9/11, The Day After or maybe it was 20 Years Later.

 A lot has been said this week about that feeling of unity on September 12, 2001. Where has it gone? What happened? Was it all a dream? Have we somehow lost our way?

I was teaching 4th grade in Manhattan and living in Brooklyn at that time and I do recall something akin to unity but I'm not sure that's really the right word. I do remember a sense of shared shock and horror at what we saw that day. I recall the growing family album of photos of the missing on posters that appeared on walls around the city and the tributes and alters in places like Union Square. I knew I was part of something larger than myself and felt a connection to those I saw everyday - we lived through something together. 

Was that unity? I remember one of my fellow teachers talking to us before we started the next school day shouting that we would be okay, that we would rise to this challenge because we were New Yorkers (dammit!) and I felt included in that crowd, but where did that feeling come from?

Was what we call unity the fact that we shared a horrific experience? Do people that survive a plane crash stay in touch and find ways to connect and work together? When I meet someone who was in New York or Washington DC these days I do feel a certain kinship, maybe unity, a shared experience but what should I expect from that?

I wonder if the media coverage is missing something here. Is the unity they speak of really more a shared trauma? 

What do we expect of that shared experience? 

We are living in a time when a minority of the country is actively fighting against the democracy the country was founded upon. We are living in a time when that minority is quite loud and has the backing of one of our political parties. How does that shared trauma work with the current challenges?

Does the unity felt in that traumatic moment mean I have to accept the position of those who are working to destroy democracy? Those who lived through that day share something unique and powerful but perhaps we expect too much from that feeling of unity.

Let's Get Political

 More and more I hear the well intentioned phrase "I don't want to be political", "I'm not trying to be political", "let's not be political, no politics here, this is a politics free zone" and so forth. Why?

That's a rhetorical question obviously. I know why, it's because political discourse can be filled with anger and venom and most people don't enjoy the upset stomach that comes with that kind of bitterness served up for dinner.

Politics, however, are the real world application of our beliefs and values. Perhaps we value clean air and water and maybe we value pissing-off (aka "owning") those people who don't look like us. Whatever it is we really value comes out pretty clear in our politics and that's fine. When I hear someone say "I'm not political" I hear "I have no values, no beliefs and don't care about anything". 

Perhaps we fear knowing more than we'd like about our fellow travelers on this planet. Maybe we'd rather not know that our cousin supports white supremacist ideas, is a bigot and an idiot to boot. Can we know these things, or more accurately perhaps, believe these things and still be in relationship with someone?

The current experience of Covid-19 is a good challenge for us to navigate. You can make the simplified but rather accurate classification of those who are working to slow the spread of the virus and those who are working to increase its reach and its deadly consequences. Those who promote vaccination, wearing masks and altering social interactions at present are working to save lives by limiting the pandemic and those who oppose such measures are, quite simply, working to make things worse in terms of the death toll and the long term health of us all. 

Taking a stand against science, public health and saving lives is a political position because the Republican Party, one half of our viable political landscape, has taken the position against slowing the pandemic. One might argue that health concerns, or science is not political and they would be correct. Science, knowledge, objective reality are apolitical by nature but they become political when a political party refuses to accept objective reality as we know it.

I saw a recent announcement of a bluegrass music festival postponing due to the pandemic. "It's not political" they stated, but in truth it is. While I fully understand the desire to limit the fall out with some fans of the genre, there's no getting around the political nature and that's fine. What I read between the lines in their statement is "We're concerned about public health and public safety and feel it would be wrong to move forward with an event that we cannot have safely". That statement is political but only because one party is loudly proclaiming that they don't care about public health and safety. 

In this case, the intentions of the organizers are clearly on the side of concern for the audience and general well being. That will be considered political by some who choose to make it so. That may be uncomfortable but it is a loud and clear statement of everyone's beliefs and values.

