

Focus on the words.

Focus on the message, not the emotions.

When parents object to teaching these skills and these texts, they deprive their children of being able to offer a critical, unbiased response to rhetoric.

This is how we educate a populace.

Thanks for a great show.

That's from Sheila.

I love the term d educate.

She's that's absolutely what we're doing.

So she's saying politics in a way was fun.

I remember growing up that we had school debates in eighth grade.

I played one of the 1992 presidential candidates in eighth grade.

I played Ross Perot on stage, so I did.

and we talked.

I remember analyzing ads when I was nine years old.

Bush, Dukakis.

I remember that.

It was it was a very common thing.

So to Sheila's point, I can remember it in grade school.

I can remember in middle school she's teaching high school students, but she's basically saying, we've kind of had to change it.

It's just too much now.

What do you see there, Evy?

I agree.

Yeah, that's that's not what we're supposed to use.

That's not what we do use.

Like I said, kids freeze up.

It's become I mean, especially currently, more than more than ever.

Although this is not brand new either.

Politics.

Any sort of disagreement has been off the table for a long time.

Then I think that the medium really matters for that.

And it's tough to look at current political discourse as a medium because it is so fraught like you said.

But there are other ways to teach kids critical literacy.

And my last unit of the year is a critical media literacy unit, and I'm currently trying to refine it to to give kids more, language around how to critique things, to talk about critical lenses, to talk about feminist critique, talk about Marxist critique.

but to do that, I don't really go straight for political discourse.

I go more towards the arts.

I started with a media review where they choose their favorite movie or TV show, and then I ask them to criticize it, like, whose voice is present?

Whose voice is being left out?

How does this text treat women?

Are there people who are, being silenced or people who are being stereotyped?

And I think that when you give students a chance to do that kind of work with something they're already interested in.

The buy in is a lot more powerful, and you get to have a lot deeper conversations about it.

Well, here's some love for Dan.

Charlie says Dan is one of the finest caring, empathetic teachers I've ever had the honor of working with.

he says he's one hell of a sense of humor, by the way, especially in regards to poking fun at himself.

He says it's my good fortune that I retired after 33 years of teaching last year because current events, including politics, was a daily topic in my English classes.

In fact, one of my weekly assignments was that each student needed to read an article from a reliable news source the times, CNBC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc.

write a quick report.

The conversations following that were deep, thoughtful, occasionally heated, but always thoughtful.

I truly believe that is the correct approach.

You can't hide truth from kids, and I can't imagine teaching without authors such as August Wilson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maya Angelou, MLK, DJ Kool Herc.

That's when I don't know, sorry, Charlie, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker Shakespeare, she says, you prevent all present, all points of view, and you get kids to think for themselves.

Good luck to all current teachers.

It's going to be rough the next few years.

Thanks, Charlie.

I hope you're enjoying retirement.

That is from Charlie.

He stuck the landing on the timing, it sounds like.

Charlie, thank you for that.

Hal and Livingston County on the phone.

Hey, Hal.

Go ahead.

Hi.

thanks for a great discussion.

I wanted to share that.

I think, without doubt, as in authoritarianism, there cannot be faith in religion or curiosity in science.

Both require doubt in religion for the faith needed facing the mysteries of the human world and in science to pursue the curious questions that lead to systematic observations allowing discoveries in science so doubts and attempts to resolve it are essential in both religion and science.

Thank you.

Okay, well thank you.

Doubt is important or what we can know versus what we believe, right?

Absolutely.

Curiosity is the most important quality for for anybody who is learning, for anybody who's trying to learn.

You have to be curious.

And curious means you don't know.

Curious means that there is stuff that isn't in the realm of what you know.

You know, kids need to fail, for instance.

I think, like if you're getting straight A's, then I'm asking you to do things that you already know how to do.

We need to push that.

We need to push past the comfort.

People are, as you know, are obsessed with grades, right?

And often it's the parents.

Right.

And what you just said is not all of welcome thought for a lot of parents who are like, kids need to fail.

