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The Right of Parental Input and Output

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I have never visited a hot dog factory, but I have been warned against it by people who refuse to eat hot dogs afterwards.  Apparently, lots of stuff can go into a hot dog, and none of it looks like something you would slap on the grill, so the input does not match the output. I rarely buy hot dogs because I ate too many in college. (Seriously, the cheap ones were sometimes four packages for a dollar!) Nevertheless, toss a few on the grill, and I still find them hard to resist.  Something about animal lips and mustard!

Come to think of it, schools are like hot dog factories because the tiny tots that entered Pre-K do not always resemble the graduates we produce, but there is a clear difference between hot dog factories and schools. It is a matter of input and output.  Factories have full control of whatever enters and exits the manufacturing process, but schools can never exercise complete control over input or output, for those are ultimately parental rights.  Parents have the right to know everything introduced into their children’s education, and they also have the right to everything their child produces during that education. No individual parent can unilaterally decide policy, curriculum, or library books for everyone, but when it comes to your child, you have the ultimate right of input and output.  

Regarding input, nothing should ever be taught, introduced, or presented to school children without parental access to the information, parental knowledge, or parental assent.  Parents rarely demand to preview everything, because they are busy, but everything should be available if they ever ask for it.  And above all, parents should always be notified beforehand if something is potentially controversial, sensitive, or age inappropriate – to ensure parents can opt out their children for religious, moral, or cultural reasons. 

Likewise, parents always deserve full disclosure regarding the output. Anything a child says, produces, or discloses in a school must be provided, available, or accessible to the parents. This includes not only classwork but also potentially harmful or sensitive issues, so parents can be involved in the solution. One of the biggest mistakes an educator can make is withholding sensitive information from a parent, even if the motive is good. Parents have a right to know information about their children that is uncovered in school, even if it is unpleasant or difficult to discuss.

Of course, in extreme cases involving the safety of the child, parents may be temporarily excluded from input and/or output, but this is the exception and not the norm, and it involves the appropriate authorities. Normally, all parents deserve full access and disclosure to both input and output related to their children. When this happens, schools run well, and parental rights are upheld and respected. Parents and educators trust each other. Furthermore, when parents have access to all input and output, they can make the best educational decisions for their children, based on factors that only a parent can know. Thankfully, most parents and educators understand this partnership, despite what you may see in the news.  

Making hotdogs and making graduates are both messy processes, but unlike hotdog factories, schools do not fully control the manufacture of their future graduates.  Our “hot dogs” also enter the factory cuter than when they exit, so I suppose schools are backwards hotdog factories.  They enter as bubbly cuties and exit as moody teenagers!  

Another big difference: our factories are open for inspection by parents. You really should see your hot dogs being made, every darn step. You will not always like or agree with everything in your local school, but when it comes to your children, you can expect full disclosure about the input and the output.  It is a fundamental parental right, and if schools ever forget that, we have lost our way.  On the other hand, if you start demanding to know what’s in your hot dogs . . . well, you’re just asking for trouble.  Sometimes, ignorance (or mustard) is bliss.  

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

What’s Next, For the Kids?

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In recent years, satire and parody from comedy sites like The Onion and The Babylon Bee have proven to be prophetic, as many “jokes” later became true. Parody, satire, and old-fashioned comedy are now dangerous for many reasons. First, they may get you cancelled, and secondly, your silly joke may become reality.  

I used to joke that politicians’ worn-out battle cry “for the kids” had been used to promote everything imaginable. Under that slogan, Oklahoma has championed issues like liquor by the drink, horse racing, the lottery, and medical marijuana. The only thing  left, I foolishly surmised, was legalized drugs and prostitution, “For The Kids!”  Our proposed state question for recreational weed lists education as its first beneficiary. So far, I was only half prophetic.  

