As my school shifts toward one-to-one pencil to student ratio, a group of teachers come to me with their concerns about a lack of decent pencil skills. I hadn't predicted this. Students are snapping pencils and saying they just don't know how to use them.  Others have turned papers into projectiles.  Still others have turned to playing violent games such as Hang Man.

"I had two students forget to save their documents," a teacher mentions.

"Could that be an issue of their age rather than a pencil skill? I mean, a hundred years from now we'll probably still have students who forget to put their names on their papers." I ask.

"Another one couldn't figure out how to put his documents in a folder. I have others who just leave every document on the desk top. Aren't they supposed to be Pencil Natives?"

"I heard that's just a myth," another teacher adds.  "Turns out the 'Pencil Native' generation isn't all that technologically savvy at all.  It's just hype created by pencil pushers hell bent on ruining slate-based learning." I know the study she's referring to and it seems to prove little more than what I already experience: students still have gaps in their ability to use pencils in meaningful ways.

The gripe fest continues until I ask the teacher, "What is their native language?"

"English," a teacher adds.  "Some of them Italian and German, but mostly English."

"And do you still have to teach them grammar and spelling?"

"Yeah."

"You don't say?  You mean they don't pop out of the womb diagramming sentences?"

"No, but . . ."

"And what is their native country?"

"Most of them are from here."

"Do we still teach civics?  I mean, if they are American, they should know all about democracy and the bicameral legislature and the writ of habeas corpus."


"Oh no, we still have to teach them that."

"Could it be that one's status as a native has more to do with comfort, culture and values and less to do with skills?  When I look at my students, they are comfortable with pencils.  They identity with the modernist, sketchy-gray worldview.  They understand conceptually the notion of portable information via the telegraph and telephone.  It doesn't mean they are information engineers with perfect penmanship, however."

Natives still need to learn the language.  They need to learn to think critically and become better citizens.  Pointing out their lack of skills doesn't take away their social context or generational identity. Instead, it suggests what we already know: that we need to teach students to think deeply about the tools they use and like any good citizen, I want them to think about how tools are shaping their reality, their relationships and their beliefs about love and truth.  I want them to criticize their pencil nation and determine when it is the right time to abandon the values of their techno world and recover what is buried in the earth under the industrial carpet of their factory school.

Last night I made salsa.  It's my third or fourth batch this summer.  There's no recipe, really.  It's not very scientific.  Or maybe it is in the purest sense - inquiry, hypothesis, test it out, draw a conclusion, but most importantly observe.  Taste it, smell it, feel the texture and modify.  I have no grade, no pressure and no audience expecting perfection.

What I have are a ton of tomatoes, some onions and spices in my back yard.  The peppers are starting to grow bigger and soon I'll have those.  I'm not a chef or a "foodie," but here's how I make it: I chop the tomatoes and place them in a bowl with a small amount of olive oil and a few table spoons of balsamic vinegar.  I dice some garlic and let the flavors marinate for the first half of the day.

At night I chop up dehydrated peppers, add half a thing of cilantro (is it called a bunch?) from our neighbor's house and cook it all up in a pot. In another pan, I sautee onions with some garlic, a little cilantro and some basil.  Once the onions are halfway sauteed, I add sauce from the tomatoes (it keeps the salsa from being too runny and flavors the onions like the salsa).  When it's all finished, I use the hand mixer to blend the ingredients with the last half of the cilantro.

*     *     *

So I read a Time Magazine article about summer vacation.  I should know better than to read it.  Every time they cover education, they get it all wrong (glorifying the Dictator of DC, promoting Bill Gates as the education philanthropist and praising Race to the Top for increasing teacher quality). The idea here is that the summer vacation leads to a backslide in skills.

It sounds true on first glimpse.  In fact, I don't deny that they have decent data to back up their claims.  However, it fails for two reasons.  First, it neglects the salsa factor.  Students learn to think well over the summer.  Yes, some of them spend hours watching television.  However, many of them learn problem-solving skills working on cars, learn about science by going camping and learn to love reading by reading annoying emo vampire books.

What the summer provides is freedom to learn.  It provides a chance to experiment without boundaries. Every year, when I ask students to write about their summer, I find that they were learning concepts and skills that are sorely missed during the school year. I wish every profession gave people the opportunity to experience a summer sabbatical, where they could pursue their own learning and reconnect with friends and family.  (Yes, I know there is a dark side to adolescent free time. I'm not pretending it's always a rosy picture.)

My second observation is that it takes only a week for students to catch up.  Yes, they forget about the last unit they learned in math.  However, do a one-week review and they are back on track.  True, they are a little rusty in reading, but give them some chances to read silently for an extended period of time and they'll regain their fluency and comprehension.

The bottom line is that I don't buy it. Give them a summer off or a week off and the same thing will be true.  Students will have to experience an adjustment time when they come back.  It's the same thing that happens to folks in the "real world" after they take a two-week vacation and adjust from Cabo to cubicle.

Last night, I had a long Skype conversation with Gregory Hill, a fellow geek, artist, believer in immigrant rights and teacher.  He's a genius and I recommend you check out his latest post on Cooperative Catalyst. Though we talked for awhile about Linux, our conversation often trailed back to the human side of life - about family, students, gardening, social justice and beer. Although he understands the intricate details of computer code, he would rather talk about how he brews his own IPA.

A few days earlier, my wife and I had a long conversation with Russ and Becky Goerend, talking mostly about gardening and parenting.  Though we could have gone into details about A HUNDRED KILLER APPS THAT WILL REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR LIFE, we found ourselves marveling about the mystery of life. Again, the conversation felt earthy.

It seems that anyone who really takes the time to get to know the complexity of technology will see both how it humanizes and dehumanizes.  Any true technophile who takes the time to think will become at least part Luddite.

I'm noticing this trend that I once called the "vinyl paradox."  It's the notion that the generation first raised on technology is going backward, not out of nostalgia, but in order to move forward.  Watch a dialog on education reform and you'll notice talks of mentoring and apprenticeship - in other words, finding ideas from the past that are more relevant now than ever.  Watch how often folks my age cringe at the church PowerPoint and yearn for candles and incense and a simple stained-glass window.

It's not that we leave the techno-world for good.  It's more like we take the pill and then go back to the Matrix with the knowledge that it's still pretend.  We see the Brave New World for what it is, but unlike the protagonist, we don't attempt to go savage so much as seek out a third way, a paradox of two extremes rather than a moderate middle. So Christy tends to the chickens and crochets and then takes a picture with her iPhone and writes a blog post once a week.

If we are, indeed, digital natives, we are also terrestrial immigrants, search for soil, rediscovering the wonders of bare feet.  If we are "hooked" on our smart phones, we are finding intelligence in the complexity of our back yards, realizing that the touch of a tomato is more profound than any touch screen.

*     *     *

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

So, I'm in my senior year of college when Brad the Philosopher asks me about my online portfolio.

"It's not just a portfolio.  It's also a place where I will put all my resources online.  I'll post every lesson plan so that I can go back and edit to refine my craft."

He cringes, "You want to teach the same lessons each year?"

"No, but I want to refine them year after year.  I want the lessons to be like a work of art."

"So, just to adopt your art metaphor, what is the art of teaching: the act of teaching or the plans for teaching?"

"I guess the act of teaching."

"And the context changes each year."

"Correct.  So, would an artist paint the same picture year after year?"

"He would if he's Thomas Kincaid."

"Exactly, which doesn't really make him much of an artist, right?"

"And an author wouldn't re-write a completed novel year after year and just change the character and setting."

"He would if he was John Grisham."

"Exactly, which doesn't make him much of a writer, right?"

"So, what do you do with your lesson plans?"

"I burn them . . . Okay, I just said that to sound more dramatic.  I recycle them.  But I get them out of my sight."

"What if they were really good?"

"Then I might adopt some ideas from the really good ones.  But here's a thought:  sometimes what seems really good at the time turns out to be less enduring than you would think.  If it's really memorable, I'll remember it."

So, it's eight years later and I still heed his advice.  I don't save my lesson plans - not the physical copies or electronic copies.  Nothing.  I save some resources (reading materials, for example) but I don't even save my project papers.  I want an empty canvas every year.  

