I have been on Twitter for awhile now.  I've wanted to write a blog post about it, but my thoughts range so much that I thought I would share some random musings:

1. There is no sense of permanence or posterity.  There is also little sense of who has read my tweets.  This can make it feel like I am a crazy man wandering a city street.
2. It's much less trite than I thought.  Often people share good information and offer profound insights.  I'm much less anti-sound-byte than I used to be.
3. At times it can feel like chaos in a crowded room (it's why I probably won't be back to #edchat) and other times it can feel like a tiny circle having a conversation.  This erasure of space, this fine line between synchronous and asynchronous communication can feel dizzying to me.
4. I can never predict what will go viral.  I know that short, provocative statements sometimes become popular (often unintentionally).  For example, I had tons of retweets with the question, "Why are we bailing out failing schools and propping up failing banks?"  It was a line from a previous blog post, but I ended up having around seventy people retweet it. 
5. Unlike blogs, Twitter feels much more collective in nature.  There is more geographical heterogeneity, but it is much more homogeneous ideologically.  Nearly everyone seems incredibly pro-technology, for example. 

The crowd is standing room only as I begin.  I'm Icarus soaring up toward the sun.  I'm powerful.  I'm respected.  No spit wads or hunks of paper.  No airplanes.  Just me, backed up with my PowerSlides set up with the Edison Projector.

I offer a give and take, asking critical thinking questions.  I see a few college students taking studious notes.  Who knows? They could be using their tablets for the pen pal networks, but I assume these are learning devices and perceive the nodding of the heads to be agreement rather than falling asleep.  

I offer a few bits of humor.  It's an easy crowd.  People expect safe, campy, cornball humor and so my sardonic, cynical musings seem, if nothing else, like a novelty.  The laugher jars me, because I was always the serious kid who sat silently in class.  I was always a little too grown up for my age and now I'm comfortable in my own age.  

I explain the relationship between social context (the dawn of a Progressive era, urbanization, the rise of industrialization), current educational theory (and its practice) and technology.  I mention, as a historical example, the Guttenberg Press meeting the rise of nationalism and the early educational theorist Erasmus.  I lock my hands together to show the Triple Convergence and how it is a catalyst for change.  

After talking about a New Pedagogy (which I cleverly refer to as Learning 4.0 just to prove that it is two steps ahead of being 2.0 and all the while feeling, in my gut that I'm still teaching at the Beta level), I offer the question, "as we move forward, what will we do to retain the voice from the past? How will we avoid the pitfalls of perennialism?" 

I explain my seven steps and show examples of student work.  

*     *     *

Paul the Pre-industrial Poet attends for moral support. I assume that supporting one's morals means boosting one's ego.  Wrong.  Paul pulls me aside and asks, "Do you really want to know what I thought?"

"Yup.  Let me know."  

"The slides were great.  The points were well spoken.  You wowed the crowd with a folksy style meeting just the right high vocabulary to prove your points.  The information was solid, too.  I think it got people thinking. But there was one thing missing."  

"What's that?" 

"Humility." 

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."  

"Look, seven steps.  These folks have had seven steps and four keys all day long.  Multiply seven and four and you have a perfect number and that's the problem.  It's all perfect.  But people are tired, real tired, and all the keys and steps are making them feel like janitors in a stadium and they're jumping on all these steps trying to hold onto the heavy key chain and watching the players strut around on the field. What are they supposed to do with all this?"

"So, what would you have done differently?" 

"Okay, you know how you say pencils are not the magic bullet? You just presented them as the magic bullet.  You showed the best student examples and told the most enlightening stories.  You advertised yourself and although the crowd felt entertained, where do they go from there? Fantasy land?  Tell some stories of failure.  Tell a story of a snapped pencil or a paper airplane.  Show a time when a student failed to get it and ask the crowd for advice. They might not be pencil geeks, but they are experts in some area." 

  

Paul is right.  So if I'm Icarus, I'm crashing toward the ground.  I'll be greeted with adoration from those who attended the workshop.  We might talk theoretical nonsense and I might move closer to the sun.  Or maybe I can stop pretending that I'm cutting edge and admit that the edge has cut me up pretty badly in the process.

Maybe I'll just be what I am - a guy who is lost in a quickly changing industrial world, a little scared and lonely and confused by the fact that I cannot see the stars a little too squeezed in by the sardine can compression of it all.  Maybe I'll tell a few stories of failure and engage in a conversation about being relevant without selling out.

Q: What is the book about?

A: The book is called Teaching Unmasked. It's about the paradox of humility, the notion that often less is more.  I tackle various aspects of teaching mostly through metaphor and story-telling and sprinkled with a bit of humor. 

Q: Why are you writing it?

A: I have a few reasons.  First, Tom Roth gave me the suggestion that I should do a book based upon this blog.  So awhile back, I began to scour the blog for anything good.  It was harder than it seemed.  Blog posts seemed dated and whiny.  But I found a few.  Then I wrote a blog post called "The Impact Paradox," and I realized later that it's more of a paradox of humility.  In some respects, that has been my journey - learning to be humble in order to make a difference.  I know this sounds arrogant, but I think it's something I haven't read a whole lot in teacher books.  It's sort of the opposite of the five step formula concept.

Q: How will you publish it?

A: I am aiming at the five dollar price range, self-published.  I will also have it available on Kindle (hopefully for free) and as a free pdf and as a recorded audio book. One thing that I'll be adding is a blog with the entire book available in an interactive framework.  Each post will have a chapter as well as the audio embedded into the chapter.

Q: What challenges have you run into?

A: It's been difficult to keep a unity of style when the source material is my own blog.  It's also been hard to figure out how to organize it and get that sense of flow going.  With a blog post, I can set the tone and the context, but in a book, there is an ongoing narrative within. Finally, it has made me a little insecure about whether or not it is interesting to the reader.  Unlike a blog, I am unable to get instant feedback with it. I am a little scared that it will be too much like a badly cut up collage, but I'm hopeful it will blend in together.

Q: When will it be available?

A: I am aiming for March 27th.  It's an arbitrary day, but it marks my three year anniversary of blogging. I'll have an eBook and audio book at that point.  I'm just hoping it will be ready for Amazon.

Note: this is a small section of one of the chapters that I'm writing for Teaching Unmasked. Parts of the book are written from scratch and other parts use my blog as source material. And now I'm using a part from the book to post to the blog - so I guess it goes full circle.

There is a certain type of English teacher who loves the subject, not because of the power of the written word, but because words can feel like a candy store or a trendy coffee shop where you are part of the in-crowd if you never make the mistake of using your instead of you're.

There is a certain type of math teacher who loves the subject, not because of the power and practicality of numbers, but because it feels fun to live life by an algorithm and have a binary set of yes or no answers dividing through the messy mystery of life.

There is a certain type of science teacher who loves science, not out of the acquitance with life and death, but because it is fun to feel like you're in the smart people camp and talk research and data and laugh at those who believe in the lyrical poetry of Genesis.

There is a certain type of history teacher who loves the subject, not because of the power of story and the danger of ever-shifting public memory, but because it's geeky-cool to dress in Civil War regalia and imagine a nostalgic glory day that never existed and it's easy to use dead men as talking points on a crusade of indoctrination.

