Universal Truths?

I blame the primordial soup theory for one of my more bizarre quirks--a deep affinity for banjo and fiddle music. I live in the Detroit area and have lived in the industrial North my whole live save for a brief hiatus when I claimed Alabama as my sweet home.  And yet, the soup theory gives me my excuse: while my mother was raised by Canadians in Grosse Pointe, my father grew up in a tobacco hamlet in south central Kentucky.  The joy I feel when I hear anyone picking on the banjo must lie within the primordial soup of my paternal genetic make-up.  Right? Right.

This “ooze theory” extends past my own eccentricities (which, for the record, I can completely explain away every time). I was driving to school on Jefferson in Grosse Pointe, Michigan last Friday.  The sun was rising over Lake St. Clair, and the sky held that particular fall beauty that escapes words. I was digging it.  I thought of the things that stir me at my soul’s level, and those things that link me to other people. Music, natural beauty, good food--these things are unexplainable and universal.  And then I had another one of my random thoughts.  I thought about a teacher at my school who has taught for the past 38 years.  She was speaking about the shifts in education, and it all converged for me.

The primordial soup theory isn’t really a mystery.  In my world, it is a key idea that exists in basic human relationships. A teacher and a student is a classic archetype, but the key that is fading is the relational aspect of mentorship. James Hillman extols the importance of a mentor in his Jungian inspired tome, The Soul’s Code.  Hillman believes that most people have a major mentor relationship at least once in their lives.  For most American school children, that mentor ends up being a teacher. 

What happens to the mentor relationship when a computer replaces a person as a teacher?  This is not a snarky anti-technology rant.  I am pro-technology.  It is here, it is powerful, and it can be an amazing tool.  I do, however, brood over the role relationships will assume when a digital display seperates students and teachers.  Humans are pack animals.  John Donne put that idea a bit more poetically when he wrote that “No man is an island/Entire of itself/..Any man’s death diminishes me/Because I am involved in mankind.” Literature (and yes, literature DOES matter) extols the need humans have for other humans.  Robert Penn Warren’s spider web theory in All the King’s Men, Hamlet’s sub-theme of friendship, John Knowles heartbreaking betrayal in A Separate Peace: these novels reflect an inherent human need for contact, authentic human contact.

So as my state moves to digital classrooms, I hope Michigan’s leaders will pull out their child’s reading list, read the novels their children are reading, and think about their favorite teacher.  I am willing to bet that teacher was important NOT because of the lessons they taught.  A teacher’s legacy is inspiration, and inspiration comes from forging relationships.  So teach on, and keep building those old-school relationships that technology has yet to replicate.

The Magic of Middle School? WHAT?

This new school year is, in many ways, a truly new experience for me.  Instead of spending September 3rd introducing my syllabi, I spent this year’s first day scurrying around a middle school showing 7th graders how to use a rotating lock.  From a ten page AP Lit syllabus to “Now watch me.  It goes right-left-right,” the incongruity of middle school has impressed itself upon me. 

Today, though, I felt the magic of middle school.  Yep.  I really do mean to write “magic.”  Those painfully awkward years that everyone blocks out or later regrets are magical.  The learning that occurs during this age is bested only by the osmosis-like intellectual growth of infants and toddlers.  The hallways of Richards Middle School were practically electric today.  There was a visceral academic hum in the seventh grade hallway, and as I walked to my office, I realized again how amazing schools can be.

I know that opinion might not be popular these days as the entire educational system seems to be under attack.  That saddens me.  I saw kids today eagerly engaged in literary Socratic circles, science experiments, social study scavenger hunts, and a myriad of other academic endeavors.  This cross sample of students was completely heterogeneous; we have every demographic covered at Richards--from socio-economics to race, all of our students come from diverse backgrounds.  That antiquated idea of the American melting pot was alive and well and successfully bringing students together who two weeks ago didn’t know each other.  This is part of the magic of middle school.

Middle school is the transition time, the liaison to high school and further educational endeavors.  The first seven years of school are self-contained.  The first seven years put students into little pods that move together under the direction of one teacher.  Middle school, though, breaks those pods apart and brings six different elementary schools of 60-90 sixth graders together for the first time into a graduating class identified not by an elementary school but by a graduating year.  These students who competed against each other in 6th grade field day become a unified force of 400+ students who in six years will be the graduating class of 2019.  

