Dear Students,
I want you to be interested, not bored. I often think you want the same thing. But sometimes I think you like being bored. You seem to revel in it. Sometimes it seems everything bores you, and that you think it's cool to be bored.
But I want you to be interested.
I want you to know exactly what interests you: the specific, unique interests and enthusiasms that capture your thoughts, and I want you to cultivate those interests. I want you to know the joy, wonder, and sheer fun of being really, really interested in something. Having a strong interest is engaging in the short term; in the long term it could lead you to a career you love, whether its drawing, or gaming, or playing a sport, or listening to music.
But some students with interests have tunnel-vision. They are only interested in one thing and pay little attention to anything else. I not only want you to have interests, I want your interests to be deep and broad. Do you really know the thing you're interested in-- deeply? Whatever the interest, from skateboarding to online role playing games, do you know the history behind it, its major players and figures, the way it relates to the science and history of the world, the philosophy behind it? Well, why not? If you're interested in something, be really interested! As a third grader I was already interested in cartooning. I knew who drew the major syndicated comic strips, and I knew what a syndicate was. I knew about how to design cartoon characters and set up a comic strip. I meet many students who tell me they are interested in comic strips, but can't tell me who Charles Schulz is and have never heard of a syndicate. How is that being interested?
And whatever you're interested in, use it as the first domino in a long chain of bricks. How does your interest relate to school subjects like science, history, math, art, and music? How does it relate to culture, popular culture, and society? Let your interests lead to other interests! I often tell my students that if you pick up any one small subject and tug at it, along with that subject you'll pull on everything in the universe, like a string of paperclips. My interest in comic strips played in to my interest in animation. Animation led to an interest in Walt Disney, and in movie making and storytelling and fantasy. That connected to my interest in fantasy books, which led me love the Narnia and Middle Earth books. They led me to study mythic archetypes, which tied in to my interest in Star Wars and other modern myths. That led me, weirdly, to an interest in real astronomy. I developed an interest in theater, too, so when I heard about astronomer Johannes Kepler in a science video, I decided to write a play about him... One thing leads to another. "Everything is Connected" reads a bumper sticker I sometimes hang at the front of my classroom. I believe that, and I want you to believe it, too.
Because I want you to be really interested in specific things, but I also want you to be interested in-- everything.
Because boredom is in the eye of the beholder. And so is interest. If you look at life through bored eyes, everything will look boring. If you look at things with interested, wide open eyes, everything will look interesting. The students who use the word boring the most to describe the world around them in general and school in particular, seem pretty boring themselves. When I ask them what does interest them, they often are unable to think of much of anything. The world looks boring to them because they watch it through a lens of boredom. My students who are least bored are interested and engaged in something, whether it's reading or video games or skateboarding or horror movies. My students who are never bored are interested in lots of things.
Notice that I've used the word engaged, not the word entertained. Some people say that they want us teachers to make school more entertaining. If we managed to do that by using lots of flashing lights and loud noises and thumping music and exploding things in class, we might entertain you, but we probably wouldn't teach you. Ever see a TV commercial that was really entertaining and made you laugh, but then you can't remember what it was advertising? The fact that you can't remember the product means it was a bad ad. An entertaining class is often the same way. You remember laughing a lot and making a 2-liter of soda erupt, but what were you supposed to learn? Hmm... don't remember...
But even if you did learn the skills or knowledge you were supposed to learn in an entertaining class, you'd also be learning something else-- a false and destructive lesson. You be learning something that our culture is trying to tell you already in order to make money off of you: that you should be entertained all the time. Never be bored. Plug in. Be online. Listen to music. Text. Never be left alone with your own thoughts so you might actually get to know yourself. I'd like to propose an alternate lesson: learn to occupy your own brain with your own thoughts. Learn that the world doesn't owe you a life of dazzling entertainment devoid of thought.
Some people say teachers shouldn't entertain, but should engage. I agree there, to an extent. I want you to be engaged in the work we do, but I cannot guarantee that you will be engaged every day for every lesson. There is no lesson so engaging that an uninterested student can't find it boring. And there is no lesson so dull that an interested student can't find it fascinating. Boredom and interest are in the eye of the beholder.