*     *     *

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

I plan to release Pencil Me In, a book based upon this blog, on September 1, 2010.  The book will have much more of a long-lasting narrative structure and will also span 3 years instead of sticking with just 1897.  It's been a confusing, fun and exciting process so far.  My goal is to have the book ready on September 1st as an eBook, physical book and MP3 download.

I've enjoyed the process of working with a story arc.  It's helped me to think through my own journey of educational technology as well. One area of weakness for me is revising.  If you are interesting in fixing grammar, spelling and syntax mistakes, please e-mail me at socialvoice@gmail.com or send me a message on twitter @johntspencer.  I would love some help in this area.

So if you like this blog, spread the news about the book.  I have no PR and I know that word of mouth is what will make this thing work.

I'm sitting on the front porch, trying to construct a decent plog.  My hand wanders toward doodling and I end up sketching fictional characters.  I'm yearning for human conversation when my wife comes home and mentions, "We met a wonderful lady at the park.  I just felt like I had this connection with her."  

"Why is that?"  

"I had to correct your daughter," she says, knowing that it irritates me when she says "your" to describe the moments our daughter gets into trouble.  Why am I the rebel?  

"She had real empathy when I talked about the difficulty involved in having to discipline.  It turns out one of her sons is special needs and she feels a stronger sense of guilt every time she gets angry.  We talked about authority and authenticity.  It was strange to have this great conversation with a total stranger."  

"I know what you mean," I say.  Truth is I'm more introverted and I doubt that I would ever speak to a stranger in the park.  

"It turns out that she works at your school.  Her name is Eunice, I think."  

"Really tall, red hair?"  

"Nope.  It might be Mildred.  Do you have a Mildred?"  

"With the big mole on her nose?"  

"No, maybe it's not Mildred.  I know, it's Gertrude." 

"You mean Gertrude the Enemy of All Things Tom Johnson Wants to Accompilish?"  

"That's her?" 

"Yep." 

"But she seemed so nice.  She even talked about how hard it is to do her job when there's so much pressure from above to get the teachers on the same track."  

It has me thinking about enemies.  Perhaps my wife is right.  Gertrude at the Park might be a different person than Gertrude the Ruiner of Plans.  Or perhaps she is he same person, but just complicated.  Maybe she's scared.  Maybe she's stressed by dealing with a special needs kid.  Maybe she's human after all.  

Perhaps Gertrude is not the enemy of pencil-based innovation.  Perhaps the true enemy is an ideology of articiality.  Or maybe the enemy is a much more visceral fear - a fear that our students will be behind on the global pissing contest.  Or maybe it's a system and a structure that churns out robotic students prepared for the factories.  Whatever the enemy is, I'm becoming convinced that it is not an individual or a person.  In fact, it is the opposite.  The enemy isn't human.  The enemy is a process of dehumanization.

While I was at a curriculum planning meeting, Micah had a rough day, including the "leave me alone" and "I hate you" phrases.  He's a sensitive, though not necessarily angry, child and he's not the type that you can pull into time-out and have a conversation with in the moment.  However, he processes his actions and wants to talk about it later in the day.

I know that he's also a little scared right now.  Yesterday when I arrived home, he said "You and Joel will be leaving me all day." He said it just like that, italics and all, and asked me to hold him.

So last night I knew he needed to talk about his day, but it had to be in a safe way.  When I gently asked him about lying, he said, "leave me alone" and got defensive. So, I told him a Manny the Monkey story when Manny broke something and lied.  It became a safe time for him to talk about Manny being embarressed and scared even though he knew that Manny's mom still loved him.

*     *     *

I'm re-reading Saul Bellow right now.  I first read him in eighth grade after listening to references to Mr. Henderson in the Counting Crows song "Rain King."  I remember typing it into a search engine about five years BG (Before Google) - was it Alta Vista?  There were something around twenty pages about it and I thought the machine was magic.`

I ended up asking the librarian if she had a copy of a Saul Bellow book and she laughed at me, but promised that she would let me borrow a copy of hers.  I had always seen librarians as secular nuns - a little odd, good heart, but also a little uptight.  Something about memorizing the Dewey Decimal System makes you a little less approachable.

What I found in Bellow's work were flawed characters who I grew to love, not because there is redemption, but because I got to know them intimately.  I experienced in his short stories the power of rehearsal in the way we process our human experience.  "Application" doesn't have to be something that occurs when a book ends and we try and justify its merit.  It's what happens when the book spurs us toward thought.

The power of story is that it creates a safe way for people to think about life. Where philosophical dialog often forces people to go too deep too fast, a story creates a safe place to ask hard questions and think well about life.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fan of philosophical dialog.  It's just that in my classroom and with my own kids I am realizing that sometimes what they really need is a story.

I'm writing this blog post as a satire of how certain mentors and teachers approach a working class environment.  Honestly, I had this mentality ten years ago when I began at Neighborhood Ministries and I've watched it happen with new teachers who work at my school.  I figured I would turn the tables by doing a satire using the middle class instead.  It is, admittedly, an uncomfortable post and I suspect I'll lose a few followers and subscribers as a result:

"I'm part of this new program called Mentoring the Middle.  It allows those of us in the upper class to mentor middle class students so that we can pull them up toward a life of leisure.  I saw a PowerPoint of middle class kids eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and I'll tell you it nearly moved me to tears."

"I don't know how you can work with those kids.  They seem so hard.  I've seen a few of them wander over into our mall and they are so loud and disrespectful."

"It's not their fault. They're just underprivileged.  Some of them have never even been out of the country."

"Where do they vacation?"

"At Disneyland."

"Truly tragic."

"They have hedges but no hedge funds.  And get this, you know who trims their hedges?"

"A Latino?"

"Nope, they do! They also cook for themselves.  How in the world can you expect them to get out of the middle class if they don't even know how to manage hired help?"

"What if they are content with their place in life?"

"Sadly, some of them are.  So, I help them to see the bigger picture.  I help them to see what it would be like to attend an Ivy League college.  They just need to see what a life of wealth is like. Today I'm taking my mentee to the country club."

"What will his parents say?"

"Oh, who knows?  You know those lazy middle class parents, always working or watching television.  Probably won't care."

I've been listening to the rare songs of Sufjan Stevens while I wait for the boys to return home from a birthday party.  I'm amazed that he can produce so much music so quickly and that it keeps getting better.  I listen to Majesty Snowbird and Woman at the Well and Damascus.  Each song has that Sufjan sound, but the instrumentation and texture (for lack of a better word) varies.

I used to believe that the creativity was a limited commodity.  I thought that a good band would use up the good stuff on a first album.  Or that a guy like JD Salinger would throw his creativity into nine short stories, a few longer stories and a novel and then that was it.  I believed that the problem with Paul McCartney wasn't so much that he needed John Lennon to be his long-haired, angry Yang, but that he had used up his creative allotment.

I watched the same thing happen with bloggers.  Creative, insightful bloggers would burnout and I would think, "It was great while it lasted, but I guess that's about as much creativity as they have in them."  I told myself at the end of high school that I had nothing new to paint, so I set down my canvas. I decided I was done with poetry because I had used up whatever amount of poetic thoughts I had.  When I first started blogging I told myself this process would happen again in blogging.  I'd last a year and quit, realizing that I had nothing more to contribute to the imaginary global education dialog.

*      *      *

I don't buy into this theory anymore.  I don't believe that creativity happens in limited quantity.  Instead, I think people get scared.  They accomplish something really creative and then they fear that they can't duplicate it again.

Or they try too hard to be creative, which leads to a lack of creativity.  They forget that the creativity wasn't born out of a desire to do something "different" as much as it was the desire to do something meaningful.

Or they begin to listen to too many people and quit being courageous with their art form.  If they catch a glimpse of fame or slight recognition, they allow extrinsic motivation to slip in and work like cancer through their passion.

Or they think about athletes who get washed up and they decide to quit while they are on top before they look like Jerry Rice in his Raiders days.

