By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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SWING THOUGHTS: Containment, Communication, and Morale (2088 Words)
(De Facto Commentary Memorandum to DDH2)
(Saturday, November 8, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
SWING THOUGHTS: Containment, Communication, and Morale (2088 Words)
Premise: What I Have Seen
Since 2019, I have watched containment, communication, and morale intertwine in patterns that feel both institutional and existential.
My vision was sharpened by the 7 years I spent as a founding faculty member, two-term governing board member, department head, athletic director, testing coordinator, administrator, Title I director, disciplinarian, student recruiting coordinator, director of corporate relations, data analyst, and de facto historian of a startup public charter school that I left in 2011 … that closed in 2012.
Since May 28, 2025, I have written about containment, communication, and morale daily as part of an autoethnographic journal.
Since September 20, 2025 … when I wrote “Final Exams (At Chipotle)” … I have compiled 36 (and counting) public-facing essays that each record reactions … then reflections ... that help me “mind shift” … from surviving daily turbulence … to documenting its rhythm.
“Final Exams (At Chipotle)” describes separate encounters at the popular restaurant with former students … both of whom had provided unique challenges while in my class.
Our encounters taught us reciprocal lessons about grace and growth.
“Final Exams (At Chipotle)” is accompanied by a series of “##th Day of School” entries that have now become a living chronicle of how a classroom can mirror the world it inhabits.
Across those entries, and in companion works like the song “Born(e) Witness” and the Beatitudes photoessay series, I have attempted to name the invisible systems that operate beneath the visible ones.
In doing so, I have learned that the problem is not limited to one principal, one district, or even one school.
It is the choreography of containment ... the ways that institutions, large and small, maintain appearances by managing the emotions, language, and movements of those who live within them.
Containment can be physical ... through relocation or reassignment.
It can be psychological ... through the slow erosion of trust and agency.
It can be spiritual ... through the quiet dismissal of conscience as conflict.
In our school, all three forms coexist.
Pattern: Containment as Climate
From the “beatitudes.0008.001 (GRASPP)” photoessay (March 6, 2025) to the “Reaching Out … While Respecting Boundaries (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)” essays in late October 2025, the connecting theme is clear.
Containment does not always appear as punishment.
It often masquerades as professionalism.
The practice of “moving” people, “restructuring” departments, or “reassigning” classrooms has become an instrument of emotional management … rather than instructional improvement.
When I was moved from one hall to another, it was not for cause, performance, or need.
It was for control.
The stated reasons changed … the feeling did not.
Each move redefined “team” … and redrew “belonging.”
Each move was framed as a logistical decision … but functioned as a subtle exile.
I was meant to be seen, but not heard.
Productive, but not powerful.
Present, but peripheral.
I have called this the “racialized labor divide.”
It is the pattern that assigns Black male teachers the role of containment officers ... tasked with managing difficult students, maintaining order, absorbing blame, and “shielding” other teachers from these “duties” ... while often excluding them from collaborative decision-making or creative innovation.
The paradox is that we are both depended upon and distrusted.
Valued for presence, not perspective.
In “Reaching Out … While Respecting Boundaries (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)”, I wrote about how this containment reproduces itself through student behavior.
When young people witness adults being quietly silenced or publicly diminished, they learn to perform the same behavior downward.
Students mirror the morale of the system that governs their teachers.
Thus, containment becomes cultural.
It moves from hallway to classroom, from teacher to student, from conversation to confrontation.
The system maintains itself by convincing everyone involved that this is normal.
Paradox: Communication Without Connection
Communication is the word most used in our district … and least understood.
Meetings are scheduled, emails are sent, and “transparency” is proclaimed.
Yet the substance of most messages is choreography ... movement without meaning.
In Empath Remixes #83 (“A Day Off Is a Day On”) and #84 (“Amazing Grace”), I described the paradox of speaking and not being heard.
My students call it “talking to a wall.”
For teachers, it is “reporting up.”
For administrators, it is “getting ahead of the narrative.”
The end result is the same … words travel, but understanding does not.
Even in the best of times, communication at our school operates like a public-relations exercise.
It exists to preserve calm … not to create clarity.
There are statements of care without acts of care.
Announcements of inclusion without practices of belonging.
We have meetings where questions are welcomed but not answered … where listening is performed but not practiced.
The moral exhaustion that follows is not from lack of talking, but from the futility of speech that changes nothing.
In Empath Remixes #90 (“Discrete Notifications”), I wrote that “the key part of hollering is not the sound … it is the hearing.
A voice has meaning only if someone else’s ears are open.”
This is the central paradox.
We are encouraged to speak up, but the architecture of listening is absent.
My #StandupStorytelling practice was born to address this gap.
When formal channels failed, I built informal ones … songs, essays, roleplays, performances, photoessays, and dialogue circles.
In the song “Born(e) Witness,” I narrate how communication can become communion when it is honest, artistic, and embodied.
The song’s refrain ... “mine eyes have seen the glory ... of telling your own story ...” ... summarizes what I have learned.
Authentic communication must aim to connect, not correct.
It must risk vulnerability, not just manage perception.
This insight guided my 9-20-2024 spoken-word performance of GRASPP at our department meeting … as a creative way to describe “my teaching journey.”
