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The National
11-05-2025
- The National
Cycling group setting wheels in motion for women in Scotland
Women On Wheels' Tuesday begins with a morning session for beginners, where riders navigate cones and obstacles, gaining one-to-one advice on how to improve their cycling skills. In the afternoon, another session allows more confident riders to set out on a gentle ride around the surrounding area, through parks or woodland areas, with hills or more challenging terrain. The women attending these sessions are New Scots who have arrived in Scotland from countries including Iran, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ukraine. Some of the women are experiencing cycling as a new hobby, and for others, they are trying to rebuild their lives and navigate an unfamiliar city, looking for connections and routine. The purpose of the sessions is not only to improve riders' skills, but to give the women a better understanding of their local area, improving their confidence to navigate Glasgow. The sessions often cover bike rides in Queen's Park or Kelvingrove, and recently helped one woman build the confidence to cycle from Maryhill all the way to the southside. For some, cultural and religious rules have prevented women from learning to cycle in their home country. Soraya, a young woman from Tanzania, explained how she had cycled as a child before being forced to give it up due to restrictions that prevented women from cycling. She said: 'In my country, as a teenager I had to stop cycling. It is especially difficult as a Muslim and while wearing a headscarf.' Since attending the sessions in Glasgow, she has seen women of different faiths and nationalities take up the activity and says 'cycling now makes me feel free'. Eilidh has run multiple riding sessions with refugees across different charities in Glasgow for almost a decade. She has successfully brought together women from across groups such as Sunny Cycles and Bikes for Refugees, to a space where women are sure to feel welcomed and comfortable. As with many grassroots initiatives, she has hopped from project to project, supporting people until funding has run out. READ MORE: Doctor who grew up in Gaza gives 'emotional' speech at Highlands pro-Palestine march Her informal WhatsApp group chat ''Cycling Sisters' is part of the success of the sessions. This group brings together women from different charities, ensuring that women are never left behind if the funding for projects runs out. Rides and sessions are shared here, as well as photographs and funny videos. Most of the women have heard about the sessions through word of mouth. For many, it is not just a cycling group but a support network, which has allowed them to gain access to more support services in Scotland or even to hear about volunteering and work opportunities. As asylum seekers are not allowed to work, many women are keen to find volunteering jobs that fit around their ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) courses, a college programme that helps refugees to learn English. Women On Wheels helps to put women in contact with other groups and on the most recent Tuesday ride, the session stopped at Urban Roots, a community-led gardening project, where one woman was introduced to volunteering opportunities. The women feel that cycling is not only beneficial for their physical health, but for their mental health and sense of belonging. Edith, from Nigeria, is one of dozens of women who has taken part in the cycling sessions and feels an increased sense of community and friendship since joining. Edith was introduced to Eilidh when she was still living in hotel accommodation in Glasgow and describes the sessions as giving her confidence and happiness in an extremely challenging time. Women On Wheels works closely with the Scottish Refugee Council and will be hosting an event for Refugee Festival Scotland, taking place from June 13-22. Women from across different refugee sessions will be invited to a dinner at the Milk Cafe where they can share delicious food, in keeping with their cultures. For many, hotel food has been unfamiliar and poor, with little opportunity to cook and eat their preferred dishes. In a time of polarised political discourse surrounding refugees and displaced people, Women On Wheels and its refugee sessions are a quiet and powerful network, whose amazing work has mostly gone unnoticed. For the women who take part, these sessions are more than a bike ride. They are a space to grow in confidence, build community and friends and gain a sense of freedom and knowledge about the local area.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I'm A Teacher. Here's The Shocking Truth About The "Woke" Indoctrination Of Students That Terrifies Conservatives.
