“If someone’s ninety percent awful and ten percent great, everyone says that deep down they’re great. Like they’re an iceberg, but all that greatness is under the water – and invisible. But actually, the truth is, they’re just ninety percent awful.”
― Jo Harkin, Tell Me an Ending

It has been an interesting month here in Tennessee.

Last week, Governor Bill Lee called state legislators back into session for the purpose of redistricting the state in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling against a provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act designed to create and preserve Black voting blocs. That ruling opened the door for state lawmakers to tip the scales prior to the upcoming midterm election.

Redistricting is not unique to Tennessee. Across the country, efforts are underway to redraw electoral maps in pursuit of political power. This is not some new phenomenon born in the age of social media outrage and cable news hysteria. Gerrymandering has been around for generations. In parts of the Northeast and on the West Coast, political maps have long been drawn with surgical precision.

In California and Chicago, it can be just as difficult for a Republican to get elected as it is for a Democrat to get elected in Tennessee.

Doesn’t make it right.

But it does make it reality.

What makes Tennessee’s effort especially unique is the way the new map divides Memphis and its predominantly Black community, attaching part of it to overwhelmingly white and affluent Williamson County.

That’s quite a stretch considering the communities sit roughly 200 miles apart.

Between them is a whole lot of farmland, rural communities, and folks who probably don’t believe they have much in common with either.

The move comes with an election already looming, which has thrown candidates into absolute chaos. Some candidates who already launched campaigns suddenly found themselves shifted into entirely different districts. Filing deadlines had to be extended from March 10 to May 15, and some candidates are essentially sitting on the sidelines hoping the courts eventually strike down the maps and restore the districts they originally qualified for.

And they still might.

A federal judge denied Democratic officials and voters a temporary restraining order and injunction, but anybody who has watched redistricting fights over the years knows these things have a tendency to drag out like a bitter divorce.

Meanwhile, the political math behind all of this is obvious.

The Cook Political Report found Republicans could gain substantially from the nationwide reshuffling. California and Utah may yield several Democratic seats, while states like Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida could collectively add around 15 Republican seats.

This isn’t ideology.

It’s arithmetic.

Politics stopped being about persuasion a long time ago. Now it’s largely about engineering advantage.

That’s what makes all the political theater surrounding these debates so exhausting.

Because as serious as the issue is — and it is serious — the actual discussion keeps getting buried beneath performance art designed more for fundraising emails and social media clips than changing minds.

I promise you, nobody saw State Senator Charlane Oliver standing on her desk in the chamber holding a banner accusing lawmakers of racial segregation and white supremacy and suddenly changed their position.

Nobody watched Representative Justin Jones light a Confederate flag on fire inside the Capitol and thought, “You know what? I’m switching sides.”

Likewise, I seriously doubt Speaker Cameron Sexton removing Democrats from committees earned Republicans a wave of new voters either.

All of it generates headlines.

All of it generates clicks.

All of it generates campaign donations.

But very little of it actually changes outcomes.

And ultimately, elections are supposed to be about outcomes.

That’s the part that both parties often ignore. Neither political base is large enough to dominate on passion alone. Most elections are won somewhere in the middle by people who are tired, distracted, annoyed, or simply trying to survive the week.

The loudest voices in politics tend to forget that.

Or maybe they remember it perfectly and simply don’t care.

Because outrage is profitable.

Especially curated outrage.

Party leaders often frame this kind of political theater as “fighting for the little guy,” and there’s certainly truth in that. But I was always taught that if you’re going to fight, you fight to win. And if your tactics aren’t producing victories, eventually you need to reevaluate the tactics.

Some of today’s leaders seem far more interested in building personal brands than building durable coalitions.

Their social media following grows.

Their fundraising totals increase.

Their television appearances multiply.

Yet their actual political influence rarely expands alongside it.

You can complain about inequity until the cows come home, but if you can’t figure out how to consistently win elections, nothing changes.

And here’s the ironic part.

Much of the rhetoric this week has centered around voter disenfranchisement. But years ago, I learned something watching workplace disputes unfold: when two employees engage in a loud, public feud in front of management, the boss rarely stops to study the nuance of who was technically right and who was technically wrong.

Eventually, management just gets tired of both of them.

Voters are management.

And when politics becomes constant screaming, a lot of voters simply disengage altogether.