The acronym GRASPP provides leaders with a “real-time battle plan” … that helps you GRASPP, evaluate, and adjust … in the middle of a fight by recognizing …
· Group Morale
· Relationships
· Administration
· Spiritual Tone
· Planning
· Problem Solving
The acronym GRASPP was both a moral code and a survival strategy.
That performance was my attempt to translate years of unspoken reflection into a language that the room could feel, not just hear … using words that I wrote in 2016.
Some did.
Many did not.
But I learned that I could no longer wait for understanding before speaking truth.
Practice: Morale as Mirror
Morale, in our building, functions like a weather system.
It changes daily, but the air pressure never rises above “cautious.”
People smile, but the eyes do not follow.
Conversations end before they begin.
Most teachers have learned to protect their peace by silencing their convictions.
They have seen what happens to those who do not.
In Empath Remixes #84 (“Amazing Grace”), I noted that extending grace is easier with graceful people.
It is harder with those who confuse boundaries with bitterness.
The moral climate of our school now teaches compliance as a virtue and silence as self-preservation.
Teachers who speak candidly are viewed as “negative.”
Those who absorb dysfunction quietly are praised as “team players.”
The line between morale and moral has blurred.
The danger of such a climate is that it mistakes endurance for health.
We are not well because we are still standing.
We are standing because there is nowhere else to sit.
This is why I began to write daily ... not just to document my students, but to monitor myself.
Each essay became a wellness check.
The process revealed that morale is not an outcome … but a mirror.
It reflects what we believe about the worth of our work … and the integrity of those who lead it.
When communication becomes containment, morale becomes performance.
When communication becomes connection, morale becomes culture.
I have seen glimpses of that culture.
In student moments ... a quiet thank you, a sincere apology, a breakthrough after weeks of struggle ... morale reappears like sunlight between clouds.
The geometry classroom becomes sanctuary.
In those moments, the containment collapses, and true learning returns.
The students remember that they are not problems to be managed … and I remember that I am not property to be controlled.
Peace: What It Has Taught Me
Writing these essays, writing and performing these songs, and curating these photoessays have taught me that peace is not passive.
It is an act of structure.
Peace requires architecture: time, boundaries, rhythm, and relationship.
I have learned that institutions confuse peace with order.
Order is imposed … peace is cultivated.
Order can silence … peace requires sound.
The decision to “buy time” and to take leave was not an escape.
It was an ethical act of preservation.
I could not continue to model self-destruction in the name of service.
Peace demanded distance, not detachment.
In that distance, I can see the system more clearly ... and see myself not as victim or hero, but as witness.
The Beatitudes photoessay series helped me refine this understanding.
Each image was a prayer disguised as pedagogy.
Each caption ... a quiet manifesto.
In beatitudes.0008.001 (GRASPP), the words read, “Civil discourse – Especially between dissenters – promotes growth. It allows dissenters to see that they are diametrically opposed points on the same circle … and that preservation of the circle is more important than their points.”
There is a lesson that connects every artifact I have made … peace is a structured discipline … not a temporary feeling.
This discipline now guides my posture toward the district.
I do not wish to litigate what I can illuminate.
I do not wish to accuse when I can analyze.
I do not wish to destroy what I can help rebuild.
Yet, to rebuild, the system must be willing to see itself.
The purpose of this commentary is not complaint.
It is clarity.
I want to name what I have witnessed … so that we might all discern the difference between containment and care … between communication and communion … between morale and morality.
Epilogue: GRASPP Revisited
Today, it functions as a repurposed blueprint for balance ...
· Gratitude ... for the opportunity to teach, reflect, and learn, even in difficult soil.
· Respect ... for students and colleagues, even when mutuality is missing.
· Accountability ... for naming the truth without weaponizing it.
· Structure ... for building systems that sustain peace rather than manage chaos.
· Patience ... for enduring process without surrendering purpose.
· Peace ... for walking away when standing still becomes harmful.
These six virtues have guided my survival, my scholarship, and my storytelling.
They can also guide institutional restoration, if adopted sincerely.
They do not require policy shifts before practice shifts.
They begin with listening ... the discipline most missing in our culture of control.
Closing Reflection
Containment, communication, and morale are not isolated variables.
They are intertwined dimensions of one reality … how power interacts with humanity.
When power values people only for their productivity, containment becomes the norm.
When power values image over integrity, communication becomes performance.
When power values endurance over empathy, morale becomes illusion.
I have learned that systems cannot heal unless someone within them is willing to speak truthfully about what they feel.
That is what I have done through these writings.
Each essay, song, and photograph is a small act of healing ... not just for me, but for anyone who has ever felt unseen while being observed.
As I transition into this next phase of rest, reflection, and authorship, I do not wish to be remembered as a critic of our district.
I wish to be remembered as a contributor to its conscience.
The story I have told is not about revenge.
It is about revelation.
It is not about blame.
It is about becoming.
If there is a single lesson that binds Final Exams (At Chipotle), Born(e) Witness, beatitudes.0008.001 (GRASPP), and Empath Remixes #83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, and 92 … it is this … containment cannot define what was born to expand, and peace will always outgrow control.
The teacher in me has learned to measure learning not by compliance, but by change.
The writer in me has learned that truth
does not need permission to speak.
The witness in me has learned that freedom
begins the moment we refuse to confuse
silence with safety.
That is the peace I am building now ... brick by brick, word by word, walk by walk.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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