I'm a bit of a masochist. I can't help but read the comments whenever the local news posts anything political on social media — especially when it's related to public education. I've spent most of my life building a career as a public educator who emphatically embraces and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I live in Florida, where public education is very much on the chopping block and our pouty, petulant goblin of a governor has made the classroom the front line of his culture war. In recent years, whenever I read the comment section of these stories, there are scores of MAGA folks screeching in chorus about evil liberal teachers indoctrinating kids with vegan transgender socialism. 'Their [sic] teaching are [sic] kids CRT [critical race theory]!' insists one commenter. 'They want white kids to feel guilty about their race!' cries another. On and on they go — affirming, commiserating and spreading their noxious grievances. And almost none of what they claim is true. Although I'm in public higher education now, I was a public high school teacher for over a decade. I worked at three radically different schools in three radically different counties. Most of my social circle is made up of teachers. If indoctrination were occurring at scale, I'd know about it. It's just not happening. Almost every teacher I've ever met (and that number is in the high hundreds at this point) is exceedingly careful not to discuss politics or religion while at school — even with other adults, even in the relative privacy of the break room, even one-on-one in their own classrooms during lunch or planning. It's a simple matter of self-preservation — if a single student were to hear you say, 'God, I hate Gov. Ron DeSantis,' they'd tell their friends, those friends would pass it on, and by the end of the day, you'd be in the principal's office explaining that no, you do not, in fact, have a 'Fuck DeSantis' tattoo on your chest. There are exceptions, of course. In the 13 years I spent teaching high school, a handful of teachers have been openly political. I was helping a fresh-out-of-college teacher set up his classroom in 2014 when he asked me, 'Can you believe they let these Muslim kids wear their habibs [sic] in class?' This was within 15 minutes of meeting him for the first time. 'I guess the dress code doesn't apply to them. I don't know why we bend the rules for them,' he continued. He had no idea if I was Muslim. He also didn't know if I was an immigrant — even though I'm visibly Hispanic — before he then went on a rant about 'the ESOL kids,' aka students in an English for Speakers of Other Languages program, who were 'probably illegal.' Another teacher I worked with at least had the patience to ratchet his way up to vocal bigotry. He started off slow, talking about the kids with 'crazy hair colors,' and later, 'the alphabet kids,' his way of labeling students who identified as LGBTQ+. Within a few weeks, he had started complaining about 'how sick and stupid' pronouns are. 'They can call themselves whatever they want,' he said, 'just don't expect me to play pretend too.' Those two cases are essentially the extent of educators expressing their personal beliefs at work that I ever encountered. Most teachers simply don't want to risk termination by talking about potentially contentious topics at work. To this day, aside from teachers who I've befriended and spoken with outside of work, I don't know the political or religious affiliation of nearly any of my former colleagues. Teachers are that averse to potentially career-ending conflict. Of course, that's my experience with teachers interacting with other teachers. But what about inside the classroom? I couldn't possibly know what happens in every other class while I'm busy teaching my own, right? Wrong. Students talk a lot about what their teachers do and say — and they particularly love to focus on the bad stuff. Is some of it rumor, hearsay or even deliberate lies? Sure. But when you hear the same things about the same teachers week after week, year after year, from different students — including trustworthy ones — you learn to separate fact from fiction. Students told me about exactly two instances of deliberate classroom indoctrination. The biggest repeat offender was an unassuming social studies teacher. Socially, she was reserved but kind, unerringly courteous and wholly nonconfrontational. Yet in her classroom, she focused intensely on the War of Northern Aggression and the idea that it was based on 'states' rights,' but specifically not slavery. Another offender — one I mentioned earlier — routinely ridiculed the idea of pronouns and gender identity in class, refusing to acknowledge students' gender identities. He eventually lost his position because of this behavior. Despite how all of this might sound, I am honestly not claiming that scores of conservative teachers are indoctrinating our students in the classroom. Over the course of my 13 years of personal observation and dozens of discussions (outside of work) with teacher friends, those are the only two instances that I have personally encountered. The fact that these two teachers held right-wing views appears purely coincidental to me. The bigger takeaway is that like in-person voter fraud, political indoctrination in public schools is incredibly rare. And there's a good reason why it's so vanishingly infrequent ... and it honestly might shock you. It's because almost every teacher out there is spending every ounce of their energy and patience trying to get their students to read just one paragraph without looking at their