Or they attribute creativity to luck, as if their hard work at a specific craft was merely an artsy version of roulette. Often this looks like laziness. Yet, I've never met a truly lazy person.  Behind the thin varnish of a bad habit is a deep, painful fear of failure of success that will eventually fizzle.  So people quit hoping and quit trying.

*     *     *

It's not a commodity.  It doesn't run out.  As long as there is a deeper meaning to teaching there is a need for creativity. If anything, it's like a muscle.  When people have the creative impulse and try to save it and manage it like a commodity, they grow less creative and become guarded, which turns to less creativity.  It's a cycle.  But exercise creativity and it expands rather than diminishing.

So I don't buy it when someone says that a veteran teacher can't be creative or is too "stuck in his or her ways."  I don't buy it when someone says "I used to be passionate about teaching, but I grew out of that. I'm just not that creative anymore."  Perhaps you grow out of novelty.  Perhaps the routine wears you down in a war of attrition.  But I don't think people lose their creativity. Not really.  They just learn to hide it.  And to me that's one of the most tragic things a teacher can do to a class.

Last summer, I did a blog series called TV and Teaching and I've considered reformatting it as an eBook or even as a regular book.  I do not watch much television, but realizing that it is our cultural mythology and shared collection of narratives, I see it as a lens we can use as we think through the first year of teaching.  So, I'd love to  put the blog posts together into short, practical chapters aimed mostly at new teachers.  Sort-of a "what I wish I had known when I began" kind of book.

My only concern has been copyright violation.  I'm not sure if referencing television is considered fair use or not. I have no intention of quoting any shows, but I just want to be careful.  Does anyone have any idea of what the fair use laws are and whether or not a book like this would fall within it?

As I walked into my classroom with the brand-new phonograph, a man from the district stopped me.  "Yeah, um, this is blocked.  Sorry dude, but you can't have your students use the phonograph."

"Why is that?"

"Well, it could have dirty words.  After all, these are Victorian Times.  Who wants to risk a lawsuit?"

"I see your point, but students could also speak a dirty word as well.  So, I don't really see why a change in the medium is all that different."

His boss walks up to me.  "It's not about that.  It's about our limited capacity for music.  See, the school band will be using this hall way and they need it for their classroom.  It's just not that wide. We can't fit all the instruments and fit a phonograph. So, with limited band-width, we have to either block the phonograph or slow everybody down."

"Why can't we just use a different hallway or perhaps build a new one?" I ask.

"I don't know.  I'm just the IT guy.  I'm an Instrument Technician.  If you have issue with this, talk to the district."

So, I found a way to sneak the phonograph in through the back door.  I just think it's sad that we have to find back door methods of accessing tools that will be useful for learning.

I'm alone at the grocery store.  Alone with my mind.  It meanders easily. I can't believe they are playing a Fugees Song.  Who would have thought that would be grocery store fare so quickly?  I guess it's not all that quickly.  Okay, peanut butter.  They always make such a big deal out of George Washington Carver inventing peanut butter and ignore his contributions to inventions such as the motion picture.  They also make such a big deal out of the fact that he was black and never tell kids that he was gay. Oh, here we go.  


Extra chunky? All of them are extra chunky?  I don't want extra chunks, just chunks.  I wonder if this is sort-of peanut butter version of the way movie theaters call a small soda large.  Talk about Orwellian Double-Speak.  I wonder when it expires.  In two years?  Should I even be eating anything that expires in two years?  Okay, beer, apples, what else did I need?  I wonder if the cashier will see this bizarre cart and think that I'm a pot head.  Why does that matter, John.  You don't even know the cashier.  And why did your internal monologue switch to third person.  

And so it goes, unending, meandering.  I re-read the snapshot of my internal monologue and shutter.  Can I really be that scattered?  Is my mind that shallow?  And why do I choose to stay in the shallow end rather than swim in the deep end? Why do I cherish alone time with my mind?

The lady behind me in line is chattering into her phone.  "I think I need to cut back on Facebook."  She talks about it as if it's a drug.  "I just get so bored, you know."   I'm not sure she's really talking to the other person so much as talking to herself.  I get the sense that she's not too crazy with a meandering mind.  Perhaps she's scared that she'll find herself boring.

I want to write about this, but should I just tweet or should I blog.  


It hits me that I'm not too different from her.  I now have a strange kinship with Smart Phone Loud Talker.  The lie of media is that it will fulfill one's basic human needs by keeping one company, connecting one to community and giving one self-worth. I tweet when I feel lonely. Like the Smart Phone Loud Talker, I tweet to hear my own voice.

*     *     *

I'm a technology skeptic.  So is Jerrid Kruse. When I read his tweets and his blog, he offers smart, insightful dialog with a strong dose of humility and critical thinking.  I don't get the sense that he is all about building a strong social media empire.  He wants to offer a somewhat Luddite argument to counter-act that obsessive technophilia that one finds on many education blogs.

Like me, Kruse has a constellation of blogs all interconnected.  In What on Earth, he tackles issues of science teaching.  Real science.  Not simply a blog of theory, but a blog about what it means to love science and love teaching.  One of my favorite posts on this site involves the use of fear to scare people into supporting science education.  There aren't too many posts on this site, but I'm hoping he expands it.

In Bridging the Gap, Kruse proves that he can theoretically and use his razor-sharp mind to analyze research.  It is geeky without being pretentious, unabashedly intelligent without trying to prove something to the world.  In A Place for Ideas, I see a contrasting perspective.  It is personal, often dealing with issues of faith and philosophy.  It makes me wish I could share a pint with Jerrid or perhaps even co-write a personal blog about faith with him

His main blog is Teaching As a Dynamic Activity.  This one pings back and forth between each of the other blogs in its style and approach.  At times very theoretical, often very practical and on many occasions personal, it exudes an intelligence and humility that make it one of my favorite blogs.  Jerrid is a wanderer, not wandering aimlessly, but wandering nonetheless and thinking, questioning, open to what life throws his way and eloquent in explaining what he is discovering.  To me that is a mark of a true man of science and a true man of faith.

Gertrude the Bureaucrat pulls me aside this summer, "I know you plan to use pencils this year, but you're not planning to let them use erasers are you?"

"I think it's a great tool. Students can erase mistakes as they go or they can erase them after the fact."

"Yes, but how do you have common assessments if you don't have common methods of assessing?"  By "common" she means "standardized."  Common is multilateral and democratic.  Standardized is unilateral and authoritarian.

"I'm not sure I see your point," I add.

"Well, a kid can just erase his or her work at any given point."

"Isn't that what learning is all about?  What about our slogans of life-long learning and loving learning?  If that's the case, how do you justify an end point?"

She goes into a long lecture about formative and summative assessment and I tune her out.  It's a small battle to fight and I nod my head.   See, if pencils and erasures represent anything good, it is the notion that one can always change.  Growth is always possible.  Learning is not a fixed commodity, but a journey.

"How will you grade their work if they can just go back and change things?" she asks.

"I don't grade it.  They do portfolios."

"Won't that make kids lazy?" she asks.

"Not at all.  They work harder because I take away the bribes and extortion. I can't claim to support the notion of developing democratic citizens and go with a totalitarian style of assessment."

"This goes against standard pedagogy," she objects.

"Tell me, why would you ask me to use differentiated instruction and assess in one format only? And why would you ask me to have students collaborate and then force them to compete for grades?"

The conversation ends with a long lecture on the Bell Curve.  I listen for awhile and then we "agree to disagree" which is a nice way of saying, "we'll just choose to casually ignore one another."

See, the issue isn't about pencils or erasers.  The issue is about the purpose of learning and assessment.  If I want to use assessments to help students, I can't be the bully.  I can't be a dictator.  An adversarial relationship leads to fear.  I don't want a fear-based classroom.  So I let them re-write work.  I let them use the erasers.  I need a positive classroom in order to gain their trust enough for me to speak truth into their lives.

She finally ends with, "All your cuddly bunny coddling is doing a disservice to them. It's not how the real world operates."  Perhaps.  But I have a hunch that in the real world they just might use erasers.