I want you to be interested not because someone used a flashy gimmick on you but because you are an interested and interesting person. I want you to be fascinated with the world. This is an attitude, and it can be cultivated. Ask yourself lots of question. Make connections. Be curious. There is no down side to this. Being interested makes your life more entertaining and engaging, and you don't have to wait for someone else to do anything. And you learn. A lot. In a way, the world does offer 24/7 entertainment-- if you know how to look at it the right way.
Student have tried to find topics that would bore me, to stump me with topics so dull I could find nothing to say about them. Pain drying. Grass growing. Dust. Ag-lets. In every case, I was able to find something interesting about them.
Boredom or interest do not lie in the world around you. They are inside you, in the way you pay attention. Look. Listen. Smell. Taste. Touch. Think. Ponder. Drink in wonder. The world is too full of fantastic and fascinating things and life is too short to ever, ever be bored.
Unless you are a boring person.
You have to work at being interested, and interesting, but it's worth it.
Work... that's something I'll talk about next time.
Mr. Finkle
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
To My Students - What I Want for You Part 2
To My Students,
As I said in my first letter, I want you to understand about rules: why they matter, when they should be resisted, and that ultimately it's not about rules-- or shouldn't be. I hinted that there was more I wanted for you.
Just as the nature of rules is paradoxical, the next two things I want for you are paradoxical as well. They involve usefulness and attention.
Many students ask their teachers, "When are we ever going to use this stuff?"
On the one hand, the answer might be, "Maybe never." On the other hand, the answer might be, "Maybe every day of your life." You just never know. I want you to understand that the idea of something being "useful" is not as obvious as it might seem. We teachers are told that most of you will have jobs that haven't even been invented yet. If your jobs haven't been invented yet, how can we, or you, possibly know what skills or knowledge might be useful for ? Even in the world of current, existing jobs, you may be bound for a career you've never heard of just because there are so many careers in the world. So you simply don't know what will be useful.
But I also want you to understand that what makes things useful may not be job-related at all. Some things are useful because they help shape who you are as a person. Learning a difficult subject, even if you will never "use" it in the future, teaches you habits of the mind, like perseverance, diligence and curiosity. Learning a difficult subject also teaches you things like problem solving, logic, and creativity-- habits of mind and habits of character that will serve you well in any field of endeavor-- and in your personal life. You don't know what kinds of difficulties you may face in the future, or what kinds of research, thinking, and insight you might need to use to overcome them. You may find that you or one of your children are struck with a rare disease, or caught in a natural disaster, or caught up in a terrible conflict with someone close to you. Those lessons you learned in science or reading or from the novel you read in 7th grade may hold the key insight that helps you overcome a hardship. I when I have a physical ailment of some sort, I use my "home version" of the scientific process to figure out what's causing it. I still live by the lessons I learned in Narnia or by listening to Atticus Finch talk to Scout. Paying attention to the things you are asked to learn is a good thing-- you never know what might come in handy.
Paying attention is a habit of mind all its own-- perhaps the most important habit of all. I want you to understand the importance of attention. We ask you to pay attention. It is a payment of sorts because by paying attention to one thing-- what we want you to learn-- you must give up paying attention to your cellphone, your friend across the room, your daydream. It is a struggle for many of you, partially because you don't see the usefulness of what we are asking you to learn. But I want you to understand that attention is not just a school issue-- it is a life issue.
In fact, what is your life, but the sum of what you pay attention to? How you pay attention doesn't just control your success in school. Relationships are built and broken on how well people pay attention to each other. Jobs are kept are lost. Ideas that could improve your life forever could be noticed or ignored-- depending on what you pay attention to. People are cheated or avoid being cheated by how well or poorly they pay attention.
By asking you to pay attention, we are asking you to practice a skill that will lead you to live a better life. Our world is full of distractions: gadgets, trivial information, temptations of every kind. By selecting what you focus on and what you ignore, you give you life a path and sense of purpose. Simply letting your attention flit around aimlessly leads... no where.
But as always, there's a paradox. Some distractions, some things that lie off the beaten path, are exactly the kinds of things we need to pay attention to. Pay attention to homeless musician playing the violin in the subway. Pay attention to the sunset that will never appear again. Pay attention to your younger sister or brother who wants you to read them a book. I want you to pay attention to your attention. Your attention determines your experience, and how others experience you.
What you pay attention to is often determined by what you find useful. And what you think will be useful is often what you pay attention to.
So I want you to be open minded about what is "useful." Anything and everything can be useful. It just depends on how you pay attention to it.
And I want you to pay attention to how you pay attention and what you pay attention to. I want you to be mindful.
