Trending? Or Timeless?

            In the section on journalism in his World Without Mind,Franklin Foer argues the primary force now is “trending.” Even more than clicks and views and likes and reposts, journalists worry about what’s trending and react accordingly. It almost seems the reverse of the time-honored notion of the scoop. This, in turn, drastically affects one’s perceptions and even larger understandings. I’ve been wondering if the same focus isn’t part of what’s been haunting independent education.

            If you know me, whether personally or through this blog and my Twitter stream, you know I believe strongly in progressive, innovative movement in education. For years I’ve preached, “Evolve or die.” While rather dramatic, it also strikes me as too patient. Somewhere is that sweet spot at which we move forward with due haste…and with due thoughtfulness.

            Many schools are doing some extraordinary work, keeping their DNA while still significantly adapting programs and practices to meet student’s needs right now and in the future. For example, many schools have “academic excellence” as part of their mission statements. Just what does that mean, especially in 2018? What are the implications of our conclusions? What should change? How far are we willing to go? How honestly are we answering these questions?

            It often seems that school are, like those journalists, reacting to trends. In some ways it’s a form of silver bullet, latest and greatest thinking born of a desire to improve. That’s been a long-term practice in education. (Should I have said trend?) Recall when television and filmstrips were the greatest? Individualized reading packets with leveled comprehension tests? More current examples are makerspaces and mindfulness. So many schools have rushed to create specific makerspaces and to incorporate mindfulness. Both have value, but we need to think very deeply about these ideas big picture. For example, if a school believes in the principles of a maker space—and they are exciting—they should not be limited to a space if the rest of the program remains much the same. Instead, it should flow throughout the school. (I’ve written more extensively about this idea here.) As for mindfulness, given the increased rates of anxiety among our students, I’m glad we’re doing something. But there is a very pressing, further reaching question: what is our role in creating the need for mindfulness programs and what do we do to change that?

I wonder, just as media grabs onto what’s trending to gain an audience, whether schools sometime do the same because of legitimate fears of financial sustainability. It certainly explains some other current, perhaps unhealthy, things occurring in many schools. They are primarily part of how we operate as businesses. For example, I hear more references to our customers. I see it in some of the ways we brand and market ourselves. I’m not opposed to these things; and while hopelessly romantic idealist in some ways, I fully accept that independent schools are businesses. The question lies in how we do that business. How have we, as one head wrote, moved to such a contractual relationship in our communities? Meanwhile, are we plumbing our souls? Baring them? Or selling them?

I don’t think it’s the latter. At least not very much. Quality educators remain committed to mission and ideals and kids. But I’m not sure we have enough of the first two. After all, we scream, there isn’t time for all that reflection. Perhaps that is because we’re so busy grabbing on to the next best thing, whatever is trending at the time. Ironically, and this is where I draw the significant hope, at this point in time, so much of what’s trending harkens to the timeless, most precious elements of human learning.