I wrote a fictional description of teacher burn-out on a day when I felt worn out.  It wasn't the teaching gig that bothered me.  It was the system.  It wasn't so much my time as my thinking process that was dominated so much by all of these aspects of being a teacher that had nothing to do with student learning.  The following is a podcast reflection followed by the writing. You can access the podcast here or listen below:

Burn-Out

He tightens his tie, but it is still an inch and a half below the belt. Carefully looping each knot once again, he feels the sense of ritual slip through his hand. As he steps back, the tie leansslightly.

"I'll let it walk with a limp," he tells himself.

He pulls out a glob of blue hair gel and catches the flickering gray hairs by his side burns. No one told him gray hair would be the norm at thirty-two. He stares into the mirror. Wrinkled lines on his forehead, a tie suffocating his ability to breath. Suffocation, that's it. The ritual itself is suffocating. He feels like the shame of an atheist who walks into a cathedral and must walk with an ash-stained forehead out of fear of admitting to others that this universe is pretty lonely.

It's not that he hates the ritual, but that he feels like a phony. They stripped away his name, gave him a title, told him to wear professional clothing (after all, it's "Meet the Teacher" night, despite the reality that he will leave in the evening feeling even more unknown)

I'm a phony in a Cathedral of Data. I'm a participant in an institution that I can no longer
love. It's not that I don't believe in learning. I just don't believe in school.

He gathers up his backpack.

I refuse to be the teacher with the rolly-cart. I refuse to push around my crap like it's luggage in the airport. A laptop, a clip board. Don't chain me down with binders. Life isn't linear. Let's stop pretending.


He thinks back to the first two years, when he would leave early on the first day back. He would
make lists and lists of lists and he'd play an old vinyl record of James Taylor just to remind him of
his childhood and of shag carpet when he would hope for a better school year.

He would move desks around and hang up posters and self-righteously claim he was better because his walls weren't tarnished by bright pre-fab posters advertising positive attitude. He silently curses the obese orange cat who gorges himself on lasagna and offers cynical remarks toward society. To this day, he has never stepped into the teacher supply store and he wears it like a badge of honor.

This year, though, the backpack feels heavier and like his tie, he moves with a limp. He hopes with a limp. I will endure four hours of meaningless PowerPoint presentations.

I will learn, yet again, how to do a fire drill and how to handle blood-borne pathogens. I will be professionally developed and not learn a single new skill to help me as a teacher.

He grabs a few extra pins and some blank paper. If he plans it just right, he'll look extra studious "taking notes" when in fact he will spend his time doodling pictures of an escape world he creates where people don't confuse children with data.

He kisses his wife, but she's still asleep. He walks into his daughter's bedroom and nestles the
teddy bear up against her face.

He wonders if he creates an enemy out of "standards" and "data" because, at his core, teaching just might not be his gig. Would Superman get bored with x-ray vision if he didn't have a villain? He smiles at the thought that no one knows how often he searches for truth through the lens of old comic books.

The drive is painfully slow. Every street is being torn-up and refurbished. Orange and white traffic barricades block him from moving wear he wants to move. Like the tie and the title and the PowerPoint presentations, it's all the same symptom. Something is broken, really broken, but we don't know how to fix it, we will look busy and constantly re-invent and reconstruct and hope that we can convince people that novelty equals change.

"I'm tired of the barricades," he says aloud. "I'm tired of the noise. I'm tired of the next best thing and the jargon and the well-intentioned gestures. I'm tired of the cage and the tie and the title and the staff handbook. I'm tired of pretending to like people I don't know and pretending to know people I don't like. I'm tired. That's it. I'm just really, really tired."

He turns up the radio louder this time. If he can just focus on NPR, maybe he'll hear a depressing
story about genocide or something and he'll be able to regain some sense of being thankful for
this job.

Turns out it's just a pundit-junkie spouting out phrases like "high standards" and "transparency" and "accountability" to try and justify the newest educational reforms. The pundit blames the lousy, lazy teachers and on some level he feels as though the pundit is right.

"But don't confuse my lack of action for laziness. I work hard. I put in crazy hours. It's just that I'm tired
angry-pundit-man. I'm really tired. And after a summer of curriculum planning and mandatory
workshops, I'm even more tired than ever." The pundit doesn't listen.  Then again, neither does the district or the principal or the parents.

It's not that teachers burn-out.  They just disappear.  They slowly go invisible.  They exist without ever being present.  Then one day, they log in their hours and they're gone.

It's a frenetic Sunday morning with blog posts and outlines of a book I want to write (a superhero memoir based upon the themes of Ecclesiastes).  Isolated in the wandering world of multi-tab interaction, I fail to listen to the birds or notice the sun rise.  I'm allowing a tool bar to define both space and time. I find myself stirred by a blog post by Doyle, but it isn't enough to move me outside.

The boys wake up early, sometime around six.  Not being governed by a clock, they notice the sun rise and embrace its warm rays.  I hold Brenna in a rocking chair while they play on the swings.  

"Look, a hunting bird," Micah points out.

One humming bird was chasing the other. Was it war? Was it love? Was it friendly play? And is there an intersection between any of those?

Micah is silently mesmerized for perhaps twenty or thirty seconds. For Micah, this is a big deal. The tweets are enormous at this points, birds getting out there livelihood before it gets too hot. The sun is beyond the rising point and illuminates our disorderly back yard.

I think to myself, "There is more complexity in one hummingbird than in the whole lot of our humming machinery."

I'm listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation while driving home in the blazing Phoenix heat.  Two researchers lament the loss of academic integrity in the current higher education context.  They seem to attribute it to lazy students, the internet and a failure to enforce strict punitive measures for plagiarizers.  Never once do they question whether colleges are becoming irrelevant in their pedagogy or whether they were failing to assess accurately.

Instead, the implied metaphor was that the students were on a road to higher achievement and they were short-cutting the drivers who were going the longer, more patient route.  The goal seemed to be the magic ticket of a scholarship or a diploma or some other extrinsic motivator.

As they describe the creative methods for cheating, it becomes apparent that the students who cheat are not lazy so much as good consumers.  If the bottom line is simply a reward for work completion, they manage to get more bang for the buck. In essence, they are following in the foot steps of Bill Gates (who stole MS-DOS and passed it off as his own).  If the goal is a the magic ticket of fame and fortune then perhaps children are not all that misguided in making roided-up super-athletes their role models.

Fortunately, I don't see the goal as work completion.  I would rather see that students learn.  See, when students really want to learn something, they don't cheat.  When the goal is not so much a magic ticket as it is a meaningful quest, they aren't in such a hurry to find all the short cuts.  For this reason, I rarely run into cheating in my classroom.  When I'm not obsessed with the magic ticket, I can help students along the journey so that they don't need to cheat. The following are some preventative measures I take that deal with the causes rather than the effects of cheating:

1. Formative Assessment / Active Monitoring: Some students cheat because they want the ticket and they know they can get away with it.  If I am assessing constantly in an informal, transparent way, I can redirect them back to the journey and away from the magic ticket. If it is not until a mid-term that a teacher notices a cheating student then that teacher doesn't know the student very well and hasn't made any effort to help him or her.
2. Keep It Meaningful: Students will work really hard when they know that a task is meaningful.  If it is important to life and to their future, it remains meaningful. I used to cheat on worksheet packets because they were bland and meaningless.  Do I feel guilty?  Not in the least.  I cheated on a grade, but I lost nothing in terms of learning.
3. Provide Intervention: It is the job of the educator to ensure all students learn. Students will cheat if they are confused and believe they are stupid.  A good teacher will have a system in place to help students who are struggling.
4. De-emphasize Grades:  When we take the magic ticket out of the picture, there is less pressure to perform and pretend and more freedom to make mistakes and learn.  
5. Customized Learning: I want students to meander.  I want them to take different routes in their learning journey.  If I can craft assignments so that they are different from their classmates and different from my former classes, it becomes harder for them to cheat. Professors who whine about cheating often fail to change their syllabi and they don't differentiate instruction. 
6. Critical Thinking: It's nearly impossible to cheat in the higher-level thinking domains of analysis, evaluation and synethesis.  If a teacher is tossing out drill-and-kill rote memorization tests, they are setting up a system where it is easy to cheat.
7. Authentic Assessment: Life usually allows notes.  It usually allows calculators, too.  Sometimes (gasp!) it allow interaction with other people.  So, why not go project-based and let the learning assessment reflect the way that people learn naturally?  Yes, students might still cheat (especially if the project is out-of-class and they have perfectionist parents) but if a project is well-monitored there will be no reason to cheat.

