Today is the last day in May, which means it would be the last of my #MTBoS30 posts, if I hadn’t missed like 17 days. My ‘drafts’ are full of posts of half written nuggets of ideas that didn’t make it into a full fledged post once life got in the way. There is one post that has been there longer than any of the others. It’s the one that is the closest to completion, and will probably be the longest and most personal thing I’ve written. It currently has the working title of “Bipolar post.” and it details my whole story with mental illness. This is not that post. My hesitation in posting about my mental illness is stems from my fear of the stigma our society has around mental illness.

May is also National Mental Health month. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has been running a campaign all month about the importance of getting rid of the stigma surrounding Mental Illness. The stigma around mental illness shows up at the dinner table, in the halls of government, and in numerous places in our society. People seeking treatment for mental illness must plan as much for the negative labels around their condition as they do for the medication they will take to treat it. It’s a big problem, especially among people who deal with youth. Here is Mayim Bialik, former keynote speaker at NCTM Annual 2013, talking about the campaign:

Stopping use of harmful words is one thing, and it’s important. What I want to advocate for, is to take it a step further. If you’re one of the 1 in 5 people who are affected by Mental Illness, I would say that it would be good to share your story with someone. The most recent time I did this was with a student who we had admitted to the hospital and was returning to school. I also try to make it a point to do this whenever I hear someone use the term ‘Bipolar’ as an adjective. Whenever I have shared my story, I’ve found that it resonates with more than just 1 in 5 people, and it also leads to a good conversation, and a better, broader picture of what Mental Illness is.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Why is Carl advocating for this when he can’t even put his ‘Bipolar post’ live on the site?” I’m asking myself that too. I feel like I have a lot to talk about in terms of mental illness based on my experience, but then if I do I know people will look at me with ‘that look’. So sometimes throttling back and not telling the whole story is a good first step. It’s a start. That’s why this post is about starting. It’s not about putting yourself all the way out there all at once. It’s about taking one little small step.

Yesterday I was at a great wedding for a friend of mine (Congratulations Kevin and Jessica!). While I was there, a friend of mine asked about Common Core and I suddenly couldn’t stop talking about it. The standards situation is likely to come up at any point when I’m outside of my education circles (this time it came up about 15 minutes after toast). It doesn’t seem like an open bar and loud pop music are a good back drop to discuss the intersection between theory, practice, and bureacracy, but I think I did a good job.

My main points were the following, and be sure to let me know if I’m not making sense in the comments below:

• Standards are the best description we have of how students should learn math in the grades K through 12. While debate about the implementation, or the assessment, or the marketing could be debated the content of standards are solid. Considering the years of trying to change math class it’s the best shot we have at making real serious progress right now and should be fully implemented (in writing this I realize I was basically channeling Matt Larson’s great ignite talk).
• CCSS-M is written by great people who have brilliant ideas of what should be going on in classrooms.  My buddy asked “do you even know who writes the standards?” suggesting that the standards were thrown together by special interest groups and not teachers. The authors are super-smart and they are around teachers all the time at NCTM and other conferences, and they always say brilliant stuff (like Phil Daro here on Answer getting).
• The Common Core is suffering from a marketing problem. I think anyone can write anything, regardless of how little sense it makes, and put “aligned with Common Core on there” and face little conflict.  Common Core is the kind of project that didn’t really have all of the lawyers needed to attack publishers and school districts for intellectual property or trademark violations, (at least I think this is true) so it is possible for someone to put out some garbage that anyone could windup on some parents dining room table who could end up making a #STOPCOMMONCORE Facebook post.

We talked through the throwing of the bouquet and when we stopped at the the cutting of the cake and I thought that was the end of it. What I said in my last post was true, as he was obviously mulling this over in his head. After the cake was being plated my friend came back over and said, “So we need to take less funding from military and for more funding for Common Core’s marketing department?” I kind of agreed, but then I said no. What needs to happen is we just need to trust schools, researchers and teachers what are doing the hard work of education and stop second-guessing them every time things get scary. The military budget would be great, but this change doesn’t cost any money at all. Give schools the time, space, and respect they needs to attempt big changes and big shifts, otherwise don’t be surprised when things remain traditional.

I started back into a rant mode, arguing “You won’t see people question doctors and their medical practices, but when it’s a teacher it’s a whole different story…”, but we were interrupted. The DJ put Taylor Swift on and the bride was making the groom dance to it with her (I might have danced a little too). I know there are much more things to say about common core, but this is what I could put together yesterday. Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.

Teachers always have the best stories. I spent this weekend at a wedding and was reminded of this fact. Sure, there are some people who have an amazing story of how they ran into Khloe Kardashian at the juice store, or whatever, but that kind of story is a random anomaly. I’ve found that Teachers can consistently entertain a group of people by merely going through some of the minutiae of their daily life.

I first learned of this as a teenager when I was drawn towards a conversation my aunt Josie Mae was having with my other Aunt’s. Josie May, who worked at a middle school school in Chicago, was going in detail about her students, her co-workers and teachers through a series of vignettes. I hung on her word as they were window into a world beyond the bubble of suburban school which was all I had known for the past 12 years.

My other relatives were pulled away and I was left staying next to Josie Mae who asked me what I was doing. I said I was actually in college and planning on going into education, and was interested in hearing more of her stories. What she said next really boggled my mind. She said, in the most serious of tones, “Oh, those weren’t stories. that was just what I did last Friday.” WHAT!?! As a teenager who thought I would have to memorize and rehearse interesting things to say at parties to impress people, this made quite an impact. At this point I knew I wanted to teach, but knowing that I would never be at a loss for an interesting tale at a family gathering seemed like an added bonus.

This Friday I show up at a good friend’s wedding where I ran into a nine or ten old buddies. We haven’t all been in the same place since we were probably in one of our parents garages over a decade. I didn’t have to worry about making up a story of how interesting my life has been in the past 14 years, and I was able to get through the awkwardness associated with this high school micro-reunion. We actually got into a pretty spirited conversation about common core that I’ll spin into another post.