phones. They're too busy trying to get students to complete just one math problem without saying, 'This is too hard.' To write just one essay without using ChatGPT. To turn in just one assignment on time. And that's when they're not revising their lesson plans to align with the state's new Best-Ever Evidence-Based Data-Driven Standards That Are Guaranteed To Promote Mastery and Cultivate a Growth Mindset This Time. (Note: These will be deemed outdated and obsolete within two to four years, and replaced with Even-Better Standards, which will be functionally indistinguishable.) These revisions, of course, have to be scheduled around their student data chats, individualized education program meetings, professional learning communities, parent-teacher conferences, morning duty, hall duty and afternoon duty, all of which occur outside of mandatory faculty meetings (that always could have been emails). Of course, rational people know that there isn't rampant classroom indoctrination, but 'liberal teacher indoctrinating your children' has been a favorite bogeyman of the right for at least as long as I've been alive — part of a decades-long fight against public education that so many people have been sounding alarm bells over — and now I worry it's too goddamn late. Too many voters believed that schools are chopping off kids' genitals during recess. Too many voters believed that schools have litter boxes for kids who identify as cats. Too many voters believed that teachers promote feelings over facts. The most gullible among us voted for Donald Trump (he's a good businessman, after all!), and now the Department of Education is dead, graduate schools can no longer afford to bring in the next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, middle-class people are seeing their student loan monthly payments double, triple, or quadruple, and state and local public education funds are being gleefully snatched from public schools and funneled into for-profit corporate charter 'schools.' The generation of children and young adults whose education was already heavily disrupted by the pandemic is now left with far fewer, far worse post-secondary options than any generation before them in the modern age. And that's aside from rising unemployment, rising inflation and a housing market that is outrageously unaffordable. But hey, at least eggs are cheap now. Oh, wait... Marco Vanserra is the pseudonym of a professional educator and public school advocate. He specializes in making mathematics relevant and accessible to underserved communities in Florida. This article originally appeared on HuffPost in April 2025.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I'm A Teacher. Here's The Shocking Truth About The "Woke" Indoctrination Of Students That Terrifies Conservatives.
I'm a bit of a masochist. I can't help but read the comments whenever the local news posts anything political on social media — especially when it's related to public education. I've spent most of my life building a career as a public educator who emphatically embraces and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I live in Florida, where public education is very much on the chopping block and our pouty, petulant goblin of a governor has made the classroom the front line of his culture war. In recent years, whenever I read the comment section of these stories, there are scores of MAGA folks screeching in chorus about evil liberal teachers indoctrinating kids with vegan transgender socialism. 'Their [sic] teaching are [sic] kids CRT [critical race theory]!' insists one commenter. 'They want white kids to feel guilty about their race!' cries another. On and on they go — affirming, commiserating and spreading their noxious grievances. And almost none of what they claim is true. Although I'm in public higher education now, I was a public high school teacher for over a decade. I worked at three radically different schools in three radically different counties. Most of my social circle is made up of teachers. If indoctrination were occurring at scale, I'd know about it. It's just not happening. Almost every teacher I've ever met (and that number is in the high hundreds at this point) is exceedingly careful not to discuss politics or religion while at school — even with other adults, even in the relative privacy of the break room, even one-on-one in their own classrooms during lunch or planning. It's a simple matter of self-preservation — if a single student were to hear you say, 'God, I hate Gov. Ron DeSantis,' they'd tell their friends, those friends would pass it on, and by the end of the day, you'd be in the principal's office explaining that no, you do not, in fact, have a 'Fuck DeSantis' tattoo on your chest. There are exceptions, of course. In the 13 years I spent teaching high school, a handful of teachers have been openly political. I was helping a fresh-out-of-college teacher set up his classroom in 2014 when he asked me, 'Can you believe they let these Muslim kids wear their habibs [sic] in class?' This was within 15 minutes of meeting him for the first time. 'I guess the dress code doesn't apply to them. I don't know why we bend the rules for them,' he continued. He had no idea if I was Muslim. He also didn't know if I was an immigrant — even though I'm visibly Hispanic — before he then went on a rant about 'the ESOL kids,' aka students in an English for Speakers of Other Languages program, who were 'probably illegal.' Another teacher I worked with at least had the patience to ratchet his way up to vocal bigotry. He started off slow, talking about the kids with 'crazy hair colors,' and later, 'the alphabet kids,' his way of labeling students who identified as LGBTQ+. Within a few weeks, he had started complaining about 'how sick and stupid' pronouns are. 