The surreal is now real, not unlike professional wrestling, which is why I call this new reality the “educational smackdown”. It’s all theatrics, and level-headed parents and educators are forced to choose between two elitist mindsets: Pollyanna Public Schools (PPS) and Evil Public Schools (EPS). Meanwhile, neither side accepts any responsibility for their antics, leaving us with very stark choices in the upcoming elections. Now that primaries are over, I wonder if either side will pivot to reflect the beliefs of common-sense parents and educators. 

To capture the hearts and minds of sensible parents and educators, the PPS crowd must admit that radical agendas have been pushed into schools for decades. Age-inappropriate issues, hostility towards people of faith, and out-of-touch national unions have alienated many from public schools. We need to own that as educators. To win back rational parents and educators, the PPS crowd needs to get real. We have usurped the parent-educator partnership in favor of faraway activist agendas. 

Likewise, the EPS crowd cannot continue to pretend that everything in public schools is deplorable. Local schools accomplish miracles every day, and local communities know it. Clearly, the new strategy of replacing one form of indoctrination with another doesn’t work; neither does focusing on isolated examples of bad behavior while ignoring their own complicity in crippling public schools. We can do better than taxpayer funded barbeque grills or vague teaching laws that proponents cannot even follow in their own classrooms. We trust the doctor-patient relationship; let’s trust the parent-educator partnership, too. 

Case in point: as data emerges from the pandemic, both sides are outraged, but neither side will admit their part in the dumpster fire. Sensible parents and educators struggled to survive it while flaming pennies (the radical one-percenters on both sides) set their schools ablaze. One side openly advocated to close schools while the other side created knee-jerk rules that forced schools to close. In retrospect, both sides needed closed schools for their own contradicting political purposes, and the proof is now in the pudding. As a superintendent during all this, I navigated both sides to keep my schools open, but in the end, no one won.

We now need leaders with the courage to represent everyday parents and common-sense educators, but so far, we are only faced with extreme choices offered with faux outrage, bluster, and backroom deals of elitists in a pretend educational smackdown. We need a leader willing to betray their own orthodoxies to serve sensible, everyday, common-sense parents and educators – leaders willing to honestly resist the extremes of their respective political cults. Eighty percent of parents and eighty percent of educators agree on eighty percent of kid-level issues, and this 80/80/80 rule works every day in your neighborhood schools. May the forgotten and ignored majority of parents and educators rise. 

Most importantly, however, we must stop all jokes, parodies, and satire. Let’s call on the government and big tech to immediately shut down, de-platform, and block sites like The Onion and Babylon Bee, because we can no longer discern pretend from reality. Besides, God only knows what will happen next . . . for the kids!

Tom Deighan is a public educator and author of Shared Ideals in Public Schools. You may email him at deighantom@gmail.com.

Open Schools Versus Preemptive Closures

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January 7, 2022 by Tom Deighan

Once again , schools across our nation are preemptively closing due to COVID-19.  Yes, closing is always an option for Duncan Public Schools, but we will stay open as long as we can safely do so. We will continue to face this pandemic as we have from the beginning. If we close a single site or the entire district, we will close for a defined period due to actual conditions. Our children need the structure, safety, and normalcy of open schools. We have faced this threat before, and we will face it again, together.  

Hundreds of schools in our nation preemptively extended their Christmas Breaks, and who can blame them? We are in our third school year with COVID, and national educational leaders still exert intense pressure on schools to close, terrifying parents and staff.  Due to endless media reports of school closings, I suspect much of our nation is unaware that schools have been open safely since the beginning of this pandemic.  No wonder parents and educators across this nation are still terrified to fully commit to in-person, full-time instruction in the age of COVID.

We know that schools have been open from the beginning – not just during the current 2021-22 school year but last year (2020-21) – and yes, even during the spring of 2020! Wyoming and Montana reportedly did not preemptively close schools, even as the majority of other states preemptively closed (including Oklahoma.)  Yet, by the summer of 2020, we had solid research from Europe suggesting that schools could be safely open, and it was correct. Why don’t we hear about more research and the thousands of schools that have been open safely during all of this?  Why don’t we reassure these parents, educators, and students with the evidence available at this time?

