Yeah. Classes in session, busted pencils, fully-ledded education talk, educated educators,
working education. Yeah, man, Johnny Thurland stuff up in the chat already. You know, yeah,
Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, me, Dr. Tim Slecker, and of course, the chairman of the boards,
Jacob joining us for, you know, I wouldn't even say a big dog at the desk, big dog at the desk,
chairman of the boards. We will have him again. In fact, though, you put it out there. I mean,
Terry Bar, civic media's own great post out there about actually one of Jacob's choice,
chairman of the board episodes favorite TV teachers. Yeah, check it out on the civic media website.
There you can help it Tim. We just go viral every time we do the producers. I don't know what it is.
You know, I just say I love that right up, you know, check it out. And if you, you know,
miss that. And the first day, and the first day of school stuff, too. Yeah, I think she's a fan.
I think you too. Is that or, you know, Jacob's got a little extra cash. He's doling out or something.
Yeah, I just, that's the, I only advocate for my stuff. That's why we, I'm a bad producer,
really. If you look at it, I'm largely incompetent. But if I'm in it, I'll slip Terry at 20.
No, we know actually producer's choice. Great, great, great new addition to the busted pencils
line up. So man, yeah, check it out. Make sure you go and download those episodes. And while you're
at it, download every other episode we've ever done because it's always good stuff. Johnny,
it's, this is like a preview classes in session for a great show that's going to air Saturday.
So yes, we are going to tell you we're going to reveal right now that Saturday show when you're
listening isn't live. We had a great guest, Randy Winegarden, president of AFT, you know,
talking about her new book. But we're going to kind of preview that though with our own little
kind of classes in session. And I'm sorry, but I got, I got a Tim bomb already lined up. And I'm
about, I'm about ready to pull the pin and let it go. But it's interesting because today,
you know, new nape results were released. And 12th graders can't read. And well, that's the
stark asm. That question was so seldom asked him, seldom the question asked, is our children learning?
Is our children learning? Well, according to nape, it's continues to be bad. High school seniors
in 2024, a third of them are reading below basic. And some of the indicators, at least according
to the post that I saw, which was actually the New York Times, lots of issues, learning
laws, COVID and things like that. However, Johnny, I want to potentially, I don't know, legitimize
or give some credence to one of the other issues that could be plaguing reading skills. And that is
social media and short kind of reading blasts where short, I'm telling you, you know, the fact
that kids aren't reading long passages, they're not reading books, they're not getting deep into
what it means to be a reader. And is that being reflected in those results? And I was just thinking
about that, you know, reading books, I'll admit, maybe here in the swell of what's been happening
over the last four to five years. My book reading has taken a back seat to, you know, jumping on to
social media, reading a post, following a LinkedIn article that connects me to this. I'm not saying
I'm spending my time, you know, just doom scrolling and putting thumbs up and little bitty sentences
and stuff like that to, you know, my high school buddies revealing that, you know, back in 1985,
yeah, what really happened. Like, I don't really care about that stuff. I'm not looking at that stuff,
but I'm reading short. And if it wasn't for busted pencils, and then you say, you know, great
guess, like Jonathan Gearko, and, and now Randy Wankardin in their books, I haven't been reading a
lot of books. And is there something to the potential that, well, a lot of short form reading has taken
over kind of our ethos of what it means to read. That's how I'm kind of introducing the topic of
why teachers feel fear fascists. Tim, that's a pretty exciting circumnavigation around a few
different topics to get there. But, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure the NAEP scores have a whole lot
to do. Why teachers are feared by fascists, although it's definitely one of the tools of, you know,
the larger discourse, which contributes to sort of the demoralizing of the teaching profession
and of teaching labor. But, you know, you're right. There's a couple of different things happening.
So, class and session is rolling and the new NAEP scores, right? We want to remind folks what the
NAEP is, the national, right, assessment of educational progress. So N-A-E-P, and it's like a yearly
test that measures probably math and reading, math and reading, math and reading. And, you know,
interestingly enough, I usually bash on this test, not because it's not a good test, but just because
we tend to take it out of context. We're like, whoa, the point that this group of young people
are doomed. They're awful and they're not going to be as good as past generations because they
scored lower. And we've had so many shows explaining about how that's sort of rigged. Like, you can't
only climb for so long. It's like you can only be such a level of, you know, proficient reader.
And the number of proficient readers doesn't necessarily, you know, predict, you know, the progress
and the success of a generation. If we believe that then people writing these articles shouldn't be
successful because they scored lower than these generations. But interestingly enough, Tim,
interestingly enough for the listener, this is a unique moment. And I think, Tim, there's some,
I'm a little less like, it's because of the social media and it's all these things than you are.