Public education demands that our students learn more than just academic facts.  Our students learn how to be responsible, respectful citizens of an increasingly diverse world.  That was the hum today.  I was witnessing strangers and rivals become friends, and that transition was possible because they were sharing a mutual experience: learning. 

Education can transform life like very few other experiences can.  The students I saw today were maturing not just academically; they were growing into adulthood as they risked learning about others.  A classroom is so much more than four walls with motivational  posters.  It is a doorway to the experiences that shape who we are and who we will become. 

A Quiet Reflection

My classroom career is framed by violence.  It began with Columbine; it ends, for now, with Connecticut.  

In the fourteen years I’ve been teaching, violence has marked my watershed moments--I was tucked safely away in my classroom (arguably the most surreal space outside of a college campus) while I watched Columbine, 9/11, and the Connecticut massacre.  In January I am stepping away from that safe-zone because it is becoming less safe.  Please don’t misconstrue that statement: I still feel safe, and I hope I still make my students feel safe.  It is the outside forces--and unfortunately, those forces seem to throb to a political pulse--bullying their way into the public school classroom, causing destruction and mayhem, that threaten the safety of the children who occupy that space.  

I haven’t even figured out how I feel about Friday’s events.  I am sickened on one level, but I confess that I am also numb to the deaths of those little bitties.  I am repulsed, but I am not shocked.  Is that wrong? I think yes. What does it mean that I have no surprise, just deep sadness, for the meaningless violence that invaded a school occupied by 5 years olds and their 10 year old schoolmates?  I have come to expect that this sort of tragedy will occur at least once every year or two.  What does that say about me?  About our culture? About this country that was built so everyone could pursue inalienable rights that, not so flippantly, begin with life.

This bookend of violence serves to reinforce my decision to go across a field to my district’s middle school.  I believe in education, not just teaching.  As our culture continues to unhinge from civility and kindness, voices of compassion and reason must speak louder.  Intervention must happen now, more than ever before.  Political bias is strangling the opportunities of the children born into the middle or lower socio-economic realms.  Their education lies exposed to the perils of lame-duck legislation that will deny them their rights.  Budget cuts are forcing them into overcrowded classrooms where marginalization happens quicker and conformity is the only key to success.  But what happens to the child that embodies Thoreau and marches to his own drummer?  He, too, must learn to adjust, but without intervention, his chances for success diminish.  

What happens when violence cuts down innocence?  We turn inward, trying to find answers that cannot assuage senseless loss.  There is only one answer for me: we must turn back to education.  We must ensure that all people--rich or poor, black or white, rural or urban--receive an education that heightens individual personhood.  Neslon Mandela’s idea that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” has never been more powerful, more urgent, more necessary.  The world changed for the worse yesterday, and the ripple effects will play out in the weeks to come.  

Gandalf’s reminder to Bilbo Baggins echoes in my head--I am a very little lady in a big, big world.  I am not a politician demanding firearm action, nor am I a prophet saying that when we took God out of schools we opened ourselves to violence.  Instead, I am one teacher dedicating herself to making public education relevant and sharing the most powerful weapon with future generations in an attempt to curtail other, more base weapons from repeating the tragedy of Connecticut. 

“I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local ring and the terror of being left outside.” --C.S. Lewis

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the Homecoming pep assembly at my high school and then, the next day, attend University of Michigan’s homecoming.  Both events contained the same elements: teens dancing and screaming to deafening music played in the hopes of spurring the home football team on to a victory.  They were both loud and smelly, intense and bizarre.  I went into one of my weird dualistic observation modes and realized as I watched both events--our pep assembly and the UM football game--that these young adults were willing to sacrifice pretty much anything in order to fit into the “local ring” they perceived.  Friday night was freezing, but the high school boys were still shirtless with their chests painted to represent their class.  At the UM game on Saturday, the cold drizzle soaked every student who stayed despite the whupping the Wolverines were giving the Fighting Illini.  Nothing could separate these fans from the love they were giving their respective schools. 