We now have literally thousands of models available to reassure fearful parents and educators that full-time, in-person instruction is not only safe but also prevents the negative social, psychological, and academic impacts of long term, preemptive closures. I suspect that parents and educators may be unaware of how many schools have offered full-time, in-person instruction. Even if they are in an open school, I suspect they believe open schools are the exception – not the rule 

Rather than focus on the current slate of closures, perhaps we should reframe our national discussion as we prepare for the 2022-23 school year.  If we can somehow raise awareness of open schools (or just acknowledge them) – we may not have to constantly struggle against the pressure to preemptively close schools. Where are the studies, the examples, the research, and the data about all these schools that have stayed open? Why aren’t national leaders helping parents and educators welcome their students back with confidence?  Where is the proof that preemptive closures have worked? 

The fear and reality of COVID-19 is real.  It terrifies me every day at some level as a superintendent, and closure of our sites or entire district for the safety of our students and staff is always an option.  As we prepare for the 2022-23 school year, however, this is the time to settle the issue of full-time, in-person learning versus preemptive closures. 

No school is a model for how to manage COVID, especially not Duncan Public schools, but national experts can surely knit together some best practices from the thousands of schools who have stayed open during this nightmare. Districts who have been open feel alone, and districts who are closing preemptively feel alone. That is not necessary as we face our fourth school year with COVID.  May God protect our schools, children, and staff once again as we enter another fearful time, but may we also face any challenges with confidence, experience and wisdom . . . for that is how we want our students to face the world.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

COVID Groundhog Day for Schools

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Groundhog Day is this Wednesday, February 2, 2022, and just like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, our world will drag out of bed expecting the COVID loop to continue. But this isn’t just any Groundhog Day. Next Wednesday is 2-2-22, so something exciting is bound to happen, possibly at 2:22 PM. (Yes, 2.2.22.2.22 – just as Nostradamus likely predicted!) I am skeptical, but if Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t crawl out of his burrow before noon on Wednesday, I’m buying extra toilet paper.

In recent weeks, schools have experienced their own Groundhog Day of sorts as preemptive and indefinite closures again rolled across our nation due to COVID. In Duncan, we closed for the first time due to COVID (two days), and students reportedly broke down in tears at the news. Thankfully, we have avoided preemptive and indefinite closures, but this is their third school year saturated in such fear and anxiety. If it terrified our students who have attended open schools, just imagine the nationwide mental condition of students living through the Groundhog Day loop of constant closures.     

After three years of subjecting children to such trauma, my concern is that we will forever be stuck in the same Groundhog Day pattern. Schools face intense pressure to close preemptively and indefinitely at the slightest sniffle. When they do close, they are endlessly shamed. Meanwhile, our nation seems unaware of the thousands and thousands of schools in our nation that have managed to safely avoid preemptive and indefinite closures. Where are the models and data from those schools to help guide other struggling districts?

The 2022-23 school year will be our fourth COVID school year, and parents and educators need examples and strategies to stay open, not endless pressure to close and bitter shame when they do. Unfortunately, I suspect that most parents and educators still assume that preemptive, indefinite closures are the norm rather than the exception. Our national obsession about closures has ignored thousands of lonely schools that defied the odds to stay open. What about the states and communities that never closed?  Where are the models and strategies gleaned from their journeys?

This is our third COVID school year, and we know the patterns by now, and we know what works. If we are ever going to escape this COVID Groundhog Day, we must offer schools real strategies to avoid indefinite and preemptive closures. If we do not equip schools now, we can expect this pattern to repeat itself again in the future, whether or not Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on 2-2-22 at 2:22.

As hard as it has been for districts like Duncan to stay open and avoid preemptive closures, it has been infinitely more difficult for those schools pressured to preemptively and indefinitely closed. Whichever path communities have chosen, doubt and anxiety dominate every aspect of our lives. And if it has been hard on us adults, we can barely comprehend the despair of children living through this endless COVID Groundhog Day.