The ability to be open minded and mindful-- those are two more things I want for you.
Of course the other thing that makes students not want to pay attention to school is that whether things are useful or not, they sometimes seem boring, uninteresting.
Boredom and interest. There's more I want for you-- and next time we'll start with those two paradoxes.
Mr. Finkle
As I said in my first letter, I want you to understand about rules: why they matter, when they should be resisted, and that ultimately it's not about rules-- or shouldn't be. I hinted that there was more I wanted for you.
Just as the nature of rules is paradoxical, the next two things I want for you are paradoxical as well. They involve usefulness and attention.
Many students ask their teachers, "When are we ever going to use this stuff?"
On the one hand, the answer might be, "Maybe never." On the other hand, the answer might be, "Maybe every day of your life." You just never know. I want you to understand that the idea of something being "useful" is not as obvious as it might seem. We teachers are told that most of you will have jobs that haven't even been invented yet. If your jobs haven't been invented yet, how can we, or you, possibly know what skills or knowledge might be useful for ? Even in the world of current, existing jobs, you may be bound for a career you've never heard of just because there are so many careers in the world. So you simply don't know what will be useful.
But I also want you to understand that what makes things useful may not be job-related at all. Some things are useful because they help shape who you are as a person. Learning a difficult subject, even if you will never "use" it in the future, teaches you habits of the mind, like perseverance, diligence and curiosity. Learning a difficult subject also teaches you things like problem solving, logic, and creativity-- habits of mind and habits of character that will serve you well in any field of endeavor-- and in your personal life. You don't know what kinds of difficulties you may face in the future, or what kinds of research, thinking, and insight you might need to use to overcome them. You may find that you or one of your children are struck with a rare disease, or caught in a natural disaster, or caught up in a terrible conflict with someone close to you. Those lessons you learned in science or reading or from the novel you read in 7th grade may hold the key insight that helps you overcome a hardship. I when I have a physical ailment of some sort, I use my "home version" of the scientific process to figure out what's causing it. I still live by the lessons I learned in Narnia or by listening to Atticus Finch talk to Scout. Paying attention to the things you are asked to learn is a good thing-- you never know what might come in handy.
Paying attention is a habit of mind all its own-- perhaps the most important habit of all. I want you to understand the importance of attention. We ask you to pay attention. It is a payment of sorts because by paying attention to one thing-- what we want you to learn-- you must give up paying attention to your cellphone, your friend across the room, your daydream. It is a struggle for many of you, partially because you don't see the usefulness of what we are asking you to learn. But I want you to understand that attention is not just a school issue-- it is a life issue.
In fact, what is your life, but the sum of what you pay attention to? How you pay attention doesn't just control your success in school. Relationships are built and broken on how well people pay attention to each other. Jobs are kept are lost. Ideas that could improve your life forever could be noticed or ignored-- depending on what you pay attention to. People are cheated or avoid being cheated by how well or poorly they pay attention.
By asking you to pay attention, we are asking you to practice a skill that will lead you to live a better life. Our world is full of distractions: gadgets, trivial information, temptations of every kind. By selecting what you focus on and what you ignore, you give you life a path and sense of purpose. Simply letting your attention flit around aimlessly leads... no where.
But as always, there's a paradox. Some distractions, some things that lie off the beaten path, are exactly the kinds of things we need to pay attention to. Pay attention to homeless musician playing the violin in the subway. Pay attention to the sunset that will never appear again. Pay attention to your younger sister or brother who wants you to read them a book. I want you to pay attention to your attention. Your attention determines your experience, and how others experience you.
What you pay attention to is often determined by what you find useful. And what you think will be useful is often what you pay attention to.
So I want you to be open minded about what is "useful." Anything and everything can be useful. It just depends on how you pay attention to it.
And I want you to pay attention to how you pay attention and what you pay attention to. I want you to be mindful.
The ability to be open minded and mindful-- those are two more things I want for you.
Of course the other thing that makes students not want to pay attention to school is that whether things are useful or not, they sometimes seem boring, uninteresting.
Boredom and interest. There's more I want for you-- and next time we'll start with those two paradoxes.
Mr. Finkle
Sunday, December 16, 2012
To My Students: What I Want For You - Part 1
Dear Students,
I am your teacher-- for a time. We will spend a year, maybe three if I loop with you, together. You may remember my class fondly for many years. You may remember my class as a torture chamber you need to recover from once you escape. You may forget you were ever in my class the minute you leave on the last day of school.
