You can view the video at Internet Archive or view below

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

It's not easy being the white kid in the barrio.  It doesn't help when you're also the only one who wears a Starship Enterprise t-shirt on free dress day.  So, I'm not surprised when Star Trek fan approaches me to talk about Data.

"I don't think he's an Android at all.  I think he's a geek.  I think he's a guy who came from the Midwest, you know, really logical and all and hardworking.  Maybe Kansas.  And he got the nickname Data because he was obsessed with making common sense decisions."


"You don't like Data?" I ask him.

"No, he's fine.  He gives a lot of great information and like everyone else he's wrestling with how to be human in an intergalactic universe. He's a nice guy.  You don't see him subjecting women like Captain Kirk.  But still, I'd go with Picard over Data in a life or death situation."  I have a hunch that someday he'll write A People's History of the United Federation of Planets. 

*     *     *

People say that our decisions should be "data-driven." A simple glimpse at Star Trek reminds me that data is meant to inform rather than drive. However, when data becomes an excuse to close entire schools down or to create an educational pissing contest (that I'll from now on refer to as 48 States Left Behind) we are allowing blind, unfiltered, unanalyzed data to make policy decisions.

Students at my school fail the tests.  I can look at the demographic data and realize that special education and ELL students both tend to fail the tests.  This can help inform me regarding educational decisions.  But it cannot tell me much of anything about the quality of teaching.  I can misread the data and say, "Wow, Latino students aren't as smart," or I can say, "Wow, Latino students must be getting the worst students."  After awhile, Data becomes a sort-of Magic Eight Ball.

Or I can use the data to inform decisions.  I can look at a test, even an imperfect test, and say, "Raul is struggling with reading.  His AIMSweb fluency scores is really low."  I can compare teachers and say, "this teacher's students did really well with critical thinking questions.  Is there something that person is doing that others could try?"

Data is a nice guy.  He's useful and I'm glad we have him around.  I just think that he does best when he provides useful information so that others can make the decisions.


Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I don't own an alarm clock.  Okay, I own one, but I don't use it as an alarm clock.  It functions as a digital clock / night light for all the times I have to pray with a kid who is having nightmares.  On most days, Brenna is my alarm clock.  I'll hear her gurgling noises and know that it's the one time of day when she'll get a bottle.   If Brenna sleeps in, though, I usually wake up on my own.

I've learned to trust my body more than my technology.  It's why I don't own a watch.  I can generally see the time of day based upon the sun.  I don't own a cell phone, either.  If I need to contact someone, I can always find a phone.  But I want to miss people.  I don't want to begin to think that a text is a substitute for a cup of coffee or a pint.  It's why I have moments when I think about going back to riding a bike to work.

Technology is a drug and like any drug, it is addicting, powerful, potentially helpful and potentially lethal.  On some level, we can predict the side effects and maneuver it carefully.  Still, there are negative side effects that one cannot predict.  An alarm clock is great, I'm sure.  However, I'm convinced that my day is shaped in part by how it begins.  I might be the only person who feels this way, but once I abandoned the alarm, mornings became pleasant.

I encourage technology criticism in my classroom, but I don't push my views on students.  They start the year thinking I'm crazy for not owning a cell phone and by the end a few of them might think I'm a little less crazy, but none of them will get rid of their phones. Hopefully, though, I spark some questions and on my best days I get the students to ask deeper questions.

One my my students wrote an article about the power of Google.  I was encouraged for this generation. It's as though they have awoken from the techno-daze with a more realistic picture of how technology shapes their world.  Yes, they might be "digital natives," but they are become "Luddite immigrants," and I smile at the notion of a dual citizenship.

have a cheap, fake cupcake since home-cooked pastries are banned at most schools

Today is my three-year anniversary of this blog.  I wrote my blog post the day after I opened the blog, so maybe tomorrow is the real anniversary.  I had a friend put together some questions so I could do a question and answer reflection on this blog:

Can you describe your journey as a blogger?
I started this blog (here at blogger) and a blog at Teacher Lingo.  Eventually, they merged into one.  In the early phase, blogging was a solitary exercise.  Few people read anything I wrote.  In Blogger, my only readers were Quinn and Dustin and on Teacher Lingo, my only readers were Betty and Mystery Teacher.

Over time, I gained a readership, but I was still experimenting.  I'd change the layout a bunch, link it to other blogs I'd created, try out new blog series.  I began to draw pictures and do videos and podcasts.  I started to use humor a little more and stopped trying so hard to sound like the expert.

At some point, it grew in popularity and I started to think this blog was really important.  I added social elements to it and checked my Technorati number (which reached in the high 400's) and tried to get more blog followers.  I wanted to be published and I thought a popular blog might be a part of it.  That phase was a short phase around Christmastime and eventually I settled back into a place of realizing that the numbers and the influence mean nothing.

Why did you choose the titled, "Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher?"
Everything I read in the ed-world seemed to be five steps and ten keys.  "So You Want to Teach" well here are some ways for you to do it.  There was nothing wrong with those blogs, but it wasn't me.  I was a third year teacher who didn't feel I had much practical advice to offer.  (I still don't)  Eventually, I grew into the name.  My earliest blog posts were often heated and passionate.  I think I'm slowly growing into the humility of this blog's name.

How would you describe your role as a blog writer?
I think the term "musings" turned out to be the best way I can describe it.  Someone once asked me what it was like to be participating in online journalism.  My blog isn't journalism.  It's more like a public journal of what is inside my head - whether it's a story or a few paragraphs or a rant or a picture, a podcast or a drawing.

Why do you have so many blogs?
I realized awhile back that I have a diverse group of readers.  Some are close friends and family and others are complete strangers.  For awhile, I tried to balance that by making very specific themed blogs (Jesus in Left Field or Blog in the Suburbs).  I'll sometimes start a blog because it just doesn't fit this blog, knowing that eventually it will be "finished" and I'll import the posts (TV and Teaching was like that and so was A Sketchy Premise).  Currently, Adventures in Pencil Integration works like that.  I can't imagine those blog posts fitting on this site.