There is a certain type of computer teacher who loves the subject, not because of the deeply human need to create tools or the muddled benefits each tool offers, but because a shiny new gadget can make one feel important or relevant or somehow more knowledgeable within a tiny circle of like-minded technocrats.

It's novelty, affinity, perhaps even comfort, but it isn't love.

At some point, if we're lucky, this changes. The English teacher is in a conversation and finally realizes that words shape reality.  The math teacher sees the loaded, often political reality of numbers and data and now math becomes almost terrifying.  The history teacher sees an event effect the "people from below" and grasps intuitively, the sense of connection with the larger human story.  The science teacher smells death for the first time - real death - and sees the life cycle, not as a diagram, but as a vapor. And the computer teacher realizes that, while technology can split an atom to create power, it can also split a person into fragments of humanity in a pseudo existence.

It is in these moments that the teacher realizes that the subject is not bound to a textbook or a set of standards or a curriculum map.  It is a mystery, not in the New Age, light some incense and play some Enya type of mystery, but in the jagged, uncomfortable, adjust your tie since it makes you sweat and tremble kind of mystery.

As we analyze the functions of money, a student raises his hand and wonders why we left off two categories. "What about bribes? It's not the same as spend, save, invest, give away, lend or borrow."

Another student argues that it fits better within the category of "spend." She points out that whether one spends money on influence or a product, it is still spending.

The first student then asks, "Well, what about stealing? Shouldn't that be a category?"

Another student asks, "What's the difference between stealing and investing." He's not joking. He asks about Bernie Madoff and I explain that most investors don't steal and yet he won't drop it.

"Why do rich people who steal millions go to fancy prisons while my brother goes to a ghetto prison for stealing a car?"

Another student jumps in, "Did he have a gun? That could have been armed robbery."

"Why does it matter if he had a gun?"

"Well, it would really scare someone if you had a gun."

"I'm sure people were scared when they lost their entire retirement."

It has me thinking about the ways our nation punishes poor people. If I am rich, I get golden parachutes during an economic crisis. If I'm rich and I donate, I get buildings named in my honor. If I am rich, I can steal and end up spending four years in a fancy prison. My money alone gives me the loudest voice in education reform.

The system is rigged. Seriously rigged. When Wall Street executives get fat bonus checks and seventh grade ELL students are still expected to pass a multiple choice reading exam, there is something wrong with our nation's definition of accountability. Why is it that we are closing "failing" schools and propping up failing banks?

For all the talk about low expectations among low income students, it seems to me that our nation has higher expectations for the poor than we do for the rich. I'm not against wealth.  I'm not a socialist.  It just seems wrong that those who are born into a challenging circumstance should then be required to live the rest of their lives at a higher ethical standard than those who are born into privilege.

I don't believe in committees.  Like bureaucracy, the term is too difficult to spell and too cumbersome to endure.  Committees often turn to mindless group think, chatty ego boosting and a lack of innovation out of a desire to mitigate liability.  Besides, they always hand us binders (seriously, do I need another binder?) and agendas and we sit at a table so I can't get away with drawing pictures (the way I would at an in-service).  As the pencil representative, it's my responsibility to attend.

The conversation appears innocuous and civil.  Each member of the Pencil Planning Committee (PP Committee for short) shares input on pencil integration.  Think of this as a secret password phase.  I can say anything that I have heard at a conference and people nod their head in approval.  For example, I might say, "We need to focus less on pencil skills and more on thinking with pencils."  Then, I can make a joke out of word play and say, "I didn't mean to call you morons."  People chuckle and I'm in the club.

A few other options are:

• Teachers need to learn how to use pencils.  It's not an option. 
• We need to go beyond pencils and think of what a true twentieth century pedagogy should mean
• Let's keep in mind that there needs to be a connection between theory and practice. Let's make sure the pencils don't drive the instruction. 
• We need to convince people that pencils are not scary.  Yes, they can poke an eye out, but that's why we have something called classroom management. 
• Let's get pencils into the hands of students.  Why do teachers get all the good ones?  

For my part, I use the phrase, "Kids are pencil natives.  They come to class knowing penmanship.  Do we really need a pencil class?"

All of the above comments are valuable.  Indeed, they create a shared sense of values within the group. I have used every one of them at some point.  The word "used" is key here.  On a subterranean level, each of us jockeys for power and uses language as our weaponry.  For all the smiles and nodding (I'm beginning to feel like a bobble head) we are competing for a voice in how our district will use its resources.

As the conversation moves into practical elements, we begin to lose sight on everything we just shared.  The dialog quickly shifts to better teacher pencils.  

"Let's get colored pencils for the teachers.  If they fall in love with the quality pencils they will be more comfortable and eventually move into integration."  

"Ooh, I like that.  And what about making the shift to using only iParchment."  

"Our district could pilot iTablets so that all teachers could have a portable notebook that they can touch."  

I step in at this point.   "All paper is touchable.  Yes, some of them come with carbon paper that we can trace with our fingers, but is that really crucial to better learning? Besides, we just talked about a shift away from skills and away from teacher-centered integration and now we are focussed on colored pencils?  Are these just gestures we are using or do we really believe in a twentieth century education?"  

I tell the group that we need to have pencils in the hands of students, that professional development must be horizontal and that teachers with pencil experience should create a proposal for using piloting 1:1 pencils to student ratios and then mentor the next teachers.  I rattle off ideas and offer quick comebacks to anyone who challenges me.  

Paul the Pre-industrial Poet attends the meeting and remains quiet through the entire thing until it is over. 

"Can you believe what just happened?" he asks. 

"Yeah, the teachers started out really selfish, huh?  We talk about the social and political barriers that get in the way of pencil integration, but what about the human barrier of pride?  What if the biggest issues involve things like ego and selfishness?"  

"I agree," he adds.  

"So, I was able to steer it in the right direction."  

"I agree with your thoughts on ego and selfishness.  But I'm wondering if you might be searching for specks and ignoring planks.  Your school will be piloting the new initiative and you will be the one being recognized in the process.  Your classroom will have a set of pencils next year. Is it possible that this is about you?"  

He's right.  For all my talk of collaboration and wise decision-making, I tend to define those on my terms.  Collaboration is great so long as one agrees with me.  Wisdom is necessary as long as the decisions are in my hands.  What happened there was not honest dialog, but merely deceptive power-grabbing and I was the one who bullied my way to the top.

Students in my district have a hard time passing the standardized tests.  It's no secret.  You don't have to show me another graph advertising this in an in-service meeting (if you really want to provide me a service, you might want to ditch the graphs next time).

Some say the problem revolves around the incessant drill-and-kill instruction geared to teaching to the test.  Students fail to engage in higher-order thinking and the learning is not authentic.  Others claim that the problem is students lack the practical skills like reading fluency or writing mechanics.  Both sides are right.  I have students who are missing a few key practical skills and others who have not been challenged to think deeply. If I want to address this, I need learning to be both holistic/conceptual and skills-based.

Some say it's wrong to expect students to do well on a standardized test that fails to hold them accountability, especially when the test is culturally biased and requires prior knowledge they do not have simply because they are from the working class.  Others say those are all excuses and that low standards have created unintentional academic ghettos.  Both are right. My students face immense barriers, but offering excuses won't fix that issue. Test or no test, I want them to increase in their knowledge of the world.