Watching these frenzied displays of school spirit, I was struck again by the power of the group.  All the people at both events were gathered because they all felt a draw, a kinship to the greater goal of the group.  In these two particular cases, the goal was to win a football game and celebrate a specific school.  But the power of the group is not simply one of teams or schools or even a common goal.  The power of the local ring, as C.S. Lewis calls it,  rests in humanity’s basic need to belong.  We need a place where we can find community and solidarity.  We long for others who share our ideals, our jokes, our desires, our goals. To be in not out, to be with not solo, to be joined not isolated is one of our most basic needs.  People need people.  It really is that simple.

So once again I turn to school.  We are becoming more isolated as we inundate ourselves with technology.  Yes, social networks allow people to communicate with everyone all over the world, but I question the authenticity of that communication.  With Facebook or Twitter or Posterous or Google+ or any other social medium, we are allowed to avoid much of the mess of interpersonal communication.  When we communicate via the computer, we communicate in a sterile environment.  A computer screen buffers our real selves from the selves we present to the world.  This constructed reality presents some major problems for education.  

Our students flourish when they create authentic, organic relationships with others.  Programs like Link Crew prove that.  Unfortunately, there is no app for chatting over coffee.   And while I do admire the commercial that shows a young tuba player performing his recital to his father’s face held up on an iPad, I question where all of this is taking us.  Where is the app that allows kids to sit down, face-to-face--with all the sensory overload of a deep conversation--and experience interpersonal exchange?  I am not pushing against change; I am questioning the logistics of the change.  Humanity has needed community since antiquity--we are programed for it.  As we reprogram how we teach, we need to keep the interpersonal at the forefront.  

Take Me Back to the Start

I watch Glee.  Every week.  I DVR it, I watch it, I re-watch it, I download the music.  I admit it: I might be a Gleek.  BUT!  In defense of a teen show that is often badly written with story plots that are convoluted at best and intellectually bizarre at worst with characters who are way too often caricatures and almost dangerous, simplistic stereotypes sometimes silly, I find myself challenged by the better episodes.  

Last week’s episode, “The Break Up,” hit upon a raw nerve that the current antagonistic political culture has exposed.  Throughout the episode, the characters are all dealing with profound change--stay together or break up, forgive or walk away, offer total support or lose love.  I thought about the dichotomy these oversimplified story-plots offered and then I thought about what I always think about: my job.  

I’ve been in a committed, faithful relationship with my job for the past thirteen years. Yes, I strayed once for one year when I wanted to see if teaching really was what I wanted, but the proverbial siren song of education called me back to Fraser High School.  We’ve been a good combination, and I feel as if we’ve made each other grow.  Teaching has challenged me, has made me laugh, has taken me on dates that last all night and sometimes even extend into the wee hours of the morning.  We fight like all couples, but teaching is patient and the papers it gives me never go away.  Teaching has given me some amazing presents on our anniversaries:  passion, purpose, the ability to multi-task, a freakish sense of hearing for the F-Bomb.  Teaching has sharpened me and I like who I am when I am with it.  

But somewhere along the line, teaching changed on me.  I don’t completely recognize it anymore.  I know it isn’t teaching’s fault; outside pressures, financial stress, an inability to communicate clearly have all contributed to my frustration with my job.  Teaching keeps asking more of me, but I am givin‘ ‘er all I got, Cap’in.  So teaching and I are in a rocky spot in our relationship.  Which brings me back to Glee.

Each couple hit the dip this week. Each couple had to make a decision to fight or to quit.  The kids all broke up; the adults haven’t...yet.  I am in the dip with teaching and I do not want to quit.  But I don’t know how to keep going forward sometimes.  Between the pressure from politicians, parents, technology, the need to evolve, I find myself looking at teaching with jaded eyes and I sometimes take it for granted.  I had a good, albeit busy, week last week, but when I sit here on Saturday almost dreading next week, I need to back up and consider what is going on in this vital relationship in my life.  

My other relationships--the ones that are so much more important than my job, the ones that fill me completely--have taught me that this is a storm I must weather.  Deep down, I kinda love this gig.  I can’t quit you, teaching, but you are really giving me a run for my money this year. 

Keep the Wit, Give Me Generosity

My Great-Auntie Miriam died in July at the age of 99, and as I read over her will,  I realize again what an exceptional women she was.  