Forward In All Directions

I've been thinking about direction in terms of teaching. When I was an undergrad a lot of time was spent on creating lesson plans that were very directed. "SWBAT" was the acronym that ruled the day, standing for "Students Will Be Able To..." and especially in my field of Art, we were taught to be very specific about what would happen and have very specific guidelines for how to measure and grade students. Even at the time I thought the notion of stating emphatically that students would do this or that was a little presumptuous. How did I know what exactly they would do, at best I could hope or guess. I wasn't even thinking about what students really needed to be able to do. Over the years as a general education classroom teacher as well an art teacher I've found there's fewer things that students need to do and many more things they can do.
These days I do teach specific skills, although they tend to come more from student's requests. To paint with watercolors you need a brush, paper, paint and water - that's what you need to know. "Oh, you want know how to make this kind of textured look that works well if you're trying to show a grassy field? That's called "Dry Brush", here, I'll show you how that works..." That's a typical teachable moment. Who "directed" that particular lesson? I can tell you that I don't write that sort of thing in any lesson plans, so it must have been the student. Perhaps I've changed that old phrase to "Teacher Will Be Able To Explain What is Needed In The Moment".
Another word that is used a lot in education is "Control". Teacher evaluations place a lot of emphasis on control. Is the classroom or are the students "Under Control"? There are many good reasons for paying attention to control. Out of control is almost always unsafe. So while I am always attending to control in that way I've also started thinking about the word as it applies to how the students go about their learning.
I'm perhaps most interested in controlling the class in terms of motivating them to be focused on learning, on the serious work of exploring, questioning and collecting ideas and experiences. What direction they will take with their work is of less interest to me. I would rather see a student in control of their learning experience, focused and engaged even if what they produce seems to be a random collection of ideas. A student who, in the art room, is really exploring ideas may not create a single finished, beautiful piece of art that will hang in the family's living room. They may have been going in many different directions, but the work they did can still be worthwhile assuming they were in control of the process.
I realize that I value control over direction. It's asking more of the students to develop their ability to control, their self control and accept that the direction their work takes them might not be known at the start but I think the experience is much more fruitful, both in the moment and long term.

The Prize Box Solves Everything

Every day I have students who come to class carrying clipboards, tickets, popsicle sticks in a cup, charts and other means of tracking and or modifying their behavior. It's not uncommon to have three or four students in a class who have some sort of a behavior plan. Yesterday afternoon one class had two students with popsicle sticks in a cup, one loses a stick every time he blurts out, another loses a stick anytime they are not paying attention, two other students have charts where they are scored on various behaviors either positive or negative. At the end of the day, remaining sticks are counted or score sheets tallied and if the score is within a certain range the student gets a reward. All of this makes me wonder if the estate of B.F. Skinner collects royalties on the use of his basic theories, or does Pavlov get a cut as well?
We talk a lot about 21st century learners and curriculum designed for the digital learner and yet there is much in schools that looks the same as it did in the early 20th century. Behavior modification practices are especially noticeable. Should we consider how much more work we expect students to do, or how much more time is given to testing and test prep? Should we consider student's lives outside of school, the increase of planned activities such as sports, drama, dance, etc.? Perhaps it's worth considering the increased time spent on laptops, video games, cell phones or watches. Is it possible that with all these changes to student's lives, that the same old ideas about how to alter behavior, especially when there are legitimate questions as to whether those ideas work in the long run.
Is it possible that we, in schools today, are in such a headlong rush to do more faster, test more, finish more and so on that we grasp at what appears to be the easiest answer for a child who can't or won't sit still, finish math, stop screaming, play nice or have a positive attitude?
When I observe teachers and administrators still waiting for students to line up quietly before going outside for a brief recess repeating the same "We'll wait here until you're all quiet, you're wasting your recess" lines in May, after having spent the entire school year on the same routine, I have to ask if the methods we're using to alter behavior work. Of course it's also fair to ask if these expected behaviors really line up with our overall goals for students.

Play Day

Schools across the country are participating in the Global School Play Day . It seems that educators, child psychologists, doctors etc. have noticed that kids need unstructured play time, a lot of it in fact, much more than they get in their normal day to day experiences. Like most of life, the reasons for this shortfall are many and often complex. The available menu of enrichment activities has mushroomed over the years and who doesn't want to take part in gymnastics, soccer, orchestra, drama, sculpture classes, rock climbing and dance in between visits to the local museum or national park? The average curriculum of your local elementary school has changed over time as well. Some of you may remember taking a nap in kindergarten. Those days are long gone as students practice for the tests which take up an ever increasing amount of the day.
Yes, children need unstructured play, a lot of it, far more than the average child experiences. Yes, it's great that schools are showing some awareness of this fact and wouldn't it be nice if it happened more than once a year?
Here's a modest proposal - why not devote most of one day a week to inquiry and play at school? Who knows what might happen.

A Catalog of Brilliant Ideas That You Can't Use Anytime Soon.

