Dear Students,

When I first got the cameras, teachers warned me that students would all of a sudden be "off task."  See, in our profession, we have this magical formula called Time on Task and it helps determine if students will be successful in their education.  I scoffed when I heard that projects and pencils and pictures would all take my students "off task."

However, I watched as you moved off-task.  I saw daydreaming.  I heard conversation that seemed "off task."  I noticed some of you pulling away from your project for awhile.  Was I providing too much freedom?  Was this a failed experiment?  When I corrected you, a few of you commented, "I'm working on this part at home," or "just let me think."  I assumed you were being disrespectful and I reprimanded you.  Verbally.  Publicly.

When I saw the finished products and participated in the conversations, I noticed how deeply you had been thinking.  It hit me: it's not about being "on task" so much as it is "thinking deeply."  It's not about work completion, because learning is not a chore.  You taught me that if students are excited about learning, they will end up working harder.  Yet, if I chide you for not working hard, you will neither work hard nor learn much of anything.

I even had to rethink some of the "fluff stuff."  When I was a student, teachers would yell at me for talking and for joking.  They mocked me for drawing pictures.  Yet my ability to draw and talk and listen and even joke around have made me a better teacher.

So, again, I'm sorry.  I don't mean this to be an excuse for a class of anarchy.  I'm just saying that from now on, I am going to focus less on what you do and more on what you are learning.

Sincerely,

Mr. Johnson

So, I'm at the PIE Conference and I place my slides on the projector. I'm nervous, shaking, literally sweating bullets. Okay, not literally, but figuratively. I assure you that there were no flying bullets in my room. I choose the number six, since it's perfect and I so badly want something about this presentation to be perfect:

Lie #1: We can connect to the world and still feel the grass beneath our feet. I tell the story of our neighborhood and the lack of community that exists as a result of newly emerging new transportation, urbanization and the fact that information is now global (thanks to the telegraph)

Lie #2: What is new is always innovative.  I mention that of novelty versus innovation and the fact that often "innovation" is merely hype (I piss a few people off by mocking the iTablet.  Note to self: some people love their yellow legal paper, even if it won't let you multitask and take papers out like a real notebook)

Lie #3: We can control the effects of technology.  I mention the changes in Europe after the printing press and how wildlife changed as a result of railroads and barbed wire.

Lie #4: Quality isn't lost in compression (and the lie that effeciency means effectiveness): Here, I play the mandolin and then a phonograph and asked them to write down which sounded better.

Lie #5: Better tools equal better learning. I share the idea that often simpler and fewer tools force students to be more creative).

Lie #6: It will save time.  Time will move on whether we "save" it with gadgets or not.

*      *      *

The workshop (which is a bit of a lie, given the fact that no one is building anything) is failing miserably. People are drawing pictures and ignoring me. So, I open it up and say, "What are you thinking?" It becomes a conversation.

"I don't think pen pal networks and telegraphs have changed anything," a teacher begins.

"Me too. If anything, time away forces me to appreciate the grass when I'm back."

"Can't we have it both ways?" a teacher asks.

"I don't think technology makes things better or worse, it just changes things.  So, we don't lose our connection to the land.  We just view it through a new filter."

"If we think critically about technology, we can predict its outcomes," someone adds. "That's a pretty fatalistic mentality."

But then another teacher mentions Prometheus and Pandora and quotes a few lines from a Socratic dialog. We talk about the Tower of Babel and the Sirens and the Roman notion of bread and circus. We talk about how often a pen pal letter will pull us away or how the edgy urban environment can make us feel claustraphobic. As we discuss the ideas, I find myself yearning for something low-tech - perhaps a chalkboard where I could be drawing diagrams or taking notes. I feel a bit like a heretic in a high-tech cathedral.

Finally, a teacher says, "I agree with all of these except number two." We discuss it for awhile, but I am struck by this notion that our frame of reference for wisdom is anything but innnovative. We're going back to Greek and Roman mythology. The teacher, for his part, finally says, "I guess there's nothing new under the sun," quoting a man who lived in an era where the printing press didn't even exist.

"We need to have a shared vision of education in America," I parrot to Paul the Pre-industrial Poet.

"Where did that come from?" 

"A speaker at the PIE Conference mentioned it.  I tend to agree. As long as we fail to agree on the purpose and direction of education, talks of pencils and photos and telegraphs are meaningless."

"I'm not crazy about that idea," Paul mentions.  "If we all share the same vision and goal, it becomes myopic. And when it's myopic, it becomes too easy for those in power to hijack the language and use it to make money." 

"What if the vision is good?"  

"It's not a matter of good.  The issue is this: if you define a vision too loosely it's meaningless.  We could have something like, 'We will create life-long learners' and it sounds pretty, but what does it mean?  Or we could begin with something more specific like, 'Equip all students for the skill sets required for the industrial age.' It ends up missing out on big parts of an education."  

"I see.  I guess it fails to allow for the conflict and the paradox that often lead to a whole education."  

"Exactly. So, we start with, 'Why do we learn?' Historically, we've had three streams in this area: a neo-classical ideal of the well-rounded citizen needed for democracy, a religious idea of education leading to a more moral person and a vocational stream with the notion of learning a trade."  

"Can't we find some overlap?"  

"Maybe.  But I'm thinking there are elements each can bring to the table.  So, I like the apprenticeship model and I like the option of vocational education.  I like a deep philosophical understanding of the world and an appreciation of the liberal arts and a preparation for college.  And, even in a secular place, I like concepts like love and humility that we can take from the spiritual side. It's not overlap I'm looking for, it's diversity of opinion."

"So, can't we agree on the best parts of each of those streams?"

"I don't know.  Maybe we can.  But look: I have listened to too many conversations on the best vision for my race.  Some say DuBois and others say Washington.  I think they both make sense.  We need a talented ten percent.  We need leadership.  But that alone will be merely elitism.  We need economic empowerment and practical skills.  We need to fight injustice but we also need to reform the system from within.  They both have great points and I doubt that you'll get people to agree on both sides."  

I'm changing into working clothes and eavesdropping on to two conversations simultaneously.  "It's not that we hate Mexicans.  We just worry that they're invading our culture," a man says.

His friend responds, "You can't go anywhere without seeing Spanish.  We're losing our language."

I hear another conversation in Spanish, "They hate us.  They don't want us here.  We work harder than them and get paid less and then they're winning in soccer.  They don't even understand the sport."

The issue isn't simply a language barrier.  The bigger issue is a communication barrier.  For all the talk of Twitter and Facebook and instant connections, these strangers in a locker room cannot connect as much out of ideology as language.

*     *     *

When I pick up my kids from the gym child care (Kids Club, technically), it is clearly visible that the language isn't a barrier.  They are playing a game of pick-up basketball with the mini-hoops.   It honestly looks like a multicultural utopia that you see on cheesy corporate stock photographs.  Except it doesn't feel cheesy.  It's profound.

Play together.

