Paul's Policies

When I was in Kindergarten, I struggled to sustain my attention in circle time. What I remember most vividly was that I couldn’t stand sitting criss-cross applesauce because it hurt and I was fixated glancing at the shadow reflection of my knees on the carpet. I distinctly remember looking for my shadow behind me on the carpet as if it could move and talk like Peter Pan’s shadow. But, I tried not to look at it because I was scared that it was fate that Captain Cook would come and take me hostage if I glared at my shadow too long.

For me, at the age of six, this was a very challenging “stretch” rather than the very comfortable sitting position that my teacher suggested that it was. I remember often leaving the circle and sometimes motioning for my peers to join me so they too could take a break from the uncomfortable stretch. I absolutely loved circle-time which was named after the awesome colorful oval-shaped carpet that we all loved, everyone except one student. This disoriented student was always wandering the room and never seemed to understand what he was doing or where he was going. At the time, I didn’t know he had a disability; I felt sad for him. Looking back, it’s still hard to remember how much me leaving the circle and wandering the room had to do with lack of sustained attention to what the teacher was saying and how much of it was due to simply refusing to follow my teacher’s strict guidance to revert to the criss-cross applesauce “stretch.” I wanted to learn what was going through Greg’s mind. The first thing I noticed about Greg was that he was african american but his challenges were clearly more about anxiety than systemic racism preventing him from getting to know the students sitting on either side of him during circle time on the oval rug. It wouldn’t take the U.S. Department of Education to teach his peers in circle time to treat Greg more like a friend than a stranger and wanderer. But, the parent volunteers like my mom didn’t know how to talk to him.

At my elementary school, teachers seemed to be strict and adamant about everything and they didn’t want to let any student try to help the disoriented students. They wanted a speech therapist to help him but K-12 education separates kids with speech difficulties from the rest of the class in special education if after-school programs that help in the community aren’t willing to provide transportation to a qualified speech therapist to help someone like Greg practice brave activities that he could do with other people his age. There were plenty of after-school programs, but no program in the same city would offer him the speech therapy he truly needed. The U.S. Department of Education prevents classroom choice between Special Education and regular classroom learning because it’s clear that the United States of America has a shortage of school speech therapists.

I recognized that it was hard to find a speech therapist to help my brother with speech therapy. He couldn’t even talk privately to his teacher until he was five years old after seeing a speech therapist in another city. A bus driver that takes kids to speech therapy would be nice. Paying bus drivers overtime for providing transportation to speech therapy, or in my case, physical therapy would be great. Funding for these services could be gathered by crowdfunding and fundraisers sponsored by the parent teacher organization at the local level rather than the federal level.

I remember always being prone to ask questions about the teacher’s reasoning for strict rules. I had an external locus of control, which means that I took a lot of things the teacher said personally when they assigned classwork with seemingly too little time to finish. I would often think about this more than the class discussions, and juggle between several trains of thought often, sometimes vaguely related to the subject matter and sometimes not. In elementary schools in general, and especially in mine, there was an appropriate and an inappropriate time for everything, especially when it came to asking questions. I often came home from school feeling unsuccessful due to my failure in being able to ask questions. 

At this age, I also frequently failed to receive answers from my dad. At this age, I wasn’t able to dissociate my dad’s ignorance from that of my teacher’s or anyone else’s’ for that matter. My dad often ignored my questions when he was busy with work or for whatever reasons, usually not explained by him. In my mind, the students in my classes inherently shared the same indifference towards my questions as my dad and teachers, since none of them brought up this dilemma in class that I had noticed. I often avoided talking to other kids at recess for fear that they would either ignore my questions or insult them or because I didn’t want to get in trouble for saying something rude or inappropriate or touching other students without consent, as I’d been hastily punished for this in class or in the hallway. None of the staff who disciplined me for these things likely realized that this was due to feeling left out of almost every conversation. They wouldn’t have easily guessed that I didn’t have all the latest gadgets since many of them knew that my dad made plenty of money to afford these things at the time, having worked as an engineer at Intel like many other parents at my school who bought their kids these things.

The topic of just about every conversation had to do with something unfamiliar to me, such as a new video game, computer game or app on a phone, a new social media post, results of a recent football or basketball game, a new youtube video, and the list went on. I grew up with very limited access to technology and when I was permitted access, it was strictly for educational purposes. I also lived in a house separated from my peers by an extremely busy street with cars travelling over 30 mph that I could only pass with a parent. Most of the nearby neighbor kids lived in houses too luxurious and uniform to other houses to be easily recognized as houses where kids might live. I seriously didn’t feel comfortable asking kids to go on playdates since I didn’t think any of the other kids would relate with me enough to be interested in having a playdate. At the time, it would have been awkward making their parents feel obligated to schedule one, forcing their kids to oblige to seemingly unorthodox activities that they may or may not have actually been excited about. It also would have been annoying listening to kids convince me why I needed the latest phone or video game when I wasn’t allowed to save up for these things. I did all I could to save up for these things.