What are three words you would use to describe your blog?
Creative (perhaps quirky), thought-provoking and honest

Why do you blog?
I write.  It's not an option for me.  It's a part of who I am.  If it wasn't this, it would be a journal.  On some level, I like the feedback I get from others.  There are some people I feel I've gotten to know a bit. So, there is a social aspect to it.

What is the hardest part of blogging?
You don't know if people are offended.  You don't know if they are interested.  If you get one or two comments it could be that people are simply busy or that it was a boring blog post.  An avid reader all of a sudden leaves.  So, it's the mystery of it that makes it challenging sometimes.  I think, on some level, that's why certain bloggers quit.  It's unpredictable.

What advice would you give to bloggers?
Let it reflect who you are. If you post in spurts (like Doyle does) it can be great.  If you post all the time (like me) go for it. Some people like reading something daily.  If you post once a week (like Brazen Teacher) people will look forward to the weekly post.  If you want to focus on a niche area, find your niche.  But don't be afraid to branch out and go into topics beyond your small niche.

What do you see as the future of this blog?
I'll keep doing what I do.  I might tweak the layout a bit over the summer.

*      *      *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

photo credit

Christy sent this e-mail to me:

Me: Joel, don’t make a mess with the popcorn kernels.

Joel: Momma…

Me: You need to obey and not make a mess. Take the bowl and kernels to the kitchen, please.

Joel: But I’m learning! Everything is part of learning and sometimes learning is messy, Momma.

Me, struggling not to laugh: Do not argue and take the bowl to the kitchen. It’s true that everything can be a part of learning, and you need to learn not to make a mess. 

 He is, indeed, my son.  Joel has somehow internalized the message that learning is messy and that anytime is learning time.  The bizarre part is that I never articulated it verbally.

Incidentally, someone found Photo Booth on my Mac (work computer).

I'd rather connect over a coffee than in 140 characters -- but sometimes it's my only option

A student at lunch says, "There's nothing to eat if you're a Vegan."

"Sure there is."

"Even the salad bar has animal products."

"That doesn't make a difference."

"Do you even know what a Vegan is."

"Sure I do.  Pointy ears. Really logical.  Vegans.  They're on Star Trek." 


I'm no longer surprised by any of this.  Between satire on Family Guy and South Park, viral YouTube videos and Myspace bulletins, kids seem to access older pop culture references through online media.  What it makes me wonder is whether social media is leading toward a bigger monolithic culture (and destroying the local teen culture in the process) or if it means culture and pop culture in particular is becoming specialized and fragmented.

*     *     *

So, I've been having a conversation in Google Buzz with Joel and Russ, who are two people I know only through blogs and Twitter.  I mentioned that Twitter feels like a big party I snuck into, but I don't particularly belong.  We ended up discussing online community, social networks and metaphors about each.

I'm starting to believe that my online experience is a community.  The Luddite in me believes it's not true, because it's not human.  It's not fleshy.  There are no back porches or coffees involved.  And yet . . . I am idealistic about community constantly.  If I'm not careful, I get frustrated with church or small groups or neighbors or even extended family.

I get frustrated because I can't be myself completely.  However, all community is like that.  All community demands that the individual sacrifices something of a voice to be a part of the group.  It's why people get hooked on Ayn Rand and why it's easy to be a Holden Caulfield and whine about phoniness and yet none of that matters when you just had a baby and neighbors and church people and extended family members all show their connection to you through casserole.

My online friends can't give me casserole, but they can offer comments and conversations and on certain evenings it can feel like a community.

*     *     *

How are social media changing culture?  (I know, I know, all media is social) Are we moving toward fragmentation / specialization or are we shifting toward a larger monolithic mega-culture?

Is online community possible?


Is it possible to be both authentic and anonymous online?

Does this make a difference to how a person teaches?

I've grown to enjoy the Pen Pal Networks and I like the concept of growing my PLN. However, there are moments when I don't feel that I belong in here. By that I mean, I feel that I am a guest who snuck in the back door and people are too polite to tell me that I should probably avoid taboo subjects and limit how often I take a sip of the punch.

If a PLN is a party, though, it begins to feel as if it's a party for pencils. In other words, people are spending their time on the pen pal networks writing about how great paper is and how it will revolutionize the education world. People swap stories of how amazing stationary days have been at school and wonder what it would look like if each child had a stationary in every classroom. One to one pencils.

Subgroups of stamp collectors describe all the newest methods of sending letters and gush about how wonderful our socialized postal service is. People quote Edison on the disappearing role of the teacher in an age of electricity as if enlightenment comes from a filament in a bulb rather than the development of wisdom.

Paul the pre-industrial Poet puts it this way, "It's like throwing a party at my house where the honored guest is my house."

Imagine a coffee shop where the main topic of conversation was coffee or visiting a house where the main conversation was the structural integrity of the tresses or the amazing colors of the adobe. Now imagine that this house had some really dangerous flaws and few people seemed to talk about it - the crowded capacity of the house, the floor boards where people could way too easily slip through or the fact that so many people stayed inside the house that they missed the explosion of blossoms going on outside.

I don't mean this to be a criticism of my PLN. I do the same thing. I write little notes about how slow our telegraph can be at school or how nifty our Kodaks have become in students doing storytelling. But in the process, I miss out on what is really important. My students are telling amazing stories - pictures or not.  People are sending letters from all around the world and one would imagine we'd be tackling global issues of learning.  Maybe hard conversations on race and unity or conflict or motivation.  Perhaps tough talks on the nature of learning.  Instead, much of the conversation seems to be about having conversations . . . which I suppose is what I am doing right now.

Thoreau used paper and pencils. He was a quintessential pencil geek, but he knew the dangers of industry. I wonder what he would post on a pen pal network.

note: I borrowed this concept of a party for technology from Joel Zehring

in our urbanized world, we bought into a lie that time and space were commodities to spend rather than elements that defined us

I don't spend my time the same way I did my first year of teaching.  In fact, "spend" is a bit of a misnomer. All I have is the "now."  I can't invest it or save it.  Time will pass regardless.  Still, I don't use my time the same way I once did and it had everything to do with what I value.  I spent my first year trying to impress people.  I attended meetings, volunteered for committees and graded papers all in an effort to look as though I had it together.  I had a lunchtime detention group.