No, my kid needs to get straight A's.

We got college to think about here.

Totally.

Almost unrelated fields, right?

You're record on paper and your actual course of learning.

But my.

Yeah, my point is, and I find actually that parents are understanding when it's, when it's presented to them in this way where it's, it's either you can have the perfect record or you can actually be thrown into doubt and curiosity.

I love the idea.

I think, and you're the expert here, not me.

I think it's interesting because I think some parents are just thinking down the line, what's our transcript going to look like?

How do we get into school?

Like what's that like?

You know, and that's and that's valid.

That's I understand that.

You know, I have kids who are in school, and I want them to have a great record so they can get into college and get all the scholarships.

But as a teacher and as a mother, I'm more concerned about them actually learning then, yeah, I think doubt is important, but it can be tough because this current political climate is very much anti research and anti like proven fact, like anti-science.

Look at climate change and how there's rhetoric around it being lies.

And where does that rhetoric come from.

How are people proving it.

They don't have the actual facts that 100% of the scientific community confirms climate change exists, but we have politicians who are trying to say that it doesn't.

So I, I run against that in micro in my classroom when I try to say, hey kids, you want to know what's really beneficial reading?

it's great to read.

Here's all the research.

Here's all the reasons why it builds empathy.

It develops your vocabulary, it is good for your mental health.

And kids will literally say, well, that's somebody else.

That's that's you don't know if that's true, that that's them.

That's not me.

And same thing with it.

It's, it's it's hard because you want to encourage them to question, but you want to encourage them to question.

Right.

And right now we have people questioning things wrong.

Just very much incorrectly.

Yeah.

Part of what you're describing too, I think, is some of the fruits, the sour fruits of social media, which is like everyone has an equally valid opinion on everything.

And I actually watched a debate on Joe Rogan between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith on the subject of Gaza.

It was a lot, but it was interesting.

And it's not about what I think or whatever or what they think.

There was a moment where Douglas Murray was saying to Dave Smith, like, you're talking a lot about something like, have you ever been there?

And Dave's like, no.

And he's like, do you have any like actual background in the subject?

And he's like, no.

And he was like, but I have a voice.

I have an opinion.

And he's like, yeah.

And Douglas Murray was like, you do.

And you're listened to way more than people with actual expertise, because that's how the modern platforms are working.

I just don't he was saying, I don't know if that's healthy, but Dave seems like.

What do you mean?

Like, are you saying I'm not allowed to speak?

And he's like, I'm not saying you don't.

You're not allowed to speak.

I'm saying, why does your voice carry so much weight when you don't really have expertise or knowledge in something?

But I think the modern ecosystem of these platforms has encouraged too many people to think like you've got a voice is therefore as valid as anyone with expertise, and if they have expertise, maybe they're just elitist and fake news spreads five times faster, right?

That's latest statistics.

Fake news spreads way faster than actual news.

And and fighting back against somebody's misconception once it's already established takes so much longer than actually teaching them the right thing.

we're way late for what I wanted to get to as well.

So now I want to shoehorn this in because I think it's important we're going to talk more coming up in the next couple of weeks about Governor Hochul proposed Bell to Bell cell phone ban.

First, I want to listen to what the governor said in an interview with NBC New York about how her proposed cell phone ban would work in K-Through-12 schools.

Does your bill ban possession of devices in school or just use of devices in school?

Use of devices from bell to bell.

When there's once a school day starts, they need to be set aside and we'll get I give a lot of flexibility to school districts.

So under your plan, could a school then allow students to simply shut their phones down and keep them off in their backpack or their locker, or do they have to give the phone up?

They need to have an environment where the children don't have access to the phones.

I mean, the temptation is great.

So that's why it's called a bell to bell ban.

You're not checking your your cell phone or texting people or sending anything on any platform in between classes.

You're not doing it at lunch, etc.

that lines up with what we're seeing in a number of other states Illinois with the Democratic governor, Arkansas, where the Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the governor of Arkansas.

This is what she said about their ban recently.