When I spent Christmas Break compiling a book about Duncan’s journey to keep schools open, I did it in hopes that some attention could be drawn to schools across our nation that have managed to stay open. Surely, our nation can learn something from the thousands of other schools like ours that have defied the odds. Parents, educators and students all deserve the confidence and assurance that they can return to normalcy. They need hope for ending preemptive and indefinite closures due to COVID.

Before we ever approach Groundhog Day 2023, schools need strategies and models to safely stay open – instead of shame and impossible choices. If Bill Murray could escape his endless loop, we can, too. And who knows, maybe something cool will happen on 2-2-22 at 2:22? I will be watching that little critter closely, this Wednesday. I don’t have any predictions, but if Punxsutawney Phil is wearing an N-95 mask, I am stocking up on Charmin.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Toby Dawn’s Serious Summer Plans

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Please pray for me, for every year shortly after graduation, my lifelong friend and childhood hero, Toby Dawn McIntyre, attempts to whisk me away for a summer adventure. He once surprised me with a motorcycle and sidecar immediately after graduation ceremonies, “Hop in, Tommy Boy!” He said, tossing me a pair of old aviator goggles. “Summer Vacation starts tonight!” I was wearing a suit and tie, so I passed.  The next summer, he sent me a box full of fish heads as an invitation to join him at an Alaskan fish cannery. Last summer, he begged me to join him as a truck driver in Europe.  They had a serious driver shortage, “And they’ll pay us to see the sites!” he told me. So far, I don’t know what he’s planning this year, but he has been texting a lot of Mickey Mouse memes. 

No one takes their summers more seriously than Toby Dawn McIntyre, but few people can take three months to kayak down the Mississippi, not even most educators, despite the perception that we take summers off.  Mountains of work pile up during the summer, including most of the maintenance and technology projects.  If you have a student, you know about the endless stream of summer camps for everything from STEM to sports to the arts.  Many schools also offer summer school, which often includes busing and feeding children.  

In fact, summer is the busiest time of the year for principals and other administration because we must wrap-up one fiscal year, start another, and hire staff.  Many of the other staff also have summer jobs.  When I was a classroom teacher, I drove a semi, hauled hay, worked at a truck stop, and even worked at a summer camp. (I was a terrible camp counselor – too many spiders.) Those without summer jobs get recruited for stuff all summer long. Visit any Vacation Bible School or summer church camp, and you will find a slew of school staff.  They make summer stuff work when they are not working at school.  

Assuming that educators do nothing during the summer is like assuming that wheat farmers only work during harvest or that tax accountants only work during April.  Summers are less hectic, but the pressure is on for a good school year.  Great athletes are made in the off-season, and so are great school years, so whenever something looks easy from the outside, it probably wasn’t.  Hard workers and gifted people make things look easy, and most “gifted” people are really just hard workers.  All of this applies to students, too. 

Busy kids are happy kids, so put them to work, keep them engaged, and kick ‘em outside once in a while, so they can learn to drink from garden hoses. (Hose water is tangy!) And if you really want happy summer kids, make their bedrooms device-free zones overnight.  Sure, they will kick and scream a little, but within a short time, you might see those Tik-Tok “ticks” subside.  Let them start a summer job or project. I have mad respect for hard-working kids because they grow up to be successful adults. As Toby Dawn says, “At some point, you can’t fix lazy,” and I have rarely seen a hard-working kid become a lazy adult.  

As the 2022 school year wraps up, begin this summer with intentionality, for great summers do not happen by accident, and next school year depends on it.   Whether you are a parent, an educator, or a student, purposely plan now for a great 2022-23 school year. Work hard at having fun this summer, like my friend Toby Dawn, for summertime, like childhood, is fleeting.  Cherish every moment.  And if you see a large red-haired man riding a motorcycle with a screaming man trapped in a sidecar, move out of the way.  If we are also wearing Mickey Mouse ears, you can bet we are headed to Disney World.    

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Safety and Security in Schools

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This is part of a series of ten summertime articles mapping the common ground upon which parents, educators, and communities can unite regarding one of the most divisive topics in America: public education. 