I realized somewhere in my second or third year that my actions didn't match my claim to be student-centered.  The following are some examples of how my approached changed:

• Less grading and more authentic feedback.  I conference with each student each week, but I no longer spend hours inputting numbers into the computer. 
• Less time on discipline.  No more parent meetings or discipline slips or detention.  Instead, I have short conversations and spend more time doing projects before school or at lunchtime.  
• Less time on paperwork.  I fill out papers the moment they are in my box and throw anything unnecessary in my recycling.  I check e-mails twice a day.  I keep one calendar with all the dates. I have one day a week when I do all my photocopying. It's a much more simplified system.  
• Allow students to do the nonessentials.  They do the bulletin boards and the vocabulary wall.  They post the articles to the Social Voice blog.  
• I think a lot less about administrators and school climate and staff members.  It's not that I don't care, but that it's overwhelming mentally to keep track of school when I could spend that time thinking about learning instead.  I guess I'm a little less insecure in that respect.
• I assess student work early in the mornings, when I'm less likely to feel overwhelmed. I don't try and multi-task.

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

it is way too possible to make a huge deal out of one word and miss the message

I find it odd that people seem more irate over an "F Bomb" than they were over the make-believe bombs that never existed in Iraq.  I find it stranger still that a Vice President who says something is a "big fucking deal" is a big fucking deal to the American people and yet we remain silent regarding the veep who defied Geneva Conventions rules of ethics in supporting the torture of suspected terrorists.

For what it's worth, I don't cuss very often.  It's not that I see anything particularly wrong with cussing.  It's an antiquated social norm that some people value.  I also wear a tie and match my clothes fairly regularly. I realize that cussing can come across as rude (then again, so can shooting people) and it's not a battle I want to fight.  I don't cuss around my wife, but I also try not to pick my nose around her or talk with my mouth full of food.  I've even been known to take my hat off when walking indoors.

Still, cussing is simply a social norm.  It's no different than picking one's nose, belching aloud or forgetting to place a napkin on one's lap.  A simple "excuse me" should suffice. After all, I'm more offended by the bad comb-over than a dirty mouth.

The codified "dirty" words are "vulgar" only because they once belonged to the poor.  The gentry refused to use "shit" and preferred "excrement" and in a hierarchical, class-based system, the gentry had moral authority. I guess they were sort-of the Oprah of that day.  Eventually people combined the "dirty" words with the "cursed" words (words like Hell and damn).

Somewhere along the line certain sects of Christians applied this layer of cultural linguistics to the Bible and cussing became a sin.  It became tricky, because Jesus and Paul both said "shit" and Jesus said "asshole" and Paul said "cut off his balls."  I can't blame Jesus, though.  He wasn't from the gentry class. Preachers had to work really hard to twist Scripture to be about cussing.

A simple glimpse at each passage will reveal that the verses are about failing to judge or slander or gossip.  It's about the motives or language.  It's what's inside the bowels that counts, not what comes out of the shit-hole.  I stole that from Jesus, but I think it's public domain by now.

So, it has me thinking about teaching and language and ethics.  It has me wondering if maybe we're doing a disservice to students by simply reinforcing old Victorian cultural values that have no deeper ethical reasoning beyond simply judging those of a lower socioeconomic status.  I'll probably avoid cuss words in class, but if I do, keep in mind that it's not a big fucking deal.

"We'll just call it a sudden acceleration accident."

Success.  Achievement.  Race.  Race faster.  Race to the top, kiddos.  Don't eff this one up.   We will not losing the global pissing contest.  

Macbeth raced to the Top.  

Hitler raced to the Top.  

If we learned anything from the current economic crisis, it's that mindless acceleration leads to ruin.  Toyota is realizing the same lesson with sticky pedals.  We need brakes.  We need breaks.  We need bubbles to burst.  

I want my kids to succeed.  However, I want them to define success on their terms.  I don't want sudden acceleration accidents.

Am I the only one who thinks the politicians made a mistake choosing a slogan that sounds like it's designed for Nazi Germany?

The politician blames the districts and the principals and the teachers for failing to educate the low-income students. The teachers blame the politicians and the districts for the constant interference. If that doesn't work, they blame one another. Timmy can't graduate, because his middle school teachers were so lousy and his middle school teachers think his elementary teachers were lousy, because they spent all their day doing circle time and chasing bunnies. Bill Maher says it's the parents and most of the teachers seem to agree.

Take a field trip to the apartments and ask a kid what it's like to do homework in a studio with no light or what it's like to move for the ninth time in the same month. It's not low expectations when I point out that poverty is real and that it's brutal. Why didn't Jose know anything going into kindergarten? It could be that Jose's mom was checking groceries and that, at seventeen, she barely knows how to keep a four year old alive, much less provide him with a print-rich environment that will lead to phonemic awareness. Or it could be that Maria isn't kindergarten-ready, because her dad works construction and her mom cleans houses and she is raised by a distant aunt who places her in front of Nickelodeon all day. I'm already forgetting what it's like to be in those homes, because it's been almost seven years since I worked at Neighborhood Ministries and I catch only glimpses of the poverty in our antiseptic, gated environment.

After taking that field trip, do a walk-through at a school. Not a drive-by, mind you, but a real walk-through. Take a week if you need. Start at kindergarten, with kids who are still learning survival skills, stop by my class in the seventh grade and listen to the conversations kids have. If you need to, go back to the K-6 teachers and thank them for teaching kids to think. Go up to high school and listen to the AP English class debate the character development of The Great Gatsby.  Now go back to that apartment and ask yourself if that child got a quality education.

Then you can decide who is to blame for the education they received. I blame the parents for taking an interest, even when they are exhausted and when they only graduated the fourth grade. I blame the social worker who placed the student in the right foster family and who worked a thankless job of putting the pieces back together. I blame the pediatricians for setting up free clinics on their spare time and the churches for running food banks and shelters and helping people find a purpose in life.

I blame the elementary teachers who worked miracles to teach a class full of non-native language speakers how to read in English. I blame the middle school teachers for sticking with the kids at a rough age. I blame the counselors and the coaches and club sponsors who took an individual interest in the well-being of a child. I blame the high school teachers who helped get a group of students ready for college when the cycle of poverty seemed too strong a barrier. I blame the administrators whose hands were tied by tons of rules and regulations.

