A few times a month, I’ll be on the whiteboard, jotting down examples for my lesson with my back turned to my students. The students find ways to distract themselves (while believing they have nothing to copy down along with me, but that’s another story). I let them rock until I’m turned back around and then they know it’s go time. Today, however, I took the opportunity to listen in when one student said: “School sucks.” I didn’t stop them. In fact, they went off for about two minutes and my ad libs were as follows:

“Oh, word?”
“Yo, for real.”
“Nah, I hear that.”
“Um, I can’t talk about that. When you graduate, I’ll holla. Not now, though.”
“No, not saying you’re not graduating, but yeah, that’s too old.”

We took our students’ feedback for granted. If you ever want to know how a school is doing, you don’t have to ask the adults. Ask them if you wish. Well, most of them. Look at the reports and the jumble of quantitative data on any number of Excel spreadsheets. You don’t even have to necessarily visit the school, though that’s my #2 indicator, really. We could visit a school, get a peek at the gorgeous bulletin boards, and lay out gridded curriculum early and often. We can look at the accolades splayed near the entrance and the artwork on the walls. We can check the website with its responsive design and glossy photos, too.

And, if you want to know how a school’s doing, ask the students.

Our society vastly undervalues student opinion as a matter of course. In the way of efficiency and so-called rigidity, we continually push for institutions that force schooling upon students, not education for and with students. Even those of us who proffer liberation and freedom talk still serve schools, if not promote schools, that need students to sit down, shut up, and take these quotes from icons of liberation and freedom movements of yore. Discipline has its place and so does human expression. The tension about student opinion is ultimately about showing the discipline to hear things that might make us as adults maladjusted.

Or we can keep lying to ourselves that 12-14 years of militaristic schooling methods will allow students self-determination.

Adults can often lie to themselves. We can make the moves assigned to them. We lay out their data and action plans for other adults to see. We bring in other adults that – under pressure – will vouch for our competence. We focus on the aesthetic to dissuade the nitpickers. We pull up our chins and speak with a bass in our voice to invoke authority. We create as many filters as professionalism allows, many of which protect us from scrutiny, from vulnerability, from the pain that our optimism was slowly but surely decimated by individual and structural choices made around us, by us, and for us. We’re so complicated and have a hard time owning that, due in no small part to the nature of our profession.

Failure comes in degrees and sometimes, it’s scalding in our chairs and stools.

Some might say that we shouldn’t ask every student about their opinions, to which I’d contest that these stories matter as well. We should listen to the students who excel and the students who struggle in equitable measure. At some point, we start to see patterns in their narratives that could inform our thinking. Our students have stories to tell, and many of them are about us as adults. Even the majority of students who “lie” to us relent and get to the heart of their frustration eventually.

But this also depends on the relationships we have with students.

My main class this year inadvertently reports on the schools happenings all around me in the morning when they leave their coats and in the afternoons when they leave. Some yell at each other about the NBA and the latest sneakers while others take selfies on Snapchat (“Hey, put that away!” a loud adult says, then smiles) and jump at their friends for a hug. They usually approach my desk since my music is anywhere between Meek Mill and Beyoncé. They don’t want me to take it personally (“OK, this is awkward”) but they can’t stand school nor math nor any of this nonsense. Yes, the synonym for nonsense. I give a few teacher glances and let them interpret my face for each other. Then, I hear whether I’m doing the job I’m supposed to, who I’m reaching, and who I still have ways to go before I got them.

I don’t give them the impression that they have to lie to me for their grade. If anything, their opinion is the goal. Some schools don’t hear it because they refuse to. Other schools don’t hear it because they don’t. I rather be the latter without reservations.