I remember learning the world “steward” as a kid at church.  Literally, a steward is one who manages something: an estate, an airplane, a train.  In the Evangelical world, being a good steward means giving generously, living humbly, loving strong; it means managing well all the blessing God has generously given.  My Auntie Miriam was the ideal steward of time, money, and--most importantly--people. 

I remember hearing a story about how she helped my mom avoid a spanking because of a mis-cut sandwich.  Family legend has it that young Rita wasn’t willing to eat a sandwich cut along the boring horizontal status quo of sandwich cutting.  Instead, ever the rebel, young Rita wanted her sandwich cut diagonally.  My grandparents were Canadian Mennonites and were not often given to such frivolous, childish antics.  As such, young Rita found herself in a world of trouble over her refusal to consume said sandwich and her subsequent crying jag.  Ever the steward of people’s feelings (and, in this case, fannies) Auntie Miriam stepped in and cut the sandwich.  And my did she cut that sandwich.  She cut it in about 16 different pieces of random size and shape.  I'd like to think there were swirls and bunnies, but that might be too much to ask. The story ends with young Rita eating the sandwich, bumm intact and peace restored.

Above all other stories, that story is my Auntie Miriam.  She was patient and kind, gentle and wise, calm and deliberate.  She took a daily “constitutional” walk around her town of Kitchener, Ontario.  She fed the finches every single day.  She read voraciously, went to church every Sunday, and fought for what she believed in.  

She is as generous in death as she was in life.  I am awed by the amount of money she left to 25 different charities.  Even now she is a steward to others.  As I think about what it would be like to be 99, I can only hope that I leave a legacy as striking as her’s.  She taught me more about being a teacher than any class or lecture or TED talk or book or film.  She taught me to cut the metaphorical sandwich in new ways; to walk around my school in order to become invested in it; to care for the people who can’t necessarily care for themselves; to fight with dignity and passion for the causes in which I believe; to give all that I have because at the end of the day, I certainly can’t take it with me.  I keep one of her old sweaters in my classroom to remind me of who she was and how she dealt first in kindness and then anger.   

My Auntie Miriam was one heck of a lady, and she was the ideal steward.  

Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

As the 2012 school year ended, I realized a mantra had gradually developed that embodied the entire nine months: “forget theory, give me practical application.”  This year, my mantra has already manifested itself: “just because I can doesn’t mean I should.”  

I need to give credit where credit is due.  Kevin Randall, science teacher extraordinaire, has lived this idea since he was in high school.  He has developed an entire livable philosophy (see my 2012 mantra) that sums up my 2013 motto.  Kevin helped to create the Better Everyday movement, a theory that asserts we each have the choice to improve our lives if we state and keep specific goals that are paired with specific action plans.  My BE goal this year revolves around organization, an elusive beast that is a continual figment of my professional imagination.  I am not totally unorganized--my clothes are color coded and hanging neatly in closet; my shoes are arraigned by type and brand; my books are alphabetized and very, very neatly arraigned in a rather impressive Dewey fashion.  Classroom organization eludes me.  I cannot seem to master the odds and ends of a high school teacher.  I am late taking attendance, horrible at creating a streamlined paper system, and creative in my ability to “organize” manila file folders into a giant pile of chaos.  

So let’s be honest.  I could be organized if I truly valued organization.  I read once that what we care about dominates our time.  I spend time doing many other things other than organizing my room and desk.  I will spend three hours working with a student on a paper but not take the 15 minutes necessary to write the next day’s assignments on the board.  If I can focus on something other than paperwork, I do.  But that isn’t the best course of action for me.  I am stressed and worried too often, and my anxiety is often way too high.  Papers pile up in my study at home and my desk at school.  This is no longer an acceptable course of action for me.  Because of Kevin and MASC/MAHS Student Leadership Camp Level II, I have accepted the challenge to be Better Everyday  and don the mantle of organization.   

This mantra of mine, this idea that ability does not grant inherent permission, is going to be key to my continued development as a teacher.  I can spend an entire Saturday watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey (I mean c’mon...who couldn’t???) but should  I?  I will be asking myself “can vs. should” all year.  I am going to be officially starting school tomorrow, and I am excited to see the growth my motto will bring. Can vs. Should--let the games begin!