If we want to see real immigration reform, we need to eat together and play together and live near one another.  We need to connect, even if it goes beyond language.  We need to laugh.  As long as the "other side" is an unnamed, theoretical entity, we can label and stereotype and make bold statements about lazy Americans or lazy Mexicans.

It's not that the kiddos are colorblind, either.  Someone once said that "little kids aren't colorblind, they're color kind."  While I found it trite at first, I'm now seeing it as profound.

On the way to the car, Joel points out, "Some of the kids talk really funny and one girl, her eyes are so dark it's like it's a giant pupil."  They're blunt about race, sometimes to the point that they hold out their arms and compare skin color.  One of the neighborhood kids once pointed out in shock, "Some white people are darker than some Mexicans," leading to an honest, albeit bizarre, conversation on phenotype that degenerated into a conversation about the prettiest dogs. But at least they connect and they play and the difference don't create borders. I'll take a blunt conversation about race over awkward silence and whispered stereotypes.

*     *     *

I get my students at the age when the school is large enough that the smallest minority groups (in our case black and white) sit together in the cafeteria.  Race is now taboo and the silence is part of what keeps it powerful.  They no longer eat together and slowly they quit playing together.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think the little ones get it.  I've read the sociology books about marginalization and homegenization and the interactions of crowds and the complexity of culture.  I know it's not as simple as holding hands and pretending there's nothing wrong.

Still, I think the answer is to play together and pray together and eat together and live in the same areas and talk, even awkwardly, in our front porches.

I still have easy access to my first memory of deep sea fishing, not because of the fresh salty air or the mist or anything that would resemble an impressionist painting. Etched in my mind is the flapping tail and the blood and the bulging eyes and the squishy fat beneath my fingers as I gutted it.  The memory is powerful and emotional, but not traumatic. I learned a respect of life that day.

*     *     *

A man cuts us off in the parking lot and "mad dogs" Christy.  He's viewing his pickup as an extension of self and our inconvenience to him is a slap in the face. I'm not sure if it's a universal phenomenon or a distinctly American part of our psyche that views a hunk of metal and a combustible engine as an extension of self.  He's compensating for something and I have a hunch it has nothing to do with the size of his privates.  Perhaps it's a compensation for life or for insecurity or for a harsh word from a teacher or a need to prove one's worthiness through a status symbol.

I once though thought that animism was a primitive belief system - and perhaps that's what it is.  But it's not primitive in the sense of being backwards or illogical or superstitious.  It's primitive in terms of being deeply human, connected to our own roots.  Yet, we often animate things like cars and avatars and imaginary status symbols and framed degrees on textured walls. At least a tree is animate to some extent.  At least it lives and breaths and provides life.  Can't say the same about a Fantasy Football score.

So, the same is true of me.  I get to this place where I start to believe that my number of Twitter followers or the persuasion of my speech or whether or not I read the "right book" makes a difference.  I start to believe in the lie that novelty is innovation.  I feel guilty for my mostly dirt backyard as if an emerald lawn is what makes me a man.

*     *     *

I'm terrified of teaching science next year.  I look at the standards and I don't understand them.  I don't get how light can be a particle and a ray.  I don't get the notion that energy exists in everything and that it's transfer is often invisible and that there is more space than there is form and that the make-up of an object has everything to do with things like velocity and chemical compounds.

I don't get biology, but I get a glimpse of it when I watched life come out of nothing and I wept at the sight of a newborn.  I get it when I see my grandfather minutes after his last breath.  I get it when I have to gut a fish or when Christy walks inside, shaken after having to kill a rooster.

So, what is my essential question for science next year:

What is life and death?  

Why does it matter?

I'd love to reach beyond that, but I'm limited to all things under the sun.  I'll be reading the science standards, but I have a hunch that I'll have to read Ecclesiastes a few times as well.

I had my reservations the first time we went to the Pencil Integrated Education (PIE) Conference.  First, people seemed to be more impressed with the technology itself than with learning.  "Hey, it's cutting edge.  It's a set of colored pencils.  It will forever revolutionize education."  Socrates revolutionized education.  The Gutenberg Press revolutionized education.  A tablet instead of a notebook?  Nice upgrade, but not revolutionary.

Then there was the issue of those who mistook PIE to be all about baking.  We did our best to accommodate them, but the questions always felt odd (i.e. "How many recipes will college-ruled paper hold?") We had the other segment of mathematicians who mistook it for a pi conference and wanted to talk about developing theorems and setting up new algorithms. Actually, I think they kept us grounded a bit, preventing us from groupthink.

It never felt like a waste of time, because the true benefit had nothing to do with what I learned.  It was the human connection that mattered.  It was the chance to get to know people who also used pencils rather than slates.  Sometimes when I was on my own, I'd feel so lonely.  I needed the PIE Conference to remind me that I'm not crazy - or that if I'm crazy, it's not because I am insane, but because the system is insane and things like critical thinking come across as insanity in a factory education.

*      *     *

I've noticed something different now.  People seem more interested in learning.  Yes, we have our fair share of people obsessing over just how light a paper tablet is (even if you can't multitasking), but in general I've noticed a few positive paradigm shifts:

1. A focus on the way people learn.  In my first PIE Conference, a presenter would show us how to use a pencil (it's not that difficult, really) and only at the end would we get ideas.  Now, we're planning, connecting, using multiple media all with student learning as the goal. 
2. Connecting to other disciplines - in other words, not seeing Pencil Tech as its own entity, but instead getting into brain research (though I'm still not sure what to think of phrenology), motivation, assessment practices, etc.
3. Openness to some of the criticisms about how technology (from pencils to the telegraph) are changing technology in both positive and negative ways. We're moving from "pencil citizenship" to citizenship.
4. From a "we'll use this in the new industries" mentality to a mindset that embraces life-long learning and progressive education.  Pencils can be used not just to manage a factory, but to create art, poetry, tell stories, advocate for social causes, etc. 
5. A better understanding of the social, political and economic pressures that prevent students from accessing tools.
6. A more philosophical bent.  We're now asking questions like, "Is hard work as important as deep thinking?" or "Should assessment be based upon a product or a cognitive process?"  (or, in the case of the phrenologists, bumpy heads) 
7. A chance to extend beyond the conference.  With the whole PLN concept and the pen pal networks, there is a sense that I get a human side to the people I will interact with through shorthand notes and perhaps via telegraph.  

Joel loves to announce to everybody, "we're home" as we approach the our driveway. He's like a miniature, horribly inaccurate GPS, tending to point out things like cranes (the machines and not the birds) and slug bugs and the billboard with the toothless man. Unlike a real GPS, we can't quiet him down in the event that we are actually lost.

So, when Joel announces, "We're home," Micah will inevitably respond with, "No, we're almost home." He says it like that, with thick, exaggerated italics in his voice. It's odd that the younger one is the one insistent on using precise language.

This will lead to a shouting match. On more than one occasion, the shouting spilled over into physical violence. Thankfully, Brenna now sits in between them and you can't hit someone when a baby is in between you. I think it might be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It has me thinking about language and the way it creates conflict. Both boys are right. Both boys know where we are going. Yet, there is something within everybody that needs to be right and it's especially true in language.

