What Message Are You Sending?

A very wise woman shared the following message with me and I want to share it with you.

Yesterday afternoon I was driving home from the post office when the song on the radio was interrupted by a jarring tone. After a long beep, I heard those familiar words: This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency. . .

If you live in the United States, you can probably repeat that message verbatim because you've heard it so many times through the years. Yet as I was driving along, I wondered why the message was so disconcerting. I knew it wasn't an "actual emergency" (as opposed to what, a "virtual emergency"?). And then it hit me why those words are more jarring than they need to be. I was hearing the exact same recording I'd first heard when I was a child. The voice was now a little scratchy from so many playings, with lots of white noise in the background. I bet it was recorded in the 1960s or even earlier, and that poor announcer is either in a nursing home or long gone from this world.

That ancient recording gives a strong subliminal message. "If this was an actual emergency, you'd be plunged into the dark ages, or at least back to the time when this was recorded! We'd all be huddled in basements with ham radios, dusting off expired cans of food, wearing bellbottoms with large orange and lime green flowers on them!" (Okay, the kids may be wearing those now, but you get my drift.)

There is something powerfully but subtly disturbing about public messages we see or hear often that are never updated or refreshed. Here's a challenge for you this week - find one small, tired piece of the public face of your school or classroom that you can easily update (or even remove if it has outlived its purpose). That comic sans font on the school website that looked so young and fun when you put it up in 1998? Looks a little sad and cartoony now. The health guidelines for handling blood on the bulletin board in the teacher workroom that are fly-specked and water-stained? Kind of scary for volunteers who see them every time they wash their hands, and know we are in the midst of the worst flu pandemic in decades. Put up a clean copy and send the subliminal message that you're absolutely on top of health issues in your school. The laminated commercial poster of the 7 Comprehension Strategies in your class room that is curling around the edges and torn in one corner? Hey, what has it done for you or your students lately?

We may not see or hear some of the outdated messages we're sending out about our classrooms or schools. As insiders, they aren't in focus for us anymore - we understandably are concentrating on the immediate needs of our colleagues and students, exciting new projects, or even actual emergencies. If the messages aren't obsolete we may keep them up, not noticing the "message beneath the message" the format or age of them is sending to the public about how current we are in our approaches to teaching, learning, and life in a school community. I have no doubt insiders in the government are hard at work using the latest technology to prepare our country for a real emergency. I just wish they'd take ten minutes to record and send out a new message to radio stations using a bit of that whiz-bang technology. It might be more reassuring than they realize.

Pay attention to the little things as they often send big signals.