At over 6 feet tall in 7th grade, Jake towered over the other students in the hallway.  On this day, however, the double-barrel shotgun crooked over his arm is what caught my eye.  A crowded hallway . . . a teenager with a gun . . . every educator’s nightmare!  Fortunately, this was twenty-five years ago. 

“No shells,” he reassured me, placing two fingers in the barrels. “I had to give a dumb gun safety speech, but I’m running it to the pickup before your class.”  Jake was 13 and had no business driving, but I trusted him completely with a gun.  That was long ago in a small rural school where we hosted school turkey shoots as fund-raisers.  His pickup wouldn’t have been the only one with a firearm or a gun rack.  Times certainly have changed! 

I have written about the 80/80/80 rule in public education (80% of parents and 80% of educators agree on 80% of the issues), but it may be more of a 95% rule when we consider safety and security.   Virtually all parents and educators agree on this issue.  As superintendent, I have served in a small rural district with no local police department, which meant we were on our own in an emergency.  I have also served in a large urban district that had its own police department.  Approaches to safety and security vary depending on the district and community, but all parents and educators agree on some basic principles.

First and foremost, parents demand to know that school staff are not only qualified professionally but that they are also good people.  It may sound unfair to label people as good or bad, but there’s really not much gray area on this issue.  Adults can afford to interact with each other within broad parameters, but when it comes to children, people are either good or bad.  Ask any parent, and I suspect you will find widespread agreement in their definitions.  Parents only want good people working in schools.  Period.

Beyond just trusting the staff, parents also expect their children to be protected from unwanted intruders.  The doors should be locked, the playground fenced, and staff should have reasonable procedures to limit access to the school.  In addition to being a security issue, this is also a practical matter because schools are so easily disrupted. The best-intentioned visitors can easily cause chaos by showing up on the playground or in a classroom unannounced.  Trust me, I check in at the office every time, even as the boss, because we are ultimately considering the worst-case scenario.    

God forbid, if a threat emerges in a school, parents want to know that staff will do whatever is necessary to protect their children from any harm.  How schools plan for this varies widely. Evasion, isolation, and evacuation are always options, but any bad person threatening a child should be decisively stopped by whatever means necessary.  More and more districts are hiring armed security or arming their staff due to this fear.  Threaten a child with a gun, and political differences quickly evaporate, at least for that moment.

Once schools reasonably ensure that children are safe and secure, we can worry about all the normal kid stuff, but things have changed a lot since I saw Jake in the hallway with a shotgun.  We didn’t worry as much about guns 25 years ago, but we also did not worry about cyber-bullying or online safety either. Of course, no school is perfectly secure, but statistically speaking, schools are still the safest place for a child. Parents and educators from wildly different backgrounds actually work together every day on this and other critical educational issues.  I bet Jake is a parent now, and I bet his 13-year-old can safely handle a shotgun and a pickup truck.  I also bet that he would agree with most parents and educators about the importance of safety and security, even regarding double-barrel shotguns.

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

Pollyanna and Evil Public Schools

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Local rivalries abound in public schools, where parents and students rally around their local mascots. Likewise, collegiate supporters bleed the colors of their alma mater.  Such wholesome rivalries create a sense of community and an opportunity to cheer on our kids and the corresponding cartoon characters. On a national scale, however, the rivalry is not nearly as good natured. We are told to see our local public schools exclusively through our Cable News Goggles, and when we do that, we can only see Pollyanna Public Schools or Evil Public Schools.  

The Pollyanna Public Schools (PPS) hero myth paints all public schools as perfectly motivated institutions in need of no improvement or innovation, regardless of the facts or outcomes. The only thing Pollyanna Public Schools need is more funding to achieve educational utopia. The Pollyanna Public School crowd demonizes all public-school critics as greedily motivated to destroy public schools at all costs. PPS heroes stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that anything is systemically wrong within public schools, even in the most egregious situations. 