'They can call themselves whatever they want,' he said, 'just don't expect me to play pretend too.' Those two cases are essentially the extent of educators expressing their personal beliefs at work that I ever encountered. Most teachers simply don't want to risk termination by talking about potentially contentious topics at work. To this day, aside from teachers who I've befriended and spoken with outside of work, I don't know the political or religious affiliation of nearly any of my former colleagues. Teachers are that averse to potentially career-ending conflict. Of course, that's my experience with teachers interacting with other teachers. But what about inside the classroom? I couldn't possibly know what happens in every other class while I'm busy teaching my own, right? Wrong. Students talk a lot about what their teachers do and say — and they particularly love to focus on the bad stuff. Is some of it rumor, hearsay or even deliberate lies? Sure. But when you hear the same things about the same teachers week after week, year after year, from different students — including trustworthy ones — you learn to separate fact from fiction. Students told me about exactly two instances of deliberate classroom indoctrination. The biggest repeat offender was an unassuming social studies teacher. Socially, she was reserved but kind, unerringly courteous and wholly nonconfrontational. Yet in her classroom, she focused intensely on the War of Northern Aggression and the idea that it was based on 'states' rights,' but specifically not slavery. Another offender — one I mentioned earlier — routinely ridiculed the idea of pronouns and gender identity in class, refusing to acknowledge students' gender identities. He eventually lost his position because of this behavior. Despite how all of this might sound, I am honestly not claiming that scores of conservative teachers are indoctrinating our students in the classroom. Over the course of my 13 years of personal observation and dozens of discussions (outside of work) with teacher friends, those are the only two instances that I have personally encountered. The fact that these two teachers held right-wing views appears purely coincidental to me. The bigger takeaway is that like in-person voter fraud, political indoctrination in public schools is incredibly rare. And there's a good reason why it's so vanishingly infrequent ... and it honestly might shock you. It's because almost every teacher out there is spending every ounce of their energy and patience trying to get their students to read just one paragraph without looking at their phones. They're too busy trying to get students to complete just one math problem without saying, 'This is too hard.' To write just one essay without using ChatGPT. To turn in just one assignment on time. And that's when they're not revising their lesson plans to align with the state's new Best-Ever Evidence-Based Data-Driven Standards That Are Guaranteed To Promote Mastery and Cultivate a Growth Mindset This Time. (Note: These will be deemed outdated and obsolete within two to four years, and replaced with Even-Better Standards, which will be functionally indistinguishable.) These revisions, of course, have to be scheduled around their student data chats, individualized education program meetings, professional learning communities, parent-teacher conferences, morning duty, hall duty and afternoon duty, all of which occur outside of mandatory faculty meetings (that always could have been emails). Of course, rational people know that there isn't rampant classroom indoctrination, but 'liberal teacher indoctrinating your children' has been a favorite bogeyman of the right for at least as long as I've been alive — part of a decades-long fight against public education that so many people have been sounding alarm bells over — and now I worry it's too goddamn late. Too many voters believed that schools are chopping off kids' genitals during recess. Too many voters believed that schools have litter boxes for kids who identify as cats. Too many voters believed that teachers promote feelings over facts. The most gullible among us voted for Donald Trump (he's a good businessman, after all!), and now the Department of Education is dead, graduate schools can no longer afford to bring in the next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, middle-class people are seeing their student loan monthly payments double, triple, or quadruple, and state and local public education funds are being gleefully snatched from public schools and funneled into for-profit corporate charter 'schools.' The generation of children and young adults whose education was already heavily disrupted by the pandemic is now left with far fewer, far worse post-secondary options than any generation before them in the modern age. And that's aside from rising unemployment, rising inflation and a housing market that is outrageously unaffordable. But hey, at least eggs are cheap now. Oh, wait... Marco Vanserra is the pseudonym of a professional educator and public school advocate. He specializes in making mathematics relevant and accessible to underserved communities in Florida. This article originally appeared on HuffPost in April 2025.
Buzz Feed
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Buzz Feed
I'm A Teacher. Here's The Shocking Truth About The "Woke" Indoctrination Of Students That Terrifies Conservatives.