Today I will walk into my classroom with the buzz of RIF lists and furlough and Race to the Top and new standards and I will meet a new group of students (my class is only a quarter long) and we'll think together and I'll leave the day feeling grateful that I get to do this for a living. I'll watch learning happen and if it's a good day, I probably won't blame myself.  I'll blame my students for their resilience and their courage to learn amid a story that can feel hopeless.

photo credit

my sons are at an age where all things are magical

my students are at an age where magic is disappearing

my job is to teach reality without kids losing the sense of magic

Sometimes I wonder if the reason Joel and Micah love the back yard is the sense of perspective they get.  Much of their world requires looking up, feeling lower and undersized in a world of towering adults.  The backyard has tiny bugs - little manageable creatures vying for a toddler's attention.  The backyard doesn't have towering oaks.  It has humble orange trees with branches designed to hold the weight of a four year old.

It has me thinking about kindergarten.  Everything will be Joel-sized, from the tables to the chairs to the play areas.  The classroom designers paid careful attention to the social, behavioral and developmental needs of five year olds.  It's an escape from the "grown up" world of muted tones of subtle grays.

Somewhere along the line, classrooms change.  I noticed that while visiting a few seventh grade classrooms  yesterday.  Students will hunch over desks that are both too big and too small for them.  Oddly enough, the space will grow physically smaller as the students grow larger (incidentally, the class sizes grow larger as well).  In a push to be a learning environment, students will feel as if they have jumped inside of a textbook.  It's just a small example of how the system is not designed for social and developmental needs.

*    *    *

So, all of this has me thinking about the paradox of middle school.  It's the notion that they are both adults and children.  It's the concept of beginning and ending, a sort-of purgatory between childhood and teens. I'm thinking that most of the conflict I see at my school relates to the practical difficulties of this paradox.

Middle schoolers are hyper, like pups who don't get a chance to run.  Yet, they have no recess and few social experiences at the very time when they are experimenting socially.  Like kids, they need to play and like adults, they need to learn to relate to one another. Yet school is designed to prohibit both. While elementary teachers have reading groups and cooperative learning activities, many middle schoolers work individually, silently; switching classes from one tiny space to the next.  

I think about discipline issues and it seems that much of what goes on relates to this paradox as well. At times, I don't allow students enough freedom and I forget their need to feel as though they are training for adulthood.  Other times, a kid will act childish and I forget that they are simply acting their age. It's a difficult mystery to walk and I slip up often.

It is no wonder that most of the middle school children I know feel misunderstood.  The system is not designed for them. While middle schoolers need safety and stability in a world of chaos, they switch classes for the first time ever.  At a time when they are confused by this adolescent paradox, they have a more distant relationship with their teachers than they've ever experienced before.

So, I'm left feeling excited about teaching all subjects to seventh graders next year (if things fall through).  I think the self-contained model is a step toward what seventh graders actually need - a more relational approach to school.


Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

It's no secret that democracy has jumped the shark in America. Voter turnout remains low and millions of Americans remain dissaffected and disenchanted. So what's the solution? How do we bring back civic participation? I have two options:

Option #1 - Government Exchange Program
It's pretty much a student exchange program except with the entire government. Now, this could be fun if we exchange with Great Britain. A simple glimpse at the parliament and you'll see how much more entertaining their representatives are compared to a day of watching C-SPAN.

However, I'm thinking something a bit more extreme, like Iran. Give us Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs and we'll send the three branches of government. Thus it's burqas, stonings, censorship and human rights violations for us and they can have Diet Coke, Paris Hilton, robotic rap music and Justice Scalia. My guess is that after two years of an Iranian theocracy, we might just have higher civic participation.

Option #2 - Educate Students for Critical Thinking
This one is a bit riskier. It's the idea that we actually teach civics and promote democracy within the school itself. The idea isn't anarchy, but it does involve students having a chance to develop their thinking, express their voice and make observations about their world. It would involve community service and community interviews. It would mean that civics wouldn't be relegated to a one-semester class at the end of high school.

Our current model of education was designed for compliance rather than critical thinking. I'm thinking maybe we could implement a few changes to shift toward students becoming critical thinking citizens. Or not. Maybe we should just try option #1.

photo credit

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

While sitting in a PLC Audit meeting, a teacher sits their quietly for forty minutes.  It's common in a group of mostly white males to unintentionally censor and African-American woman.  Call it white noise.  Sometimes a screaming injustice just sounds like a hum when you're in the power culture.

Finally, though, she ventures out and offers a metaphor.  She says that the real catalyst for our dysfunction has to do with trees.  She says that we have a ton of twigs and we've gotten really good at measuring the twigs and spreading them all around and occasionally even stacking them on one another.  But that's only good for a fire.  There's nothing living.  There is no trunk.  No roots.  No photosynthesis.

"It's okay to say, 'this is math' and look at another part of the tree and say, 'this is science.' It's not okay to yank them all off and then get mad at people that the twigs aren't growing.  We have no deeper philosophy.  We have no roots.  We have no concept that our subjects are part of the same tree."

She's not against trimming trees and analyzing branches so long as we remember the trunk and think about the soil and consider what is growing beneath.

She has summed up so much of what I mean when I say I want to recover what is buried under the industrial carpet.  She gets it and she does it with a metaphor that at first feels really trite but is perhaps the only metaphor that will work.



Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I made the mistake this evening of asking Joel if he was making dirt.

"I'm making dust," he tells me.

"Dirt is made from things that die and from poop and from rocks when they die."

I was struck by the efortlessness of dirt and flowers and orange trees. The blossoms are exploding like crazy with a perfume heavier than old lady perfume in a crowded church . . . but a million times nicer to the olfactory system.

"Consider the orange tree, John.  It's not laboring or spinning."

*     *     *

Christy is with her aunts preparing for a memorial service for her grandfather.  She'll be thinking about death and life and a man who lived well and who, we believe at least, is still alive . . . just far away for awhile.

Christy's grandpa was one of the most self-less, kind-hearted, humble people I've known.  He ended well, spending most of his days not just visiting others, but helping them.  It wasn't that he was moralistic, but that he simply saw a needed and served quietly without asking for so much as a nod or a thank you.

