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!

What The Soccer Girls Taught Me

My favorite moment in the 2012 Olympics was watching the USA take on Japan in a perfect soccer rematch.  At one point, the announcers said that this match had been simmering for over 380 days.  Fans have been letting this game marinade for that long and were not disappointed.  Team USA pulled out a victory in a tense, (for me) nail-biting second half.  Watching coach Pia Sundhage celebrate when the official finally blew the whistle on the game, watching scoreless Abby Wambach race back to the defensive end, watching Carli Lloyd pull out a hat trick: these moments made this a magnificent, intense, ultimate showdown of pure athleticism.

During the medal ceremony, though, a discussion by commentators Arlo White and Brandi Chastain resonated with me.  As the Japanese team was accepting their silver medals, White and Chastain credited their approach as a pivotal point for women’s soccer.  In short, they opined that Japan’s financial dedication to their women’s soccer program created one of the most dominating, skilled teams in the world--after only a few short years.  In essence, the commentators struck upon a vital aphorism: we invest in that which we value.  Japan wanted a world class soccer program, so they spent the necessary money.  It paid off.  A FIFA championship in 2011 and a silver medal in 2012.  Not bad...not bad at all. 

I cannot help but apply that truth to the current trend in contemporary education.  If politicians and various law-makers keep pushing to cut spending on education, then what do they really value?  Can they stand upon their trite platitudes of a “quality education for all” when they limit the resources for public education?  Instead of cutting spending on public education, invest in it.  Instead of slashing the funds for struggling schools, supply the cash necessary to achieve excellence.  Saving money by cutting teachers and increasing class sizes does not create success.  Hiring quality teachers and minimizing class sizes is the key to a successful public education, but that demands financial commitment.   

The Japanese soccer program is exciting proof that financial backing can create excellence.  This gold medal match created a record in attendance, and women’s soccer is becoming more and more popular.  Like the Japanese soccer program of four years ago, public education doesn’t have to continue the downward slide.  Give public education the financial resources it needs, but be prepared for the explosion of excellence that will follow. 

A Lesson in Dichotomies

For the second year, I am participating in Michigan's Student Council and National Honor Society Student Leadership Camp. And for the second time, I am caught in a dichotomy that makes me reevaluate basic truths. One basic truth is that life is random and cruel and violent and fragile and tenuous and too often--way too often--we are at the mercy of forces that drive us to our knees under their crushing strength. A tsunami destroys a village. A hurricane destroys a New Orleans. A gunman destroys the lives of everyone sitting in a Colorado movie theater last night. That is a very real side of life, and the emotional fall-out from that killing spree has just begun. Like the Columbine boys, James Holmes stole one more layer of innocence, of assumed safety, of hope. But as I sit here in a dorm room at Albion College, thinking about the hundreds of high school students about to descend upon us in all their hormonal glory, I cannot help but consider this other basic truth: people can be glorious. James Holmes was 24, and immediately after I read about his savage act, I watched six 24-year-olds intentionally, willingly, eagerly decide to sacrifice seven days of their summer to help grow student leaders. Where one decides to destroy, six decide to give. Where one acted for hate, six are acting for hope. It is this dichotomy, this extreme juxtaposition of evil and good that distills for me an even more basic truth: we have choices. Each day we choose to help or hurt, create or destroy, heal or harm. For one week, I am immersing myself in the positive. I am going to metaphorically swim in cheesey optimism and I am not going to apologize. I will sing, chant, question, and even cry this week. But in contrast to James Holmes, the 70+ adults and college students with me are going to create something positive. We're going to inspire the latent passion in Michigan's teen leaders, because “The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown" (Margaret Mead).

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

This week marks 2012’s Teacher Appreciation Week.  It made me think about appreciation and what it is I think teachers really need.  In my opinion, what we need, what is truly missing from Rick Snyder's approach to public education, is respect.  Michigan's politicians pay lip service to respecting the education process, to respecting what teachers do everyday, to respecting the necessary institution that allows all children the opportunity to improve their lives through the life of their minds.  We need less theoretical respect and more practical respect from the folks in Lansing.

Here is the big disclaimer:  I know way too often, we teachers bring this disrespect upon ourselves.  NPR interviewed Davis Guggenheim, the director for Waiting for Superman, and he said something I often ponder.  He said that his most sincere intention was to actually honor teachers rather than attack them.  He said, and I am paraphrasing, he was trying to jump start a diseased system and show how important education is in the lives of the average American.  The quote that hit me revolved around the trust parents instill in teachers everyday.  Loosely, he said that everyday, teachers need to ask themselves what sort of teacher they will be that day.  When my students walk into my classroom, who will they see?  What teacher will greet them?  That question directs who I am in my classroom. By the laws of averages, it stands to reason that not every teacher does, but I think Guggenheim and way too many politicians have limited the sample and focused exclusively on the Bad Teacher circa Cameron Diaz, 2011.

Guggenheim is correct on one level, but completely wrong on another.  He painted with a broad stroke.  In my school, I believe that 99% of my peers are 100% committed to their job.  When we gather on our off-time, we always still discuss the job, and as we face the looming change our current government is instituting, we are actually discussing how to do our jobs differently. 