Some point out that that the test is irrelevant to their lives and especially irrelevant in a Digital Age.  Others point out that students will have to pass tests in the future and that the tests can give a relevant, albeit fuzzy, picture of what students know.  Both are right.  The test is irrelevant when it is the bottom line.  We spend way too much time and attention on it.  Yet, I have found that students need the skill of finding their own answer and then fitting it into something which best matches their idea (which, honestly, is something we do all the time.  "I need an expense report.  Which program would best fit the expense report?") and I've also found that sometimes the data can help me identify struggling students.

I wonder if the major culprit is not the test or the students or even the poverty.  I wonder if the major culprit is binary thinking.  Edu-pundits latch onto one major idea and then try and create a solution that fails to address the whole picture. Transnational corporations hijack the conversation so that they can make more money off of mindless test prep materials. We rush to solutions without seeing the comprehensive problems.

Imagine a person in a horrible car crash and the doctor responds, "Yes, his heart is failing and he has internal bleeding, but we really need to treat only his brain injury. Thinking is all that matters."

Case in point: students need the core curriculum of reading and writing and math.  Yet, they can't unlock a passage without prior knowledge and those are found in social studies and science and art and PE.  Students need fluency in reading and yet one of the best ways to become fluent is through drama.  One of the best ways to improve in math is being involved in music.

Both/and thinking feels very wishy-washy and dangerous.  It begins to feel like a cop-out. And perhaps I am copping out on this one.  However, my experience as a teacher suggests that everyone is right regarding why students are unable to pass the test.

I overheard a conversation a few days back (yes, I eavesdrop on my students) about the pen pal networks.

"I only have twenty followers," a kid says.  

"It's okay.  Jesus only had twelve."  

"That's not true.  Jesus had thousands of followers.  He just had his top eight.  Except it was his top twelve." 

"True.  So, maybe you're not Jesus.  But I'm your friend and though I won't follow you around, I'll always pick you for short stop even on your worst day."  

*    *    *

I receive a request from the insecure short stop asking if I'd be his friend.  I ignore the request.  Okay, that's not entirely true. I think about my own childhood and shudder.  I can't imagine walking to kids' homes and seeing a list of the top eight and realizing that I don't make the cut.  It would be like relational tryouts and I wouldn't have made the junior varsity popularity team.  I can't imagine what it would be like, in the formative years, when I was experimenting with how to interact with others, to have this massive public network of social relationships advertising to the world that I was a loser.

Still, it's not as if I can follow the kid or friend him.  For what it's worth, I'd like to keep "friend" a noun rather than a verb.  Can't a friend be the last refuge of permanence in an industrial world of change?  We've already lost place and we're quickly losing thing. Let's keep person.

It's just that he and I can't be friends.  I can't invite him with me to the pub.  I'm his teacher. He's my student. We aren't going to share stories about work or talk politics (and our shared anger at the McKinley administration for failing to deliver either hope or change in their Caravan to the Top initiative)  

A few days go by and then he stops me in class.  "Why did you ignore my friend request?"  he asks, calling me out on my act of passive-aggression.  

"I'm sorry.  You're my student and I just don't think we can be friends.  Some day, when you're older, send me a friend request again, okay?"  

He walks away, head hung low.  He'll understand, right? 

*     *     *

When I tell Mr. Brown, his answer surprises me.  "I would have accepted his invitation.  I know there is a difference in age and I am concerned with the graying of adulthood and childhood in our country.  Though, to be quite honest, we still have kids working in the factories.  I just think that the last person a kid wants to have reject him is his teacher.  Socially awkward short stop boy looks up to you."

"What about his parents?"  

"I would have become their friends, too.  I would have explained it all to them and talked about his need for a mentor."  

So, I'm left perplexed.  I set up rigid rules for social engagement and they seem to make sense to me.  They are set up to protect myself from rumors.  But in my goal to be safe, I've unintentionally crushed a kid.  

So, I added myself to the Pen Pal network and I have found the following things to be true:

1. My friends and family mostly send messages about make believe games where they pretend to run a farm or move through a sorority.  Note to self: the only thing lamer than being on a farm is pretending to be a farmer on a pen pal network.  
2. No one told me that people would write personal notes on my wall. What disturbs me, though, is a friend who "tagged" a photo of me. He used some kind of adhesive and now it is permanently on my wall.  Not sure I want a photo of me at the Haymarket Square riot will look good in front of the school board. I never thought in advance the reality that the vapor-self, the ever-evolving imago would be amplified.  I feel a bit like a celebrity.  
3. It's like a staff lounge without the bickering, gossip and complaining about children.  We share ideas, pass notes and actually talk about teaching.  It's like professional development, but without the annoying Edison Projector or the Kodak reps trying to convince me that their cameras will turn my children into geniuses. 
4. There is a pecking order to #3.  For all the talk of democracy and horizontal collaboration, there are gatekeepers who open up the world for new guys like me.  This isn't bad, either.  They are sort of pencil mentors in a way.  Still, it has a darker side when people jockey for Eduplogger votes.  It's a bit of a pissing match, really.  But on that note . . . please vote for me.  
5. Social networks dehumanize and humanize simultaneously.  We play games of pretend.  We craft identities.  We use the plural first person instead of saying "I."  But we also connect and play and interact.  I feel more authentic and more artificial every time I pass along a pen pal note.
6. Stuff is permanent.  I can always say to a person, "that's not what I said," and if I look sincere enough, it works.  But once people resend a note I sent, I'm screwed.  I thought I had sent out a private note to a history teacher, "Garfield was a crappy president anyway.  So, he got shot?  Will anyone remember him in a hundred years?" Now my parents (who were big Garfield fans) think I'm evil.  
7. People like to repeat one another often.  It's a bit like going to a party and hearing Gertrude say, "Josiah said something totally witty.  He said . . . " and then you run into another person that says, "So, Gertrude told me that Josiah said this really funny thing . . ." I'm sure Josiah feels pretty good, but after awhile I'm ready for something new.  

show your work

prove it

the process

the system

the graphite numbers

coldly lining up

dreading the red checkmark

simply saying

"the product is more important than the journey"

either/or

binary machinery

every number

predictably acting as numbers act

always neutral

a Switzerland of sorts

even the irrational 

must be rational

even negatives

act positive when they multiply

do they envy six or twenty-eight?

we say some are imperfect

but numbers never lie

(they're just used and flipped and pimped by dishonest humanity, right?)

neatly contained

until . . . 

circles

need an area

to exist

pi 

numerical anarchy
in a suburban sea of normalcy

always changing

never ceasing

dependably illogical

imaginary numbers

telling grammar school textbooks 

to "eff off if you tell a kid

he can't find the square root of a negative.

I'll be useful for my lack of propensity
to follow the rules."

messy - dirty -scary

never neutral 

unable to stay in line

if I was a # I'd be real

but irrational

and sometimes

I'd be imaginary

Micah tells Joel to look up at the moon.  The elder is taking a lesson from the younger, a quick reminder that the moon still matters.

"It was hiding behind the clouds, but now it's back," Micah explains.

"It's a quarter-moon," Joel adds.  "A quarter is when a number smaller than one and it means you chop one up into smaller pieces."  It's not a bad description of fractions.  I'm guessing he won't need to understand the concept completely until he is in school.