I'm a bit of a masochist. I can't help but read the comments whenever the local news posts anything political on social media — especially when it's related to public education. I've spent most of my life building a career as a public educator who emphatically embraces and promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I live in Florida, where public education is very much on the chopping block and our pouty, petulant goblin of a governor has made the classroom the front line of his culture war. In recent years, whenever I read the comment section of these stories, there are scores of MAGA folks screeching in chorus about evil liberal teachers indoctrinating kids with vegan transgender socialism. 'Their [sic] teaching are [sic] kids CRT [critical race theory]!' insists one commenter. 'They want white kids to feel guilty about their race!' cries another. On and on they go — affirming, commiserating and spreading their noxious grievances. And almost none of what they claim is true. Although I'm in public higher education now, I was a public high school teacher for over a decade. I worked at three radically different schools in three radically different counties. Most of my social circle is made up of teachers. If indoctrination were occurring at scale, I'd know about it. It's just not happening. Almost every teacher I've ever met (and that number is in the high hundreds at this point) is exceedingly careful not to discuss politics or religion while at school — even with other adults, even in the relative privacy of the break room, even one-on-one in their own classrooms during lunch or planning. It's a simple matter of self-preservation — if a single student were to hear you say, 'God, I hate Gov. Ron DeSantis,' they'd tell their friends, those friends would pass it on, and by the end of the day, you'd be in the principal's office explaining that no, you do not, in fact, have a 'Fuck DeSantis' tattoo on your chest. There are exceptions, of course. In the 13 years I spent teaching high school, a handful of teachers have been openly political. I was helping a fresh-out-of-college teacher set up his classroom in 2014 when he asked me, 'Can you believe they let these Muslim kids wear their habibs [sic] in class?' This was within 15 minutes of meeting him for the first time. 'I guess the dress code doesn't apply to them. I don't know why we bend the rules for them,' he continued. He had no idea if I was Muslim. He also didn't know if I was an immigrant — even though I'm visibly Hispanic — before he then went on a rant about 'the ESOL kids,' aka students in an English for Speakers of Other Languages program, who were 'probably illegal.' Another teacher I worked with at least had the patience to ratchet his way up to vocal bigotry. He started off slow, talking about the kids with 'crazy hair colors,' and later, 'the alphabet kids,' his way of labeling students who identified as LGBTQ+. Within a few weeks, he had started complaining about 'how sick and stupid' pronouns are. 'They can call themselves whatever they want,' he said, 'just don't expect me to play pretend too.' Those two cases are essentially the extent of educators expressing their personal beliefs at work that I ever encountered. Most teachers simply don't want to risk termination by talking about potentially contentious topics at work. To this day, aside from teachers who I've befriended and spoken with outside of work, I don't know the political or religious affiliation of nearly any of my former colleagues. Teachers are that averse to potentially career-ending conflict. Of course, that's my experience with teachers interacting with other teachers. But what about inside the classroom? I couldn't possibly know what happens in every other class while I'm busy teaching my own, right? Wrong. Students talk a lot about what their teachers do and say — and they particularly love to focus on the bad stuff. Is some of it rumor, hearsay or even deliberate lies? Sure. But when you hear the same things about the same teachers week after week, year after year, from different students — including trustworthy ones — you learn to separate fact from fiction. Students told me about exactly two instances of deliberate classroom indoctrination. The biggest repeat offender was an unassuming social studies teacher. Socially, she was reserved but kind, unerringly courteous and wholly nonconfrontational. Yet in her classroom, she focused intensely on the War of Northern Aggression and the idea that it was based on 'states' rights,' but specifically not slavery. Another offender — one I mentioned earlier — routinely ridiculed the idea of pronouns and gender identity in class, refusing to acknowledge students' gender identities. He eventually lost his position because of this behavior. Despite how all of this might sound, I am honestly not claiming that scores of conservative teachers are indoctrinating our students in the classroom. Over the course of my 13 years of personal observation and dozens of discussions (outside of work) with teacher friends, those are the only two instances that I have personally encountered. The fact that these two teachers held right-wing views appears purely coincidental to me. The bigger takeaway is that like in-person voter fraud, political indoctrination in public schools is incredibly rare. And there's a good reason why it's so vanishingly infrequent ... and it honestly might shock you. It's because almost every teacher out there is spending every ounce of their energy and patience trying to get