That may be the single biggest threat facing American democracy right now — not apathy born from ignorance, but apathy born from exhaustion.

Sometimes being right isn’t enough.

Sometimes presentation matters.

Sometimes rigorous self-evaluation is necessary.

And sometimes the people screaming the loudest are actually convincing fewer people than they think.

While lawmakers redraw maps in Nashville, schools across Tennessee are quietly redrawing lives.

As the end of the school year approaches, teachers are beginning to learn their fate for next year. Some will be reassigned. Others will be searching for work outside their district entirely.

This process happens every spring, though most people outside education barely notice it.

Parents are focused on graduations, vacations, baseball tournaments, prom pictures, and making it through the final weeks before summer.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, teachers are anxiously refreshing emails wondering whether they’ll still have a classroom come August.

The stories spread quickly this time of year.

Some are accurate.

Some are exaggerated.

Some are half-true accounts passed from one faculty lounge to another until nobody knows where they started.

But the anxiety underneath them is absolutely real.

Employment uncertainty impacts far more than individual workers. It affects spouses, children, mortgage payments, childcare arrangements, transportation, healthcare, and family stability.

One staffing decision can completely alter a household routine.

Metro Nashville Public Schools categorizes non-renewed employees into four groups.

There are “Displaced” employees, whose positions disappeared because of district-level budget or programming decisions.

There are “Unassigned” employees — tenured teachers whose positions vanished because of school-level changes but who remain eligible for placement after June 15 if they don’t secure another role first.

There are “Non-renewed eligible” employees, which includes non-tenured staff and large numbers of permit or waiver teachers whose annual permits expire automatically each year.

And finally, there are “Non-renewed ineligible” employees — educators who were not retained because of documented performance concerns.

This year, MNPS has 659 teachers searching for new assignments.

Five hundred nineteen are eligible for rehire.

Only 29 have been deemed ineligible.

That distinction matters.

Because in a political climate where every staffing change immediately becomes a social media controversy, context often disappears.

The reality is many of these changes are tied directly to enrollment declines and shrinking school-level budgets.

Fewer students means less funding.

Less funding means fewer positions.

And eventually those reductions land on real people.

Some schools are absorbing particularly heavy losses:

• Antioch High School: 18
• Cane Ridge High School: 16
• John Overton High School: 16
• Thomas Edison Elementary: 16
• McGavock High School: 15
• Una Elementary: 15
• John F. Kennedy Middle: 14
• A.Z. Kelley Elementary: 14

Now, context matters here too.

Large comprehensive high schools naturally employ larger staffs, which means larger reductions when cuts become necessary. A school with 150 teachers cutting 15 positions is very different from a small elementary school cutting 15.

Still, those numbers carry emotional weight.

Because behind every reduction is somebody cleaning out a desk.

Somebody updating a résumé.

Somebody sitting in a parking lot after work wondering what comes next.

And one of the more interesting parts of the data involves permit teachers.

Tennessee law allows districts to hire non-licensed teachers on temporary permits if they can show progress toward full certification. Those permits expire annually and may only be renewed for up to three years.

Of the 519 employees eligible for rehire, 427 are permit holders.

That number raises uncomfortable questions.

Not just about staffing shortages, but about the long-term pipeline into the profession itself.

Because districts don’t rely on hundreds of permit teachers when the profession is thriving.

They rely on them when they can’t fully staff classrooms with licensed educators.

And yet, despite all the talk about “supporting teachers,” the profession increasingly feels trapped between impossible expectations and declining public trust.

Teachers are expected to solve academic deficits, mental health crises, discipline challenges, food insecurity, attendance problems, political polarization, and societal instability — often while being blamed for outcomes largely outside their control.

At the same time, public discourse surrounding education has become relentlessly combative.

Everybody says teachers matter.

But increasingly, fewer people seem interested in making the profession sustainable.

The district’s data is informative, but incomplete.

It remains unclear whether the totals reflect positions, individuals, support staff, or specific teaching assignments.

It would also help to compare these figures to prior years in order to determine whether this represents an outlier or an annual pattern.

That’s one of the challenges with education reporting.

Numbers without trend lines create confusion.

And confusion tends to get filled with assumption.

Still, the broader picture feels hard to ignore.

Enrollment declines continue.

Budgets tighten.

Veteran educators retire.