I'm proud to say that improving our state's mental health, and especially our kids mental health, is one of my top goals for this administration.

The reason for that is really simple.

Over the course of the last several years, we have seen a staggering rise in mental health illness among young people, particularly over the last decade.

Anxiety, depression, suicide have doubled and sometimes tripled among our kids.

And to me, and the data, the culprit is very clear unrestricted access to smartphones and social media.

And we now have an opportunity to do something about it.

It's Governor Sanders in Arkansas.

So Ebby Fanning, for you, as a high school teacher, what do you make of these Bell to bell ban proposals?

I love it.

So I've had one rule in my classroom for maybe the last ten years, and that is no cell phones.

I cannot compete with a screen.

I accept that, I recognize that I can't compete with a screen.

And so if you're going to learn in my classroom, if you're going to pay attention to what is happening between us, between the people there, there needs to be nothing buzzing in your pocket.

Everything else.

Everything else I can work with.

We can.

You know, I don't really need any other rules, but there has to be no phone.

But if I'm one of your students, let me just put it in my locker.

I'll check between classes in the hallway or at lunch, but not in class.

I won't have it in class.

And so then I see you one period, and you're happy and everything is good.

And we're talking in Europe, motivated.

And then I see you the next period, and you suddenly won't make eye contact and won't speak up in class because something happened on the phone.

Must have been right.

I mean, the social media and the the effect that it has on on these kids, I don't really understand it.

I have to say, I'm not part of the generation.

I'm glad that we were part of a generation that didn't have that honestly right.

And I still, I see it, I see the effect of it.

I can't understand how and why that works, but I can see that a glance at a phone can change a student's day instantly.

Okay.

So Bell, to be clear that I'm good with that.

You're good with that okay Dan.

Yeah we already do take our phones from kids when they enter the building.

At least that was a cell phone policy that we implemented at the start of year three of the EPO.

So about seven years ago.

And I would agree, it has dramatically improved my ability to teach because I'm not competing with the screen.

We call it what it is and we call it screen addiction.

Then you're removing the the thing that is an addicting input.

But I, I worry about the cell phone ban because since day one it's it's always been about just removing it as opposed to actively teaching responsible use.

I'm not saying that I would be good at actively teaching responsible use, and it's it's nice to not have to worry about that.

I can just worry about reading.

but when our kids going to learn that and where and that's tough.

And when the onus is put just on kids to try to remove the stimulus and then you see things like the CEOs of TikTok knowing that it was addictive and programing their algorithm to be further addictive to teens.

And the onus is not put back on them to say you as a corporation have a responsibility to our world as a like a member of this global community, then that's that's where it still sticks with me as problematic down to our last minute or so earlier.

Charlie, apparently a former colleague of yours, Dan wrote in and said he thinks these next 3 or 4 years can be really tough for teachers.

Do you agree with that, Abby?

I think the years have always been tough for teachers and at the end of the day, it's me and my students in my classroom without their phones and with a great book, I'm good.

Do you think it's going to be harder?

Dan yeah, totally.

I think that it's been a really hard year already.

I think that it's hard to think about what three more years of this is going to be, but I'm trying to do my best to remind myself that it's not all doom and gloom, and that I can focus on joy for myself and for my students.

I can share joyful moments.

I can insist that there are ways that they share joy with each other.

And, you know, keep within my locus of control what I what I can.

I want to thank our guests for coming in, giving up some of their vacation week.

I really hope it's restful the rest of the week.

This is at noon.

This is great.

It started at noon, not 730.

So I didn't know what you meant.

It's not like a 730 bell, I get that.

Yeah.

Noon.

Piece of cake for you guys.

I mean, by now, not most of your days is complete.

At this point, I fulfilled my responsibility for.

Thank you so much again for having us.

Oh, Dan hired Abby Fanning, two teachers who are just held in such high regard.

And our listeners are seeing why.

Good luck to you.

Thank you for being here and sharing your perspective.

This.

Thanks so much for having this conversation.

That was great.

We've got more connections coming up in just a minute.

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