their students to read just one paragraph without looking at their phones. They're too busy trying to get students to complete just one math problem without saying, 'This is too hard.' To write just one essay without using ChatGPT. To turn in just one assignment on time. And that's when they're not revising their lesson plans to align with the state's new Best-Ever Evidence-Based Data-Driven Standards That Are Guaranteed To Promote Mastery and Cultivate a Growth Mindset This Time. (Note: These will be deemed outdated and obsolete within two to four years, and replaced with Even-Better Standards, which will be functionally indistinguishable.) These revisions, of course, have to be scheduled around their student data chats, individualized education program meetings, professional learning communities, parent-teacher conferences, morning duty, hall duty and afternoon duty, all of which occur outside of mandatory faculty meetings (that always could have been emails). Of course, rational people know that there isn't rampant classroom indoctrination, but 'liberal teacher indoctrinating your children' has been a favorite bogeyman of the right for at least as long as I've been alive — part of a decades-long fight against public education that so many people have been sounding alarm bells over — and now I worry it's too goddamn late. Too many voters believed that schools are chopping off kids' genitals during recess. Too many voters believed that schools have litter boxes for kids who identify as cats. Too many voters believed that teachers promote feelings over facts. The most gullible among us voted for Donald Trump (he's a good businessman, after all!), and now the Department of Education is dead, graduate schools can no longer afford to bring in the next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, middle-class people are seeing their student loan monthly payments double, triple, or quadruple, and state and local public education funds are being gleefully snatched from public schools and funneled into for-profit corporate charter 'schools.' The generation of children and young adults whose education was already heavily disrupted by the pandemic is now left with far fewer, far worse post-secondary options than any generation before them in the modern age. And that's aside from rising unemployment, rising inflation and a housing market that is outrageously unaffordable. But hey, at least eggs are cheap now. Oh, wait...
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I'm A Teacher. Here's The Shocking Truth About The ‘Woke' Indoctrination Of Students That Terrifies Conservatives.
I'm a bit of a masochist. I can't help but read the comments whenever the local news posts anything political on social media — especially when it's related to public education. I've spent most of my life building a career as a public educator who emphatically embraces and promotes diversity, equity and inclusion, and I live in Florida, where public education is very much on the chopping block and our pouty, petulant goblin of a governor has made the classroom the front line of his culture war. In recent years, whenever I read the comment section of these stories, there are scores of MAGA folks screeching in chorus about evil liberal teachers indoctrinating kids with vegan transgender socialism. 'Their [sic] teaching are [sic] kids CRT [critical race theory]!' insists one commenter. 'They want white kids to feel guilty about their race!' cries another. On and on they go — affirming, commiserating and spreading their noxious grievances. And almost none of what they claim is true. Although I'm in public higher education now, I was a public high school teacher for over a decade. I worked at three radically different schools in three radically different counties. Most of my social circle is made up of teachers. If indoctrination were occurring at scale, I'd know about it. It's just not happening. Almost every teacher I've ever met (and that number is in the high hundreds at this point) is exceedingly careful not to discuss politics or religion while at school — even with other adults, even in the relative privacy of the break room, even one-on-one in their own classrooms during lunch or planning. It's a simple matter of self-preservation — if a single student were to hear you say, 'God, I hate Gov. Ron DeSantis,' they'd tell their friends, those friends would pass it on, and by the end of the day, you'd be in the principal's office explaining that no, you do not, in fact, have a 'Fuck DeSantis' tattoo on your chest. There are exceptions, of course. In the 13 years I spent teaching high school, a handful of teachers have been openly political. I was helping a fresh-out-of-college teacher set up his classroom in 2014 when he asked me, 'Can you believe they let these Muslim kids wear their habibs [sic] in class?' This was within 15 minutes of meeting him for the first time. 'I guess the dress code doesn't apply to them. I don't know why we bend the rules for them,' he continued. He had no idea if I was Muslim. He also didn't know if I was an immigrant — even though I'm visibly Hispanic — before he then went on a rant about 'the ESOL kids,' aka students in an English for Speakers of Other Languages program, who were 'probably illegal.' Another teacher I worked with at least had the patience to ratchet his way up to vocal bigotry. He started off slow, talking about the kids with 'crazy hair colors,' and later, 'the alphabet kids,' his way of labeling students who identified as LGBTQ+. Within a few weeks, he had started complaining about 'how sick and stupid' pronouns are. 