The "Important" Versus the Important

     One aspect of education that makes it particularly challenging work is that everything potentially has greater gravity than it may seem at the moment. For example, every interaction with another person, whether a colleague or especially a student, holds amazing potential energy, either positive or negative. Each class can turn off or turn on one or more learners. I don't recall the exact number, but I remember reading somewhere how educators make an incredible number of potentially impactful decisions each day--many more so than most people.That's quite awesome. It's also both invigorating and exhausting.
     It's also why I think we need to reflect on another real challenge tied to this first one: discerning the "important" from the important. The former are those things that we tend to hold out as crucial, even vital, far beyond their real value. The latter are what truly matters.
     For example, let's consider a typical English curriculum and ask some big questions. What is the purpose? Is it to study literature, meaning the general canon and genres and literary elements and how authors speak to each other across generations? In other words, it is to study literature (pronounced with suitably snooty tone)? Or is it for us to consider aspects of the human condition as they play out in myriad ways across cultures? Or, even simpler, is it supposed to keep alive--spark?--a love of reading deeply? Why is it so heavily focused on literature? Why is the overwhelming majority of writing based on formulaic essays and standard literary criticism? Why do we even have English classes rather than Communications classes?
     One can raise similar questions, of course, about other disciplines. In chemistry classes students struggle to memorize elements of the periodic table. But does that really help them to understand how that table works or the relationships between elements? Currently some healthy debate is raging about algebra. Why is that the one almost universally-required math course when it seems to be the one that turns many kids off from math? I don't have definite answers to these questions, but I certainly have opinions. And I do know we need to be considering such notions.
     However one answers these questions, we put misplaced faith in curricula, imparting upon it unjustified importance. Despite what I have to see as the  bald marketing attempts in the use of this label, there is no teacher-proof curriculum. Conversely, a great teacher can bring a terrible curriculum alive. Similarly, we place too much faith in assessment, whether standardized or teacher-generated. That naturally then leads to grades, perhaps the currency whose value we have most inflated.
     I could keep going. Any thoughtful reader can add to the list. A list can help us keep focus on the right issues--and deem what is truly important.
     We also must ask another key question: Why do so many of us become so overwrought about the "important"?
     One reason is a positive one. It's that we have many passionate, caring, dedicated people concerned about education. That can also be a challenge in that sometimes our lizard brain, despite being primitive and small, overwhelms the cerebral cortex. In less scientific terms, we react emotionally to the immediate. Further, as humans we prefer the tangible, the measurable; they are easier for us to grasp, to manage, even to manipulate. We become more vulnerable to the traps of fast thinking. Our vision can become myopic, monochromatic, one-dimensional. Rigid even. The sort of outlook that promotes pure rigor. Which often means just more of the same.
     Learning at its best, though, is scintillating, imaginative, speculative, kaleidoscopic. It revels in the process, both in the here and now and wherever it may be going, knowing it never really arrives at a certain destination. But hoping. It's that insatiable curiosity innate in us at birth, optimally raging for the rest of our lives.
     We assign much of what we deem "important" that status because of short-term thinking.But as one of my mentors regularly encouraged, we need to "take the long view--the longest view possible." At the risk of seeming melodramatic, perhaps we should consider education in the same way David Brooks encouraged to consider living our lives for building a resume or a eulogy. To capture that notion, I'll defer to one of my former students, who graduated high school in 1988. In a comment on a blog post I wrote in 2012 after a beloved educator passed away, he wrote:

ESA was never about the location. It is a sugar cane field in between Lafayette and New Iberia. The population of Cade, LA doubles every morning and halves every night. It was always about the teachers. Coach Rhoades, Madame Garboushian, Ms. Dobkins, Mr. Olverson, Dr. White, Mr. Tutwiler and, yes, you, Mr. Crotty, taught us more about what the journey we had in front of us than any of the lessons and tests we had to pass. Prep school for once meant more than learning what we needed to know to succeed in college. It also prepared us for the challenges we faced outside the classroom. I remember very little of the books that I read back then (enjoyed Watership Down, couldn't summarize it for you if I tried). I do not remember a specific PE class Coach Rhoades taught. I do remember many of the conversations we had over 24 years ago --- conversations that stay with me and continually educate me to this day. May Coach Rhoades rest in peace with the knowledge that his lessons were always destined to outlive him --- and us.

   
   

Take a Bullet?

       Throughout most of my career--I began teaching in 1983--the question would have seemed absurd. I don't think it would ever have come up in an education class, and I can't see undergraduates chewing on it during a bull session in the dorm. Perhaps the only place I could have imagined it would have been contemplated is in a philosophy class focused on ethics, one of those topics such as "Is it wrong to steal if your family is starving?"

       The question: Would you take a bullet for a student?

       Once again, people who work in education must struggle with that gut-wrenching question as we grieve over yet another school shooting where an adult did just that.