But I think you're on to something here. And I don't want it to obviously, you don't do this,
but, you know, the media will absolutely do this in certain contexts. Take it into a rationale
for being dismissive of this, this crop of young people, you know, they're incredibly bright.
And a lot of ways that if you compare them to, I'm going to intentionally compare them to students
and say, you know, 1992, let's look at that number for, you know, a very pointed reason because
actually this group is 10 points lower, just 10 points, but that's enough to look at 10 points
lower than 12th graders in 1992, right? And so that's a little bit closer to that. Like, what's
different about what they're doing in the world? Let's get an understanding. But they're going to
be great at things that people in 1992 that were 12th graders weren't doing. So it's just very
different worlds. Thank you. But I picked 1992 to compare it with Tim. Do you see through me a
Tim bomb? Yeah. I was reading about this this morning because this hint to our listeners,
Tim texted also the new nape scores. And I was like, Oh, Tim's going to want to do a show on this.
I didn't know it would be today. Well, but I was reading up on it. And, and, and really,
1992, we compare with the 12th graders. So graduating class of 1992, that was a minute ago.
That's in the old century. That's the first time we have a pretty sizeable gap in the differences.
So I'm not too worried about these current these current 12th graders because they're not that far
off than the class of 1992. 10 points, but, you know, that's start where it starts to get significant.
And I know a lot of people who graduated around that time who are writing these articles and doing
this kind of work and they're just fine. So, so again, remember in context, but Tim,
I think you're on to something that young people are getting information differently. And we did
in the 90s, then we didn't 80s or even in the early arts, right? We did read more. Not necessarily
saying that's better or worse, but we definitely had print text more readily available to us.
And, and nowadays, there's a lot of different ways you can get information that don't necessarily
require you to be a voracious reader, right? And so, I, so that kind of reminds me when we get
these headlines. And I'm going to tie it to this great book interview we did this week with our
returning guests, AFT President Randy Winegarden. Listeners, you're going to love that show on Saturday.
But why fascist fear teachers? You know, Randy's really defining, you know, we got to
pre-read this Tim and I. Yeah, yeah. We're probably scoring better than those 12th graders did.
But we got to pre-read this book Randy in this book defines teacher labor in such an authentic way,
not surprised because she's a teacher and she's also a teacher union president. So she hears a lot
of pop teachers, you know, she's pretty close to the profession so she can capture it in stories
and really shine light on the different dimensions. And, and as a, as a communication tool to what
it's like to be a teacher for people who aren't teachers, it's a great read because you kind of
better understand what teachers do. If you are a teacher, it's a great read because you're like,
yeah, that's what I do. In fact, Tim reading that book, right? And I got to tell this to Randy too,
but reading that book, Tim, it gave me like a renewed description for when people ask,
what is it you do again? And I'm like, well, I'm a teacher who teaches teachers, but I'm an educator.
And I can explain to them what it means to educate. I won't spoil that because Randy shares that
in the show. She also elaborates on it in the book. But one of those reasons Tim, it comes back to
even the nape score is that, you know, I hate to sound like extra liberal media, you know, like
trumpers out there. And you know, I got love for you. I might not agree with you, but we got
space to ear from you. You always blame the liberal media or so my liberal friends are always
blaming particular media outlets. I won't name the one conglomerate. They like to drop. It's a
three letter word that rhymes with rocks, but they like to sign it sort of blame that depiction.
But honestly, flying large teachers can relate to this. We don't get described very well often in
the news, in the headlines, in the newspapers, in conversations. You know, everybody loves their
teachers when you ask them about their favorite teacher or they ask them about what teachers contributed
to them. But on a day to day basis, the way we talk about education, the way we support it in
this country, the way we devalue what teachers do collectively, it takes its toll. And Tim, you've
done this, you've done a lot of work on this teacher demoralization teacher exodus. You know,
how our morale is really impacted by this stuff. And one of the things that Randy's book does
is talks about how it's actually an intentional political effort to make sure that I'm a sunrise
and make sure teachers feel bad and to make sure that people kind of talk ill of the profession.
Right. So it's connected because I think we do this too with young people. These articles about
nape scores are intentional to be like, well, those young people just aren't going to be a smart
and they're doomed. And what are they going to contribute? And it's like, hey, hold up to be young.
I mean, these are going to be the people who run this country in in just a few years, like you
blink and they are the ones who are working with. We're leaning on. We're depending on them. And so,
you know, I hate to see them devalue the same way I hate to see teachers devalue. I hate when
students are devalued and the two are connected to learn more about it from the book. But Tim,
tell us about this because this is aligned to your area of expertise.