"Daddy, is that the same moon as yesterday?"

"Yeah, it's the same. The moon is always there."

"So, it's not a new moon?"

"Same moon every night."

"Does it just lose part of itself and grow back?"

"No, it has to do with the light hitting it.  Part of the moon is hidden because it's dark."

Joel probably won't understand what I told him just as he doesn't completely understand fractions and, on some level, the sun really does disappear every night.  But he loves to learn.  It's always relevant to him and he is unashamed about asking questions.

We never tell Joel, "This isn't important, because you won't use it when you are older."  It's not about when he is older.  It's about now.  It's about learning how to learn.  Joel never asks me, "How will I use this in a job?"  Never.  Not once.  Joel never asks me, "What will I get for learning this?" What he "gets" is a chance to learn, a journey, a process, a dance.  Some days learning will be a meandering trip in the woods and other days it will be an epic that will require a dagger.  But if he ever pursues education, I want it to be the way one would pursue a love and not the way one would manage a portfolio.

Perhaps the saddest part about sending my children to school (and I will) is that learning will, at some point, become a commodity.  It will become a possession, an investment, a tangible good to be used in exchange for money.  If he's not careful, he'll get good grades to go to college and he'll go to college to get a good job and he'll never learn how to ask, "What is good?" because "good" and "goods" don't often intersect.

For now I'm just happy with him asking "What is the moon and why is it disappearing every night?"  Keep staring out at the universe, kid, and some day you'll stumble on why we are here.

photo credit

Paul the Pre-industrial Poet tells me that I need to get onto a popular Pen Pal Network.  He's an "early adopter," who tends to find technology quickly, explore it rapidly and then decide if he wants to keep it or dump it.

I tell him that he treats technology like an uncouth bacehlor who hasn't discovered the joy of marriage.  He says, "More like speed-dating, but you're right . . . No, I don't like your metaphor at all.  I use technology, but it's because I don't want it to use me.  I don't want to be married to a medium and forget about my real wife. Let's avoid human metaphors.  The more we human the machine, the more we dehumanize ourselves."

"So, why should I join the pen pal network?"

"You need to be part of my PLN. It's how I connect with other educators."

"Can't you just connect over a pint?"

"Does it have to be either/or?"

"I just don't see the big deal in using a pen pal network.  I can't see the value in sending trite little messages to people on my free time."

"So, if something is short, it's trite? What about parables and poetry and proverbs?"  Paul is quite fond of alliteration.

"I just don't see what the big deal is."

"It's a social medium.  You connect with people constantly and share ideas and resources and, on a good day, you share a part of yourself."

"Every medium is social.  I keep hearing this term 'social media,' but a letter is social.  I send postcards all the time.  Last time I checked, that's social.  It just seems to be a ton of hype."

"You might be right, Tom.  But the only thing worse than creating unnecessary hype is the snobbery of avoiding a medium simply because people are excited about it."

The simple addition of "pages" tabs into Blogger has made student portfolios so much easier.  In the past, I would say, "I want you to have a blog that also functions as a website and as a wiki, allowing me to edit your portfolio.  I'm not telling you how to do it.  Figure it out on your own."  I wouldn't give additional class time for the exploration.  I wanted it to happen independently, going viral, involving the kind of chat that happens on a schoolyard.

Now they'll simply go to "add a gadget" on Blogger, instead of thinking about linking individual blog posts and making them "pages."  (Incidentally, some kids found ways to display new headers and side content on particular blog posts.)

As a teacher, I want the technology to be fairly user-friendly.  I don't want to boot up MS-DOS, for example.  My goal is not to teach students how to use computers, but how to think more critically and creatively.  Computers can be helpful.

However, there comes a point when there is too much help.  For example, I like when a student doesn't download a free layout, but spends the time customizing his or her own.  I like when we use OpenShot Video Editor instead of iMovie, because it forces students to use fewer templates. Despite the fact that it is so 1986, I still think one of the most powerful and non-user-friendly tools is a spreadsheet. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of user-friendly slideshow software, because, to a large degree, they are simply computer-based poster boards.

For what it's worth, I find many of the Apple programs to be too restrictive and too focussed on staying within the Apple family (it becomes a little monopolistic and incestual) all in the name of being "user friendly."  However, Linux tends to be more open, more collaborative and more creative.  The strange part is despite all the beautiful iCandy, my students tend to get less frustrated with Linux.

So, I've been working on a writing an indie book (indie sounds so much cooler than self-published) called Teaching Unmasked and it's based on the paradox of impact.   I think I've gotten over the need to have my work published by a "real" publisher and I'm excited about being able to sell this for around five bucks. 

I have created two cover options and I'd like to know what my readers think:

 I stumbled across Joe Bower's Blog For the Love of Learning through Twitter.  He posted some comments and I enjoyed his responses.  I enjoy some bloggers because they are so different from me (Matthew Koslowski, for example) or because they have similar ideas but a different style. 

When I read this blog, though, it's like we are on the same wavelength.  At one time that would have bothered me.  I wanted so badly for my ideas to be terribly original or thought-provoking or provocative.  What I have found, though, is that what I believe is what many teachers are already saying.  And in this case, Joe Bower is articulating it better than me. 

However, he tends to be a little more direct, well-reasoned and well-researched in how he writes.  He doesn't meander in metaphor unless it is necessary and he doesn't seem to play around with words.  Still, his blog exudes clarity and reason in the arena of authentic learning.

I decided to record all of my Facebook Word Verifications (CAPTCHA) from yesterday and paste them in the exact order to see what kind of random nonsense I get:

in Romans

lost legacy

we sit

on television
ransacked nation

ankle glory

chained left

lives detached

amen toaster

I think it's about Rome - about bread and circus and our current addiction to technology.  But then again, Facebook Word Verifications are like Nostradamus.  You can make them say whatever you want.

For the most part, I abandon the worksheets.  We breeze through them quickly and then I break students up into small groups to discuss the question, "What are the elements of a good career?"  The brainstorm turns out to be incredibly specific with a few groups simply writing down names of careers.  Perhaps I should have modeled it first.

I then present career philosophies

• Vocational: based upon one's identity, beliefs and values.  It's the notion that who you are guides what you do (a sense of calling to it)
• Hedonist: find a job that is enjoyable, fun or pleasurable.  
• Economic: a job is based upon money.  The higher the pay, the better the job.  
• Recognition: the best job is one where a person will receive honor, recognition, fame or accolades. 
• Humanitarian: here the idea is to make a difference in the lives of others

Students engage in a debate about the merits of each and the question of whether someone can truly pursue multiple career philosophies and find contentment.  Afterward, as they break into small groups again to do a pros and cons chart, a student pulls me aside.

"If there are all these reasons for having a career and our school wants to get us job-ready in the future, why are we only following the economic philosophy?  Why don't we make a difference as a school?  Why don't we talk about identity and values and beliefs?"

"Some people don't think that's important.  They see it as fluff.  Shouldn't we pursue the core knowledge?"

He responds, "It seems like answering the question of why we work a job would be at the core of all of our knowledge."

As the students work on an individual assignment describing their own career philosophy, I hear shouting from Mr. Brown's classroom.

"Faster, I say!  It's not about quality!  It's numbers! It's data! We need to win this race! It's a race to the top, I tell you! And our company will not have any losers being left behind!"