The Evil Public Schools (EPS) villain myth, on the other hand, paints all public schools as corrupt and incompetent institutions with no redeemable qualities or outcomes, regardless of the impossible challenges or expectations they face. The only option for the EPS antagonist is to dismantle public schools entirely and give more public funds to private entities. The Evil Public Schools crowd asserts that public school supporters are only motivated by greed and protecting existing educational power structures at all costs. The EPS villain stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that the school district does anything right, even when presented with truly stellar examples.  

Predictably, both sides faithfully scream, “Keep politics out of education!” And both sides profess to be fighting “For the Kids!” Nevertheless, both sides willingly ignore the obvious complexities of kid-level situations because nuance does not lend itself to high drama.  Few educators, however, have any Pollyannish delusions about their public schools, and likewise, few parents think their local educators are evil. Our modern Cable News Goggles focus almost exclusively on the extremes, incessantly keeping parents and educators on edge. It sure seems like we are being forced to choose between either a progressive march toward Marxism or a progressive march toward crony capitalism. 

Unfortunately, the kid-level voices of common-sense parents and educators disappear in the din of extremists. Ultimately, the PPS and EPS perspectives are simply two sides of the same political coin, for neither side has much of a message besides demonizing each other and asking for more money, without accountability.  One side refuses to consider any model wherein money follows the kid.  The other side rejects the idea of any public rules following the money as it is passed without oversight to private entities.  

Critics of public schools have many valid points, especially after the issues that developed during the pandemic.  Champions of public schools also have valid points, and most educators are dedicated, selfless professionals. Yet, the endless back-and-forth between PPS and EPS has resulted in stacks of legislation unrelated to the three R’s and seemingly designed to control kid-level options.  On one hand, legislation forces people to celebrate what they should tolerate in a free society, and on the other hand, legislation restricts people from tolerating much individual freedom at all. 

Local parents working with their local educators can work miracles, but both sides will need to cede a little more local control for this to happen. The conditions, causes, or solutions are rarely simple, so let’s take off our Cable News Goggles when we look at our neighborhood schools, parents, and educators.  They probably aren’t evil or Pollyannish, but they are undoubtedly dedicated to the local mascot, and as long as we can agree about cartoon characters, we have hope.  Please pray for kid-level wisdom, and please pray for the safety of our schools this Second Sunday of the Month. 

Tom Deighan is author of Shared Ideals in Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

The Pre-Eminence of Wal-Mart Parents

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Somewhere around the age of 2 or 3, children try to leverage pressure on their parents in public. I call those the Wal-Mart years, when children test us with fits, tantrums, and other tactics whenever they have an audience.  The goal is to get what they want, be it a toy or candy, but the larger goal is determining who’s boss, and it doesn’t just happen among toddlers.  I have a friend who admits to losing it in the cereal aisle when her child threw a tantrum during one hectic trip to the store.  She raised her voice, grabbed her child by the arm, and corrected him sternly right there in the store.  She never hurt her child, but it was enough of a scene that a concerned bystander scolded the mom and told her just to give the kid the cereal he wanted. Before the mom could respond to the stranger, her kid popped off, “Mind your own business, lady, or my mom will kick your butt!”  

The lady in this story is a great Mom, but everyone loses it in Wal-Mart eventually.  It does not make someone a bad parent, and kids rarely lose love for parents who correct them.  This is even true when the relationship is not perfect.    Even more remarkable, when the parent is derelict or abusive, however, children will still often defend them with a loyalty that defies logic.  That’s the power of the parent-child bond, and educators know that anyone who dares get between a child and a parent does so at extreme peril.  And when I say parents, I am referring to the caring adults in children’s lives who nurture their education. That role is often filled by someone who is not the biological father or mother.  Every child who has such an adult parenting their education is generally ready for school.    