Differently.  Not better.  I think what we do is very, very good.  We currently challenge our students to think and act and grow and become academic, life-long learners.  However, we need to start doing what we do so well in a different way.  We need to plug in and start making the technology our kids depend upon work for us instead of working against us.  We need to engage the student on their level and stop competing with all the Angry Birds and Words with Friends that distract the contemporary learner, both kids and adults.  Changing for the learner isn’t a new concept.  Sesame Street knew that in the 1970‘s, and if I had time, I publish a thesis tracking how teachers from antiquity to today have incorporated the students’ interests to enhance learning.  This new tech revolution isn’t really new.  It is the pressure and timeline haunting contemporary teachers that changes how today’s game is played. 

Here is where the idea of practical respect comes in.  We need the respect afforded any professional who is seeking to improve how they do what they do to benefit not only a few people, but the whole of society.  Here is where I feel completely disrespected.  I am many things, but I am not stupid: impossible timelines, impossible classroom numbers, impossible percentile jumps our students are supposed to make on standardized tests designed to have a specific percentile fail.  I am not stupid and I know we are being set up to fail.  In that failure, our students will suffer, our cities will suffer, our state will suffer, and our country will suffer.  

By adding respect to appreciation, those who pass laws, which will ultimately help us change-and-save or fail-and-lose, will give us the necessary leeway that ensures success rather than failure.  Respect infuses trust into the process of change. Respect would negate the established antagonistic relationship that expects failure rather than success.  I want appreciation, but I would much prefer respect. 

Expectations

Yesterday, I assigned a difficult poetry explication to my AP Lit students.  It is May, and they have three classes until the AP test (block scheduling makes counting off days much more optimistic).  After that, they will be working on a cutting edge iPad pilot project.  In short, they all see the finish line and are becoming restless with any and all work.  A bright young lady was struggling to understand both her poem and the assignment, and as she spoke with me, I asked her some clarifying questions.  As she began to understand what she needed to do, she starting making some very astute, academic observations about her poem.  I am a rather excitable lady, and because her intellectual prowess impressed me, I shrieked  calmly said "Yes!  That's it!  See...you can do this assignment."  She stepped back, shaking her head furiously.  "No! No!  Don't do that," she said.  "Don't have high expectations for me.  I don't like that."

We both laughed, she went back to work, and I turned to help another student.  I retold that story to my best friend, and we had another good laugh.  But I totally understood what this student was saying.  She wanted my expectations lowered so she would be assured of a good grade or, at the very least, an easy last few classes.  She wanted my expectations lowered because mediocrity is easier than excellence.  She wanted my expectations lowered because if my standards are low, failure isn't possible.

I teach in a public high school, and contrary to what way too many politicians, pundits, and lobbyists might be saying, teachers' expectations are NOT too low.  What we have, though, is a shifting cultural norm.  Paper and pencil has been replaced by tablet and laptop.  The idea of "reading, writing, 'rithmetic," of specific norms by which we quantify and qualify our successes needs to remain, but the dissemination of information needs to change.  Adding technology without shifting our pedagogical approach is ridiculous.  We cannot just hand students tablets or laptops or the gadget of the week and expect new outcomes.

As a teacher, I must shift my expectations.  I have expected myself to be the proverbial "sage on the stage."  I need to expect my students to shoulder a vast majority of the learning while I shoulder the responsibility of facilitator.  It is going to be a drastic change for me: in 13 years, I have developed some good, entertaining, captivating lectures.  I will miss having 35 eager diligent faces looking at me, responding to my jokes, writing down my words.  Letting go of the control of my classroom worries me, and I know I will spend hours I don't have building lessons based upon the Universal Design for Learning.  But I have to expect this because this is an inevitable change.

Like my students, it would be easier for me to beg for lowered expectations.  I am already tired thinking of the work that lies in wait for me and my school district.  Still, like my student, if the expectations were lowered, I would be disappointed.  Like her, I am kinda proud that somebody expects excellence from me.  It makes this job hard, and like Tom Hanks so astutely asserted in A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great."

Rachel's Challenge

1700 students, aged 14-18, were held captive today by Rachel Scott, the first girl killed at Columbine 13 years ago, which, incidentally, was my first year teaching.  I remember that day, the tension of my first year teaching--a tension so deep it dropped me from a size 10 to a size 2--reflected in the terror of those images flashed time and again on the television.  I remember questioning what in the hell I had decided to get into when kids were substituting their books for automatic weapons.  I didn't know how to approach the reality of public education when kids didn't willing stand on their desks for captains who inspired them.  Dead Poets Society came out my senior year in high school, and I would have stood on my desk for any of my teachers: they were my heroes and role models.   I became a teacher to inspire others as they had inspired me.  Columbine was the tectonic plate that irrevocably shifted my reality.

As I think back to my first year teaching, I realize that the seeds I am reaping now were planted by the honors seniors I inherited from a veteran teacher.  Those students, the few who kept me in teaching, taught me about joy in the classroom.  They showed me the gift a teacher is given when his or her students meet them halfway.  They taught me that when a teacher allows her passion to show, her students will forgive a multitude of mistakes only a first year teacher can make because they believe in her potential.

Rachel's Challenge encourages a chain reactions of kindness.  Oddly enough, Columbine helped inspire my passion and helped keep me in the classroom.  Today, I was once again reminded that sometimes, sometimes, the best of humanity walks the hallways of our high schools.