'They can call themselves whatever they want,' he said, 'just don't expect me to play pretend too.' Those two cases are essentially the extent of educators expressing their personal beliefs at work that I ever encountered. Most teachers simply don't want to risk termination by talking about potentially contentious topics at work. To this day, aside from teachers who I've befriended and spoken with outside of work, I don't know the political or religious affiliation of nearly any of my former colleagues. Teachers are that averse to potentially career-ending conflict. Of course, that's my experience with teachers interacting with other teachers. But what about inside the classroom? I couldn't possibly know what happens in every other class while I'm busy teaching my own, right? Wrong. Students talk a lot about what their teachers do and say — and they particularly love to focus on the bad stuff. Is some of it rumor, hearsay or even deliberate lies? Sure. But when you hear the same things about the same teachers week after week, year after year, from different students — including trustworthy ones — you learn to separate fact from fiction. Students told me about exactly two instances of deliberate classroom indoctrination. The biggest repeat offender was an unassuming social studies teacher. Socially, she was reserved but kind, unerringly courteous and wholly nonconfrontational. Yet in her classroom, she focused intensely on the War of Northern Aggression and the idea that it was based on 'states' rights,' but specifically not slavery. Another offender — one I mentioned earlier — routinely ridiculed the idea of pronouns and gender identity in class, refusing to acknowledge students' gender identities. He eventually lost his position because of this behavior. Despite how all of this might sound, I am honestly not claiming that scores of conservative teachers are indoctrinating our students in the classroom. Over the course of my 13 years of personal observation and dozens of discussions (outside of work) with teacher friends, those are the only two instances that I have personally encountered. The fact that these two teachers held right-wing views appears purely coincidental to me. The bigger takeaway is that like in-person voter fraud, political indoctrination in public schools is incredibly rare. And there's a good reason why it's so vanishingly infrequent ... and it honestly might shock you. It's because almost every teacher out there is spending every ounce of their energy and patience trying to get their students to read just one paragraph without looking at their phones. They're too busy trying to get students to complete just one math problem without saying, 'This is too hard.' To write just one essay without using ChatGPT. To turn in just one assignment on time. And that's when they're not revising their lesson plans to align with the state's new Best-Ever Evidence-Based Data-Driven Standards That Are Guaranteed To Promote Mastery and Cultivate a Growth Mindset This Time. (Note: These will be deemed outdated and obsolete within two to four years, and replaced with Even-Better Standards, which will be functionally indistinguishable.) These revisions, of course, have to be scheduled around their student data chats, individualized education program meetings, professional learning communities, parent-teacher conferences, morning duty, hall duty and afternoon duty, all of which occur outside of mandatory faculty meetings (that always could have been emails). Of course, rational people know that there isn't rampant classroom indoctrination, but 'liberal teacher indoctrinating your children' has been a favorite bogeyman of the right for at least as long as I've been alive — part of a decades-long fight against public education that so many people have been sounding alarm bells over — and now I worry it's too goddamn late. Too many voters believed that schools are chopping off kids' genitals during recess. Too many voters believed that schools have litter boxes for kids who identify as cats. Too many voters believed that teachers promote feelings over facts. The most gullible among us voted for Donald Trump (he's a good businessman, after all!), and now the Department of Education is dead, graduate schools can no longer afford to bring in the next generation of scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, middle-class people are seeing their student loan monthly payments double, triple, or quadruple, and state and local public education funds are being gleefully snatched from public schools and funneled into for-profit corporate charter 'schools.' The generation of children and young adults whose education was already heavily disrupted by the pandemic is now left with far fewer, far worse post-secondary options than any generation before them in the modern age. And that's aside from rising unemployment, rising inflation and a housing market that is outrageously unaffordable. But hey, at least eggs are cheap now. Oh, wait... Marco Vanserra is the pseudonym of a professional educator and public school advocate. He specializes in making mathematics relevant and accessible to underserved communities in Florida. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ One Of My Students Asked If I'd Stand Between Them And A Gunman. Here's What I Said. I Just Lost My Job Because I'm An American I Made It My Mission To Find The Priest Who Molested My Brother. Here's What Happened When I Finally Did.