"But Mr. Brown, the work is looking sloppy and everything we do looks identical!"

"Welcome to the edu-factory," he responds.

Students are in an assembly line filling out one line a piece on each of their worksheets.  On the sideline are students who want a piece of the grade as well.  "You sir, do you want to work in this edu-factory?  I'll pay you a C for the work.  Right now you're failing.  Take a C!"

The child simply nods.

"Alright, everybody, your grade is now a C! We only have so many points to spread around.  But we can now hire two new workers."

A child volunteers to work for a D and Mr. Brown fires another worker who refuses a C.  Finally, two more workers begin to whisper to one another.  "We quit.  We'll fail this unit if we need to."

This leads to a chain reaction as the students begin to go on strike.  As my students discuss career philosophies, his students talk about unions and free markets, wages and fairness and eventually meander into why one would work a job.

Neither of us taught the same lesson.  I might steal his idea next year and I know he plans to use my career philosophies tomorrow.  We share.  That's the idea of "common" knowledge and "common" standards.  It's horizontal.  Our paper and pencil "integration" is natural and fluid and based upon our own expertise.

Give us a program and we'll be programmed.  Give us worksheets and our work will be full of sheet.  The results will be uniform, but we'll miss the chance to be innovative.  Give us a chance to develop our own lessons and give us the freedom to share what has worked and we'll grow together.  The best professional development happens over a pint, not in a crowded library.

I used to believe that grades were ineffective on motivation. While I knew some students were motivated by the desire for an A, I thought that taking away grades would make little difference. The hard-working students would be the ones who still wanted to work hard and still pursue and education. The burnouts would remain well . . . burnt-out.

Instead, I found this trend: when grades are no longer an issue, all students become more motivated. Don't get me wrong, at first there is a slight adjustment, but it isn't long before students begin to learn for the sake of learning. This is nothing new. Alfie Kohn has proven this in his research for years. Extrinsic rewards diminish motivation in the long run.

Still, I think there is another dimension to this. I can't prove this, but I think it has to do with the fact that they feel safe. Security doesn't lead to laziness, but paradoxically it leads to positive risk-taking. If a student knows that there is no grade, that student doesn't worry about screwing up.

Case in point: I teach two regular classes and three classes that are pass/fail. I tell the students that they pass regardless of their work. My exact words are, "This class isn't about finishing work. It's about learning. Work is great. I hope you all work a job. But this isn't your job. This is your education. I hope you make the best of it."

The first day is slow. Students occasionally say aloud, "This doesn't matter. It's not even graded." Yet, as they begin to choose books and as we analyze articles, novels and poetry together, they forget about grades altogether. A child at a fifth-grade reading level will pick up an eight-grade level book, struggle a bit with the syntax and vocabulary and ultimately find a reading flow.

Don't get me wrong, I still conference with students, write notes on work and occasionally bust out a rubric.  I believe in feedback.  What I don't believe in is grades.

One could point out that this is a "curriculum-free" class with considerable amount of freedom. It's true. I don't deny that the freedom to choose is necessary in a grade-free classroom. However, I still choose half of what they read and yet I don't really experience any push-back from them. One could also point out that this might be a mere fluke. However, this is my fifth year of teaching a non-graded class and, in most cases, it was the last class of the day. Every time, the "quantitative gains" (read "test scores) improved more in my non-graded than graded classes.

I don't deny that scrapping grades sounds crazy. Freedom sometimes sounds like anarchy to a person experiencing totalitarianism. Grace sounds scandelous to those who expect law.

If they approached kindergarten with the same asinine logic they use with seventh graders.


a mock article I wrote:

A recent U.S. Department of Education study confirmed researcher's deepest fears about the inherent flaws in our Early Elementary Educational System.  Children are not recieving adequate training in paleontology, despite the numerous toys, gadgets and picture books.

"We still have children laboring under the misonception that the Tyranesorus Rex was a vicious carnivore when, in fact, he was more akin to a ginormous buzzard. Just check out the bones," explains a key paleontologist.  Critics point out that paleontologists should not be offering such silly comparisons and using words like "ginormous" and "bones" that reduce the scholarly nature of digging bones in the desert.

The lasting impact is immense.  In recent years, Japan and India have both led cutting edge fossil escavations.  China alone graduate twice as many paleontologists as the United States.  Skeptics say this is not surprising, given the fact that they have the largest population in the world.  Most experts, however, ignore data disaggregation and point to this as yet another industry that the United States is losing.  And the culprit?  Bad teachers. 

A government spokeswoman and former Teach for America graduate Bruce Lystra explained that the larger issues are lack of teacher training.  "Better teachers.  That's what it comes down to.  We have held such low dinosaur standards for so many years that it is leading to ignorance."

Julia Henderson, a second year first grade teacher (It's her second year of teaching first grade.  She doesn't actually teaching children who are repeating first grade) mentions the pressure of meeting the state's paleontolgoy requirements, "I have children who love dinosaurs but can't pass the test.  It's a lot of memorizing.  I want children to read.  I want them to love learning.  Most kids come in fascinated by dinosaurs, but I fear that the drill-and-kill method simply strips away this intrinsic motivation."

Bruce Lystra is doubtful of this.  "Do we have statistics proving that kids love dinosaurs? I'm not so sure.  I think Jurrasic Park was sort-of the Challenger Moment of our paleontology perception. Instead of loving dinosaurs, kids grew afraid of them.  We need a safe environment where kids can fill out worksheets about dinosaurs and see that the animals are pretty safe . . . seeing as how they are dead."

The Obama Administration plans further expansion of the new Dinosaur Initiatives.  They recently released a PBS show Dinosaur Train which teaches kids to combine dinosaur terminology with nineteenth century technology and they are creating a multi-million dollar task force to create nationwide paleontology standards.

Not everyone is convinced that dinosaurs are the answer. A critic from Reclaim Education, a Progressive Think Tank, suggests that dinosaurs might not be the greatest focus for American education.  "We're focusing on dead animals and dead ideas, using dead instructional models.  Where is the change we were promised?"

photo credit

A day after the worksheet debacle, Mr. Brown comes into my room.  "Can you believe we have to take time out of social studies to teach Career Readiness Exploration Program?"

"I'm sure the districts spent barrels of money on it, what with all the worksheets and workbooks and . . ."

"You nailed it.  They're worksheets and workbooks, but nothing is a thinkbook anymore.  It's about productivity and results and not the cognitive process anymore.  Might as well turn them into machines."  

"I'm upset with the conflict of interest.  Am I really supposed to believe that a program developed by Carnegie can be trusted?  Can I really separate out Carnegie the corrupt robber baron from Carnegie the educational reformer?  Yes, it's fine that he wants to give back, but that feels a bit like robbing a house and then returning a few pairs of slacks and some silverware."  

"They want me to teach CREP, well this is CREP, this is total CREP, this is a pile of stinky CREP," and he says it with just the right Scottish accent that it makes me smile, if not laugh.

"Are you really that upset about it?"

"See, Techno-Tommy, I'm worried about this.  I really am.  Students need social studies, because our community needs civic-minded people.  We need people who can explore the world with a critical eye. We need students to know the narratives of the past to make sense of the present.  It's not a fluff subject just because it doesn't help create better factory workers."