But that is not what I want for you.
It may appear that I want you to be merely obedient, well behaved, and hard working because it will make my life easier. But that is not the case. I cannot speak for all teachers, but if I'd wanted an easy life, I would have chosen a different career path.
So if I don't want merely want good behavior and hard work, what do I want?
I do indeed want you to understand the importance of following rules. Many, if not most, rules are a contract between members of society that make life run more smoothly. When people break those rules by driving on the wrong side of the road, by stealing, by committing violence-- by disrupting class-- they are hurting other people. They are hurting the community. And so mindful obedience for the good of all, and for your own good, is necessary. What you do, or don't do, affects everyone around you. When you blurt out or have incessant side-conversations, you make it harder for me to teach, and harder for you and your classmates to learn. It's really a question of simple manners. Manners, by the way, will get you a long way in life.
When I think of rule-following, I think of the self discipline required of members of a band. I attended our school's band and chorus concert last week, and what struck me was how self disciplined the members of both bands and the chorus were. They were quiet when they needed to be; they listened to and watched the conductor; they worked as a team. In a way, they weren't thinking about rules, I suspect, but of the music they were trying to create.
I don't want you to just follow rules because you will get in trouble if you don't. I want you to follow rules because you are learning to be considerate of other people. I want you to go beyond rules, the way those of you in the concert did, to create something great in our class. Following rules isn't a chore if you know you are creating something great together.
Maybe you don't personally see anything great going on and couldn't care less about what we do in class. Well, other people do see the value in what we are doing, and so for them I ask you to try to follow some rules.
But on the other hand...
I also want you to understand the dangers of blind obedience and conformity. Some rules are not for the good of the many, but for the good of the privileged few. Some rules, some ideas, need to be vigorously resisted, as apartheid was, and slavery and segregation and fascism. If rules are not truly for the good of all, then they must be resisted, in word and in deed, and with reason and logic on your side.
But choosing to resist rules is not always right. "I don't want to follow the rules because I want to do whatever I want," is not reason or even a reason. It is a temper tantrum.
And to resist getting an education is, if I may say so, the height of ignorance. Education is the first thing tyrants and dictators try to eliminate in order to control people. Education is the surest way to take control of your destiny, get out of poverty, find a calling in life and follow it. In parts of the world where children are denied education, they long for what you get for free everyday. I don't have time to go into the full story of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the head for protesting the fact that girls are not allowed to be educated in the Swat Valley, though I may later. Suffice it to say, she was resisting rules for the right reasons.
And so I want you to understand and think about the need to follow rules, but also the need for dissent from the truly unjust rules. History classes you take are full of examples of this tension. Stories you read in English are full of nuanced and thoughtful explorations of this theme. Pay attention to history and stories to help you decide when to follow and when to resist-- how to live your life.
So I want you to follow the rules-- sort of. What I want even more is for you to see so much value in what we have to experience and create together that rules become a moot point. I will hold you to rules if I have to-- but that isn't really what I want. I want you to be interested, to be engaged, to be considerate because you understand the importance of what we are doing.
Which leads me to the next thing I want for you-- but that can wait until next time.
Mr. Finkle
I am your teacher-- for a time. We will spend a year, maybe three if I loop with you, together. You may remember my class fondly for many years. You may remember my class as a torture chamber you need to recover from once you escape. You may forget you were ever in my class the minute you leave on the last day of school.
But that is not what I want for you.
It may appear that I want you to be merely obedient, well behaved, and hard working because it will make my life easier. But that is not the case. I cannot speak for all teachers, but if I'd wanted an easy life, I would have chosen a different career path.
So if I don't want merely want good behavior and hard work, what do I want?
I do indeed want you to understand the importance of following rules. Many, if not most, rules are a contract between members of society that make life run more smoothly. When people break those rules by driving on the wrong side of the road, by stealing, by committing violence-- by disrupting class-- they are hurting other people. They are hurting the community. And so mindful obedience for the good of all, and for your own good, is necessary. What you do, or don't do, affects everyone around you. When you blurt out or have incessant side-conversations, you make it harder for me to teach, and harder for you and your classmates to learn. It's really a question of simple manners. Manners, by the way, will get you a long way in life.