"Mr. Johnson and Mr. Brown, your students never filled out the Migration Packets."

"No, they created independent projects instead," I explain.

"Yes, I saw.  They were cute."

Mr. Brown cuts in, "No, cute is baby bonnets and fluffy bunnies.  What my students created was powerful."

She continues, "But the Migration Packet was more about problem solving."

I argue, "My students had a migration problem that they solved in groups.  It was authentic, connecting ideas of science and social studies and they had to develop a solution . . . "

"Yes, so you solved one problem.  The packet had one hundred problems chosen by some of the best educators that Pencil Island could find. We spent good money on learning tools and you neglected them."

"You bought the wrong tools," Mr. Brown replies.  "I could build a house, but it would be useless if I bought a demolition ball."

I add my thoughts, "My students went deeper into the content and hit every objective you wanted them to hit. The Pencil Packet was a multiple choice marathon."

"I see your point, but it is what it is."  I hate that phrase.  It makes it sound like "what is" cannot change, as if we are reduced to academic fatalism.  "Tell me, will students answer one question in-depth or do multiple choice on our high-stakes test?"

"Multiple choice," we reply in unison.

"And McKinley's Caravan to the Top is all about test scores, right?"

"But . . . "

"And you agreed to do a common pencil-based unit with the rest of the staff."

Mr. Brown corrects her, "Common is shared. Standardized is imposed. Common is horizontal. Standardized is vertical.  I agreed on the objectives that we planned.  I never agreed to standardization, though."

"Look, we even got you photography machines, cameras or whatever they're called, so that you could create motivational PowerSlides for your students.  Yet, you gave dangerous machines to your students."

What she can't see is that the pencil packets were far more dangerous than a camera.

A girl stands before a crowd of parents, the projector flickering a fuzzy image of a bird.  It sharpens as she begins telling a poem of migration, weaving in and out of metaphors, a series of seemingly unrelated pictures tying into the story of movement.  It's our story.  The Guilded Age.  The Age of Industry.  A time of gray smoke stacks and gray graphite  and gray steal trusses and gray trains barreling through our landscape.

She moves to her story, with images of her home and her neighborhood.  It's the story of migration as well.  She cries when she speaks of learning a language and no one knows if it's acting or if it's reality or if maybe it's both.  

*     *     *

The photography project was part of our larger unit on migration.  Mr. Brown and I tied together concepts from math, from science, from literature and from social studies.  Though we often read the same texts and engaged in similar dialog, students chose their own project.  

One boy compared the movement of a child to the movement of an adult - the migration from free movement as a youngster to the restrictive movement of school on up through the factories, where the machines move and the people are confined.  Another student charted the migration of ideas by taking pictures representing various methods of story-telling.  A girl chose the migration of nature - from the animals to the seasons and the cyclical nature of it.  

Some chose to present in a scrapbook.  Others chose slideshows.  Still, others chose to use SmartCharts and present it in a larger poster board.  Some integrated painting or drawing into their photography.  It wasn't so much differentiated instruction as it was empowered instruction.  Students chose not only the concepts but also the media and the presentation methods. 

*     *     *

Mr. Brown stops comments, "Photographs are pretty powerful, huh?"

I answer, "The power was not in the photography.  I'm doubtful that any of my students will become the next Ansel Adams . . ."

"At least not yet! You never know."

"Right. But the novelty of the medium wore off quickly, with each flashing bulb losing its magical luster.  It was replaced, though, with something deeper."

"I know what you mean. I'm getting to where I love technology.  However, I love technology, not for the flashing bulbs or the instant access or the efficiency.  It has to do with the ability to relate and create and communicate.It has to do with mixing media meaningfully so that learning grows deeper."

My students used text-based resources and they used pencils and photography and the parents were moved to tears in the oldest, perhaps most foreign of all media - the voice, orally spoken, memorized and rehearsed and delivered as if it were the first time.

 

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I'm not sure what's the difference between a cliche or an adage or a proverb, but ever since my pre-service classes, I have listened to the advice, "You can't be their friend.  The buddy teacher gets run over."

I get it.  I'm the leader of my classroom and I'm certainly not BFFs with my students.  We don't go to the mall or chill at Rollero or play pick-up games at the park.  When I had a Facebook, I would refuse their requests. I understand the need for acceptable adult-child boundaries.  I also know that they are not in need of another peer who can spout out robotic hip hop. We won't go hang out at the autocratic, self-proclaimed Burger King, where, oddly enough, I can have food my way.

However, I'm not sure that any of the aforementioned activities qualify one as a friend.  My mentor Brad is a friend and yet he was older, had more authority and never felt like a peer.  Similarly, when I was a small group mentor at a faith-based non-profit, I always remained the adult who was "in charge."

Still, I was their friend, because friendship isn't about age or location.  It's a bond that says, "I have your back.  I will be honest with you.  I will stick up for you.  I will help you and I will even be vulnerable enough to ask for your help. We will have fun together, but we'll also grow together and learn together."

So, it has me thinking about my classroom.  I want to play around and joke a bit.  I want to join in on a few pick-up games at lunch. I want to be honest about who I am.  I want to stick up for my students.  I want them to know the room is safe.  I want them to know I'll have their backs.  I'm hoping we'll grow and learn together.

When this happens, they will be able to trust me and I'll get a chance to know them and as a result, I'll know how to teach them more effectively.

Yes, I'll remain the adult.  I'll be an authority figure.  I'll discipline.  But I'll also get a chance to be a friend.  And here's the cool part: I got a e-mail from a former student asking if he could be an intern in my classroom next year.  He'll remain a friend, but now he's a peer.

*     *     *

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The folks at Kodak want me to pass out the cameras and "let kids explore."  I'm imagining plumes of smoke in my room, so I take it cautiously on the instructions.  Yet, first I want students to think philosophically about the new medium.

I ask them to write a plog post answering the question, "What holds more power: words or pictures?"  To my surprise, the students do not all agree.  I assume that with the novelty of the photograph, students would write about picture power.

"A picture can tell you what is empirically real while words can write about reality that we cannot express in a photographic form.  Show me a picture of love.  Show me a picture of hope," a student writes.

One student writes, "Photographs are more permanent.  They are more objective. They capture the truth without having to be reinterpreted.  There are less layers of communication to go through.You can't edit a picture."

Another student disagrees, "Pictures are more emotional and more subjective.  It's because there are no words.  There is no context.  The photographer has deliberately framed a scene, just one scene, and you're stuck with it."

I begin with this concept of more powerful and we more into: Which captures reality better?  Which captures the truth better?  Most students tend to believe that a person can change words, but that pictures are undoctored.  So, I show them the famous Lincoln picture with the body of John Calhoun.  They're floored.

A girl asks, "How do you know what's real if you can just manufacture truth by changing pictures?"

"Isn't that what we do with words?" a boy asks.

"What if all truth is manufactured?  We keep asking 'does the photograph capture truth' and it's not something out there that we capture.  It's something we make up as we go along."

