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Dear Brady, fueling despair in the classroom is toxic. Don't do it.
This essay appeared last month in my Substack publication "Eclectic Currents." I wrote to my younger self, early in my teaching career as a device to scold present educators about freaking out at school after the 2024 election results.
Dear Younger Brady, remember those couple of summers you worked on the back of the village garbage truck? You banked summer bucks as a sanitation engineer—in the days before automatic arms slung trash cans over the side of the truck.
I remember my first driveway. Cormier Road at True Lane.
I hopped to the pavement, dumped the cans, set them back on the terrace. Hop, dump, set, repeat! After three driveways cleared in record time,—SPOOOOSH! I felt the truck’s air brake.
My driver partner Jeff scowled at me in his side mirror. He angrily motioned me to the cab. Like an eager puppy, I trotted up to his window.
In a brusque but calm manner, he said, "You gotta calm the [expletive] down."
What? CTFD?
"At this rate, we'll be done before lunch. You’re wearing yourself out. Now knock it off!"
They should know better
A day prior to the 2024 election, I heard two of the most ridiculous statements in recent memory. These statements fell out of the Exaggeration Tree and hit every branch on the way down.
“If Trump doesn’t win, this is the last election.”
"If we don't show up [for Harris] tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again."
These aren’t the voices, tweets, or TikToks of unknown trolls or Russian bot farms.
These came from Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey.
And let me be gracious before criticizing their statements: Musk and Winfrey have fascinating, genuinely American-dream-type stories taking them to the heights of popular culture. Whatever their politics, they have compelling backstories.
Back to their statements. These are intelligent people. They should know better.
Here they sound like the standard political speech in a truckstop diner or a faculty lounge (I can confirm this, as I’ve experienced both).
Their statements are reckless and easily disproven. By a seventh grader. My social studies teacher mind might explode with too much exposure to these statements.
But, I take a breath and defer to old Driver Jeff and his loving CTFD correction.
60 seconds? Minutes? No, try sixty…
Please join me, even if Mr. Musk and Ms. Winfrey cannot, in wishing the United States a happy sixtieth—yes, number SIX-ZERO presidential election.
To anyone adopting the “last election ever” belief genre, please take a seat in the overcrowded waiting room of celebrities who quadrennially promise to move out of the United States if the vote, an act of democracy, does not go their way.
Through wars—including the Civil War, pestilence, social and cultural upheaval, the nation has continued to hold elections. I ask you to consider giving the American nation some credit for enduring for sixty election cycles.
Election 2024 will neither be the “last election” nor the “last opportunity to ever cast a ballot again."
Pause, take a breath, and read this section carefully
Dear Brady, when things in life like, say, a presidential election (or a Green Bay Packers playoff game) don’t go your way, your students and colleagues need you to preemptively CTFD before getting to school.
You can’t control anyone else. You can control your own state of mind. And it will calm the atmosphere in your classroom.
This is critically important because students have:
- ongoing family issues
- adolescent hormonal and physiological changes 24/7
- the rocky social landscape of tween and teen lives
- been burdened by the generational effects of the establishment foolishly cutting off their social and educational development for more than a year.
In short, kids have enough [expletive] to worry about without a classroom fueled by bald-faced lies like “last election” nihilism.
If you’re in agreement with Elon or Oprah, I am humbly informing you that their statements are incorrect. In an age of “what is my truth?” this can come as quite a shock.
You’re intelligent. You know better.
Young Brady, if you want to be considered a “professional” then act like it. Your students depend on you to keep your classroom from becoming a Hunger Games-style spectacle of euphoria or despair.
Your reactions impact your students.
Keep your political opinions, emotions, and anything like that outside of school. Some students and parents in the community already know and understand where you come from. But you need to play it straight on the job.
The best compliment I received from several students through the years was that they couldn’t tell where I stood on the issues—even after we discussed multiple current events issues in our classes.
Some who know me would scoff at that. But they should have seen me in the classroom. Playing the gentle “devil’s advocate” role does wonders.
Don’t fuel the anxiety and dread
These kids are impressionable. Their anxiety and collateral actions on a national scale are off the charts. They get enough of the anxiety flood outside school. How could someone introduce “last election” and the even darker “They’re coming for you!” hyperbole into supposedly safe spaces?
Younger Brady, for one last time: get it together, take a breath, and CTFD. You and your students are worth doing that for.
Sincerely,
-Older Brady
P.S. If you feel self-righteousness and political thoughts are consuming most of your time, it’s time to get back to your faith, mellow people, long walks outside, and a good book.
Epilogue: Presidential Elections Survival List
In the spirit of Driver Jeff’s CTFD exhortation, take a look at what U.S. elections have persevered through. These are not all-inclusive.
- Wars
- 1812 - War of 1812
- 1864 - Civil War(!)
- 1916 - World War I
- 1940 and ‘44 - the eve and middle of World War II
- 1952 - Korean War
- 1968 and ‘72 - Vietnam War
- 2004 - post 9/11 and War on Terror
- 2024 - Middle East (U.S. Navy’s most action in a generation)
- Pestilence
- 1918 - Spanish flu pandemic
- 1948 and ‘52 - polio outbreak
- 2020 - COVID-19 pandemic
- Social Upheaval
- I’ve lost count. Perhaps we can cite relatively serene election cycles to save time. (Maybe 1988 or ‘96 in my lifetime?).
Note: I am not typically so crass as to use or imply foul language in my posts. Sometimes the circumstances warrant the crassness.
Discussion (28)
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To even be a teacher you need to be liberal or keep your politics to yourself.
I like your CTFD acronym. I'm going to use that for an email response. My TLDR is getting old.
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Nice write-up. A co-worker used to tell me a version of CTFD at work. Mostly it was “change the things you can and come to peace with the things you can’t.”
Regarding the election, people always think the time they are living in is the worst ever. History shows we have had worse periods and I’m sure those folks thought the same thing (or maybe not because they probably didn’t know what was going on, especially in real time).
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Many small ‘c’ conservative teachers exist. I didn’t want to spoil good collegial relationships with unnecessary political interjections. And I was largely successful in my 21 years. Speaking for myself, I played it straight at work because (a) it’s the right thing to do and (b) life shouldn’t be all politics. That’s somewhat fantasy now, especially (b). Engaging others with politics aside is now countercultural.
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The kids must have loved the younger you.
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You're too kind Susan. When I reflect on my teaching career, I most miss the students. I don't miss the bureaucracy, directives, and victimhood mentality.
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