When I think of rule-following, I think of the self discipline required of members of a band. I attended our school's band and chorus concert last week, and what struck me was how self disciplined the members of both bands and the chorus were. They were quiet when they needed to be; they listened to and watched the conductor; they worked as a team. In a way, they weren't thinking about rules, I suspect, but of the music they were trying to create.
I don't want you to just follow rules because you will get in trouble if you don't. I want you to follow rules because you are learning to be considerate of other people. I want you to go beyond rules, the way those of you in the concert did, to create something great in our class. Following rules isn't a chore if you know you are creating something great together.
Maybe you don't personally see anything great going on and couldn't care less about what we do in class. Well, other people do see the value in what we are doing, and so for them I ask you to try to follow some rules.
But on the other hand...
I also want you to understand the dangers of blind obedience and conformity. Some rules are not for the good of the many, but for the good of the privileged few. Some rules, some ideas, need to be vigorously resisted, as apartheid was, and slavery and segregation and fascism. If rules are not truly for the good of all, then they must be resisted, in word and in deed, and with reason and logic on your side.
But choosing to resist rules is not always right. "I don't want to follow the rules because I want to do whatever I want," is not reason or even a reason. It is a temper tantrum.
And to resist getting an education is, if I may say so, the height of ignorance. Education is the first thing tyrants and dictators try to eliminate in order to control people. Education is the surest way to take control of your destiny, get out of poverty, find a calling in life and follow it. In parts of the world where children are denied education, they long for what you get for free everyday. I don't have time to go into the full story of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the head for protesting the fact that girls are not allowed to be educated in the Swat Valley, though I may later. Suffice it to say, she was resisting rules for the right reasons.
And so I want you to understand and think about the need to follow rules, but also the need for dissent from the truly unjust rules. History classes you take are full of examples of this tension. Stories you read in English are full of nuanced and thoughtful explorations of this theme. Pay attention to history and stories to help you decide when to follow and when to resist-- how to live your life.
So I want you to follow the rules-- sort of. What I want even more is for you to see so much value in what we have to experience and create together that rules become a moot point. I will hold you to rules if I have to-- but that isn't really what I want. I want you to be interested, to be engaged, to be considerate because you understand the importance of what we are doing.
Which leads me to the next thing I want for you-- but that can wait until next time.
Mr. Finkle
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
The Ideal Brochure for Public Education
I wrote earlier this week about how a brochure for public education might read now that education deformers have had their way. Such a brochure would advertise things like Conformity, Data-Obsession, and Core-Class Focus (at the expense of the arts). It seems to me that most of the "improvements" hoisted on public education have actually been designed to make public schools as unappealing as possible. Jeb Bush, education deformer extraordinaire, even tipped his hand a bit in an editorial to the Orlando Sentinel in April. In touting the virtues of virtual school, he stated, "Digital learning can transform education from a factory-style system into a personalized, achievement-based system." Aside from the laughable idea that virtual school is personalized (in any way other than the self-paced aspect of it), the truly ironic thing about his comment was that Bush and his policies of grading, punishing, and rewarding schools based on test scores is what led them to becoming "factory-style." If Bush objects to schools that operate "factory style," he has only his own policies, and those of his brother and President Obama to blame.
But this made me wonder, what should a brochure for public schools look like, and, by implication, what should our public schools actually look like?
Well, based on my own experiences of school as a student, teacher, and parent, and based on what I have read about what really works in my reading about effective education systems, here is what I think public school brochures should read like:
INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION: Your student is an individual, not a number. We want to treat your student like a person. Our teachers look at where their students are at, where they want them to be, and help them to grow from there.
INQUIRY AND CURIOSITY: We want students to not just answer good questions, but to ask good questions. We want to inspire curiosity and fascination with the world around them. We model that fascination and curiosity ourselves as teachers.
CONNECTIONS: We want students to realize that the Sherlock Holmes story they read in Language Arts demonstrates some of the scientific principles they learned in science, that the concepts they learn in Math might influence the economics they learn in History. We want students to see connections between different areas of study, between different things they read, and between what they learn and themselves. We want them to see that there is space between the subjects where fascinating things are happening. (What happens in our brains when we read a great story?) We want students to see that standards are really a minimalist way of looking at learning, and that sometimes the most important things we learn are off the "beaten path" of standards and curriculum maps.