Educators whom I respect hold the parent-child relationship as sacrosanct, for we know that it is an unbreakable bond. Parents are the preeminent influence in children’s lives.  Teachers know that their jobs are infinitely easier when the parent supports their child’s education, even in the smallest measures.  An educator can never replace the parent as the most important influencer or educator. We can often only enhance and support.  If a parent resists or devalues education or holds hostile feelings toward the teacher, educators struggle, often in vain, to overcome that child’s resistance to learning. On the other hand, when a parent participates or even tacitly supports in the simplest of ways like checking on their children’s grades online, that child enters the classroom with a tremendous advantage.  

Educators assist the parents, but we can never usurp, override, undermine, or replace the roles or responsibilities of a parent.  Contrary to the extreme examples we may see in the news, virtually all educators know that the power of a parent is unparalleled.  It is first biological, which is almost impossible to overcome, and then it is based on simple time and relationship. Think about it, children spend about 15% of their time each year in school, and they get new teachers every year.  The remainder is under parent or guardian supervision, year after year. (There are 8760 hours in a year, and children only spend 1260 hours in school, which is about 15% of their lives: 7 hours each day X 180 days = 1260 hours.) 

Educators assist parents, and I know educators who can help children overcome overwhelming obstacles, even those children who are unsupported in their education, but no educator can completely replace a caring, attentive, and invested adult in the home.  That’s why parents will always be the most important educators, and nearly all educators honor this parental role in a child’s life, especially during the challenging years!  Wal-Mart parents unafraid to correct their children in public are our heroes, for they are making our jobs much easier. Thank you for being the most important educators.

Tom Deighan is currently the superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Swimming in the Piranha Fishbowl

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Historically, certain professions accepted the reality of living in a “fish bowl.”  Politicians, pastors/ministers, school leaders, and city leaders all signed up for this in some measure.  People in private-sector leadership understand the fishbowl, too, due to social media, as do teachers, law enforcement, and healthcare workers. Swimming in the fishbowl is not just for high-profile leaders anymore.  Nowadays, anyone can find themselves in the public fishbowl, but in the COVID Era, the fishbowl is now full of piranhas. And if you or someone you love has ever been piranha’d, you need no definition.  Find a leader in a fishbowl, add piranhas.  

Many of us signed up for life in the fishbowl, but in the social media age, anyone can unexpectedly take a swim.  No matter who you are or how you found your fishbowl, no one is truly ready for it.  The stress on your family, relationships, and health can be overwhelming under normal circumstances, but add a few piranhas, and life in the fishbowl has become a blood sport. Without warning and without cause, anyone (literally anyone) can be attacked with a thousand tiny bites while the public watches on.

Consequently, joyful jobs like coaching or volunteer positions like school board and city council are rapidly becoming less joyful. Modern technology has devolved into something medieval. Decent people are now publicly piranha’d simply for having a different perspective, a different philosophy, or a deeply held conviction. People are demonized simply because of their profession, titles or labels.  A snap of the jaws, a little blood in the water, and a feeding frenzy. 

When we interject national political vitriol into our homes, churches, schools, and communities, people become caricatures and symbols.  Symbols become targets. Ideas become weaponized, and decent people become dehumanized.  Consequently, piranhas are tossed into our schools and churches and neighborhoods. Before we allow anyone else to be piranah’d, we must remember that these are real people with families, jobs, and dreams.  They are our neighbors. Our doctors and nurses. Our pastors and principals.  

Do people’s titles, positions, or political parties make them more or less human?  Do we really believe local board members and city council members are evil?  Your local teachers are radicals?  Healthcare workers are trying to hurt people? Parents are terrorists? Do we really believe this about each other? 

We may never see our statewide or national discourse return to civility, but at the local levels, we can restore decency by recognizing each other as people, not as symbols. Your local “fishbowl” leaders are often simply volunteers; they do not deserve to be demonized.  People working in the fishbowl do not always deserve praise, but they don’t deserve to be constantly piranha’d, either. 

Our children are watching, and how we treat each other as adults teaches them volumes about our world.  Our little Mayberry can either nullify or affirm the world’s ugliness. We can model true tolerance – accepting people even when we do not agree with them – or they can see a world full of bloody fishbowls, where our online profiles or likes determine our worth as people. 

