Upstander Reflections

Sniffling, Nate, my five year old said, “I want to be Spider-Man for Halloween but I can’t.” Even though it was the middle of June and I have no idea why he was thinking about Halloween, I responded. “Of course you can. Why couldn’t you?” He went on to explain that Spider-Man, the new one from the movie, Into the Spiderverse , has dark skin and fuzzy hair and, unless Nate can change his skin color and hair texture, he can never be Spider-Man.  Spider-Man AKA Miles Morales.  Half African American half Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn.   I will let that soak in for a minute.  People of color have been having conversations like these with their children for years but for me, a White guy raised in the 80s and 90s, this is new.  My childhood was a good time to be Mike Walsh. From the Life Cereal commercials starring a kid named Mikey who looked a lot like me that “likes it,” to Mikey Walsh, the main character and saver of the neighborhood i...

The economy is stronger than it’s been in years. ISIS no longer holds territory in the Middle East and we have less troops fighting in foreign wars than any time since 9/11. On paper our country seems more stable at home and abroad then it’s been in a generation. So, why would I title this post crisis?      2012… Long before Trump started his run for the presidency he seemed to have a theory on what gets votes and consolidates power. Chaos and crises. He ran an election on it, and won. Drain the swamp! Build the wall! Lock her up! Think about it. 2015-2016 was a time of relative stability. The recession was over. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were winding down. Times were good, considering. Yet, chaos and crisis won, even though there was no chaos and crisis. The “swamp” is not drained. The wall is not built. Hillary Clinton is not behind bars.   The game plan has not changed since he took office. He has sowed crises everywhere, b...

One thing that I have learned in my career as a high school teacher is that I should never try too hard to catch someone doing something wrong. I find that when I do, I tend to miss everything else that’s going on. For example, let’s say a student is on her phone in my classroom but she is concealing it in her bag. I know she is on her phone but I also know that this is a difficult crime to prove. If I accuse her of being on her phone, all she has to say is, “no, I was looking for my pencil.” What do I do then? Empty her bag? Check her phone and hope that something she was doing had a timestamp on it so I can prove she was using it at the exact time I accused her of using it? As the meme says, “ain’t nobody got time for that!”        If I concentrate too much on this infraction, my teaching suffers. Learning suffers. Or, maybe, I miss some blatant infraction that is occurring on the other side of the classroom. So, what do you do, Mr. Walsh? D...

A few weeks ago, a group of predominantly White, Catholic high school boys, many wearing Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats, attended a pro-life rally in Washington, DC. They were harassed by a group of Black adults that call themselves Hebrew Israelites. In turn, the Catholic boys had a bit of a stand-off with a Native American man beating a drum that had just attended an Indigenous Peoples march. This whole situation went viral and sides have been taken. Students from Covington Catholic in “stand-off” with Native American Nathan Williams I know what it’s like to chaperone a group of teenagers in Washington DC during tumultuous times. I chaperoned 24 mostly Hispanic students at President Trump's inauguration . I can relate. I am also Catholic and attended an all boys, predominantly White Catholic high school. My school was once on the cover of the Chicago Tribune for chanting Buckwheat to a Black basketball player of an opposing team. I can relate.   Need...