The boys don't completely get it, but Joel sums up my feelings pretty well himself, "Grandaddy died and we'll miss him.  We won't see him for a long, long time.  But God gets to decide when someone dies and I'm okay with that." It's the same thing he said when he watched Prince of Egypt except this time it's not a cartoon.

*      *      *

If there is time and I'm not too sleepy, I'll sneak out tonight. When the boys go to sleep Christy and I might take advantage of a March evening.  It's one of the few nights left when we can walk out barefoot and it's still cool enough that it's refreshing but warm enough that you can wear short sleeves. We'll smell the orange blossoms and we'll stand barefoot on the dirt and if we're lucky we'll remember that none of this was our own doing.

next time, I'm drawing them a picture

As the kids work on their budgets, a boy calls me over, "Mr. Spencer, cell can mean a prison cell and it can mean a cell on a spreadsheet and it can mean a cell phone, right?"

"Right."

"So, is that a homonym or a homophone? I think it's a homophone and she says it's a homonym."

"It's a homonym.  Homophones are words that sound alike, but are spelled different. Can you give me an example of another homonym?"

"Cougar.  I could say, 'There's a cougar in the jungle,' or 'That lady from Murder She Wrote is such a cougar."

Wow, so apparently there's at least one seventh grader who think Angela Lansbury is hot.

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

Minutes after the grant guy leaves, Ms. Jackson pulls me aside in the hallway.  "Hey, I took a look at your proposal and I'm impressed."

"Thanks," I answer awkwardly.

"I corrected the grammar and punctuation - and with a pencil nonetheless."

"I'm impressed. Did you read it?"

"Yeah.  I think you made a mistake, though."

"Which was?"

"You included me as one of the three teachers who will pilot the program."

"Would you be interested?"

She gets real shy and sheepish, turns away for awhile and says, "I . . . I don't know.  I know it's silly, but I don't know about cameras and phonographs and pencils and everything.  I'm used to what I'm doing. I guess I'm actually a little scared."

"You're the best sixth grade teacher we have.  I know that I sound like a politician saying this, but it's true.  And I need your help in how to teach well.  Maybe I can help you with the tech stuff."

"Tom, you're a great teacher and I'm up for this plan."

So, she agrees and adds a bunch of awkward self-deprecating humor.  We're not used to encouraging one another - not real encouragement.  Sure, I might say, "You have a really pretty new mustang.  I bet it has a ton of horsepower" or "Nice mutton chops.  They have a real Chester Arthur look to them."  But no one compliments another teacher on anything deeper.

Perhaps it's that we're the first generation of teachers to work in a factory school and on some level, we all still interact as if we are in one-room school houses.  I'm at home with my students.  I can take their compliments and add my own feedback and yet, move into the hallway and hear a compliment from a teacher and it shakes me up a bit.

I'm not a specialist.  I'm not a trained monkey.

Teaching is one of the few professions left without an Orwellian euphemism.  We aren't Cognitive Development Specialists or Core Curricular Instructional Achievement Specialists.  Alan, a guy I know in that cyber-vapor kind of way tells me that some people have adopted "co-learner," as a phrase and I'm hoping the phrase dies quickly and is buried next to Open Classrooms and eventually Unschooling and perhaps even Cooperative Learning. (I don't mind any of those concepts, but the terminology is annoying)

I am a teacher, which means I am in charge.  It means that I have more knowledge and perhaps even more wisdom than my students.  It does not mean I am more intelligent, but simply further along on the journey.  I have a set of skills, a developed philosophy and a conceptual albeit practical understanding of how people learn.  I am the expert.

I should lead with humility.  I should earn a child's respect.  I need to create situations where students learn information on their own, with a high degree of autonomy.  Less of me teaching directly and more of me watching them learn. In that sense, I am "less of a teacher."  However, I am still the leader.  I am still the one creating the learning situations.  I will listen and at times I will learn from my students.  Yet, I am still the one who develops the curriculum, who models higher level thinking and who creates a climate of trust.

I've been in classrooms where teachers are co-learners.  I've seen what it is like when it is totally horizontal and the teacher is the big buddy.  The result is not a "democratic classroom" so much as it is Lord of the Flies. It's chaotic and confusing, with a grown-up who can legally drink acting like an adolescent. On some level, it feels fun.  Who wouldn't want to be in a room with an Adam Sandler character? However, students don't feel safe and ultimately they don't learn.

Students need a leader.  They need an expert, a mentor, a sage. They need a teacher.

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

Sometimes people say, "tell your story," and that's not what they want to hear.  What they want is, "tell us a bulleted point list of your accomplishments."  What they mean is more "tell us your resume" than "tell us your narrative, rife with conflict, character development and confusing paradoxes."

I missed that idea entirely today at a Very Important Meeting.  One of the judges for a large education grant asked me, in the middle of my class, "Would you share your story of pencil integration?"

"I guess it's a bit of a love story," I explained.

He furrowed his eye brows and stroked his handle-bar mustache.  "I'm not seeing your point entirely."

"You know it's a bit trite, I suppose.  I fell in love with pencils.  I mean, I thought I knew pencils.  I could talk about the feel of a pencil in my hands and the moment of excitement when I first scribble some words. But I think I was in love with the idea of pencils.  I mean, it was the notion of writing and editing my words - the idea of it - not the act itself that I loved."

"I'm not sure I'm understanding it one bit," he answered.

"I do this with all technology, I guess.  I fall in love with it before I know it.  Then I see a dark side and I run.  For me, with pencils it was the notion of the temporary side of pencils that scared me.  It was the question about sloppiness.  I love to write, but I was afraid I would be too casual and my writing would decline."

"And .  . . "

"So, I threw away my pencils for a few months.  Then I decided that I love pencils.  I love the writing and editing process, the shading and smudging of pencil art, the feel of a notebook and the marks on my hand.  I love the power of a temporary medium - the notion that all could be erased at any moment.  'Pencil me in' isn't as permanent as 'having ink done.' Seriously, would anyone ever have a pencil tattoo?"

"I'm not sure where you're getting at."

