Iowans must fight to flourish

Most teaching happens in a classroom with only a student audience. Occasionally, a visitor drops by, but it’s rare. However, teachers who direct choirs, bands, or coach or advise activities have large public audiences choked full of experts ready to second guess.

I was a high school English teacher and adviser for the yearbook and student newspaper. While it might differ from the pressure felt when a championship game was on the line, it had public pressure. The difference was the boo-birds weren’t in the bleachers, they were on the phone and email.

The school newspaper I advised appeared in the local paper once a month. Even though I had top notch students, the adviser and students made public mistakes. It also contained student editorials, and cartoons that sometimes caused a public gasp.

For example, I had one colleague who took it upon himself to circle all the errors in the newspaper and place an edited copy in my mailbox. After a few months of nicely reminding him his student mistakes were private and mine were public, I reached the boiling point. The next publication, a few student articles bled red from his pen. I’d had enough. I marched to his room and strongly suggested where he could put his pen.

The newspaper was monthly, but the yearbook took a year to produce so, it was expected to be pristine. It was always good, never pristine.

One of the biggest jobs was to establish a theme for the book. We wanted something up-to-date, catchy, but flexible enough so students could truthfully capture the story of the year. Deciding on a theme was tricky because what sounds good in August may not work in May. We even misfired a couple times and changed it to something more workable.

Lately, I’ve been reminded of those yearbook theme sessions as Gov. Kim Reynolds rolled out her new Iowa theme, “Freedom to Flourish.”

It’s a bad yearbook theme. It’s an awful state motto. In yearbook language we’d say, “It’s not broad enough to capture the truth.” Bluntly, it’s a lie. It has about as much credibility as Jason Aldean’s song about small towns.

Who has the freedom to flourish in Iowa?

It’s sure not public-school teachers who lost their freedom to teach when the governor and her legislative lemmings rewrote the curriculum. It’s not the kids struggling to find their identity and being told freedom to make those medical decisions won’t be flourishing. Freedom sure isn’t flourishing for families needing SNAP benefits recently slashed. For women needing reproductive choice there’s not a flourish of freedom to be found. For those who think guns don’t belong in every person’s pocket, this new freedom flourish seems deadly.

Perhaps the only group flourishing under the Reynolds’ freedom are MAGA worshippers afraid of anyone considered “other.”

Like the couple of times, we changed yearbook themes, I’d suggest our new theme be, “Fight to Flourish.”

Iowa is not Reynolds’ audition platform. We don’t need a $300,000 bad yearbook theme, dreamed up by some out-of-state consultants who might have flown over Iowa once.

If we don’t “Fight to Flourish,” they’ll be no one left to turn out the lights.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to public schools for 38 years.