*     *     *

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

So, I'm at that cafe again and I hear a group of teachers whining about the pencil.  They say it will make kids shallow.  They say short-hand language is ruining academic prose (as if students completely lack the ability to shift registers.  Don't they move from slang to academic language in speech?).  They say that pen pal networks are America's new cocaine.  I slip back into my childhood again:

I bought my first pencil when I was thirteen.  Back in the day you couldn't buy the fancy yellow kinds and the eraser was still a new concept.  But it wrote accurately and I believed that I could sketch out the world in all its gray ambiguity.

My mother called me in, concerned about my pencil time.  "I fear that it's becoming addicting," she said.  "You've been writing so many letters to classmates.  Isn't it killing your study time?"

"Mom, it's not a drug.  It's communication.  It's not an opium den, it's a pencil.  I spend time writing letters because I care about my friends. It's not the act of writing that I love. It's how we communicate. The same goes with drawing.  If I had a set of paints, I would probably paint."

"I fear that the pencil is making your communication shallow."

I wanted to say, "I'm in seventh grade.  On some level, everything I write will seem shallow to you.  And if it's deep, I'm probably hiding it from you."

Instead, I answered, "That's how we talk, too. Yet, you don't seem concerned about the language used verbally."

She worried that I would lose my ability to write.  I have a hunch that it taught me to distinguish between formal and informal English and thus helped me refine my writing.  It broadened my scope and taught me how to write concisely when necessary. I'm thinking my students are learning the same lessons.  Brevity is not an option when limited to 140 characters.

She said it wouldn't prepare me for life.  I wonder if it taught me lessons on human relationships.  The letters taught me how to refine my thoughts and the sketches helped me to see the world differently - whether that "different" is better or worse, I have no idea.  But I embrace it nonetheless, because it's now a part of who I am.

She said it was opium for the mind. I get her point.  She wanted us to play. And we did.  Often.  What she failed to see was how quickly the novelty of notes wore off and we would chose instead to play a pick-up game of baseball. Even now, I have to be careful with the pen pal networks.  I can waste my day away reading 140 character messages when what I really need is to play in the mud with my daughter. Yet, the same can be true of reading or painting or tinkering with machinery.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't buy into the myth of the Pencil Natives.  I don't think that a yellow Eberhard Faber will bring salvation and peace to our "globalized society."  But I don't think we are raising a generation of stupid, illiterate, shallow thinkers.

Note: I'm writing this blog from personal experience.  I once mocked the curriculum specialist for using People Bingo.  I posted a snarky comment on Facebook and she came to me the next day and told me how much it hurt.  

The pen pal networks are down right now.  Apparently the conference didn't anticipate such a high use of paper. So, I'm at a cafe with paper and pencil, plogging my problems. I begin this entry, expecting to write about pencil integration and why it doesn't have to server economic interests.

A lady walks in and orders a large coffee.  "It's been a tough day," she begins.  "I had two people leave my workshop yesterday and when I checked the pen pal network, they had mocked the Ice Breaker I had developed."

"Oh, that's horrible," the waitress comments.  "I know a thing or two about grumpy customers, but none of them have ever left the table in mid-meal."

"Do they write 140 character messages that mock you?"

"Nope.  Not so much."

"One man even wrote a plog post about it. Plogs last forever. Couldn't he just have talked to me instead?" The lady begins crying.  She starts talking about missing her husband and her sons and how hard it is to be creative with something like ice breakers when she's not a fan of them in the first place.  For the first time, I see her not as a fixture of a conference, but as a human.

I walk up to her and say, "I'm so sorry.  I mocked the ice breakers for being artificial and contrived but then I chose the most artificial and contrived method of complaining.  It was cruel and insensitive."

The moment is awkward, but she's gracious.

"I'm sorry for crying," she says.

"Don't apologize.  Your tears are a gift.  I needed a change in perspective."

For all the discussions my class had about pencil citizenship last year, I feel like a hypocrite.  I failed to understand that even in the transgeographic pen pal world, the bottom line should be love.

We gather around the tables, all hyped up on Coca-Cola. At some point, the conference organizers will realize that a cocaine-laced beverage is probably not the best refreshment before a long-winded workshop on "Pencil Citizenship in the Pencilsphere."

So, it begins with an Ice Breaker. A simple glimpse at the hashtags on our pen pal networks would suggest that the ice isn't all that frozen. If anything, we might need a lesson on being kinder in our comments (myself included). But it's the culture of this thing, where quick wit, novelty and sound bytes are more important than story and sustainability.

I'm not sure why we need an ice breaker. We're at a conference, and we're speed-dating for acquaintances we'll never see again. It's not that important that I know your trivial background or that you know mine. So, you met William McKinley? Nice, but not beneficial to me. So, I once played on a barnstorming baseball team? Again, not that important.

The choice this time is People Bingo. It consists of running around and getting signatures for trivial facts about people's lives. As if Bingo wasn't already the lamest game ever, we have to take away the gambling and turn it into an autograph party. Fun. Not. All of a sudden the Wednesday night smoke-field Bingo room just got a lot cooler.

I start envisioning new Ice Breakers. How about Extreme People Bingo, where you have to wrestle people to get a signature? Or what about turning People Bingo into a drinking game? I've given workshop presentations before and I'll tell you that I wouldn't mind having a slightly liquored-up crowd. (If you are in the Temperance Movement, please don't be offended. I am not advocating public drunkenness)

Ice breakers generally fail for two reasons: Extroverts don't need the ice broken and introverts need the ice to melt slowly. So, it is a waste of time for one group and socially awkward for the other. I fall into the socially awkward category, so I use People Bingo as a time for a quick escape.  I wander the conference hall for a bit and then step outside into the cool summer air.  Call me icy if you must, but the loud chattering voices are a bit much.  Let me hear the breeze.

After sitting through the Creative Class session, Paul the Pre-Industrial Poet says to me, "I'm bothered by his message. Tools are great. I don't deny that. It's just that I don't believe that complex tools equal complex thinking."

I add, "A motion picture is complex but it leaves little to the mind. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but I'll take Tolstoy and Twain over anything Edison can produce."

"And I don't believe that there has to be a special elite class of people who use creativity for economic and social pursuits."

"It's a bit insulting to those who work blue-collar jobs."

"I had the same thought. Look, my dad was a slave. We had no tools.  To those in power we were the tools. But listen to the songs we produced.  Listen to the oral history we told.  Take a glimpse at the Underground Railroad for a minute.  We shaped farming in ways that people will never know.  We changed American cuisine. We were a Creative Class as well."

*      *      *

A few days ago, I gave my daughter a box. She didn't think outside the box. She turned the box into a cave and into a horse and into a home for her doll. I didn't tell her that she had to be creative. She has the creative impulse because she is human. We are made to be creative.

If I want my students to be creative, I won't tell them to be creative. I won't explain to them that they can be part of the great Creative Class. I'll give them freedom. I'll make learning meaningful. The tools will not "require creativity." Creative thinkers will find the tools and use them in innovative ways.

We grab a seat in the balcony, because even at UnConventionAl, the twentieth century un-conference, innovation doesn't include progress in race relations.  It's a trend of noticed with some of the techno-utopians who don't want to be bothered with the sticky human issues of social justice.  After all, the machinery will eventually take care of those issues in our Global Village.

"We need to cultivate a culture of collaboration to compose a creative class."  All alliteration aside, the message is one I've heard repeatedly.  I could use the same alliteration if I wanted, "From farms and factories to a philosophy of frenetic futurism."

He pulls out a box and says, "We need to think outside the box."  I find it odd that he's using cliches as he talks about innovation.  True innovation isn't thinking outside the box.  It's re-purposing the box.

"It starts with a pencil and moves to mimeographs and type-writers, photographs and Vitascopes, phonographs and telegraphs.  Simple minds and simple tools are fine when you are growing corn . . ." the crowd chuckles. "But you need an innovative mind to think through the mixing and mashing of multimedia tools. Complex tools demand creativity."