"See, so much of my life is permanent.  And that's good.  Marriage, family, my profession.  I love the permanence of that. But pencils are constantly changing. And I fell in love with them for the very temporary nature of it all. It was the classic boy meets pencil, boy throws all pencils away and then boy comes back to pencils forever narrative."

The grant man just stared at me blankly and said "thank you," though I don't really think he meant it at all.  I could hear him, perhaps in my head, tell his colleague, "I simply wanted to know how he uses pencils in his classroom. I need to know that he'll use our money wisely."

Someone recently asked me about a section in my book Teaching Unmasked where I argue that less instruction is sometimes better.  I mentioned that the goal should be to move from differentiation to empowerment.  Today's lesson demonstrates a little bit of what I mean.

My First Year: Differentiating
I began by asking groups to defend why budgets were important in the form of a brainstorm. I demonstrated how I create a budget and had students take notes on the process.  I attempted to use multiple intelligences and used some physical manipulatives for those who have a harder time figuring out the concepts.

I then broke the students up into ability-level groups and had each of them work on a small budget together.  Afterward, I gave them a new document and had them fill it out individually.  I leveled it so that the lower students had a document with fewer categories and the highest group had more categories.  The lowest group had no "rationale" category, but the highest group had to fill out a rationale.  When it was done, I showed them how to format it and create a graph.  The entire process took two class periods.

This Year: Empowering
I begin with the question (individually): Why is it important to organize money?  What is the best way to organize it?  I then broke them up into small groups for discussion and most students agreed that a budget would be necessary.  I then asked them to find out how to do a budget  for a scenario I gave them. Most used Google and found the answer to be a spreadsheet.

The conversations were interesting.  Some students discovered that they they had to divide the annual salary by twelve to create a monthly budget.  Others found that they needed to look up the income brackets to find out the taxes.  Groups created brainstorms for budget categories and then some chose to reject or follow different categories.

I set no boundaries in terms of who could share what information, but reminded them that they had to have their own budget based upon their own decisions.  Students argued about whether it is better to have roommates or get a studio apartment.  Other times, they divided up research and had different students find the average amount someone would spend on food or clothing, etc.

I stepped in often and asked questions, such as, "What will you do in an emergency?" or "Will you really be discipline enough to only spend forty dollars a month on entertainment?"  Don't get me wrong, I had to do a few minutes of direct instruction.  For example, I showed students how to use formulas on spreadsheets, but students figured it out on their own. I even busted out the multiple intelligences for a moment when a girl needed help with the concepts of categories (I pulled out some coins and envelopes)

However, I kept my instruction to a minimum.  As a result, most students have a finalized budget and some have already created a graph.  In other words, they have learned all the objectives but at a faster rate.

What I've Noticed as a Result of This Shift:

1. Students work more cooperatively. They share, but they don't seem to copy as often.
2. Students gain all the skills originally desired (budgeting, decision making, graphing) but they are taking ownership of it by developing the formulas, seeking out the information, etc. 
3. The lowest students end up contributing, even if it takes a little longer (for example, a lower level student might find the cost of housing while another student finds the tax brackets and the cost of insurance) 
4. Students end up finding things that I wouldn't have noticed - such as the cost of funerals or the need to save for celebrations
5. It's counter-intuitive, but allowing them to make more decisions actually leads to faster learning.  It's surprisingly more efficient. 

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

Awhile back, I attended the PIE Conference (Pencils Integrated Education) for the second year in a row.  I'm not against conferences.  They provide a platform for connecting and motivating - though not necessarily for training (which is how they market it).  I have my little quirks, where I get uptight about various issues.  Do we really need to advertise the vendors as if walking through a sea of advertisements are an asset rather than a liability?  Do we really need more notebooks?

Still, I find that most speakers are passionate and interesting - which is more than one can expect from a staff development meeting.  I attend a workshop called "Paper for Creative Thinking."  I assume that the workshop will include some science experiments or perhaps some ideas for problem-based learning.  Or maybe creative writing.

Instead, the speaker jumps out in a samurai costume, which, if a little gimmicky, was at least attention-getting.  He then began teaching us how to make origami cranes.  We had little colored papers at our tables and each of attempted to follow the directions.

It was interactive and the directions were great, but I kept expecting something more.  I kept thinking that this would lead into a deeper conception of creativity in the classroom.  Perhaps a discussion?  Instead, we learned about other animals, other textures and other colors.

I overheard a woman ask him how this connected to learning and he responded, "The Japanese students continue to improve in their test scores.  Some day they will beat us in achievement.  Some say it is their curriculum, I think it has to do with origami and its connection to creativity.  A century from now, they will be creating automobiles that are the most reliable in the world."

I left a positive evaluation, despite feeling disappointed.  The speaker tried really hard, had a great level of passion and dressed like a samurai.

Yet, I see that as a trend in the paper world.  I hear it constantly, "In an industrial age, we need developers and thinkers.  We need creative problem solvers."  Yet, I'm not so sure that the best way to become a creative problem-solver is through origami or free time with crayons.  I see this often in the PIE Conference - speakers who want us to abandon the basics in favor of origami or sand box time.

I could be wrong, but here's what I notice with my students:

Creativity happens when people analyze problems, see things from multiple perspectives and develop a solution.  Creativity happens when a student inquires about the world, develops a hypothesis and presents a solution.  Creativity occurs when a student conjures up a story or a poem or takes an unusual stance on a social issue.

In other words, creativity doesn't have to look flashy.  Creativity will happen when students have freedom and autonomy, when they find purpose in what they are doing and when they are not stuck in a system of rewards and punishments.

Joel says, "I want my compass to talk."
"It's impossible."
"But you said it tells you where to go, daddy."
"What I meant is that you can read it."
"But I need it to talk to me in case I'm lost in the forest."
"Joel, if you're ever in the forest, you know who will be with you?"
Micah, from across the hall, "God!"
"That too.  But I'll be with you."

*     *     *

"Are you putting all the darts on the glass door?"
"That's impossible to put all the darts."
"I'm sorry.  Most of the darts."
"Yeah, you were exaggerating. I couldn't put all of the darts, there's like a hundred billion of them."

*     *     *

Micah is playing with the dinosaurs:

Kid Dinosaur says, "Show me how to jump off the couch." 