Saving for these things always backfired despite the numerous attempts to earn money to save for those items. My mom, having been a financial advisor, was excited that I took up a lot of ways to make money, such as lemonade stands and pulling weeds in the yard, but she often told me and other parents that the money I made was instead related to college savings. I intended to do these things to make enough physical money to use to buy these items for myself, since my parents wouldn’t buy them for me, but I usually became impatient and bought other less expensive things anyway.

Two of my elementary school learning experiences can’t be reasonably justified by poor experiences with the school and its staff. One was my tendency to roam around the room in kindergarten instead of reverting to another sitting position or falling asleep. Another was my inability to focus my attention on the teacher’s current train of thought, and instead spacing out or focusing my attention entirely on an unanswered question.

Note that many similar inattention challenges have continued throughout my years of education, however they aren’t nearly as prominent as these experiences since these elementary school experiences were my first indications of learning challenges. It’s difficult to know which challenging learning experiences result from my unofficial ADHD diagnosis and which ones stem from my distinct personality and learning style. My other challenges have since improved.

But, the problem that still needs to be resolved is putting a school mode on smart watches and smart phones for students who need medical updates or struggle excessively with typing on a computer or taking notes on a worksheet clasped to a clipboard that a student has to be sitting criss-cross applesauce to use. 504 plans and IEPs should allow students with documented disabilities that lead to catastrophizing the scope and progress of classwork to ask an AI chatbot to flesh out the steps of an assignment or focus on one page of a book they are reading at a time to engage in micro-learning that doesn’t come naturally when parents have unjust expectations for doing chores in a big house rather than suggesting smaller chores that they can start with right away.

Before that happens, just try a classroom activity melting broken pieces of crayon in a muffin tin to give all of the students in the classroom so guys wouldn’t freak out that they would get cooties by drawing with the pink part of a multi-colored crayon, composed of the crayon colors that were melted into that crayon.

If the no-phone or smart device in class bill is going to stay, teachers need to step up their game by teaching students how to adjust the speed on an audio books so they have time to understand and comprehend what they are listening to rather than just encouraging students with disabilities and learning differences to read as quickly as every other student. It is not reasonable to just tell students with disabilities and learning difference that they just have the same mental capacity as other students if that is really a white lie and they need permission to record a classroom discussion using a Livescribe pen to go over cornell notes with a 3rd column between cues and definitions, called bailout opportunities for students who are neurodivergent who need help understanding which ideas they had that were focused on what was being taught in class and which thoughts were their own and could be making them feel isolated without wanting to interrupt class to express concerns about that. 

A student being allowed to have a phone to customize Cornell Notes to have a 3rd middle column is a good way to help students recognize the questions they have that are a part of their original identity and not just try to suspend all thoughts that are off-topic when it’s hard for a student with a disability to explain how difficult and emotionally damaging it is to push those thoughts away.

An easy rebuttal to this is: “Why not just encourage the students to write down their thoughts in a notebook?” 

This won’t work for many young students who would end up scribbling out words that they didn’t mean to write and writing words too close to the right side of their page that make it hard to understand for them while reading it again later. Also, using Google Docs allows a student to feel like their notes could be taken a lot more seriously by other people if they are not in bad handwriting. It is hard for even the student who wrote those thoughts to understand when they get home and explain them to a trusted adult.

For some students who are abused at home and don’t feel comfortable reporting their parents for fear that they will be separated from them, it is a good idea to offer them self-defense classes from funding at the school district level rather than vague guidelines about gender fluidity from the U.S. Department of Education. If you want to close the gap of gender parity, teach girls in Kindergarten how to do karate, taekwondo and math and teach young boys how to do laundry, sweep and mop, and post healthy recipes on Pinterest.

If encouraging big tech companies to develop a school mode for devices to be used during class isn’t an approach to holistic education, then I don’t know what is. Kamala Harris who ran against Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election didn’t ever clarify how she would make the education system more holistic. A holistic education should allow students to share their notes with each other and exchange phone numbers to connect outside of class. 

If Trump can get ‘school mode’ on Apple and Samsung devices, students would be saved from the feeling of isolation that starts in Kindergarten when students realize that there is only one kind of Cornell notes and that kind of Cornell notes isn’t motivating them to stay awake during class. And, also students are discouraged from texting each other notes and noteworthy epiphanies at all during breaks and transitions.

I plead with School boards to address this problem before every child with disabilities is faced with detention or a visit to the principal’s office when they blurt something out and interrupt class when they feel that their voice is unheard.

At Brigham Young University, there is a Student Voice mailbox where you can write down your ideas that go into the mailbox and you have no clue when they will be read. Your voice is more than a piece of paper that gets shipped off to Neverland with Peter Pan and the lost boys. It deserves to be heard by friends, families and classmates at a school board meeting.

Slips of paper in the Student Voice box that go unread or not acknowledged in a follow-up email lead students to contemplate whether anyone at school will care about their suggestions, input or concerns. The Student Voice box turns students into strangers while phones on school mode could help students make friends in class with people who care about learning and change the world through finding people with common interests, a similar philosophy, or similar hobbies.