*     *     *

My mind races back to corn fields.  There is more molecular complexity in an ear of corn than in an entire Vitascope.  We lie to ourselves when we think that knowing machinery means we have a deeper, more conceptual understanding of life. It's true that we were simple people if simplicity is measured only in tools.  We had fewer tools.  We had less access to the world at the palm of our hands.  But we weren't illiterate hicks. We were a Creative Class.

So, I'm listening to the chatter of the speaker, but I move back to the corn field.  I'm eight, barefoot and staring at a worm.  My father is arguing moral philosophy with a neighbor.  Dad says that Aristotle had it right - that the goal is a middle ground, a place of temperance between two extremes.  The neighbor says the goal is a Hegelian synthesis.  Neither men have access to a photograph or a telegraph or a pen pal network.  Yet, they are creative thinkers, tackling existential questions from multiple perspectives.

As their dialog transitions into farming, it becomes a more practical layer of creativity.  They are discussing water use in a time of drought. They discuss sustainability in light of soil erosion and fertilizer.  It isn't the tools that lead to the creativity.  Instead, they become creative because of limited resources and simple tools.

Farming required more than mere "grunt work" as the speaker describes.  (Really, "grunt work?" Were we merely cavemen wandering a sea of corn?) The skill set involved predicting the unpredictable, developing new tools at low costs.  Collaboration?  We had a community co-op that helped us survive.  Creativity?  My dad could use bailing wire and wood to develop tools that would rival anything Edison is producing.

A Note Ahead of Time: I don't advocate irresponsible drinking.  When I say "have a pint," I'll probably have one or two only.

Tonight I will have a pint with my best friend Javi (I'm not sure if I'm too old to use "best friend" but at least it's not BFF).  The meeting will be entirely synchronous and low-tech.  No Twitter or Blogger or Google Docs. It's not that those things are bad.  They just make the beer taste funny. We won't share data as we sit around a crammed table beneath the flickering fluorescent glow of a school library whose books are too new to smell like reading.

We'll collaborate horizontally.  I'll ask him about specific strategies and he'll ask me about professional development (now that he's moved on to a district position).  We'll discuss co-writing our Indie Teachers blog together and we'll tell stories about our kids from last year.  Interspersed in these conversations will be talks about relationships or about God or about baseball (I forgive him for being a Dodgers fan) and perhaps even the intersection between all of these topics (Why God hates the Giants and what that means for my world view). Then we'll talk about what learning centers and free movement would look like in my classroom given my own emotional need for a calm environment. 

I'll allow him into my classroom and into my mental space of lesson planning.  He's one of maybe two or three  people who have that permission.  He didn't earn it through a title or a skill set, either. He earned it through friendship. He earned it with pints.  Perhaps I'm being cruel here, but I don't genuinely listen to people's ideas unless I know them.  Oh, I'll listen to ideas as a skeptic and perhaps try out a few strategies that people pass along.  But I don't really listen to a person until there is a relationship of trust.

I realize this is an inefficient and perhaps even ineffective method of collaboration, but I have to trust people before I really try out their ideas. I trust Javi with my teaching because I trust him with my students and I trust him with my story.  I know his heart and his values. We've done service projects together and I've watched how he interacts with students. I listen to him because he has the freedom to criticize my ideas without me feeling attacked.  I listen to him because he's not wielding authority.  I listen to him because he's humble.  For all the talk of a "flat world," nothing makes things multilateral like a pint together.

I'm not necessarily opposed to sharing ideas with a team of grade-level teachers.  I've never bought into the Lone Ranger myth.  Yet, one of my favorite parts of teaching is the times I get for true collaboration - the kind that isn't tied down to an agenda or a data sheet or meeting notes or techie tools. 

I share the story of the Flat World and the Global Village with Paul the Preindustrial Poet. I expect him to nod in agreement, but instead he responds with, “Tom, I think you’re creating a false dichotomy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why  do you have to have either round or flat?  Why go global or local?  Can’t it be both?”

“I’m not sure it can.  I think you have to make up your mind where you plant your feet.”

“Perhaps.  But the forces of a flat world are here regardless of what you feel.  If I ignore it, I am doing my students a disservice.  However, if I teach them to think critically about the whole flat world concept then they can be critical thinking citizens of this flat world.” 

“But aren’t they better off acting in the local community where they at least have a voice?”

“If they only think locally, their world view will be myopic.  It becomes tribalism.  If they go global without knowing their own backyard, it becomes imperialism and colonialism.  If they think globally and locally, they avoid the extremes.  They walk in tension, yes, and they face a certain level of confusion.  Yet, they also learn to navigate that confusion.”

“I see your point, but there is something unnatural about the Global Village.”

“I don’t disagree.  It’s inhuman.  It’s industrial.  We let the steel steal the soul of the people in exchange for instant communication.  I see your point.  However, who better to humanize it than your students? Let them act locally and communicate it globally.  Let them think about global issues in their own community.  But also let them think about how their own locale affects the entire world and if the time is right let them partner across the world with fellow students.” 

“That sounds like idealistic romanticism, Paul.”

“I’m not pretending it’s easy.  I’m not suggesting that pen pal networks will bring world peace.  But respectful dialog is a powerful force.  And if you don’t allow your students to participate in the global dialog you create your own ghetto.”

“I guess it’s just personal for me.  When I was standing on the plains with the sun rising, surrounded by my family, it all felt natural. It felt right.  It felt like I lost something when I moved to the city.  And it feels like we all lost that something in the process of the flattening of the world.” 

“So, have one foot in the factory and one foot on the farm.  Have one hand on the pen pal networks and one hand holding a pint with a friend.  Garden and write.  Be open to the world without shutting out your neighbors.  I’m not saying it’s easy.  Paradox is always harder than polemic pursuits.”

Paul has a point. Whether I agree with it is up in the air.

So pencil me in.  Don’t stain me with ink.  Let me live the graphite duality of global and local, of technophile and Luddite of urban and rural.  Let me experience the monochrome mystery that never truly hits black and white – the gray reality of paradox.  Pencil me in so I avoid the extremes of myopic parochialism and arrogant imperialism.  Pencil me in, because life is temporary, a vapor, in constant flux, in tension and harmony.  Nothing in this world is entirely permanent. Pencil me in.

I'm painfully shy when it comes to singing and dancing and I know it hasn't always been this way.  When I watch Brenna, she already bops to the music and Micah goes completely free form with his interpretive dances.  I recognize that dance is a common language, that it is inherent in every culture and that it is a method of expression that comes before speech.

So why do people stop dancing when they get older?

free of social media, Brenna had instant access to her dad

Being in Colorado meant a bizarre exchange of access.  Certain things I had access to on a regular basis up there are rarities down here.  Meanwhile, certain things we take for granted in suburbia were hard to come by in rural Colorado.

I lacked access to . . .

• instant internet connection - I had no idea how addicted I've been to social media until I was away.  Given the fact that I don't have a cell phone (much less a smart phone) a computer is my only way to access e-mail and Twitter and my Google Reader.  
• Starbucks - not as hard as I thought, actually.  I'm finding that I go there less often the older I get.  Someday I'll be a curmudgeon complaining about those who will drop a few bucks for a brew you can make at home.
• clocks - I have no watch and our part of the house had blinking clocks displaying artificial time.  It took me a few days to release myself from frequently checking the clock. 
• grocery store - we are within walking distance of a local organic-styled grocery store.  It was an adjustment to realize it would take half an hour to reach a store.
• friends and family - it's strange, but I missed being able to go to my mother-in-law's house (two doors down) or see my brother-in-law or go have a beer with Javi

I gained access to . . .

• cable television - and it turns out it sucks worse than one could imagine
• stars - God I miss the stars already
• bugs - I'm realizing how lucky we are in Phoenix to generally avoid things that suck blood or bite
• cottonwoods and aspens and everything else I could label under "amazing view"
• hills - I love to run trails and instant access to hills was amazing
• perspective - everything that should be big remains big and everything else becomes smaller
• uninterrupted time with my family - perhaps the greatest gift of this trip was realizing how much I enjoy Christy and the kids.  