Daddy Dinosaur answers,"How about you try on your own and if you still need my help, I'll help you."

Kid Dinosaur jumps and says, "I didn't need your help, but thanks for watching." 

My new book Teaching Unmasked is available in the following formats right now:

• As a free eBook (you can download the PDF file)
• On Kindle for $4.00
• In Print for $12
• On a blog
• As a free audio book (I'm half-way through this part)

Description
The Hollywood prototype of Silverscreen Superteachers presents a mythology that the best teachers are those who go into rough areas, make a huge difference and tell their stories in the process. The goal is to make a difference and change the world. After awhile, it becomes a mask that teachers wear - a mask of professionalism, of authority, of knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, masked crusaders are not what children need. They need alter-egos more than superheros - regular people doing great things when they stop trying so hard to do bigger things. What if more is not better? What if changing the world is not a better goal? What if the best way to teach content is by teaching less? What if the best way to lead a classroom is by serving it? What if the solution missing in most of educational reform is not "more" but "less?" This is the main premise of a paradox of humility. It is the notion that learning increases when teaching decreases. It is the idea that teachers who quit trying to change lives are those who end up changing lives. It is the belief that the best way to achieve is by de-emphasizing achievement.

My left-wing progressive friends feel disenchanted with Obama.  The slogans of hope and change have run dry and they're confused by a president who has failed to pass health care reform, continues to pursue war and has bailed-out large corporations rather than helping individuals.  Add NCLB 2.0 and they have no faith in their leader.  In their eyes, he's Bush with a better command of the English language.

My right-wing conservative friends are angry with Obama.  They see him as a man who wants to slowly shift our nation into socialism.  They have a hard time with a president who seems to show compassion on terrorists and yet feels okay with federally funded deaths of unborn children.  They worry about the national debt and the explosion of a Nanny State.

People assume that moderates are pansies without a backbone.  People assume that those who take a middle ground are simply power-hungry pragmatists without any sense of philosophy guiding their actions.  Perhaps they have a point.  But there is a real risk in being a moderate.

Teddy Roosevelt angered the pro-business right-wing of his party when he stood up for conservationism and worker's rights and yet the more socialist-minded populists hated him for being a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Abraham Lincoln angered abolitionists who wanted a politician who would take a stronger stance against slavery and yet he pissed off the south enough that they seceded.

Still, when I think back to my favorite presidents, they were the ones who took a moderate stand.  I still think Calvin Coolidge was one of our top five.  I still think the greatest legacy of George Washington was his ability to reach out to two very distinct factions within the political system.

*     *     *

My friend Dan Schlung is one of the most level-headed moderates that I know. When I first met him, I had a ton of unfounded convictions about life and he has slowly chipped away at the hubris.  I'm not sure where Dan stands politically. He asks more than he speaks.

I'm becoming more moderate as a result of knowing people like Dan. Yet, what I experience is that there is a cost to being the moderate.  In education, people sometimes see me as wishy-washy, because I'll point out that test scores are valuable as a diagnostic tool but not valuable to evaluate an entire school.  This angers some of the anti-testing folks and some of the accountability folks.

I believe in constructivism and student-centered learning.  Yet, I see a time for direct instruction and for modelling.  I see a time when a teacher has to prevent specific steps and times when students need to meander around.  It's both / and.  Point this out though and people sometimes get angry.  I don't even have to be provocative, either.  A calm, Dan-Schlung-like question will illicit a boisterous response. I know this, because I have all too often been the one who gets angry with the moderate.

For all our talk about middle ground and common ground and all other ground-related metaphors, people seem to like clear-cut ideologues.  We like bold actions and black and white categories. Moderates are dangerous.

imagine if we demanded the same performance from football players that we demand from teachers

by Bruce W. (aka Bat Dude)

Historians debate the emergence of superheroes as a dominant force for social justice.  Some argue that the original superheroes were the saints (think folks on candles and not football players). The capes were originally monastic robes and the secrecy began with the belief that one should do good deeds in secret.  Others believe in a more Eastern perspective, suggesting that the original superheroes were an elite class of samurai.

Either way, by the early nineteenth century, superheroes were already working as public servants.  Each superhero fought crime locally, considered to be part of a parochial concept of community.  Unlike law enforcement officials, a superhero used non-violent techniques and served justice rather than the law.  These were the glory days of superheroes - a time when everyone, including our Founding Fathers, donned fitted pants (please don't call them tights) and spoke about democracy and service.

Blame industrialization or urbanization, the shift to the media culture and the emergence of an entertainment industry, but superheroes gradually lost their call to serve the immediate community.  Super Market, the ultimate capitalist hero, led the initial reforms toward privatization.  Superheroes became self-funded entrepreneurs who could sell their story to comic book writers (err. . . "graphic novel" writers).  In our Serve to the Top initiative, superheroes began to earn extra compensation according to the number of crimes they stopped.

Even those who felt that the extrinsic motivators wouldn't work at least admitted that it couldn't hurt.  At the worst, superheroes would ignore the incentives.  At their best, the rewards would spur innovation, competition and hard work.

So I enter that context.  My superpower is subtle.  I'm a super-geek, a man of many pocket protectors.  I'm Steve Jobs with a plastic suit and a fancy car.  My story is uneventful.  Yet, I need to increase market share.  I am no longer a servant of the public, but a franchise of my own making.  It starts out small.  I add a few extra people on my crime reports.  I write eloquent press releases.  It doesn't stop, though.

I begin to invent bad guys - paying a disenfranchised clown to act as a villain.  I fudge the data by paying folks not to report crime.  In the process, I have a television series, little figurines, comic books, a few movies.  I even take on a sidekick just to add drama to the story.  Yet, I do not recognize myself.  I began with a desire to serve and now I'm hiring the crazy cat lady to dress in an S&M costume, because it will look better on film.

I'm not the only one.  Uber-Mann, the great Nietchian superhero, takes steroids to increase his strength.  Arachnid Guy, who began as a photographer-turned-public-servant doctors photographs of himself and sells them to the tabloids so that he'll land a box-office blockbuster.  

People assumed that adding an extrinsic reward would lead to higher results.  They believed that those who followed social norms were unmotivated hippies.  Now, with publicly-traded hero markets, we're in the midst of a huge superhero bubble that is rife with cheating and lying.  We're the Major League Baseball of public servants.  