"What scares me is that teachers seem to love this program simply because it uses technology.  So, for a day they'll have access to a camera and through the entire unit, they'll have paper and pencil.  They're using novelty to sell us CREP."  I try a Scottish accent on the CREP part, but I end up sounding mildly drunk instead.

My friend Paul the Preindustrial Poet thinks the best way to prepare someone for the workforce is to prepare someone for life.  I'm thinking he and Mr. Brown both have a point here.  We're educating sixth graders.  Do they really need job preparation right now?  Is this really the time to have them develop a Career Readiness Plan?  

"So, Mr. Brown, what is your plan? Are you just going to play ignorant and claim you never had training on it?" 

"No, I have another idea.  They'll fill out the worksheets alright. You'll see."

 My first TAD Talk. (TAD Talks are meant to reveal how little we know, how much of a mystery life is and what it means to meander in the mystery - in other words, the opposite of many expert-driven TED Talks)  I don't know how much instruction to offer.  I haven't got that figured out yet, even in my sixth year of teaching. 

Available at Internet Archive or Below:

I changed this up after a great suggestion from a fellow blogger.

I might be the only person online who finds TED Talks to be smug and annoying and overly perky. I can't imagine Whitman or Thoreau at one. I admit, too, that I'm probably more sensitive to the smug side, because that can all too often become my mode of operation.

When they first came out, I thought they were cool, because the speakers were generally unknown experts who were passionate about some random subject. Then I started seeing Bill Gates and I figured we'd eventually have Oprah and all would be lost.

So, here's my idea: TAD Talks. I've decided that TAD can be TED's under-achieving younger brother who lacks the pizazz and panache of TED. The TAD Talks are the opposite of TED's. A TAD Talk is humble, subdued and meandering (as in "I only know a tad bit about this subject.")  A TAD Talk delves into mystery and paradox and admits what we don't understand.

Here's what I'm proposing. People create their own TAD Talks (it would be like the Reebooks and Addidas shoes they sell at the swap meet) covering any topic that they don't completely understand. The goal would be storytelling, mystery, paradox, or perhaps a moment when you were humbled. Once you submit it, we could have a site where all the videos are embedded.

Might be fun.

Or it might tank.

A district office representative pulls me aside before class and says, "Tommy, we're concerned with some of your pencil use."  

"Well, it's not really me that's using the pencils.  It's the students, so would you mind if I allowed them to be a part of this discussion?" 

"Well, we noticed that you have an hour of weekly drawing time. How do you justify it?" he asks with a smug grin.   

"I do.  I believe creativity is a valuable skill.  The district said so themselves just recently," I added.  

"We have worksheets designed for creativity. Besides, we're looking for problem solving creativity, not drawing." he adds.  

"Yes, but I have my students use writing to solve problems in PBLs and solve problems in math. They use the pencil and paper with their lab reports from science and I try and begin with inquiry . . . "

"We are concerned about the academic nature of using pencils in such a way. Our worksheets are designed with best practices in mind. They are scientifically proven to work. Would you trust a doctor who tried to insert blood instead of using leeches?"  

"It seems to me that you say you want creative and imaginative teachers.  You want us to think outside the box and then you get angry when we don't have students follow your rigid curriculum."  

"There's flexibility in it.  Read the Teacher Workbook.  Each lesson has at least three Extension Activities you can consider."  

"Can you tell me something honestly? In art class, do you give kids a canvas and paints and then tell them they have to only paint by number?  In PE do you hand kids a ball and tell them every child must play the same position?"  

"Look, we paid good money for Pencil Island and Jonestown Intervention.  We want to get our money's worth on the investment."  

As I leave, I fail to say what is going through my mind: What if we stopped investing in curriculum and started investing in our children's minds?

Five of the Best Presidents

Abraham Lincoln: I like him, not because he was so great, but because he was flexible, moderate and yet willing to stand up for important issues at the right time.

George Washington: He could have become a dictator.  With the love of his people and a military background, he could have turned federalism into centralism, but he didn't.

Calvin Coolidge: Yes, people hate the guy.  They hate him because he essentially did nothing.  But that's why I like him.  He didn't try and conquer the world and get America into a big war.  He didn't try and bail out an economy.  There weren't too many incidents of federal troops firing on striking workers.  We need more Calvin Coolidges in this world.

Dwight Eisenhower: I know he did some sketchy things in Latin America, but he also warned about the military industrial complex.  In many respects, the guy was a moderate and helped lead us into economic recovery.  I like Ike.

Teddy Roosevelt: A Republican with a progressive streak.  I know that he could be a little too pro-business, but he led some huge reforms in conservation, worker's rights and free market transparency. His imperialistic pursuits still make me sick, but he was in many ways a true democrat doing what the people of America wanted.

Five of the Worst Presidents

Richard Nixon: Does this really need an explanation?

Andrew Jackson: Might as well have Hitler on the twenty dollar bill.  The Long Walk was a systematic, planned and organized way to not only remove indigenous people, but also ensure that many of them would die.

Rutheford B Hayes: The man who ended Reconstruction also ordered U.S. troops to fire on striking railroad works and he helped launch more wars against Native Americans.  Besides, his election was sketchy in the first place.

Woodrow Wilson: Openly racist, he is quoted a few times in Birth of a Nation, a film where the Klan are the good guys.  While people talk about how amazing he was at foreign policy, the failure of the League of Nations helped cause World War II.

James Polk: While I respect his introduction of postage stamps, I have nothing else nice to say about the guy who launched the expansionist Mexican-American War.  Hailed by many as a "strong" president, he was often guilty of cronyism and deceit.

Final note:
I respect some of the presidents who were lousy, but then turned things around later.  Jimmy Carter comes to mind, but so does John Quincy Adams and his stance against slavery or Franklin Pierce and his call to Lincoln to stop restricting civil liberties.  

Last night, we gathered around a small fire in our back yard.  The necessity of warmth forces us to connect.  A few of our neighbors come by.  For all the talk of social networking, this is our true social network.  Before we had pen pal sites, we had fire pits and front porches and potlucks.

Earlier this week a representative from the district office pulled me aside and eagerly expounded upon a great pencil initiative.  It's not simply pencil-based, but multimedia.  Kodak cameras, phonographs, Edison projectors, perhaps even an instant connection to a telegraph.  "Tom, we're looking toward your classroom as the prototype for a Twentieth Century Classroom."

"That sounds really intriguing, but shouldn't we wait until the twentieth century so that we're all in the same century together. I mean it might be lonely in a classroom-based time machine." I responded.

He stared at me blankly.

"It was a joke," I tell him.  He offers a sympathy chuckle. It was a bad joke, but it was the best I had.  Just about every subject is taboo when talking to an edu-crat.

"So, look, we'll be adding a few phonographs in the next week.  We want to test some of this technology out on you first before launching the initiative." Something about this process leaves me feeling as though my students are the newest lab rats. I teach children, not data.  I always want to keep that distinction.

***

I spent a large part of my life in Kansas.  Everything is bigger and smaller when you can see the horizon.  Perhaps it's an optical illusion that the sun becomes massive.  I think it's an illusion that it was ever small in the first place.