I've had a few careers in my time. Working in radio, playing music full time and teaching. All of these are centered around communication in one way or another. Playing music often has, at it's core, the desire to reach an audience whether live people in front of you or listeners around the world who are streaming a recording you made. As a teacher, I often see myself as a song and dance man. One area where my various careers diverges is how feedback is processed and how new ideas are implemented. Perhaps it's because broadcasting and music are both very much market driven fields that response and adapting to new trends or information tends to happen quickly. Teaching, on the other hand seems to exist in a strange Twilight Zone of alternate reality when it comes to change and growth. I've often said that my grandmother, who taught elementary school in the 1940s-50s could be dropped into most any modern classroom (with a little help from a time machine) and apart from the computer on the teacher's desk, be able to jump right into most any lesson. Show her a schedule and she'd be lining up kids for lunch, or music, practicing writing or multi-digit multiplication with ease. How much has the world changed in the last century? How much more do we know about how humans learn? How little difference is there in the basic structure of schools?

My experience over the last few years in education has been that most all research into effective and powerful learning shows that the best ways to guide student learners are completely at odds with the standard school structure.  Dan Heath writes about the "power of moments" , Alison Zmuda talks about student engagement and a host of studies show that student centered learning, or learning experiences that embrace the messy qualities of learning are the most long lasting. Not surprisingly these kinds of learning experiences rarely fit into the daily schedule of most schools. I conducted research focused on reading instruction several years ago and the basic finding was that to have a high quality experience, to really push students in their thinking skills, we needed to throw out the current literacy program (Rigby) and make the reading time open ended, it might take 45 minutes, it might take an hour and a half. Everyone reading the report loved the insights the students showed in terms of the books they were reading, everyone loved the depth of the conversations and the connections made, everyone agreed that we'd never be able to do this in our schools.

I wonder. Do other professions have this interesting disconnect? Does the research that demonstrates how best to move forward, how best to achieve the stated goals of the profession receive glowing praise and then is ignored?

Data is the Holy Grail of contemporary education. "Drilling down in the data" is a favorite activity as long as the conclusions or discoveries can be used within the constraints of the school system.

What would happen if we really investigated and then acted on the discoveries? What would happen if we didn't already have an answer in mind, but were open to possibilities? 

Imagine that.

Change Gonna Come, Will Change Ever Come?

The latest school shooting, the 18th of this year (which is not quite two months old yet) appeared below the fold on the front page of my local paper this morning. Normal size headline font and apparently less important than the zoning issues and speaker at the local university, stories that earned more space, larger font and better placement. On the radio this morning I listened to a congressman pour all the enthusiasm he could muster into plans to build more barriers around schools, more doors, more locks, cameras, airport style screening devices. "We've got to get serious about this!" he exclaimed.
How is it that we allow people like that to speak in public without shame?
Are we sacrificing reason, intelligence, logic, compassion, humanity at the alter of free speech?
When I was young, the notion that you could stop a person from smoking in public was unthinkable and yet today imagine the reaction if someone walked into any public building smoking a cigar. What happened? How did we, as a society, go from not only accepting smoking,  but even glamorizing it to marginalizing the practice in a matter of thirty years or so?
Just as the facts concerning the health effects of smoking are known, the ways to limit gun violence are there for all the world to see. Indeed, all the developed world does see them, with the exception of the United States of America.
How do we get to that place where no one would be caught uttering a phrase like "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" or "Guns don't kill people..."?
Is it rude to not allow smoking in restaurants or public spaces? Would it be unfair to ridicule someone who claimed a right to smoke in public because founding documents of this country provided the right to the pursuit of happiness?
Do we need to increase the scorn and ridicule for those who twist the founding documents of this country to argue for unfettered access to deadly weapons?
Those who argue for so-called "Gun rights" have no logical standing, they have no facts, to back up their case and literally a world of evidence against them and yet every day we allow them to speak as if there is any semblance or reason or intelligence in their words.
What would society say, if as a teacher, I purposefully taught false information in school every day, two plus two equals thirty five, the world is flat, there is no such thing as gravity...? Some children might believe what was being taught, and what would be the consequences? Probably some failing grades on standardized tests.
Every day we allow the National Rife Association and fellow travelers to purposefully teach false information about guns and the reasonable controls that the rest of the world employs. Some citizens believe those lies, and what are the consequences?
The consequences appear somewhere below the fold on the local newspaper.