Well, okay. First though, when you said I like that the book reminded me you, Johnny, of what it
is you do. I thought you were going to say that you really spend a lot of time creating fear
for fascists. Well, man, I wish I did. And my fascists aren't afraid of me. I mean, they're afraid
of teachers, the larger group, but individuals, they're like, man, that guy's just a lot of hot air
probably on some some podcast about breaking pencils. But you get, you know, right to that point
there too, when you say, okay, what has been the goal, you know, over 10 years, over 20 years,
over 30 years, since a nation at risk in 1983, to create this narrative that first and foremost,
teachers are failing. You know, we typically do that through, you know, pointing out how
dismal kids are doing, but it always comes back into going, well, and you know why they're doing so
badly. It's because those bad teachers reference to, you know, one of our other favorite guests,
Kevin Kumashero, great book, bad teacher. Check it out. Another book I read, Johnny, in the past 10
years. So believe that, that's three books now. Come on, man. You just pretend you just pretend
you're not reading books. But yeah. And so all of that, though, you know, first of all,
teachers are failing. And then if you move it up to, you know, all the way to today, the demonization
of teachers, you know, indoctrinating, grooming and all of these things, it really is set up
to demoralize teachers in a sense where they really do kind of start to, you know, hide,
keep their mouth shut. Don't talk about what it is that they do. Very, very cautiously,
if ever, talk about potentially challenging a student to think critically about something,
to dig deep. And sit there and go, whoa, like, who would ever want to do that job? And what I
really get from from Randy's book, you know, first of all, the, the, the passion that it gave me
to actually completely read an entire book was is that it rekindles that kind of inspiration
for a teacher that says, wait a minute, I'm not just about preparing test scores. In fact,
the test score, you know, hype media coverage is actually an obfuscation of the reality of what
it was that I originally became a teacher to do, which is inspire to create critical thinking,
to welcome people with differences, to help students wrestle with sometimes uncomfortable
situations that they're going to face either in the classroom with other peers,
in, you know, coming across different content. Like, those are the things that teachers wanted to
be teachers. They never wanted to be teachers to increase nape scores. And here we go, and you sit
down and go, why the attack or, you know, Randy's kind of like, why do fascists, people who are very
much, you know, into some form of, you know, oligarchy, if you want to put it that way, any type of,
they're against critical thought. And that's what it is that they push against. And so demonizing
teachers, particularly public school teachers, ends up being a hugely successful power play
at demeaning their work, but taking the voice out of democracy and those critical conversations
that we always get to have in public school, because yes, we want you to learn to read, we want
you to learn to write, we want you to do math. But really, we want you to be a critically engaged
citizen that is fully invested in driving forward a common good that is better for the next generation
than we are currently in. And that means wrestling with some of the issues that we have in front
of us today that may be long-standing legacies of things from the past. And that may mean confronting
past stories that are embarrassing, are shameful, are painful. And that's the work of teachers.
So there you go, Johnny, there's my rant, man. Man, that's not just a rant, man. You dropped
knowledge, man. They were dropping mad science on us. That was excellent, Tim. And I agree,
what a great class in session, my guy. Yeah, because you hit the nail on the head, what it means
to be a teacher. And that's the thing that this book, us getting to read it early, I mean,
it's you could pre-order it right now, but having a sneak peek of this book and being able to
like, you know, like you had said, it was refreshing page to page. Like I mean,
through this book, it's like a sit down in a weekend, and it's done, and you don't even need
a ton of free time, because it flows like a conversation, but it was, you know, testimony,
it was renewed. It felt like a letter of two teachers about teaching for the world to read,
to better understand what teachers do. So man, what an exciting time, because it is like you said,
it is renewed to that, that social purpose we have as teachers as part of a democracy,
the social contract that public education plays, right? Freedom is really important,
but so are the responsibilities we have as citizens to, you know, making sure we have freedoms.
And so very, very exciting stuff. Man, what a great interview. I know I'm gushing on it,
because I hope that you catch it this Saturday, but Tim, man, I mean, I'm excited for our listeners
to be able to hear Saturday show when that drops. I'm excited for this class in session,
and I think we'll be rocking about this stuff for quite some time.
And you know what that leaves, Johnny? Time for your moment of zen.
All we have to do is little things, and at certain points in history,
millions of little things come together and change takes place.
Hey, thanks, pencil busters for tuning in and listening to today's class in session.
And if you want more great podcasts,
talk to Bill with busted pencils content like this,
we just head on over to Apple Spotify, or you can always find us at the civic media website,
or on our website, busted pencils.com. And don't you dare forget that you can catch great podcasts
like this every Monday for home room, class in session on Wednesdays, just like today.
And on Friday, so wrap up the week with producer Jacob's choice.
And then pencil busters, you know, it's one of my favorites.
And I've been plugging it all show because you're going to get to listen to Randy Weingarten,
AFT president on the Saturday broadcast. So don't you dare forget and tune in to the broadcast
3 p.m. Central time across all the civic media network stations for one hour of your favorite blue
color scholars. Tim and Johnny keep busted pencils.