ENGAGEMENT: We are not here to entertain students with gimmicks that make learning seem like fun. We are here to engage students in learning, to show them that learning is fun-- and hard work, at the same time. We want students to learn to engage themselves in learning, by awakening their curiosity (see above.)
CREATIVITY: Creativity is the skill of the future: creative thinkers innovate, find solutions to the world's problems, and generate useful ideas in all areas of life. We believe teachers can't give away what they don't have, so we encourage our teachers to tap into their own creativity to meet students where they're at, to use their creativity to help students develop theirs. We don't want to teach our students that there is always one right answer to every situation, but that there may be many right answers.
CHARACTER: We want students to engage in an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be an individual in a democratic society. We want students to realize the value of character traits like empathy, perseverance, and trustworthiness. We want students to understand that neither compliance nor non-conformity is always the path to take-- that there will be times for both in a life, and to be a successful person means navigating between the two. We want them to understand that history and literature both hold up mirrors for us to look at and examine ourselves.
PASSION: We want students to make personal connections between themselves and the things they study, yet also be able to become so fascinated by the world around them that they forget themselves as well. We believe that helping students find their passions, develop their interests, and cultivate their individual talents is the best way to teach them to succeed.
VOCATION: Following your passion may help you find your vocation-- your calling in life. We don't want students to merely be competent at some random job they stumble into; we want our students to excel at a career that utilizes their deepest interests and their strongest skills, not just to make a lot of money, but to do some good in the world as well (see character above).
LITERACY: We believe that the ability to appreciate the power of words, the fun of words, the beauty of words, is essential for engagement in a world where words shape societies, cultures, histories, sciences, philosophies and faiths... our very lives. We believe reading is the best thing you can do for your brain, and that students will read a lot if they have passion and curiosity (see above) to guide them in their search for reading materials. We believe that in our digital age, more than ever before, everyone can be a writer. We believe that students learn to write best when they are allowed to follow their interests, encouraged to develop new interests, and given affirmation that they have something to say. We believe students should study great writers both for what they have to say, and how they say it. We believe that students should be able to write in multiple modes and that writing about other people's writing is not the highest or best of those modes. We believe every student should be able to listen to and speak to the world-- to have a discussion with it.
We want our students not see their minds as buckets being passively filled up with knowledge, but as interconnected webs constantly adding new connections. We don't care about test scores so much. We focus on these other, difficult to measure qualities and concepts (see above), because when we do, we develop world class thinkers, literate, creative, passionate individuals who are ready to take on and contribute to the world. Send us your children. You'll be glad you did.
But this made me wonder, what should a brochure for public schools look like, and, by implication, what should our public schools actually look like?
Well, based on my own experiences of school as a student, teacher, and parent, and based on what I have read about what really works in my reading about effective education systems, here is what I think public school brochures should read like:
INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION: Your student is an individual, not a number. We want to treat your student like a person. Our teachers look at where their students are at, where they want them to be, and help them to grow from there.
INQUIRY AND CURIOSITY: We want students to not just answer good questions, but to ask good questions. We want to inspire curiosity and fascination with the world around them. We model that fascination and curiosity ourselves as teachers.
CONNECTIONS: We want students to realize that the Sherlock Holmes story they read in Language Arts demonstrates some of the scientific principles they learned in science, that the concepts they learn in Math might influence the economics they learn in History. We want students to see connections between different areas of study, between different things they read, and between what they learn and themselves. We want them to see that there is space between the subjects where fascinating things are happening. (What happens in our brains when we read a great story?) We want students to see that standards are really a minimalist way of looking at learning, and that sometimes the most important things we learn are off the "beaten path" of standards and curriculum maps.
ENGAGEMENT: We are not here to entertain students with gimmicks that make learning seem like fun. We are here to engage students in learning, to show them that learning is fun-- and hard work, at the same time. We want students to learn to engage themselves in learning, by awakening their curiosity (see above.)
CREATIVITY: Creativity is the skill of the future: creative thinkers innovate, find solutions to the world's problems, and generate useful ideas in all areas of life. We believe teachers can't give away what they don't have, so we encourage our teachers to tap into their own creativity to meet students where they're at, to use their creativity to help students develop theirs. We don't want to teach our students that there is always one right answer to every situation, but that there may be many right answers.
CHARACTER: We want students to engage in an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be an individual in a democratic society. We want students to realize the value of character traits like empathy, perseverance, and trustworthiness. We want students to understand that neither compliance nor non-conformity is always the path to take-- that there will be times for both in a life, and to be a successful person means navigating between the two. We want them to understand that history and literature both hold up mirrors for us to look at and examine ourselves.
