“The problem is that progress stopped making sense. More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes.”
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Tonight marks the beginning of yet another season of high school football.

With it comes the excitement, the pageantry and the civic pride. Stadium lights will flicker on across Tennessee. Bands will tune up. Cheerleaders will give it everything they have from the sidelines. Parents will search for familiar faces in the stands while pretending they are not nervous. Players will take the field carrying the expectations of teammates, coaches, families and communities.

Like most things in America, high school football has morphed into something different than it was in the not-so-distant past. Transfer rules, recruiting, social media and technology have all reshaped a fall tradition in ways few of us could have predicted.

It is no longer unusual for a teenager’s highlight reel to travel farther than his family ever has. A good performance can be clipped, posted and evaluated before the players have showered. Parents debate exposure and recruiting strategy. Players move schools in search of opportunity or playing time.

Still, at its core, high school football remains the same.

It is about communities taking pride in their school. It is about the band rocking the bleachers while cheerleaders work as hard on the sideline as the players do on the field. It is about rekindling relationships with old friends and forging new ones.

The focus is on the players and the field, but the experience encompasses so much more. Friday night lights remain a fixture in American culture because they offer something increasingly rare: a reason for a community to occupy the same space at the same time and care about the same thing.

Tonight, I’ll be in the stands cheering on my junior as he begins his third year of varsity play.

There is no place I’d rather be.

I’m sure the same holds true for many of you across the state of Tennessee.

And if we are lucky, for a few hours the only argument will be whether the official missed the holding call.

When You Can’t Answer the Message, Attack the Messenger

Last week, we spoke a bit about the award-winning teacher who chose to deliver some inconvenient truths to the Metro Nashville Board of Education.

Truths its members were not particularly interested in hearing.

Samira Hardcastle’s words nevertheless sparked enough interest to send clips of her speech viral. Over the past week, the story has continued to gain traction because what she described sounded familiar to people who work in schools and to families who have tried to navigate them.

Her words ring true, and the public recognizes that truth.

In response, MNPS has done what it so often does: undermine the messenger instead of discussing the message. Every attempt has been made to portray Hardcastle as a disgruntled former employee of questionable character.

An article in The Tennessean made sure readers knew she had left teaching before. You know, she was a server down on Broadway until she returned to the classroom six years ago.

As if that has anything to do with the accuracy of her observations.

I’m particularly fond of MNPS’s response to Hardcastle’s accusation that district leaders forced her to change a grade.

Per The Tennessean, MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted said administrators decided the student should be allowed to complete the art assignment since “there was no written schoolwide policy at the time that prohibited the student from being given an opportunity to complete the work.” Braisted said that after it was submitted, the school’s principal—not Hardcastle—reviewed the assignment and gave it a grade.

“The principal did not select a score for the purpose of producing a particular final course grade,” Braisted said. “The resulting course grade was the mathematical result of the score assigned to the completed work. Based on the information available to us, it therefore would not be accurate to characterize this as the district simply changing a student’s grade at a parent’s request.”

This is one of those, Do you think I’m stupid? responses.

First, it speaks to an issue I have been pursuing for the last couple of years. In a district that constantly speaks about equity, why is there no districtwide policy on late work and retakes?

In a district where central office micromanages nearly everything and teachers are expected to follow pacing guides like gospel, why are individual schools left to create their own policies on something that can directly affect grades, promotion and graduation?

If two students at two MNPS schools fail to submit the same assignment, should their opportunities depend on which principal happens to run the building? If equity means anything, surely it means students and teachers know the rules before a parent plants themselves in the front office.

Second, why was the principal doing the grading?

In a district where the drumbeat is always to produce better data—data, not necessarily better results—surely the interest shown by district leaders communicated the desired outcome to the principal. Once again, leadership placed a principal between a rock and a hard place, then described the result as if it had been produced by an unplugged calculator sitting alone in a room.

If this was truly a “mathematical result,” why couldn’t the teacher do the math?

The Discipline Secret Everybody Already Knows

Hardcastle also addressed another inconvenient truth when she spoke about tragedy. She placed a fair share of responsibility at the feet of district leaders, and she has a fair point.

She referenced the January 2025 Antioch High School shooting, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed classmate Josselin Corea Escalante before turning the gun on himself. Hardcastle wrote that teachers had complained about the shooter, who previously attended John F. Kennedy Middle School, but nothing was done.

It is doubtful that the shooter suddenly became a threat overnight, yet there were apparently no effective steps put in place to protect either him or his eventual victim.

That is not proof that any single intervention would have prevented the shooting. It is, however, more than enough reason to ask what warnings existed, who received them and what actions followed.

It is one of the worst-kept secrets in MNPS that the district does not want to suspend students. Every teacher with any experience has a story about a serious discipline issue that went unresolved, was sent back to the classroom or somehow disappeared from the official narrative.

Still, Braisted clings to the canard that this allegation has not been substantiated at Hardcastle’s former school or districtwide.

“We encourage our schools to provide positive supports that address the root causes of behavioral challenges while also holding students accountable for their actions,” Braisted said.

If it weren’t so sad, I’d laugh.

Positive supports, addressing root causes and holding students accountable are all good. Reciting them in one sentence does not prove they are happening.

A friend called me the other day.

“You seen this teacher speaking out about MNPS to the board?”

“I have.”

“If you look at her social media, she looks a little crazy. You know Metro suspended her before she resigned?” he replied.