We knew the land and the dirt and weather.  People have called it a simple life, but that's not exactly the term.  Life was complex.  Soil was complex.  We knew the names of most species that lived in our little ecosystem and our neighbors knew something of humanity that I've already lost.  I think you sometimes have to live in a smaller place to get a bigger picture.

So now our home is in a tiny enclave of a large urban center.  We can't see the stars.  My daughter will grow up without the freedom to walk out into a pitch-black night and stare into the universe.  I've heard that light pollution can cause animals to lose their orientation.  I wonder if that's what's happening to us. We start to believe that sky scrapers are larger than the very star that gives us life and warmth and light.

***

Phonographs, photographs and telegraphs present a subtle lie that life belongs on a graph.  Our neighborhood is an a grid, sending us electricity in promise of progress. It's less about progress than progression through compression.

Life on a graph is compressed.  A phonograph extracts sound that is meant for a concert hall and compresses it into a machine.  We lose a sense of the quality in exchange for portability and permanence.  The same goes for a photograph.  It's a two-dimensional, black and white replica of life. Or a telegraph - chop the information into patterns of beeps in exchange for instant messaging (teaching us the lie that the urgent is the same as the important).  For what it's worth, I have a hunch that the mind can produce permanent and portable images and sound, but it's intangible and untrustworthy.

The mind is mythology and pictures are prose, but I am convinced that truth is not always real and reality is not always true. If the twentieth century is simply more compression and portability and constant progression without ever feeling the connection to the land, I'm not sure that I'm fit for it.  If we are willing to exchange connection with one another for connection to to devices, then I think it's a Faustian exchange and I'm not sure I'm the teacher to lead this "cutting edge" reform. Especially when no one is asking "who and what are we cutting?" (Is it us? Is it information? Is it the land? Is it sound and space and time that we cut through?)

A couple of days ago, I saw my wife speaking softly into the mouth of a telephone.  She was at home, but she was somewhere else. Her hand gently held its mechanical mouth.  I don't fault her for wanting to talk to her parents, but in that moment, I was jealous.  It should have been my mouth she caressed and my lips she kissed.

A century from now, we'll probably have moving pictures at the palm of our hands.  We'll have instant messaging and we'll probably have a way to plug a tiny phonograph into our ears to hear thousands of songs. Life will be so compressed that people won't even have a reason to stare out into the stars or watch the son fall into the horizon or sit around a fire and tell stories.

Once a month, we have a philosophical discussion as a group.  People occasionally bring friends, but on some level, we know one another.  The conversation typically remains civil and deep - sort-of the antithesis of Fox News or CNN.

The topic is the relationship between mercy and justice and to what extent a person or a society pursues both.  Surprisingly, the group steered toward the conversation about what both concepts look like on a social, collective level.  My friend Rich pointed out that immigration can be political, but it is primarily an issue of social justice or social mercy.  The legal solutions might vary, but treating immigrants justly is not simply a political option.

A man I hardly know began to challenge this and it quickly turned into a shouting match between him and me, with him claiming immigrants are invaders and me claiming that they are human and therefore worthy of dignity and respect. When he said that most immigrants are here just to break the law, I lost all control.

It was ugly.

I'm tempted to justify it with a claim about how much I love my students and how it felt like an attack on them, but there is no justification.  Something in me snapped and a theoretical dialog transformed into rage.  I ended the conversation by storming into the empty kitchen and throwing my plate onto the ground.

***

It's three hours later and I'm sweeping up shattered pieces of glass.  I've been sobbing uncontrollably for minutes and then regaining my own composure.  What's wrong with me? What happened right there?  I'm scared, deeply afraid of the rage that came from inside of me.  It surprised everyone including myself.   I'm not a particularly angry man, nor am I a guy who tries to manage my temper with drugs or breathing techniques or becoming a stoic.  

In moments like this, I want to hide.  I want to run away.  I begin to question whether I should be a husband or be a dad or be a teacher if something like this can happen.  Something like this happened five years ago when I got into a shouting match with a property manager who said my wife wasn't doing her job. I want so badly for this to never happen again and it's not as simple as saying, "So, just don't lose it next time."  

At one point Joel came in and gave me a hug.  He asked what happened and I told him that I got really angry and threw a plate and a piece of it caused the entire glass door to shatter.  "It's alright daddy. Sometimes when I get mad I throw something.  Are you sorry?"  I tell him that I am and he hugs me again and says, "Everyone gets angry."  

There is restoration, though, which happens in relationships.  Christy continues to love me.  We talk for a few hours and it's uncomfortable and it's honest and the only reason it can be that way is that I feel safe with her.  I can be vulnerable and know that it will draw her closer rather than farther away.  

So, as I clean out the pieces of glass, it becomes a metaphor of myself.  I want to be transparent.  I want to be honest and let people know that I screw things up in big ways sometimes.  I sin in ways that really hurt people.  I see the shattered fragments and on some level, that's me.  Broken.  Able to wound others.  

I also see a second layer of glass behind it. Solid, whole, in-tact.  I need to hold onto that image, too.  I am made in the image of God.  I'm a new creation.  It's not simply theology.  It's a conviction I hold about life.  

***

Sometimes I come across as smug or arrogant, especially when writing about politics or standardized education.  Sometimes I play a game of pretend dress-up, but a night like this reminds me that it's more like "The Emperor's New Clothes" and I'm feeling a little ashamed and exposed.  

So, it has me thinking this morning about teaching.  I'm still scared of how I am capable of acting.  I'm still feeling exposed and broken.  But it has me thinking that if there is any redemption in an awful moment of rage it's that it keeps me from ever believing that I am a better person than my students.  It forces me to come to terms with the fact that we're all broken and that there is no such thing as a list of good kids and bad kids. 

If Google is allowed to turn a noun into a verb and the Sultan of Standards can beckon teachers to "incent," then I want to create an acronym for the verb acronym. Anyway, I hate acronyms and so I have developed one mocking all acronyms.

Another   

Composition  

Resulting 

Out of

Naming

Your  

Mnemonic 

Educational

Devices

I love my school district and so this isn't meant to be a slam. However, I'm not so sure that lockdowns, fire drills or tragic accidents fit well with Comic Sans. Perhaps arial next time? (And yes, that is pink)

On typical parent-teacher conferences, I interact as best as I can in Spanish.  It becomes a role that I play, an act that I put on based upon memorized lines, key words and body language.  My smile is thin and plastic, my energy pumped up by an edgy anxiety.  It's not that I am afraid of parents, but that I am, on some level, still the shy kid who sits on the bench at the school dance without ever really swanting to join in.

"Mr. Spencer, we need to talk."  Ouch.  No one adds to that phrase, "about how wonderful you're doing." I brace myself.

"My son says your class is fun," he adds.

"I'm glad he likes it."

"I want to know what you're doing in here.  Education is hard work.  We call it homework for a reason and classwork for a reason."  He says it just like that, with thick italics on the word "work."

I explain to him the first project of writing and article.  It becomes a mini-lesson on the research process.  He softens when he sees the research chart that his son filled out.  "You make him read print articles as well?" he asks.

"I want students to use multiple media," I add.

He begins peppering me with questions about my use of critical thinking, whether students are held individually accountable in group work and which technological skills they have acquired.  He smiles when I tell him that my goal is not to teach a child how to use a computer, but to use a computer for deeper thinking.