Fewer young people enter the profession.

And districts increasingly patch holes wherever they can.

That’s not unique to Nashville either.

It’s happening all over the country.

Which brings us to Harriet Medlin.

She may not have originally wanted to become a teacher, but Brentwood High School’s Harriet Medlin ultimately built a career that lasted 57 years.

“ I did everything I could to avoid it,” she said. “I went to a small private liberal arts college having no idea what I really wanted to do, but teaching was not one of them.”

Honestly, there’s something refreshing about that level of candor.

No inspirational movie script.

No childhood dream narrative.

No “I always knew.”

Just honesty.

She wanted to go into advertising.

But this was 1968.

“ I wanted to go into advertising, but you have to remember, this was in 1968,” she said. “So when a recruiter for an advertising firm came on campus and I walked into the session, he looked at me and he said, ‘Honey, you’re in the wrong room, this is a man’s job.’”

That one sentence says more about that era than a textbook chapter ever could.

Devastated by the interaction, she eventually followed her mother’s advice and obtained a teaching license.

And what followed was nearly six decades inside classrooms during one of the most transformative periods in American education.

When Medlin began teaching in Williamson County in the fall of 1968, integration had only recently taken effect. Franklin’s historically Black school, Natchez High, had closed and reopened as a vocational annex. Students were bused back and forth between campuses during the school day.

Sixteen first-year teachers were essentially dropped into the middle of enormous cultural and social upheaval.

“It was really rough; there were lots of fights,” she recalled.

Then came the story that sticks with you.

A student walked into her classroom and calmly informed her that he had cut another student’s throat on the bus.

“He said, ‘The police will be here shortly because I cut this kid’s throat on the bus.’ I was 22 years old at the time, and all I could think of to say was, ‘Well, is he dead?’ And he said, ‘No, I think he’s gonna be OK.’ But sure enough, pretty soon the police came and handcuffed him and took him out.”

Imagine being 22 years old and navigating that.

No trauma-informed training seminar.

No social media support groups.

No district crisis response team.

Just a young teacher trying to survive the day.

“I would go home at night and cry and call my mom and tell her everything that had happened that day,” she said. “‘Well, why don’t you just quit?’ And I said, ‘No. They may make me cry, but they’ll never make me quit.’”

That line stayed with me.

Because somewhere along the way, education lost a little of that stubborn resilience.

Not because teachers became weaker.

But because the system itself became heavier.

The job today is almost unrecognizable from what it once was.

Medlin points to technology and increasing restrictions on teachers as two of the biggest changes she witnessed over her career.

She’s right.

Technology has transformed education in ways both remarkable and exhausting.

Students now carry the entire internet in their pockets.

Parents can contact teachers instantly.

Assignments are digital.

Testing is digital.

Communication is constant.

And yet, despite all the advances, schools often feel more disconnected than ever.

Teachers now operate under layers of scrutiny unimaginable decades ago.

Everything can become public instantly.

Every interaction can be recorded.

Every lesson can become political.

Every mistake can become viral.

And somehow, amid all of that, they are still expected to connect with kids.

That’s why Medlin’s advice matters.

“You have to maintain a sense of humor, and don’t be afraid to use your personality. You have to connect with them first before they’re going to learn anything from you.”

Simple.

Human.

True.

For all our obsession with standards, testing models, AI tools, data dashboards, and accountability frameworks, education still comes down to relationships.

Always has.

Always will.

And maybe that’s worth remembering in a moment when so much of public life feels performative and transactional.

Politics increasingly rewards outrage.

Social media rewards conflict.

Institutions reward branding.

But classrooms still reward authenticity.

Kids know when adults care.

They also know when adults are pretending.

Maybe that’s the lesson tying all of this together.

Whether it’s politicians performing outrage in the Capitol or schools scrambling through another season of uncertainty, eventually substance matters more than spectacle.

Or at least it should.

Because underneath every headline, every protest, every district report, and every political stunt are actual people trying to navigate complicated lives.

Teachers trying to hold classrooms together.

Families trying to plan for the future.

Communities trying to figure out where they belong on a map someone else drew.

And voters trying to decide whether anybody is still talking to them honestly.

Sometimes being right isn’t enough.

Sometimes the presentation matters.

And sometimes the people quietly doing the work deserve more attention than the people shouting for the cameras.

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Categories: Education