I'm standing in the kitchen scrubbing dry baby food off of a spoon when I hear, "Daddy's our protector. He'll save us. He's like Superman or Jesus, just without any powers."

So my kid thinks Jesus is a superhero. Do I have the heart to tell him that his powers were more in the realm of healing leprosy and less in the realm of flying through the air and x-ray vision? Does he picture Jesus in tight pants and a cape? Come to think of it, a cape does resemble a robe.

My next thought is, "Where did he learn about Superman?" We have no Superman comic books (Or graphic novels, I guess. There's nothing comical about kicking ass in the name of justice.). He's never watched a Superman cartoon or movie, either.

Then the gravity of it hits me. He sees me as his protector. He's sees me as his island of safety. The thought becomes terrifying when I think of the world. I'm scared that I won't come through with my promises. I'm scared that I won't be able to protect him when he's on the play ground. I think of bullies and rumors and the fact that kids can be brutal.

I can't be Superman and it goes beyond simply my aversion to wearing tights. I can't save his day. I can't fight his battles. But I can protect his heart. I can be humble enough to apologize. I can be available to listen and at times I may step in and fight for him.

I can't be Jesus, either. I can't walk on water (unless it's frozen) or heal the blind or replace shopping trips with multiplying bread and fish. But I can be Christ-in-John-Spencer and for all my screw-ups, he might just catch a glimpse of God working through a broken man.

*     *     *

So, it has me thinking about my classroom and the strangers who will walk through the door on the first day.  Not all of them have had a decent protector in their lives.  Some will come to me hating me simply because I am a man.  Some of them will begin with body language that says, "I've learned not to trust."

I can't be Jesus or Superman to them, either. Nor can I be their father. I won't be able to save the world, but I can be a protector. I can protect their voice and their right to speak up for what they care about.  I can protect their freedom to learn.  I can fight against standardization in hopes of creating something real.

The nightmares began last night:  classroom walls tumbling down on me; wood gnomes taking my students hostage, armed only with a Scantron and a set of pencils; students yelling while I talk and exposing my greatest insecurities; standing in front of a crowded room and unable to give directions. I used to believe that my nightmares were somehow a foreshadowing of a gloomy year, but I've come to believe that they represent the fear, the dark side, even a bit of the reality of a school year that I miss when I plan curriculum.

I need the nightmares, because planning can almost be euphoric. I love planning for the next school year.  It's a time of hopeful idealism.  It's my chance to be the artist, creating something better than before.  I realize that some teachers dread the planning because it gets in the way, but I love the fresh start

I used to believe that the curriculum map was a blank slate.  I could simply press "back space" a few times and the canvas was empty again.  I'm slowly beginning to believe that it's more like sculpting.  I have this vague vision in my head of what we need to accomplish, but at first it's overwhelming.  It's a hunk of marble lacking in form or function or personality.

I move around to different areas - motivational ideas, brainstorming, teaching strategies, essential questions.  I start out with the larger concept and fight the desire to picture the details.  My mind wants to hijack the hammer and carve out something that would have fit beautifully for my group of students last year.  I keep it vague, though, antsy and anxious for my next group of students; for that nameless entity of strangers who will form a community with me.

It's the tension, the mystery, the paradox of it all that makes curriculum planning exciting.

*     *     *

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

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

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

"I hate when students underline their books with those ridiculous pencils," a teacher begins.

"Why does it spark such a strong reaction?"

"A page should be fresh each time one reads it.  Let a student start with a pure page, free of the viewpoints of other readers.  Whether you like it or not, reading is a solitary endeavor and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Yes, but reading only became solitary with the advent of the printing press.  Before that, when the resources were scarce, reading had to be social.  So, people shared books, read books aloud, listened intently and spoke together.  It has been a communal endeavor more often than individual."

"But we progressed toward individuality. Students now have access to books through our library.  They share, but it's sharing on an individual level," she answers just like that, with thick italics.

"So, what if pencil is another form of progress?  What if the pencil enables reading to be both social and individual?  What if students can now read a book but also interact with it and share in an asynchronous dialog with past readers?  What if they learn more from a book by the writing in the margins?"

"Or what if the social aspects of reading simply distract?  What if they're too distracted by all forms of social media - from the loud phonograph to the emerging motion picture industry to the pen pal networks and the instant information on the telegraph?  What if learning needs a little loneliness?  What if solitude is good for the mind?"

We're at an impasse, both realizing that arguments are not games to be won, but neither of us humble enough to admit it.  So we wait in silence and I finally ask, "Is that egg salad?  It looks delicious."

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

Every so often, we get a forty pound box of peaches or apples or tomatoes from the co-op.  On the surface, the food choice seems a bit banal, not unlike a 200 count box of granola bars from Costco.  Yet, the lack of choice forces us to be creative.  In the last week, we've made spaghetti for friends, fresh salsa, two large pizzas (my first attempt) and, today, sun-dried tomatoes.

It was the lack of choice that forced us into creativity.

I don't deny that freedom is necessary, but limitations lead to creativity.  It's why anarchists are usually boring.  How creative do you have to be to spray-paint an A on the side of a big-box-store or throw a brick at a G-8 meeting?  Yet, an artist is stuck with a canvas and often has to learn some rules-based fundamentals.  A sculptor is stuck with the structure of the clay and the laws of physics.

A lack of choice reminds me that the answer is not found in better resources.  Sure, I'd love a class set of brand-new iMacs.  I'd love each child to have a video camera.  I'd love to hand-pick my students according to whether they like my teaching style.  And then . . . well, we'll end up with groupthink.  

It has me thinking about education reform. Some want to think outside the box and start from scratch.  I'd love to re-purpose the box, changing it from within the paramaters. It's not that I have an attachment to the box, but that I know a creative answer will come from within the limits. On some level, I think I might be a more creative teacher when I don't have all the resources, all the support, all the agreement I crave.  I'm a better teacher when students are picked at random.

*     *     *

All of these thoughts were sparked by a not-so-free write we had to do in a training.  The teacher began with writing She Was Reading and told us that was the title and we had to write the piece.  Here's what I wrote:

You can View It Here

I'm not against Social Media, but I created this after watching some YouTube videos touting the benefits of social media and how it would connect people from around the world in new and amazing ways.  I don't deny any of that, but there is an opposite perspective that is seldom mentioned - the loneliness, the solitude, the lack of physical presence, the distracting nature of human interaction in a "digital age."

I want to preface the video with two disclaimers.  First, I really appreciate my blog readers.  I'm not anti-tech (see the last one-minute video I created).  I just think we ought to think critically about the ways in which it dehumanizes.  Second, I am a hypocrite in this respect.  As I type this, I'm humming along to a Ben Harper song on my Pandora station, reading my Twitter updates and catching up on blogs.

The neighborhood kids are over and Micah says, "Let's sing the star song."

"Twinkle, Twinkle . . ."  he cuts them off.

"No, it goes like this: Star, star, teach me how to shine.  Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind, cuz I don't understand these people."

"What's it about?" they ask.

"Stars . . . and understanding people."

