They Tried to Kill This Thing Called Happiness
Back in 2019, while I was technically out on an extended maternity leave, I received an email from two dear colleagues requesting I attend a meeting, where I was to assist in the defense of a middle school Language Arts unit of study, created jointly by a team of talented educators over the course of several years. This unit, coined The Happiness Unit, was inspired by local Evanston raised filmmaker Roko Belic’s 2012 documentary, Happy, which you can stream on the film’s website. At this particular time, The Happiness Unit happened to be on the administrative chopping block.
The Happiness Unit was one of my absolute favorite things. I looked forward to teaching it every year. It covered a slew of topics, all painstakingly and professionally aligned to Common Core Standards.
During The Happiness Unit, we studied the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, and which of the two is more tied to longterm happiness. We taught students about the hedonic treadmill, a phenomenon highlighting how the human brain is hardwired to always want the next best thing, making it challenging for people to find contentment that lasts.
We researched and read about lottery winners and what happens to these individuals over time. We examined our material-obsessed economy and how ultimately it will lead to the destruction of the planet, in the absence of meaningful interventions. We looked at the expansion of the average sizes of North American homes, from the 1960s and ‘70s, through today, despite the declining birth rates.
We examined gratitude and how intentionally practicing thankfulness is a researched strategy, proven to lead to greater overall satisfaction, for longer. And we researched other countries that have higher levels of overall constituent satisfaction, and how their societies differ from the United States.
And we did all of this with a bunch of seventh graders.
The unit was impressive. I came to it a little later, a couple of years after its original creation. We all added to it here and there; a great unit of study changes and morphs over time.
Our seventh grade team of teachers were even invited to present The Happiness Unit at the Illinois Reading Council’s annual conference. We shared our unit and aligned resources to a packed room.
But on this day in 2019, I was dragging myself to work, despite the aforementioned maternity leave, ready to defend and fight for The Happiness Unit’s very survival.
The reason it was under attack? We were told by the then literacy director that this unit no longer aligned to district objectives and that all middle schools were now slated to teach identical and heavily scripted units of study. Eventually, the district purchased a canned curriculum, provided by the one and only McGraw Hill.
Uniformity is an interesting goal. On one hand, I can understand wanting children to have a similar experience across multiple schools in a given district. However, shutting down a powerful practice, a unit exploring the concept of lifelong happiness, built slowly over time, in an attempt for uniformity, feels, well, counterintuitive and counterproductive.
Educators are all familiar with the idea of essential questions. These are the major questions at play that lead, or inform, a given unit of study. Each unit we teach also has a set of common core standards, often referred to as focus standards.
The common practice prior to 2019 in my local school district was as follows: administration would communicate the focus standards that needed to be taught within a given unit of study, and we’d fill in the essential question(s), lessons, and details. At the end, we’d assess the children on the same set of skills, whether it be through their writing or the MAP test or some other common district assessment, and the proof was in the pudding, so to speak.
The philosophy kept micromanagement at bay. It let educators be autonomous and by and large excited about their profession. Personally, building units was something I looked forward to. It’s daunting at first, when you’re just getting started. But then it becomes extremely rewarding. The units become richer as the years go on; they live and breathe. They evolve over time. They’re shared with new staff. You don’t have to teach any given unit forever. But if you build a great one, allowing it to evolve and expand, what is the harm in continuing?
At the start of the 2019-2020 school year, freshly back from maternity leave, when my building’s staff all gathered back to school, amid conversations about summer roadtrips and quality time with loved ones, we were shown, seemingly out of nowhere, a propaganda-esque YouTube video created by an educational consulting firm known as Engage New York, in which a stately blond woman told us very plainly, teachers shouldn’t create curriculum. They’re not equipped to do so. Obviously I’m paraphrasing here, but I swear, that was the gist.
Anyway, I remember looking around at my colleagues, some of whom possessed advanced degrees in curriculum design, and noticing the ruffled brows and raised eyebrows. Huh? What? This seemed to be the district setting the stage for what would later become a total annihilation of our workshopped curriculum, in favor of more scripted, canned programming.
But when I walked into the room ready to defend our work in the spring of 2019, I knew none of what was to come. In attendance were my two seventh-grade Language Arts teammates, one of whom was also out on maternity leave and had brought her new baby to the meeting. There was a parent advocate, who loved the unit and came to speak about the results she had seen at home from her two daughters, who had both experienced it. We brought our research and data. Our results, anecdotal and otherwise. We spoke candidly about our experience presenting at IRC, and how teachers all around the state continued to reach out and request access to the material. About our joint philosophies of teaching. About the dangers of stripping educators, your experts on the ground, of their autonomy. Of the extensive research behind the effectiveness of essential-question-crafted units. About choice reading, and the importance of allowing students autonomy to research and uncover truths for themselves. We brought student voice and testimonials.
But we were met with deaf ears and unwavering stares from people whose minds were already made up. They weren’t listening to us. There was no wiggle room here. This meeting had been a charade. We were told to say goodbye to Happiness.
I have to stop here for a moment. Can I propose that you, reader, embark on an imaginative exercise? Pretend you are an administrator working at the district office, a general overseer, perhaps, of curriculum and instruction.
Imagine you wake up on that very morning of said meeting; you brush your teeth, take a shower, make coffee, blow dry your hair, and then get into your car. You plug in your phone because you like to listen to music on the way to work. Something optimistic, something upbeat. You decide on Happy, by Pharrell.
You turn out of your driveway and merge onto the road, bopping your shoulders steadily to the beat. As you approach the school building, you activate your turn signal, pulling into one of the only remaining parking spots. There, you sit, taking just a small moment for yourself. Here, you practice deep, slow breathing. You are readying yourself, steeling for war.
Slowly, you open your car door and begin to walk into the school building, to perform your duties. But you are not a teacher. Not even close.
Your job? The task at hand? Well, isn’t it obvious?
To kill a unit called Happiness, a unit containing meaningful, potentially life-changing material. To put an end to quality, differentiated instruction.
Yikes.
I’m sorry, but that is just bleak.
Thank you for reading.
I was assured that The Happiness Unit lives on… in some form, at some school, not so very far away, perhaps just over the rainbow. And for this, I am extremely HAPPY!
To read more about Engage New York’s philosophy, check out this Chalkbeat piece from 2014 that puts a cute little spin on their methods.
To read another opinion about a little curriculum mass produced by McGraw Hill, read this piece, recently published by The Bay State Banner, written by a former Boston Public Schools teacher.
Stay positive out there, friends. Stay grateful.