So, here's what happened when we moved into pay-for-performance:

1. We quit working together and began to sabotage one another.  
2. We began to cheat - at first subtly and then overtly
3. We abandoned quality for mere quantity - so we would ignore "small" crimes and only take the "big" calls
4. We took on the easier tasks -  It's easier to fight a psychotic man pretending to be a goblin than it is to fight the causes of hunger and poverty.
5. With the easier tasks, we quit being innovative.  We became liability managers rather than courageous heroes.  When "failure is not an option," neither is success.
6. Our results were bigger at first, but eventually money became less interesting and so our results diminished.  
7. We became overly specialized and quit trying to learn. So, I became techno-geek and did little to hone my bat-like audio communication skills.  Why waste time on something that won't mean higher financial rewards?
8. We became physically ill. 
9. We spent more and more time on marketing.  When you serve the public, you work in secret.  When you are trying to gain market share, you spend time advertising and doing PR work. 
10. We became bogged down by the paperwork connected to the idea of accountability - in other words, the very structure that was supposed to guarantee accountability became our method of cheating

Bruce W. is a self-made technology gadget manufacturer and part-time superhero. He resides in an upper Manhattan condo as well as a ginormous cave in upper state New York.     

What motivates a superhero?

Is it the desire for fame? A comic book photo op?

Or is the the desire to save the world? 

Or is it maintaining order? 

Or justice?

Or love?

And which of those are intrinsic or extrinsic?

The heart is deceitful, says a sage of the past.  I tend to agree

I'm currently on Chapter Four of Daniel Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I've been participating in a book study group with the Nerdfighteria Misfits.  Here are my thoughts thus far:

Somewhere in my freshmen year of college, I read an essay from C.S. Lewis' God in the Dock.  In this speech to factory workers, he mentions the dangers of automation and the assumption that we are mechanical in nature.  He articulated three basic needs for all work: the need for autonomy, the need for a challenge and the need for meaning.

I found it interesting that a year later, while taking educational psychology, I ran into similar ideas.  Now they had a term: intrinsic motivation.  While many of my classmates scoffed at this concept as being idealistic, it seemed to capture the reality of human relationships better than anything else I read.  The following year, I read Beyond Freedom and Dignity, by Skinner and then Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn.  

I mention all of this, because I had my doubts about Drive.  I assumed that it would confirm what I'd read by C.S. Lewis and by Alfie Kohn and by Richard Florida (Rise of the Creative Class) and Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational - especially the points he makes about market vs. social norms).  On some level, my assumption was right.  However, there is something to the angle of Daniel Pink that really draws me in.  While Kohn tends to focus on children and schooling, Pink has a broader, social lens that I find refreshing.  

I realize that I come across like a know-it-all in pointing out what I read.  I'm just a geek, that's all. My point, though, is this: from every angle, in every arena, people keep suggesting that intrinsic motivation works better than extrinsic motivation.  So, why are we still running schools according to a system that does not work?  In an era where everything has to be "data driven," why are leaders ignoring the data that Pink demonstrates?  

So,  here are a few random insights thus far:

• I love the points he makes about heuristic and algorithmic tasks (incidentally, I had to look up heuristic)
• I like the fact that he admits there are times when extrinsic motivation works - when celebrating is okay, when short-term rewards for boring tasks make sense
• He is right about the "baseline needs" - which is why people are misunderstanding angry teachers like me.  I'm not pissed off about furlough days because I want a "pay for performance" system.  I want a living wage for my family, that's all. 
• I like the experiments he quotes.  I feel like these serve a purpose of being scientific and yet work almost as parables when I try and explain concepts like this to administrators at school.
• I really like his point about autonomy, purpose and mastery
• I find myself being more of a Type I and feeling guilty about it sometimes.  People seem to think I'm lazy, when I'm actually pretty driven.  So, I found myself feeling encouraged about the point that Type I personalities lead to higher long-term results, health and mastery

I'm left with a few questions:

• Are there any paradoxes to motivation? Is there ever a time when it is both/and?
• Some tasks that I have students do are inherently boring.  For example, they have to take the standardized tests.  Do I use an extrinsic motivator and admit that it is a boring task?  Or do I try and find a deeper connection to autonomy, purpose and mastery?

If I was a verb tense, I'd be a past progressive, present imperfect and yearning for a future perfect.

I'm thirty today.  It feels like a milestone, but I'll celebrate it quietly.  I'll probably splurge a little and go to Starbucks and then spend the day with my family.  I'm not much of a party guy. I'd rather meet a friend for a pint than see thirty friends and feel unable to connect the entire time. So, true to my style, I'm blogging on my birthday.

As I look back on this decade, I find it interesting that the achievements mean little in comparison to the journey.  I don't mean to suggest that I am anti-success.  However, the actual "moments of glory" feel a little lackluster.  They are the climax of the story, but the beauty is in the story.  Running a marathon was eventful, but it was the story of training for one that feels memorable.  Getting married was a big event, but it means little compared to marriage. I never knew I could love someone so deeply for so long. Having three children feels eventful, but it is fatherhood itself that is life-changing.

A second thought that I have is that I have fewer convictions, but I believe those convictions more strongly than ever.  I am less dogmatic about how one chooses to take care of the poor (volunteer, money, advocating) but I am convinced it is necessary.  I am less convinced that I have the ultimate solution on immigration reform, but I believe in the cause of the immigrant.  I am no longer so angry about things like tests and grades, but I am more convinced than ever that education should be authentic.  I am a little more humble about how I share my spiritual beliefs, but I am more convinced than ever in the Jesus story.

My third thought is that my journey so far is all about the people involved.  Yes, there are events and there is the overall narrative.  I want to enjoy it.  True, there are a few convictions I hold and I want to feel passionate about those convictions.  Yet, my convictions and my story would be impossible without the people involved.

This can feel a little humbling, because I've been a lousy friend lately.  I need to go hang out with Quinn and with Javi.  I need to remember that a stack of papers is less important than throwing a baseball around with Joel and Micah in the backyard.  I need to remember that, no matter how tired I feel, I always end up enjoying late-night conversations with Christy.