I'm teaching my ninth graders about integrity - but everyone could use a refresher.

If you happened to read my last-week-of-school blog post from this past June, you might remember how frustrated and saddened I was by student attitudes that rounded out the school year. I'm not naïve enough to expect every kid to be excited for the last day of school, ready and eager to attend their class parties, field days, or whatever celebrations await them. I've known better than that for as long as I've held the job. But I certainly found myself oddly wistful for my own version of "the good ol' days," where at least we showed up to watch the movie, to run through the halls squealing on the final bell, to go over to someone's house that night and have the ritual bonfire burn of all the papers we didn't need anymore.

Instead, 9 of 26 students came to my last block. In the final weeks, I had multiple students telling me they wouldn't be in class because they were going to the pool to tan. And all year long, my colleagues and I struggled with the classic conundrum: students seemingly incapable of reading or listening to instructions. They ask what they're supposed to be doing when instructions are written on the board. Their devices stay up and out and active even after you stand right behind a student and ask for them to be put away. When they complain about a low grade for the quarter, and you explain why they have it (because they didn't turn anything in for a month aside from a few assignments that were weeks late), it's our fault their parents are grounding them - never theirs.

Before you stop reading, because I'm sounding to you like the most miserable, jaded, and insufferable educator in existence, I need you to know something: I am upset by this behavior, but I expect it, because the students I work with are 14 years old. This culture of non-caring does frustrate me, but it also makes complete sense to me. These students are at a crucial point in their development to solidify a practice of integrity. Up until now, they have followed rules given to them by omnipotent adults simply because "it's the law" or "it's the right thing to do." Now, and forevermore as they age, they develop their own set of morals that will dictate what matters to them and what doesn't.

Most of them don't even yet know what that word means. I would know, because I asked them on the first day of school. One or two of them could raise their hands and tell me: "It's doing the right thing when no one else is watching." They'd be correct, but I'd add on a few other things: It's being consistently honest - your actions and behavior aligning with the kind of person you claim to be. It's holding yourself accountable - owning up to mistakes and doing better next time. Finally, it's being respectful of guidelines, instructions and expectations given to you (not necessarily agreeing with them, but understanding why they're being asked).

The root of the word is integer - whole, complete. Integrity isn't simply doing the right thing. It's an alignment between what you believe, what you say, and what you do. When those three things match, you have integrity. When they don't, you have a fracture.

This concept will take the school year and longer, I'm sure, for them to really learn. They will have to be reminded and incentivized, and that's okay. Because I know this age group and their developmental abilities and struggles, I am prepared to be patient with them. But all of this got me thinking about how lost we adults are, too, in having integrity. Most of us are walking around with more fractures than we'd like to admit.

I assume all of us have disappointed other people. We promised to show up to the party and decided not to last-minute. We spilled a secret we swore we would keep. We underdelivered on tasks we were supposed to complete. Any of this can validly damage trust between us and another person, but what matters more in this conversation is how we feel about having disappointed someone. If we can recognize that we are also disappointed in ourselves, that reveals the gap between who we say we are and who we really are - who we're showing up as. This feeling, though it is undeniably dreadful, is the one to pay attention to, sit with, and heal.

Because as adults, we don't often have teachers or mentors guiding us through the practice anymore. No one is incentivizing us with treats or a good grade. It's on us now.

Think about what our day-to-day interactions look like through this lens. I'm not saying no one is to be trusted, or that none of us are living in alignment - rather, integrity has quietly eroded, because we've normalized sub-standard expectations of each other. Think about the content creator who issues a statement "taking responsibility" for their behavior without ever changing anything, still making all the money they did before. Or the colleague who agrees to something in a meeting and then does the opposite. The friend who says "we should hang out" for eight months straight, and you're subconsciously betting on their lack of follow-through. The person who insists they value honesty, but goes silent the moment honesty would cost them something.

None of these actions are villainous, but each of them is common. And I'd argue that what's worse than the lack of alignment itself is everyone else's complete refusal to call it out.

It perpetuates a cycle that leads us to the all-but-integrity-bankrupt culture we have today: We very rarely call out a lack of integrity in others because we're afraid of conflict, of seeming "bitchy" or running the risk of people asking "what's her problem?" And we're afraid of conflict partly because we've never learned how to apologize well, nor that having to do so doesn't mean you've lost something permanently. We know from experience (or the lack thereof) that naming a problem tends to either go nowhere, or blow everything up. There doesn't appear to be a sweet-spot where we can simply name what we notice, confront it, and expect a sincere apology without drama. So, it never gets named, it never gets repaired, and it never stops feeling annoying-but-not-annoying-enough-to-really-say-anything-about.

Ultimately, we seem to have confused "keeping the peace" with actually having it. And in that confusion, adults and children alike are left without an understanding of the one practice that would actually create peace - the sincere, accountable, behavior-backed apology.

I don't feel that I have to explain what this kind of apology looks like, but I certainly know that its opposite is among the most frustrating things to witness as a teacher, and also as a person out in the world. A real apology is not "I'm sorry you feel that way," or more common from my students, an "oh, my bad," only to turn around and repeat the behavior without an instant of thought. What I'm looking for - in all of us - is an acknowledgement of what was done (honesty), genuine remorse (values alignment), and a change in future behavior (follow-through). Most people can manage one of those. Very few sustain all three.

That hurts. It hurts the person who asked for an apology, but it also hurts the person needing to apologize, whether they realize it or not. The biggest gap in my own understanding of integrity has started to crack open through the intentional act of teaching it, and it's that we don't often frame this social skill as any sort of alignment with our own morals. And if you can recognize, even fleetingly, that you're not living in accordance with your morals, that sting will linger.

I know that I value honesty, but I avoid painful truths all the time. I avoid saying the things that would probably make a relationship make more sense for the sake of not hurting feelings. I take a lot more shit from other people than I want to. I'm meaner and moodier than I want to be, and I don't always apologize. This practice of aligning is not above any of us, nor will any of us ever be perfect at it.

But in order to live more honestly, more sincerely with one another, we need to try. Integrity has never been anything more than a practice - just the same as presence, community, or moving our bodies. It's not a crime to be out of practice. It just feels a lot better when we keep up with it as consistently as we can.