"Sometimes I look at the stars when things don't make sense," the boy tells Micah.

"Me, too."  He doesn't.  Or maybe he does.  It's hard to tell.  He's three and will generally agree with what's said when he doesn't completely understand that.  (I do the same when people start talking economics or pop culture)

My kids get nursery rhymes and kids songs from Christy.  They get indie and folk tunes from me.  I'm hoping this will mean a balance of age-appropriate fun with some deep-thinking reflection. I want them to go through life dancing and thinking.

*     *     *

So track back to my classroom and I want the same thing.  Let them laugh and play and learn to play with irony.  Let them enjoy the waning years of childhood before an age of mortgages and junk mail and cocktail parties.  But also let them think deeply, questioning their world and their place within it.  Let them dance and think.

First thought on heroes: I'm not against the notion of heroes.  I am, however, against the blind worship of heroes.  I'm against the notion that a specific group is set aside to do the heroic while everyone else watches.

Second thought on heroes: A hero is not someone who simply stands up for the law.  Laws can be cruel and racist.  A hero is not someone who fights for justice defined by their ideology (as this video demonstrates).  A hero is someone who fights for justice but is motivated by love.

I read a disturbing Time Magazine article about how scientists are creating more realistic chicken-flavored soy. The term "scientist" is a misnomer.  They are technologists more than anything.  I wonder how many of them have felt the grass under their feet and felt the desert rays pulsing through their veins.  I wonder how often they simply asked and observed without the need to change.

It's intriguing work, I suppose, and like all technology, it may save a few lives somewhere along the line. (If nothing else, the poultry of this world might thank us)  As I write this, though, I look at our chickens in the backyard.  I'm not sure I want to replace them with soy.  Don't get me wrong, I love a decent soy sauce every once in awhile, but I also like chicken.  Real chicken. The kind that I can throw on a barbecue.

*     *     *  

Students at my school will spend nearly thirty percent of the school year taking multiple choice tests in solitude.  Yet, focusing  on the tests alone is misguided. Teachers can attack the validity and reliability of the test and miss out on the bigger issue of standardization.  The problem with the test is the same problem with the grades and the discipline system and the classroom structure and the straight lines and the cafeteria food and the bells and the tools of motivation.  It isn't an issue of assessment.   It's an issue of how kids learn, why they learn, what they learn, how we define them and how they define themselves.

The problem is the system.  It's built by technologists and social engineers who, in the Gilded Age, decided we'd be better off replacing what was natural with something more mechanical. The factory metaphor went beyond instruction. Everything has been standardized.  Rethinking the system means rethinking every part of school and beginning with the question "Is this real?"

*     *     *

I like computers.  In fact, I will have a nearly paperless classroom next year.  However, I don't see netbooks or tablets or online interaction as the savior of education. As I read pages of brain research yesterday, I found myself disgusted with how often they turned to the implied computer metaphor.  I wondered, after awhile, if they would have written their research differently had they sat in the grass with a pen and a moleskin.

I doubt that Walden Pond could have come out of laptop with Thoreau on a Lazy Boy in a Master Planned Community.  We need more Walden Ponds. Let's find the beauty of lily pads rather we gush about the engineering and beauty of the iPads.  What's made of steel and plastic and silicon might be more durable, but I still wager on the lily pad to be more enduring.  In another couple of decades, which one will be around?

We need to remember our collective fables and folklore and myths.  A simple glimpse at our Babel Babble might remind us that high towers and extra bars don't guarantee better communication.  As childish as it might seem, I'm thinking the education reformers might want to rethink the role of a tortoise in the context of our Run, Rabbit reality.

In the nineteenth century, we let the machines define the reform.  We created a factory of effecient teaching.  If we want to move forward, we need to avoid the trap of defining reform through the lens of a laptop. A century ago, we bought into the rabbit reality, assuming the factory would last.  Are we really jumping toward novelty again instead of finding a foundation that will last? Are we becoming the soy chicken people, simply replacing packets with pads and pods?

What if we looked back in order to look forward?

What if we tried to find what was lost before repaving the industrial factory?

What if the real change can't be defined by ones and zeroes, but by a shift away from behaviorist standardization?

What if we looked not to fancier machines but to a deeper understanding of what makes learning meaningful?

*     *     *

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

Note: I rarely write out a post before I record it as a podcast.  Yet, this time I will only because I want my readers to hear my voice as much as you read it.  Hopefully I'll post the podcast version soon. Incidentally, I hope my friends Quinn and Dan read this.  Both were gifted, though I'm not sure if they ever had the label.

"What was it like to be gifted?" a teacher asks me.

"It felt like being an adult trapped in a child's body.  I felt like an outsider most of the time for this reason. It felt fun and exhilirating to be creative and to think deeply, almost effortlessly.  But then I'd feel bored.  Or guilty that I was learning without having to work.  I'd feel at one moment so normal and then in another moment so confused and lonely."

"I bet you loved learning and hated school," he said.

*     *     *

I was gifted.  There, I said it.  

Even saying that feels strange, because it sounds elitist or overly intellectual.  Somewhere in college, I had adopted the mindset that giftedness was a modernist myth created by the 20th century need to classify and judge and rate one another.  So, I declared it to be false - just like freedom in free markets, democracy in America and other myths that I had discarded.  Now I'm coming to terms with the fact that giftedness is real and it's not about judgment or comparison.  It's about a reality that can't be ignored, not unlike special ed.

I've been going through a gifted training and it's been surprisingly difficult, at times almost painful.  I'm comfortable in my own skin now.  But I'm reliving memories, rehashing stories and I feel like there's this piece of the plot or perhaps setting that I never fully understood.  My parents downplayed the gifted concept because they were scared we would turn impractical.  Both of them had been gifted, my mom a language maven and my dad a math whiz.  Neither were all that geeky and were a little scared of us turning socially awkward.  I don't blame them.  On some level, I really appreciate it.

But I feel like I have this filter that helps make sense out of the confusion of youth.

I'm realizing that I wasn't a serious child, just a thinker.  I wasn't a child who had no sense of humor.  I just preferred adult humor in all its sarcasm and innuendo and wordplay.  I wasn't an angry child, per se, but I had a strong sense of justice in a way that turns out to be really common with gifted children.

I'm realizing that there was nothing wrong with "getting it" the first time.  In college, I never took notes.  I never re-read a textbook for that matter. I never studied for a single test in my life.  People sometimes ask me why I write so many blog posts and that's the thing.  There is no "down time" mentally.  There is no "can't we just have shallow conversation."  It's not how I'm wired.

I'm realizing that I came across as pretentious when I was curious, disrespectful when I was thinking critically, off-the-wall when I was lost in thought.  I'm realizing that my inability to care about grades probably terrified a few teachers who had no idea that if they just got to know me they would have found me tolerable in the least and maybe even pretty interesting, compassionate and kind.

I'm realizing that I wasn't being lazy when I didn't want to go through an insane amount of pre-writing or editing or when I refused to do packets of repetitive algorithms or when I wanted to know when, in real life, a person could find the square root of a negative and create an i (apparently Steve Jobs is all over that one).  I was being myself.  I took a stand and I was more than willing to pay the price for it.