“What difference does that make? They also recognized her as an exemplary teacher before they suspended her. Are you telling me that MNPS is handing out awards to less-than-exemplary teachers? That it’s giving Blue Ribbon status to kooks?”

“Noooo…”

When you honor someone’s work, you elevate their expertise in the field. We assume a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright knows more about playwriting than, say, the guy writing scripts for Saved by the Bell. We assume a Nobel Prize-winning scientist knows more about science than a local medical technician.

Unless, of course, the award exists primarily for appearances.

Maybe a Blue Ribbon Teacher knows no more than any other teacher. I’m not saying that argument is entirely without merit. I’m saying that if it is true, let’s stop with the bullshit awards and tell the truth.

But if the award has merit, perhaps we ought to listen when the recipient tells us something is wrong.

There is little Hardcastle is saying that hasn’t already been discussed in teachers’ lounges and homes throughout the district. Refusing to acknowledge her accusations isn’t fooling anyone.

It reminds me of when I was a functioning alcoholic and believed I was keeping all my secrets secret. It was only after I got sober that I realized everybody already knew, and nobody was buying my game.

MNPS isn’t protecting a secret. It is performing secrecy for an audience that already knows the ending.

The hidden agenda doesn’t stop at the boardroom. Hardcastle questioned Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s loyalty to MNPS Superintendent Adrienne Battle. She wonders why he hasn’t spoken publicly about the district’s obvious problems or demanded greater accountability from its leadership. Referring to Battle’s relationship with O’Connell—and to the superintendent’s “friends” working in roles across the district—Hardcastle said it seems really “cliquey.”

It seems that way because it is.

As he heads toward reelection mode, Mayor O’Connell probably needs to follow the same advice as MNPS. A prime example would be his claims of “fixing” school start times. Don’t think for one minute the public doesn’t recognize that maneuver for what it is: a political solution designed to sound larger than the actual change.

If you ain’t going to tell the truth, you better do a better job polishing the mirrors and tending the smoke.

Bell to Bell, Slogan to Slogan

Republican gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn has a new campaign ad, and it is as misguided as her fortune-cookie ad from the primary season.

“My plan, bell-to-bell, no cell. No excuses, no exceptions. No more posting, no scrolling. Here in Tennessee schools, we’re going to learn,” said U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in her new ad campaign.

She should have thrown in a “dammit,” just for effect.

Tennessee already prohibits students from using wireless devices during instructional time, with specified exceptions. The law took effect for the 2025–26 school year and requires local school boards and charter governing bodies to adopt policies that meet that baseline. Districts retain discretion to go further.

That used to be called local control—something that used to matter to Republicans.

According to Blackburn and her supporters, the existing policy isn’t solving distracted minds, cyberbullying and social media addiction. Those are legitimate concerns. Teachers should not have to compete with TikTok, group chats and whatever outrage the algorithm served up during second period.

But Republican leadership continually sends mixed messages to parents. We are supposedly smart enough to navigate school choice, compare academic programs and decide where thousands of public education dollars should follow our children—but we cannot teach those same children appropriate cell phone use without the state taking the decision away from families and local schools.

Make it make sense.

For the record, I’m a growing supporter of school choice, but I oppose a statewide bell-to-bell cell phone ban.

Marsha also seems to ignore the subtle fact that writing laws is easier than enforcing them. Perhaps she plans to send monitors into every school in Tennessee to ensure that nary a phone emerges between the opening and closing bells.

Enforcement costs money. Who buys locking pouches? Who collects phones and tracks confiscated property? Who handles the angry parent whose child says a phone was damaged—or hundreds of students who simply refuse?

Where is that expense supposed to come from?

Then there are the polling numbers.

An NEA member survey reportedly found that 83 percent of teachers supported all-day phone bans with appropriate exceptions. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that 74 percent of U.S. adults supported bans during middle and high school classes.

Notice the difference: during class is not the same as all day.

In Pew’s 2026 survey, 77 percent supported prohibiting phones during class, but only 48 percent supported a bell-to-bell ban. Forty-three percent opposed the all-day version.

Maybe all those numbers are accurate. I’d still be more interested in a poll showing where this issue ranks among parents’ actual concerns.

Probably somewhere around Chinese interests buying property in Tennessee: recognized as a challenge, but also understood as something state lawmakers have already addressed.

Parents I know are worried about whether their children can read, whether schools are safe, whether teachers remain in classrooms, whether buses arrive and whether a diploma still means what adults claim it means.

Cell phones matter. They are not nothing. But “bell-to-bell, no cell” sounds suspiciously like a campaign consultant discovered a rhyme and worked backward to find a crisis.

Maybe Marsha isn’t a lock for governor.

Maybe her age and time spent away from Tennessee have resulted in a lack of understanding of Tennesseans’ concerns.

I’m still doubtful.

But I’m a little less doubtful than I was last week.

Tonight, though, the phones will be out beneath the Friday night lights. Parents will take pictures. Students will record the band. Players will share highlights. Grandparents who couldn’t attend will watch from home. Communities will tell their own stories in real time.

The technology has changed the tradition, but it hasn’t erased it.

And perhaps that is the larger lesson running through all of this. Institutions can control policies, press statements and campaign slogans. They can attack a messenger, redefine a grade change or declare a problem solved.

But they cannot completely control what people see with their own eyes.

Under the lights, the truth has a way of showing up.

Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

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Categories: Education