Dear City Planners:

I am a strong advocate of pencil integration.  I have been on a crusade to provide new learning tools for all of my students and to liberate them from slate-based learning.  However, the real barrier goes beyond simply a lack of access to pencils.  The real issue is a lack of access to learning.

• If you want students to understand art and the deeper implications of the humanities, why is there only one public art museum in our city?  And why is the museum so far from schools?
• If you want students to participate in civic activities and become better citizens, why is nearly every public civic institution so far away from our school?  
• If you want students to access knowledge instantaneously, why is it that you don't provide public access to telegraphs?
• If you want students to be literate, why is it that the public library is miles away from our school? Why not build a bridge between the two institutions instead?
• If you want to build a public school, where education is truly an extension of the public, why are you selling so much of it to corporations?  Why are you seeking corporate rather than public input?  And more importantly, why are you building walls that prevent the students from interacting with the public?

See, more than pencils or photographs or phonographs or telegraphs, the greatest innovation that could happen in my school would be to make it public again.  I visited the one-room school house where I grew up and it was located next to other public institutions: the library, the city council, the post office.  While few would point to the town as being truly innovative, I was struck by the lack of barriers for students who sought access to public institutions. I know it isn't a high-tech, trendy, 20th Century idea, but I assure you that in this Era of Industry, it is truly innovative.


Sincerely:

Tom Johnson

Joel wanted to do a video with the web cam while we were there

I lead Micah down a trail.  The truth is that I’m not leading so much as following him cautiously.  He stops for a moment and listens to the aspen trees.  “They sound like water,” he says and pauses, “and they look like green fire and their trunks are white and . . .” he stops in mid-sentence and notices a butterfly.

“It shouldn’t be called a butterfly.  It should be called a flying flower.”

He sits for awhile and studies a snail and then clings to me in fear when he sees the largest bee he’s ever encountered.  He counts leaves and then asks me why our home isn’t as beautiful as this.  It’s poetry and numerical awareness science and social studies.  It hits every subject, even music when he’s quiet enough to listen. 

Call it indirect instruction. 

We walk for awhile and stand by a look-out point.  The Book Cliffs are enormous, the walls painted a deep red and a calming sage.  I stare at an aspen – not so much fire so much as an impressionist painting in action, each ray of light changing the perception of what is real and what is here and what is now. Going to Colorado forces me to see a bigger picture and come to terms with the notion of a God that is unmanageable and not so easily defined. 

*     *     *

Every year on my syllabus I include a section for parental involvement.  It includes the cliché rhetoric of most teacher advice – make sure your child rests and eats well and ask your child what he or she is learning.  I ask for parent volunteers for service activities and chaperones for field trips.  This year, though, I am including a new section:

Take your child outdoors if you can.  If it needs to be a park, that’s fine, but if you can leave the city, that’s even better. Go out and look at the stars.  Take some time to stare at the trees.  Go to a pond, not just to jet-ski or do water sports, but to pay attention and observe what you see and hear and smell and feel. Your child might find this strange at first, especially if you don’t include a computer or musicT  But take awhile and ask your child what he or she is thinking.  It might not seem like much, but it will be a type of learning experience I cannot offer as your child’s teacher.

I take a seat by the window of the train, my eyes fixated on a monochromatic landscape.  The smoke stacks tell the story of a steel steal of all things natural, replacing tradition with movement and space with efficiency.  It’s the color of a photograph, all value and no color.

I am sitting with a pencil, sketching on an iTablet.  (Don’t worry, I’m not a convert just yet.  My wife loaned me hers, because it’s less bulky than my notebook) I’m sketching what I remember of my father.  I could capture it better on a photograph, but I’m less in the mood to capture and more in the mood to create.  I have this lingering sense that capturing is part of the problem.  We are all captive by the monochrome value of industry.

Besides, my whole purpose in sketching is to remember my father for who he was, so that I don’t forget him after viewing the casket.  Still, I’m distracted. I look out the window. Steel tracks clawing into the tender earth, a tattoo of convenience, taken in a parlor when we were all too drunk on novelty to know the difference.  It was a Faustian exchange promising instant connections and all the while losing the connection to all that was once sacred – the land, the dirt, community, family.

We will someday wake up with the hangover and convince ourselves that what we really need is a newer fix.  We’ll grow nostalgic for the railroad, using it for children’s stories and decorating devices, while we push forward with newer devices to flatten the world.  We already have horseless carriages, replacing the horse with raw power of a combustible engine.

I imagine that in another half century, we will find a way to fly. We will be Icarus, pushing toward the sun, going further from the ground, detached in a steel-winged cage, stripping away the boundaries of space and time.  We’ll find ways, no doubt, to extend portability so that even the telegraph seems quaint and so that the phonograph feels static.  Someday we’ll have the world at the palm of our hands without questioning whether one should compress the globe so easily.  We will find Babel without a blink and we’ll marvel not at the power we possess but at the novelty we create.

It’s an age of Pi, permanently and randomly marching forward, each step dividing the finite infinitely.  We had no need of seconds until we created the railroad.  What will we divide next?

*     *     *

A man sits next to me and asks me what I do for a living.  We begin talking about teaching and I share my vision for my classroom, complete with photographs and a dark room, an area for phonographs, a working telegraph and most of all pencils for every student.

“I want a twentieth century classroom,” I explain.

“You can’t wait three years for that?” he asks.

“I want a classroom that will be relevant in the industrial age.”

“Oh, like a flat classroom.” 

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“One that connects to the world.  Columbus proved that the world is round and now we’re proving that the world is flat.  It’s progress.  We’re being united into a global village.” 

I’m not about to argue with him on the Columbus point.  Just about all of antiquity knew that the world was a sphere. But I’m struck by the word “progress.” It is progress, no doubt.  Progress in terms of progressing, in terms of novelty and kitsch and pushing toward a climax without questioning the resolution.  But it’s not progress I’m after right now.  It’s permanence – the kind that doesn’t exist with the (temporary) nature of a telegraph and railroads and pencils. 

I like the notion of a global village.  I like the idea of my students communicating via telegraph and telephone with students across the globe.  A part of me really hopes that technology can bridge the barriers of culture and politics and lead to peace.  A flat world might just do the trick.

*     *     *

Two days later, I am standing on the flat Kansas earth, spade in my hand and tears on my face.  It is, in a sense, a vacation, an escape, if you will, not away from reality, but back to reality.  The cool fertile earth calls for a return from where we came. I am burying the dead, refusing to outsource the job to some stranger with no need of closure. Our economy is built on separation of labor, but in this moment, I won’t be ruled by economic norms.

The land propels me back into a narrative.  I know the people, though I have changed by the flattening, monochromatic forces of industry.  I know the story, from exposition to climax and I’m yearning for resolution.  I grasp for the theme, having a hunch that it can’t be found in a telegraph or a photograph or any other type of graph.  

Global village?  On a train it sounds so eloquent, but now it’s just an oxymoron. 

I want my students to use the technology, but I don’t want a flat classroom or a flat world or flat learning.  Let them learn locally before they go global. Let them know their backyard before they tackle the world. Industry turned my world gray.  The trains already etched their name into the ground.  When I stand beside my little hometown, I’m not so sure I’m ready for it to be flattened as well. 

don't mistake a slower pace for a simple mind

One would think that a grown man trying to stay on a bull would be enough to keep the crowd's attention.  But the rodeo is slow, painfully slow and it becomes an excuse to talk and to meander around the rodeo grounds and eat snow cones and complain about the weather.

It's a foreign environment at first.  Folks wear cowboy hats and t-shirts with sarcastic comments that I can't decode without thinking back to my own rural childhood.  For a moment, it is all rustic charm and small-town feel.  I could easily write that off as the reality here: simple folk with simple minds living a simple life.

The reality is much more complicated if I open my eyes a little wider and wait a little longer.  Adolescents are on Facebook or pointing at the opposite sex in flirtation.  Parents are scolding kids for failing to understand the social norms (yes, there are social norms in rodeos).  There are rumors and gossip, arguments about Fantasy Football (apparently it's a year-round hobby).  In other words, it's exactly the same as Phoenix. The clothes are different and the nuances of small town America certainly change the pace a bit, but I am struck by how similar everyone is to each other and to myself.