So, back to the question of how it felt to be a gifted child.  It felt confusing, terrifying, exhilirating, fun, boring.  It felt the same way that life felt for all the other students.  Except on some level, I get the sense that I felt it deeper - as if the highs were higher and the lows were lower.  And I felt those emotions in a way that didn't match those around me.  I didn't march to the beat of a different drummer.  It was as if the class was drumming and I was trying to keep cadence with a sitar.

*      *      *

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

I'm a book glutton or a book slut.  You choose the metaphor based upon whether you find reading to be tasty or sexy or both.  Either way, I read through books with reckless abandon, pick apart the ideas, ask a ton questions and then leave the book as a pretty decoration for a shelf.  I am often suckered into the novelty of the moment.  I remember reading The World Is Flat just to be in on the conversation.  I felt like an expert.  It was a rare moment when I could be ahead of the trend.

In high school and college, I never re-read a book. It always felt like a cheap photocopy machine where each re-read became less vibrant and more fuzzy, to the eventual point that I was left with something worthless.  It felt like re-brewing a cup of coffee with the same grounds as the day before.  I had forgotten what it was like as a child to read a book repeatedly, each time with a new idea.  I forgot that it was less like watered-down coffee and more like a fresh cup of coffee with an old friend.

I started re-reading books when I began teaching social studies. I would read Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Aristotle's Ethics and each time come away with a new insight.  I slowed down.  I thought through new concepts that I had missed. I found strands of the narrative buried deeper than I had imagined.

I learned to listen to books.  I learned to talk about them in a communal way.  Reading had always been fast and solitary and temporary.  My students, partly because they struggled as readers, taught me to think while I read. Don't get me wrong, I am still a fan of building fluency.  When I read aloud, I read for a sustained period.  I let them read in alone and in small groups as well.

My students reminded me that reading is a process.  I had been a consumer of books.  They taught me that it's not always what I get out of a book, but what I contribute to a conversation with the book.


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

My wife wrote me a love letter.  For Victorian Times, it was pretty steamy.  Hell, for any time period it was pretty steamy.  She slipped it into my sports coat this morning as I was preparing to ride to work.  My horse was sick, so I had to walk.  Sometimes I wonder if maybe a horseless carriage might end up being best after all.  Technology is predictable.  It's not as if the engine will just shut down out of nowhere. Or maybe I just need a mustang.  (Or does that require a midlife crisis first?)

So, here's the thing: She wrote it out on pencil. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it bothered me.  Pencil is temporary.  Pencil is gray.  Pencil is movement.  Pencil is modern.  The graphite letters leave a soot behind that matches the dull gray cloud in this urban landscape, leaving its ugly erasure marks on the ever-changing steel cage neighborhood that I've learned to call home.

Don't get me wrong, I love the letter.  It's just that the medium didn't fit.

In fact, it's not the letter itself that bothers me.  It's the pencil.  It's in this middle zone of being more permanent than speech and more temporary than ink.  We say "pencil me in," when we want commitment without commitment. Sometimes it seems as if relationships, community, our most sacred social institutions have adopted a "pencil me in" mentality.

We confuse novelty for innovation and it's all at the cost of long-term public memory.  We can't remember anything.  No shared stories when they are spliced up into bits and sent via telegraph.  No common voice when it's compressed into a phonograph.

So, I walk, with letter in hand, to my factory-styled school, questioning if the pencils are even worth it, wondering if we are penciling in a shady world where nothing is temporary and nothing is permanent.

When I worked in an urban non-profit, I believed that the key to being relevant was to understand youth pop culture.  So, I watched MTV and I listened to the local hip hop station (Local is a misnomer here.  Every station is owned by Clear Channel) and I watched the movies that the students watched.  I picked up on the lingo and I would drop references to Nelly's face bandage just to prove I could fit in.  I became a cheap, carbon-copy picture of the students I mentored.  I was a really bad Adam Sandler movie.

Finally, a woman named Selena (who grew up in a working class barrio and now teaches high school English there) pulled me aside and told me, "The most relevant thing you can be is irrelevant.  Be yourself.  Be your book-reading, indie film watching, eloquent-speaking self.  It's what the students need, not because they need to become like you, but because they need a broader world view."

I had defined relevance within a consumerist filter.  If I simply consumed the right media, I would become the right person and I would have a voice in the lives of the students I worked with. I was already white, but I had become white noise.

*     *     * 

"Thank you for teaching my daughter how to use a spreadsheet.  But I think you made the number too high on the budget," a student translates for her mom. "We make it on a thousand dollars a month."

"Wow, that's impressive," I answer.

"Do you know how to use one chicken to make three meals?"

"No."  She then explains how to make each meal, ending with making a decent chicken broth for a soup.

"We have chickens.  We keep the hens for the eggs and we eat the roosters. In Mexico, we were allowed to keep roosters.  People think they are too loud here, but no one says anything about the garbage trucks."

I asked her if she would be a guest speaker in class and she said, "Oh no, I'm not relevant."

If you want financial advice, the best example you have may not be Dave Ramsey.  Go into an immigrant community and watch how a family of five makes it on $1,000 a month without the aid of food stamps or subsidized housing.

*     *     *

Home Economics is a dead class in America.  Feminists on the left wrote it off as a way to keep girls away from pursuing college.  Core curriculum folks on the right described it as irrelevant.  However, before auto shop or engineering or any other vocational programs existed, America chose Home Economics as a high school course.  Realizing in an age of industrialization that people were losing the informal education of home-making, schools began providing it as a class.

We've replaced home economics with Family and Consumer Sciences.  If you ever want to check which subjects the educators find irrelevant, follow the euphemisms.  It's why computer class is now Multimedia Authoring and shop class is called Integrated Technology Education and World History is now Global and International Studies. The change in terminology is significant.  Home economics was about managing a domestic economy.  It was about what one could produce.  It wasn't the science of family and consumerism.

I wonder what would happen if we taught all students, boys and girls, about what it means to be home makers.  By that I mean, how to garden and how to wash clothes and put them up on the line and how to fix a car and how to think critically about advertising.  I wonder what it would mean if they engaged in philosophical discussions about what advertisers are really selling - sex, contentment, family, friends, the good life.  All free.

I wonder what it would mean if they could listen to the white noise and hear how deafening it can become after a morning in the garden.

I almost didn't post it for fear that I might seem like I am seriously mocking Canada and Iowa.  Trust me, I have much more respect for both Canada and Iowa than I do for my own state right now.  Arizona is just way too easy a target.

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

I was shocked by friends who freaked out about the census, meanwhile giving Google and Facebook access to their entire life

I gather only bits and pieces of the report.  Apparently Bill Nye the Science Guy is now an expert reporter for CNN.  I'm at the gym and so the television is muted.  All I hear is the peppy pop playing from the echoing stereo.  Yet, from what I gather, it seems that BP has been calling the shots. It seems as though the Coast Guard has been taking orders from a transnational corporation.  So, the United States, a military superpower known for telling others what to do (we're the Oprah of Western Nations) has been following an oil company.