National civility will never be restored until we restore it locally, in our own communities, our own churches, and our own neighborhoods.  We must model it for our children, whether online or in person, and maybe what starts locally could spread statewide and infect our whole nation.  Make no mistake, however, it starts in our own fishbowls, and it starts with us. Enough of us have the scars, so we know what to look for. Let’s no longer permit colleagues and neighbors to be piranha’d. Sure, it may still happen in faraway places, but not in our local fishbowls. Not in our Mayberries.    

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Toby Dawn’s Fall Fireworks Prediction

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The doorbell rang shortly after sunrise. Barely awake, I scurried to the door, but no one there . . . just a faint burning smell that I recognized a split second too late. Pop! Pop! Pop!  And so it started, my annual fireworks battle with my lifelong friend and childhood hero, Toby Dawn McIntyre. He loves Independence Day, and each year, he starts his surprise attacks with a bang.  

Toby has booby-trapped doors, trash cans, and even my sock drawer.  Roman candles in the grill . . . whistling chasers tossed from moving cars . . . and, somehow, underwater fireworks.  No place is safe. Once he tethered a fishing line to my back porch and hid in my neighbors’ tree as he ziplined explosive after explosive to our peaceful cookout. When our neighbors let their dogs out, however, Toby was stuck, and we had great fun with our garden hoses. Don’t worry, no one ever gets hurt except Toby Dawn.  “Eyebrows grow back, Tommy Boy!”

As I celebrate Independence Day, however, I worry about the political fireworks ahead this fall. Predictably, new and terrifying strains of COVID are surfacing, but this year it is exacerbated by an incredibly divisive political season.  The familiar mask-or-no-mask battleline is already forming, and if history repeats itself, we can expect renewed calls for schools to close sometime later this month. (Just a hundred weeks or so to flatten the curve.) I am not sure if this slow fuse leads to a lady finger or an M-80, but if history repeats itself, the start of school will be the opening salvo. For the kids! 

The topic of education has never been more relevant or more divisive. Parents are being told to put on their Gotham City Shades, assured that everything bad they hear about in faraway big cities is also happening in their evil neighborhood schools.  Educators are being told to irrationally resist any changes in public schools, because of course, all public schools are perfect (or would be if we had more funding.) 

Meanwhile, rational parents and educators know better, despite the dire warnings of the Evil Public Schools or the Pollyanna Public Schools crowds. The radical one-percent of extremists, from both sides, continue to set just about everything on fire.  “I warned you about those Flaming Pennies;” Toby reminds me often, “they will burn the world down this election season to make a point!”  Common sense parents and educators, however, are starting to recognize much of these arguments as duds, because neither message describes many of our schools.  

I recently received fifteen fliers about candidates in one day, but none of them were sent by the candidates. In a year of unprecedented dark money impacting state and local elections, I have been fearful about the fireworks to come, but Oklahoman’s have impressed me.  We are stubborn, and we do not like faraway activists telling us how to vote.  A few high-profile dark money campaigns were effective, but overall, Oklahomans have made up their own darned mind.  Nothing makes an Okie bow-up faster than someone from Gotham City telling us how to vote, even if we agree.  

Yes, the fireworks will begin full force with the start of school, leading to a grand finale in November, but maybe, this season will reveal a brighter and more hopeful brand of fireworks: Oklahomans lighting up all this dark money with common sense and thoughtful determination. Oklahomans are too smart to vote locally while wearing their Cable News Goggles or Gotham City Shades. 

According to Toby Dawn McIntyre, “Anyone can blow stuff up, but only a skillful person can use fireworks to bring people together.”  Of course, this wisdom comes from a large red-haired man with only one eyebrow.  Nevertheless, as Fourth of July fireworks fade away, get ready for the real light show as school starts. All this dark money will surely make the fireworks brighter and more dazzling. Lets’ just hope all these flaming pennies don’t light some really destructive fires in our state, for they won’t be around to clean up the mess.     

Tom Deighan is author of Shared Ideals in Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

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