*     *     *

The worst television personality is Anderson Cooper.  Sure, Glenn Beck is insane and Keith Olbermann is obnoxious.  Bill O'Reilley is a bad listener and he's rude and he shouts down guests who don't line up with his agenda.  Still, I am more easily offended by the thick condescension of Cooper. Raised a Vanderbilt, he begins with a mentality of plutocracy.  The guy speaks to "small town folk" as if they are cute and simple bumpkins. He treats the working class families of the inner-city the same way.  Read it in his body language.  He acts like a hero in an action movie.

He doesn't get it. He's a news tourist.  Might as well buy the guy a fanny pack.

Arne Duncan was raised with the same dose of nepotism served through a slightly more altruistic silver spoon. He doesn't understand working class families.  When I see him in interviews, it becomes clear that he buys into the same simple bumpkin belief system of Anderson Cooper.  It's as if access to wealth and privilege make one more qualified to tell others how to live.

People are tired of tourists.  It's why the New York Times can't get a single thing right when they write about education and why people aren't buying the paper. Sure, blame the internet and social media, but at least those methods allow for horizontal interaction. Small towns resent mainstream media.  It's why teachers aren't easily shmoozed by offers of free bonus pay.  I don't need to be "incented" to be a good teacher.

It's why children can sense when a teacher is a tourist.  They know when an outsider hasn't taken the time to eat in their homes or do laundry in their local laundromat or shop at their ethnic grocery store (all food is ethnic - I hate that term).  A teacher can be as pleasant as Anderson Cooper or Arne Duncan, but the students are simple-minded bumpkins.  They've become astute spotters of tourists.

*     *     *

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

one lesson Micah has taught me is to look up
I almost didn't post this, because of its religious nature. I realize that a blog is probably not the best place to have a discussion revolving faith.  

We wait anxiously for the coming of the night.  The sunset has been beautiful, but now it's the awkward intermission where the sun has bowed out and the night is beginning to creep in.  I can already see more stars than what we experience in Phoenix.

My father-in-law has a close friend who died suddenly of natural causes.  I'm jarred by this term "natural causes."  I suppose if I'm going to go out of this world let it be the way I came in - through natural causes.  He's quiet I guess, but not any more than usual. Some people seem to have the gift of only speaking when something is important to say.

Death is too big a subject to discuss on a tweet and probably too big for a blog.  We bath in the dim light of solar systems so far away I can't keep track.  I ask Joel how many he sees and he says, "too many to count."  I like that.  Perhaps "countless" is more accurate than "billions and billions."

We wait, all the while pointing out planets and satellites until finally the awe takes us in subtly.  A sunset might demand out attention, but the stars seem to ask for our patience.

"He's gone right now.  He's with Jesus.  I can't imagine what that's like."

On most days, I'm at least a little scared of death.  I'm scared that grace is too good to be true and being content in the now I often fear the future anyway.  I'd love to speak boldly about how I am absolutely convinced of the gospel, but I'm not.  Don't get me wrong, it's the basis for how I live and it's what shapes my world view and yet there is always a lingering doubt that I'll probably never shake.

Tonight, though, I'm thinking of Heaven.  I'm thinking of a God vast enough to number the stars.  I'm thinking of what it will be like to live without insecurity and fear and broken relationships.  I'm wondering if I'll have a chance to write the novels I never wrote on earth.  I wonder if we'll observe better and listen better because we won't have to be rushed. I'm thinking of Jesus (not the freshly shampooed British accent Jesus of the movies, but the carpenter who cussed Jesus) and longing for a two-way conversation.


So what does this have to do with teaching?

Everything.

If we really want "life-long learners," we have to get over the taboo of death.  I'll stay silent about my thoughts on Heaven, but I will welcome inquisitive students to think about life and death and what it all means.  Perhaps it's a bit too morbid, but I think the biggest disservice we've done to students is locked them away from the dead and the dying while perpetuating a myth of the Fountain of Youth.

The boys spent hours running around the trails, observing the wildlife and eventually going with us on a walk to the creek.  They played baseball in the meadow and we threw a frisbee until it became too windy. They had a blast despite the lack of a crisp, clean, low-cut, well-manicured lawn.

We're rethinking our back yard right now.  Since we can't afford to plant a nice lawn, we've been letting the weeds grow and focusing our yard work on gardening instead.  It's a slow process, but we're moving toward more planters with gardens and adding more fruit trees.  Christy has been reading a book about "urban homesteading," and it's slowly shifting our paradigm of what stewardship actually means.

At first this shift was difficult for me.  I grew up in a home where a green lawn was a sign that one had arrived in life.  It was your little piece of paradise in the back yard.  It's true that it's pretty, but so are trees and flowers and  tomatoes.   It's true that kids can play in the yard, but our boys have had a blast watching the life cycle and exploring the "jungle" of trees.

Being in Colorado has helped reinforce the notion that a flat, pretty lawn isn't necessary for a happy childhood.

I step out toward the trail, the high desert greeting me in its minimalist glory. I’m scattered amongst the cottonwoods and the red rock mountains in the distance. Without much thought, I begin running. I’m home. I’m reconnected. To the land. To my childhood. To the uneven dirt beneath my feet.

With each step I take, a crowd of grasshoppers moves in unison – collectively taking a step and individually going their own way. Paradox, I suppose. They don’t really step or hop so much as take a short flight. You wouldn’t know that from watching a film or reading a Wikipedia entry, though.

The air is thinner here than in Phoenix, but it’s easier to breathe free of the urban haze. I stop often for aesthetic as much as athletic reasons. Two fawns hop through an alfalfa field. They prance and dance. It’s impossible to stay out here long without at least a little bit of anthropomorphism slipping in. Or animism for that matter. The trees clap along.

Thin air. It’s not that it’s missing anything, like it’s incomplete. It’s just that everything around here is bigger and smaller at the same time. I can see for miles. Everything feels simpler and yet more complex.
It’s in these moments that I realize why the ancients chose breath for the word “spirit.” It wasn’t a metaphysical musing or a list of bulleted points in a systematic theology textbook. It was life and vitality and movement all in one word. This is spirit. This is beauty. This is grace. I believe in an afterlife and I believe in God. It’s easier to believe when I’m on a desert run. Without the world of Twitter and Blogger and e-mail, I am reminded that life is a breath, a vapor. Nothing is new under the sun.

This next year I will teach all subjects and I have written honestly about being scared of teaching science, partly because I had a science teacher tell me that religion and science could never coincide and I asked her if maybe the Big Bang and Genesis 1 could fit, if perhaps Genesis was the lyrical poetry and the Big Bang was the dance. She said a rational person could never accept that. I decided I’d rather believe in paradox that modern rationalism.

Don’t get me wrong. I won’t teach religion. But in the first quarter I will teach the respirtatory system and I’ll teach about cell division and the life cycle and in the second quarter it will be more about symbiotic relationships and population growth. (At first they were going to let us spend the whole first quarter on the Scientific Method). I’m not sure I can teach science in bulleted points as a systematic subject. But I can teach about breath and life.

*     *     *

I don’t have anything against ISTE or Ed Camp. Still, if I had it my way, I would have an “unconference” in the high desert. We’d look at the stars and we’d observe the grasshoppers and we’d see dragon flies mate and fawns dance. We would see death too - perhaps the remnants of a rabbit sleighed by a coyote or the rotting carcass of deer that didn’t make it through the winter.

We’d have no social media, just social interactions. No Twitter, just tweets with a lower-case “t.” We’d go from streaming back channels to hanging out by the stream. The focus wouldn’t be innovation so much as sustainability. We would talk and listen instead of mocking a speaker’s PowerPoint slides. I have a hunch the tone and the style would look a little different if we talked about teaching instead of hanging out with the vendors or exchanging business cards.

We would see just how large the moon can become when it isn’t framed in by tract housing and we would reckon with which optical illusion we want to believe: that of suburbia or rural high desert. Most of all, we would breath the thin air.

*     *     *

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