It's part of a trend that I've noticed.  Banks set the parameters for bailouts. Health insurance companies re-framed the debate regarding public health policy.  Large textbook conglomerates dictate how we will use their materials to judge students and set up pyramids of intervention (I find it a fitting metaphor to choose a method of housing the dead)

I've been rethinking the way that we teach social studies and I'd love some feedback: 

How do we teach social studies in an era when transnational coporations are becoming more powerful than nations? 

What does this say about the way we teach civic engagement? 

Should we rethink the way we teach geography?  

How does this change our approach to economics?

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

A Note from the Author:

I'm a geek.  Part Luddite geek, part techno-geek, but a geek nonetheless.  I grew up with comic books (Or graphic novels.  I suppose there is nothing all that comical about saving the world, aside from the tights.)  I am surprised, then, by how few stories I hear in the realm of educational technology.

Don't get me wrong.  We need lists of new gadgets.  We need theoretical debates.  We need loud calls for transforming the system.  We need TED Talks and conferences and workshops and all of that.  But I know very few people who go out and try educational technology after reading lists or debates.  

We need honest stories, human narratives that delve deeper than the latest gadget.  We need humor and satire and the sometimes insane hurdle teachers face every time they attempt to use new technology.  We need conversations that reflect not simply the ideal "what if" but the reality of what it's like on the inside.  I'm not saying those stories aren't out there.  It's just that the true stories are often so honest, so painful and so bizarre that they are difficult to tell.

I began this blog as an attempt to think through my own story.  I chose the nineteenth century, because it removes me from the constant need for the cutting edge.  That, and I'm wired for metaphor.  I chose fiction, because I have a freedom to tell the truth by not telling the truth.

I almost gave up several times, because there isn't a solid story arc.  But then again, my own journey hasn't fit well within a story arc.  It's been much closer to a postmodern narrative where the twists are found in the subtleties of life.

I'd love to see more story-telling in educational technology.  Not necessarily PR stuff, either.  I'd love to see honest stories about the human side of educational technology.  I am not naturally a story-teller, but I have found that stories, even corny nineteenth-century, semi-satirical ones provoke discussion in a way that prose cannot. This blog is much more popular than I ever thought it would be.  I have a hunch it has to do with the narrative format more than anything else.  

"It's an issue of equity, Tom," explains the district office representative.

"I'm not seeing where you are coming from."

"You allow students to bring in pencils from home.  Students who have inferior pencils will feel inferior.  We need everyone on the same page," he adds.

"On the same page.  I'm curious, do you use that reasoning with all learning items or just pencils?  I mean, you said the same page and it had me thinking about reading.  My students aren't on the same page.  They're not even on the same book.  And get this, some of them actually bring in books from home."

"That's different.  You don't require them to bring in books from home."

"But I do require them to read and some of them use the library, others borrow from friends and still others bring in books from home.  To me, that's the real issue of equity.  Does every child have access to books?"

"Yes, but pencils are used in the same learning activity.  So, really, it is not the same thing."

"Can I ask a question?"

"You just did," he adds with a chuckle.  Oh, the hilarity of the district office! Why, I'm hoping they start an improv group soon.  Really, I am.
to
"Do you require all students to eat the cafeteria food?"

"No, many of them bring lunch from home."

"And it's not all the same food?  What if Charles gets jealous of Gertrude's lunch?"

He says nothing.  "What about slide rules?  Not every child brings the same slide rule.  Is that an issue of equity, too?"

"Kids will pick on other students who have cheap pencils.  It's a reality you can't see, Mr. Johnson."

"When I walk on campus, I see students tease one another about the clothes they wear.  That seems to be a bigger status symbol.  Yet, parents would be up in arms if we required every child to wear the same brand of clothes."

"Look, we'll look into it.  Right now we don't have a procedure for assessing this issue, so I'm going to have to  stick with the rule about banning pencils.  We just don't know all of the liability involved."

So, we're left with rules over reason, uniformity over equality and liability management over leadership.  Take note of this, politicians and pundits and parents: the real issue isn't the access to pencils.  The real issue is the lack of access to innovation.

I'm not a fan of future predictions regarding technology, typically because the prognosticators lack the understanding of what drives us as humans.  We want convenience.  We want connections.  We also want safety and privacy.  We want things that meet real needs.  And when we don't have real needs, we want marketers to make us feel like we have real needs.

Flying cars won't happen, because tons of shrapnel from the sky is actually pretty dangerous.  Sci Fi got it all wrong in assuming we would want watch-phones or phones the size of a flat screen tv.  It's not that convenient or that private.  All the talk of computers replacing television never made much sense, either.  TV is convenient and easy and is part of our human need for narrative (albeit narratives that are often connected to B-list celebrities).

Still, I recognize that the tech world I inhabited as a child is not the world my children will inhabit.  It makes me both excited an terrified.

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

Every once in awhile, I'll think about a person on Twitter and wonder what happened.  Did the person quit Twitter or simply quit following me?  Or did I really piss the person off and end up being blocked?  Or I'll look at an old blog post and I'll see comments and realize that there are a number of people who have lost interest in this blog (trust me, the novelty wears off pretty quickly -- I'm not very novel). Or they just got busy.  It happens to every blogger. I'm not offended, just intrigued.

There's no closure online.  

Often times, there isn't much closure in life, either.  Neighbors move away without saying much.  People get angry and leave church and forget that they're leaving a community of people as well.  Friends grow distant when we lose our point of contact.  It doesn't help that I'm not a great connector and if it takes too long, you get into that awkward place of "still a friend but not an acquaintance."

Sometimes life can look too much like a choppy postmodern narrative - like Memento or some confusing black and white flick you see in an art house when you want to tell your trendy hipster friends just how indie a film critic you can be. Life can be all dialog, with the conflict so subtle that one misses it when a character goes off-screen.  Often, I yearn for a resolution.

One of the reasons I love teaching is the sense of closure I get at the end of the year.  On Friday, I had no students.  Elective teachers were deemed "hall monitors," which meant I could focus on having a decent goodbye.  For some students, it was awkward.  They hand me a yearbook and say nothing, knowing that the middle school value system makes teacher signatures hopelessly uncool.  For others, it's a time to retell stories.  A few students offer to clean the classroom.  A few more ask to have a picture taken in front of the mural.  One of the advantages of being hopeless un-photogenic is that students feel okay if they don't look perfect.  

Oddly enough, a decent goodbye opens the door for future interactions.  It settles things so that students can come back and visit my classroom when they have their quinseneras or when they graduate.  It allows them the permission to be done with class, but still send an e-mail to invite their teachers to school plays and track meets and choir performances.

*     *     *

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

"How's the phone working?" Mrs. Jackson asks.

"It's working out really well.  I mean, there are moments I didn't anticipate.  Some kids get scared if they are talking and the room is silent and then others have a hard time hearing if the class is even remotely engaged in task that requires any noise.  I hadn't thought of the human side of it."