       Is there a right or wrong answer? If there is, it eludes me. At one of the schools where my wife worked, they were told to decide on their answer to this question so they would have the choice made in case the situation ever arose. I doubt that works. We can believe something intellectually, but I'm not sure it would hold in such a terrifying, adrenaline-packed event. Instinct likely would kick in. Plus I think the details of one's one life shift in ways that affect the answer. Before I was married and had children, I probably would have said yes. Once I had children, likely not. Now that they are 18 and 21, well on their way, perhaps. I want to believe that I would. That I could. But I'm not so sure.            Do any of these answers make me a lesser person? Would I expect more of another educator for my kids than this? What should we expect? The work, when done right, already wrings plenty of raw emotion out of caring people. Now this former nightmare has become a common reality, so much so that it fades from the headlines more quickly than Columbine did. There was an entire book written about that tragedy; now the media moves on after a few days...until the next one. We drill and train, hoping that it might help, telling our students it's just a drill and they don't need to be scared, knowing they know the truth. Each time we practice, each time the tragedy strikes, it feels even more possible that it could happen to us.

       I don't know how one erases that fear. Arming teachers is not the answer. Even greater, stricter security measures might help, but I don't think it's an answer. We don't want our schools beginning to resemble prisons. Providing resources for how to talk to children about tragedy feels like mere salve on much deeper wounds. With the number of guns already available through various means, I think that only lessens the odds somewhat.The political system seems so gridlocked and self-serving that we can't count on anyone there.

       In the wake of the Parkland shootings, some have argued that "things feel different this time." I agree in some ways. Much of that has to do with the reaction of the students, who have responded with fierce determination to bring about change. It's pictures and videos of gun advocates destroying their weapons. Of course, we've seen various hashtag movements through the years that eventually simply echoed through the vastness of cyberspace. And already some have begun trolling survivors and their family. I've even seen some invoking conspiracy theories. It's all too reminiscent of Sandy Hook--the school shooting which was supposed to be the final straw.

       Meanwhile, when educators should be focused on figuring how to help their students become their best possible selves, we have to think about survival tactics. We have to ask ourselves, Would you take a bullet for a student? Could you? That no longer just seems absurd. It is absurd. And we risk school becoming another performance in the Theater of the Absurd.

       

A Teacher's Ten First Jobs

                Jessica Lahey’s essay “Teaching: Just Like Performing Magic,’ which recounts an essay with Teller (of Penn and Teller fame), contains a great deal of inspiration.  It was first published nearly two years ago, and I recently encountered it again because of some Tweets. While I highly recommend the piece, as I do any of her writing that I’ve encountered, one line in it jarred me. It’s part of a pull quote, and I’m not sure if it comes from Lahey or Teller. It reads: “The first job of the teacher is to make the student fall in love with the subject.”

                I have so many problems with this statement that I’m unsure where to begin. If I try to thoroughly explain each of them, I’ll have the outline for a book. If I try to summarize, I’ll wind up with a frustrating mass of frustration. So I’ll reduce my basic argument to one rather sweeping assertion.  When our primary focus becomes teaching a subject, we create many of the other problems that plague education, because we forget an essential truth: that what we’re really teaching are young people.

                With that in mind, I’d like to propose ten other possible first jobs of a teacher, perhaps with the subject as context or even tool, although what that is really doesn’t matter.

     --Get to know and love your students.

     --Remember they are developing young people, not professors to be.

     --Tap into their innate curiosity by asking students what they believe and what they want to know.

     --Create a safe classroom culture.

     --Make learning relevant.

     --Share your own ongoing learning (not just that from the past).

     --Decide what risk you’re going to take.

     --Clarify—to them and to yourself—what the most important goals are.

     --Develop a plan for moving out of their way.

     --Shrink your ego so they can grow.

While each of these could be the first job, together they are the job. Do such work, and then a nice by-product may be that students come to love a subject.