When he sees a few of his son's final projects, he gives a heavy sigh.  It's silent for awhile and then he starts laughing. It's not a simple chuckle, but a full-scale laugh.

Finally he explains, "I'm sorry, but when he said your class was fun I was thinking of video games and free time.  I'm glad that he finds challenging work fun. I mean, it seems like you're really making him think and thinking is fun.  He just doesn't seem to like school usually." It's an awkward compliment, but I feel affirmed.

As clumsy as that interaction was, I wish every parent approached parent-teacher conferences with the same skepticism and rigor that this parent chose.

Photo Credit

A student came back to visit from Mexico yesterday.  I asked him what it was like and he answered, "We had to bury my grandpa."

"Was it a good memorial?" I asked.

"What is that word?" he asked.

"It's the ceremony honoring the dead."

"Oh, a funeral.  Yes, we had a funeral."

"Well, a memorial is like a funeral, but you don't actually see the person who died."

"We buried my grandpa.  We set his box in the ground and covered it all with dirt.  Everybody told stories of what he was like.  I cried.  We all cried.  Even my dad cried. I had never seen him cry before."

I'm struck by this notion of burying the dead and the way Americans outsource this process to a group of experts.  When my grandpa died, we viewed his name on a large metal box containing his ashes.  We looked at the stars and the stripes and heard the gun salute, but we were not a part of the burial process.  Perhaps that's a good thing, but I wonder if we missed the opportunity to grieve collectively.  A wise sage once said that it's better to enter a house of mourning than a house of laughter.  I wonder if we've outsourced mourning so that we can be more productive.

The student points out with a smile, "In Mexico, Mexicans bury the dead.  In America, you ask Mexicans to bury the dead, too.  I guess that's just something we're good at."  I love the lack of a political correctness filter that exists in most seventh-grade conversations.

Minutes later, he's talking to his friends about Mexico.  "I always forget how dirty it is.  There is dirt everywhere.  The streets is dirt.  The graveyard is dirt.  Dirt gets on your clothes, but it doesn't feel dirty. The dirt covers everything and it just feels normal."

Sometimes it takes a trip away from a concrete paradise to recover the earth and the reality that some day we'll all return to it.

Photo Credit

I've never been through a period where I fail to blog.  However, I have had periods where I think, "I need to come up with something better," or "This is starting to sound too much like what everyone else is saying."  If I allow this spiralling mental monologue to continue, I'll end in self-defeat and never blog about anthying.

So, it has me thinking about ways to avoid blogger's block.  I generally avoid lists and I generally run away from people who hand me lists, so I admit ahead of time that my list-creating is a bit hypocritical here.

1. Change Your Metaphor: One reason bloggers quit writing is they get scared that it's not "publishable."  You are not a columnist. You are not an editorialist. If you want to compare yourself to anything, you're more like a radio show, meaning you show up on most days and you put something out there.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  If it's boring, someone will switch to a new blog in their reader.  I've often found that people respond well to seemingly boring blog posts.

2. Branch Out: Boredom can lead to lame posts.  A narrow-mindset can pigeon-hole a blogger.  So, try something new.  When I got bored, I began writing a fictional blog about pencil integration.  It's goofy and silly, I realize, but it was something new.  Try doing podcasts or videos.  Try writing poetry or satire.  Tell stories.

3. Read: Let's be honest, no one has any ideas.  There is nothing new under the sun.  So, read other blogs and read articles and read books.  I'm reading a book right now called Readicide (and I love it by the way).  I admit that it is shaping my thinking in ways I can't quite articulate.

4. Avoid the "Pacing" Trap: Brad the Philosopher once made me memorize, "We must seize the day of excited curiosity for the acquisition of wisdom."  The idea is that learning should happen now, in the moment.  When I am excited about a topic, that is when I should explore it, think about it and write about it.  If I create a larger outline chunking up ideas to particular days then writing becomes an issue of drudgery.

5. Lower Your Standards: I know that sounds mean, but I am under no illusion that I'm a phenomenal writer.  I'm just a guy who is trying to figure out this universe.  Being content with my writing allows me to take risks, post topics that might not make a ton of sense and tell stories.

6. Social Network: I am a reluctant convert.  However, I admit that I use both Facebook and Twitter and I enjoy the community I have in both places (one being very personal, another being more professional). Often a tweet or series of tweets will spark a thought that leads to a blog post.

7. Share: Think of what you are holding back that people might want.  Perhaps it's a classroom idea that you've never shared.  Maybe it's a story that you haven't told, but you'd love to tell it.  Maybe you are tired and worn out and you just want to share how life is going.  Maybe it's a question.  I've known people with little to say but a ton to ask.  Not a bad idea sometimes.

I'm sitting at a team meeting during my first year of teaching.  In order to prove that we are "data-driven," (as opposed to say, "student-driven," which would be my preference) we sift through pages of graphs and charts, each with its own set of acronyms and abbreviations.  RCBMS, AIMSWeb, AIMS, Galileo, DRA, DRP.  The Special Ed kids have a test called Woodcock Johnson and apparently I'm not supposed to snicker when I hear the name.

"What general trends do you see?" asks a specialist.  I'm not sure what exactly specialists are supposed to do, but I know that they specialize; which is essentially the problem.  As a teacher, I don't specialize.  I teach whole subjects to whole students.  I don't see a score, I see a child.

"I guess the general trend I see is that our kids don't read very well," I say.  Honestly, I could determine this  trend with a simple five minute glance into my classroom.

"I need something more specific. What is the data saying to you?" she asks.

A teammate ventures out, "I think the picture is incomplete.  We don't have enough data to prove anything.  We have a few tests, but I'm not sure we can determine what is causing our students to fail at reading."

I use the term "teammate," but I don't really consider it a team unless we are allowed to scratch ourselves and spit sunflower seeds.

"It's like a puzzle.  We have most pieces, but we don't have the complete picture, right?" I add, so our team begins to discuss ideas of how to gather more data and gain a more complete picture.

Finally our special education teacher speaks up.  "It's not like a puzzle.  It's like Tetris.  Ideally data fits together and when it clears up it's transparent.  It's smooth.  The pieces fit nicely.  But we have too much data.  We have too many tables and charts and it's like we're on the ninth level and we're so overwhelmed that we're ready to throw our hands in the air and say, 'Game Over.' We have the data.  What we lack is a lack of data."

The curriculum specialist adds, "It's like we're playing Tetris drunk. Sometimes I wonder if we get drunk on Data and miss out on why we need data in the first place."

So, we change our approach.  Like Tetris, we see each test as being a different shape and potentially a great diagnostic tool to see both individual information and general trends.  We begin to conference with students one-on-one and ask for student input.  At times we bring in other test scores.  More often, we have students self-assess their own work. The process is flexible and organic - less like a puzzle and more like a plant.

I begin to see that "data" is not inherently evil, but often a valuable aspect of knowing my students. I tell myself that it's "information" or "feedback" rather than "data," because of the scientific connotations.  Yet, the special ed teacher reminds me, "This is science. It's science at it's best.  It's inquiry and analysis and discovery.  It's not a rigid structure, but an exploration."

At times it still gets clunky, but in most cases it's flexible and transparent and like a game of Tetris, we grow more transparent and eventually students move faster toward mastering their own learning.