Viral ethics: Keeping our moral compass in a time of confinement; The Spokesman-Review, March 19, 2020

Eli Francovich, The Spokesman-Review; Viral ethics: Keeping our moral compass in a time of confinement

"“We can’t panic and we can’t lose our intrinsic moral compass and doing right by our fellow human beings,” said Dr. Darryl Potyk, chief for medical education at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Spokane. “I would worry more about me giving it to her. But if she’s in danger, the present danger is apparent. I want to deal with the apparent danger right now.” 

Coming together

And so, last week, I approached the ailing woman.

She needed to go to the bus plaza. She’d taken a bus from her home in the Spokane Valley, where she lives alone, to drop off some paperwork downtown. While she was walking back, she had some sort of attack or episode, she didn’t know what exactly, maybe something to do with her diabetes.

She grasped the crook of my arm and, I’m not proud to admit, I recoiled at first, worried she might touch my hand. 

Five people had already passed and not helped, she said. We walked slowly to the plaza. She stumbled often, her back arching backward, threatening to upend her precarious grasp on gravity. A Spokane Transit Authority employee saw us and, without any visible hesitation, took her other arm. The three of us shuffled to the waiting area for her Paratransit bus. 

I bought her a slice of pizza and she thanked us."

Students' Broken Moral Compasses; Atlantic, 7/25/16

Paul Barnwell, Atlantic; Students' Broken Moral Compasses:

"At a recent convening of 15 teacher-leaders from around the country at the Center for Teaching Quality in Carrboro, North Carolina, I spoke to some colleagues about the balance between teaching academic content and striving to develop students’ moral identities. Leticia Skae-Jackson, an English teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, and Nick Tutolo, a math teacher in Pittsburgh, both commented that many teachers are overwhelmed by the pressure and time demands in covering academic standards. Focusing on character and ethics, they said, is seen as an additional demand.

Nonetheless, Tutolo engages his math students at the beginning of the school year by focusing on questions of what it means to be a conscientious person and citizen while also considering how his class could address community needs. His seventh-grade class focused on the issue of food deserts in Pittsburgh and began a campaign to build hydroponic window farms. While learning about ratios and scaling—skills outlined in the Common Core math standards—students began working to design and distribute the contraptions to residents in need, a project that will continue this fall as Tutolo “loops” up to teach eighth grade."