"That makes sense.  But is it a tool you think you will use in the future."

"I think so.  Here's the thing though: the power isn't in the tool.  The power is in the problem-solving.  See, they're doing a project where they look at an issue in our community.  They work with students in another school across town and they create a solution to the problem.  Part of the research on the solution is actually going out and doing community service."

"Very nice, but what happens when they don't create a solution?"

I get really sarcastic here, "Well, it shows up on the rubric.  I have a whole category for it.  The boxes are really cute.  I made it myself using paper and pencil and . . . "

"No, what happens if there isn't a solution?"

"I'm not sure where you're coming from."

"What if the solution is a mystery or a paradox?  What if it has no solution?  Or if the solution causes more damage?"

"I didn't think about that."

"I just fear that you're beginning with the wrong question.  Instead of asking them why they love their community or how they would serve it, you are starting with how they would change it."

I get really quiet here, feeling ashamed of how excited I had felt just minutes before.

"Tom, I'm stealing your idea and doing it in my classroom, too."

"What about all the questions you just asked me?"

"I'll ask my students the same questions.  I want critical thinkers and problem-solvers.  I also want students who are humble and recognize complexity and mystery.  This is the kind of project where I can bring in both ideas."

Brenna learned to crawl despite the lack of standards, objectives, direct instruction, word walls, language learning goals or curriculum maps. The process wasn't pretty.  She fell and she cried and she slipped quite a few times.  In other words, she failed every bench mark test available.

Micah is learning phonemic awareness despite the lack of "wows" and stickers and free pizza coupons for every letter he sounds out correctly. There were moments when I encouraged him to explore the letters around him, but mostly he was just intrigued by the mystery of language.

Joel took out his magnifying glass yesterday and watched a spider catch a bug (He reminded me to call it an "insect" instead of a bug.  I'm already being corrected for my lack of language clarity by a five year old).  He didn't fill out a worksheet or a packet.  He just watched and asked a lot of questions.

*     *     *

It begins with a talk about chickens - about the way children watch chickens and what they learn about the life cycle through the process. We talk about canning and jam-making and the math we teach our children in the process.

"It's as if the system is designed to create consumers," she mentions almost timdly, knowing that there is an unspoken war between "her people" and "my people."  After all, she is a home-school mom who constantly has to prove to others that she is not an insane radical and I'm a public school teacher who has to prove that I am not out to indoctrinate children and pimp out their minds to the highest bidder.

"It seems as though the focus of public school seems to be economics. Learning has to go beyond that."

"I consider home-schooling to be a form of economics.  It's just that the economics they will learn won't be consumer-driven.  They'll learn to plant and cook and fix a car.  Don't get me wrong, I plan to teach them an education that will prepare them for college as well.  But it will happen within a specific context." 

*     *     *

I am not a proponent of home schooling or unschooling, but I'm not against both models, either.  I plan for my children to go to public school, but I also plan to undo some of their schooling when I have them in the evenings and the weekends and the summer.  Call them part-time schooled and part-time unschooled. I see the war between the two sides to be harmful to true dialog that could be occurring. I have a hunch that good teachers and good home school parents both have really similar beliefs regarding student learning.

My thought is that home schoolers and public schoolers don't have to be enemies.  We could learn from one another.

Home-schoolers can remind teachers:

• Learning happens within a context.  I am impressed by some of my home-schooling friends who find ways to teach math, science, reading and writing all within the reality of everyday life.
• Children should have interaction with multiple age groups
• The classroom should go beyond the walls of the immediate building.  It needs to be real and reality cannot be boxed-in.
• Teaching is a relational endeavor.  Parents know their children better than teachers.
• Often children will discover learning naturally without being prompted

Teachers can remind home-schoolers:

• There is some solid research regarding certain pedagogy.  
• Teachers often have a certain skill set regarding what is developmentally appropriate for a set age group.
• Good teachers know how to balance a rigorous curriculum with the need for play. Home schoolers often share this goal and could learn from these types of teachers
• Teachers can help parents remember that it takes a team of people to educate a child.  There is a value in different viewpoints and personalities.
• Decent schools have a pulse on the needs of the larger, democratic society.  A good teacher will be an expert on how to get a particular age group of kids to think critically.

*     *     *

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

two things I used to judge - rich people and puns

1. Music Snobbery:. I've always liked quality music.  However, I hated musical snobbery. So, even if I listened to Pedro the Lion, I told everyone I liked "grocery store music."  (Which was half-true.  I enjoyed Carly Simon and Lionel Richie).  What I've realized about musical snobbery is that it is often not snobbery at all, but simply the product of passion and knowledge. 
2. Self-Publishing: At one time, I thought self-publishing was for losers. I was even careful to use the term "vanity publisher" to describe it.  However, I have read many self-published books and have even self-published two of my own.
3. Wealth: I once had this real Marxist, anti-wealth view of the world.  I was quick to point out how unfair it is that the poor pay for crimes worse than the rich, that they often work more labor-intensive jobs and that they are blamed for their situation.  All of that is true.  However, if I want to be honest, I am rich on a global spectrum and many of the "wealthy" are more generous with what they have than I am with my own income.
4. Parents Who Yell: I was a dad for two days when I yelled for the first time.  I cried for the next twenty minutes.  
5. Evangelical Christianity: Yes, the bumper stickers and t-shirts are annoying, but I have to admit that my view of the Bible is pretty orthodox.
6. Curriculum Maps: After seeing the amount of turn-over in our schools, I no longer view curriculum maps as evil plots to ruin teacher autonomy.  They provide a sense of continuity for students who might not know from month-to-month where they will be.  (Admittedly I am still not a fan of them)
7. Country Music: Admittedly, it is not my favorite genre. However, I have to admit that many of country songs are clever and point toward things I actually value.  Like family.  And beer. 
8. Curriculum Specialists: In the past, I thought the job was superfluous, a sort-of Office Space transplant added to a public vocation.  However, this year I felt like I had instant access to solid wisdom regarding teaching reading.
9. Puns: Still not as good as cynical humor or satire, but at times a decent pun can work well. 
10. Science: It's not all about Hadron Colliders.  It's about observing, noticing, smelling and touching and seeing with your eyes open.  
11. Big Trucks: I used to think it was all about compensation.  However, my brother-in-law has a big work truck and David is one of the coolest people I know.  
12. Third Parties (in Politics): They aren't spoilers.  The reality is that our system is already spoiled.  If anything, they might offer some vitality. 

He laments to us when it's all over, "Is it supposed to feel this way? I'm older, but I don't feel any different."

*      *      *

My wife's brother asks, "Micah, how much do you weigh?"
"Whenever people say hello to me."

*      *      *

Joel got a microscope for his birthday. "Now I can see the unseen," he tells me. Sorry kid, but you already do. Sometimes better than me.

*     *     *

"Clowns are happy because they are always smiling," Joel explains.
"Clowns are scary, because their smiles aren't real," Micah answers.
"If you smile for pretend and after awhile you'll feel happy," Joel replies.