PASSION: We want students to make personal connections between themselves and the things they study, yet also be able to become so fascinated by the world around them that they forget themselves as well. We believe that helping students find their passions, develop their interests, and cultivate their individual talents is the best way to teach them to succeed.
VOCATION: Following your passion may help you find your vocation-- your calling in life. We don't want students to merely be competent at some random job they stumble into; we want our students to excel at a career that utilizes their deepest interests and their strongest skills, not just to make a lot of money, but to do some good in the world as well (see character above).
LITERACY: We believe that the ability to appreciate the power of words, the fun of words, the beauty of words, is essential for engagement in a world where words shape societies, cultures, histories, sciences, philosophies and faiths... our very lives. We believe reading is the best thing you can do for your brain, and that students will read a lot if they have passion and curiosity (see above) to guide them in their search for reading materials. We believe that in our digital age, more than ever before, everyone can be a writer. We believe that students learn to write best when they are allowed to follow their interests, encouraged to develop new interests, and given affirmation that they have something to say. We believe students should study great writers both for what they have to say, and how they say it. We believe that students should be able to write in multiple modes and that writing about other people's writing is not the highest or best of those modes. We believe every student should be able to listen to and speak to the world-- to have a discussion with it.
We want our students not see their minds as buckets being passively filled up with knowledge, but as interconnected webs constantly adding new connections. We don't care about test scores so much. We focus on these other, difficult to measure qualities and concepts (see above), because when we do, we develop world class thinkers, literate, creative, passionate individuals who are ready to take on and contribute to the world. Send us your children. You'll be glad you did.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
A Brochure for Public Education Deform
Our son is in his in his senior year, and after his perfect SAT score, he's been getting mail from colleges just about everywhere. It's an interesting exercise in marketing and current culture to see how colleges and universities are trying to appeal to today's prospective students. Some of the schools pander so much to today's multitasking, Tweeting, gaming culture that they haven't appealed much to our son, or to us. College should be engaging, but it shouldn't be like playing on a Wii.
What has interested me the most is the brochures we actually find appealing, and what they focus on. The schools our son is drawn to, and the materials that impress us, talk about the following things:
And so on. The thing that struck me one night, though, flipping through a brochure with key words like CREATIVITY, PASSION, PERSONAL INTERESTS, COMMUNITY, SIGNIFICANCE, and RELEVANCE emblazoned across the top of each page, was the fact that if you did a brochure about public schools, the way they have been redefined and deformed in an age of NCLB and Race to the Top, it would read like the exact opposite of what colleges are advertising these days:
Attend PUBLIC SCHOOL!
Experience the magic!
CONFORMITY: In public schools, our goal is to ensure that everyone thinks exactly the same way! Our obsession with multiple choice questions, visible every day as students use their "clickers" in class, means that students think there is only one right answer to every problem, are uncomfortable with nuance or ambiguity, and never try to generate their own, novel solutions to problems.
NON-INQUIRY: Asking too many questions can get you in trouble. That's why we let students answer questions, but we avoid letting them ask them.
EQUITABLE INSTRUCTION: Our scripted curricula and detailed instructional calendars insure that, like a fast-food restaurant, our classrooms provide students with the same exact educational experience in every class. Teachers become standardized dispensers of knowledge, easily replaceable, thus guaranteeing every student will get the exact same experience!
DETACHMENT: We want students to develop a detached and depersonalized view of the world, in which they feel no messy, personal connections to the concepts they are studying! We want our students to know that no one cares about their personal stories, and they shouldn't care about anyone else's.
DATA-OBSESSION: We are obsessed with Data, and we will treat your student like a number. Your student will be referred to by test score level: "He's a 5," or "She's a 2." If your student can't make gains, he or she has failed, and prospects for the future look bleak.
CORE-CLASS FOCUS: We focus completely on core classes and minimum proficiencies. We feel that the arts are a waste of time and tax-payer money, so you won't find students frittering away their time on painting, drawing, playing musical instruments, singing, dancing, or writing creatively. Or, if we do have the arts, we will make sure that rubrics, measurement, and quantification make these courses as rigorous and joyless as our hardest core classes. Fun and enjoyment have no place in a school of rigor and data-driven instruction.
GOAL ORIENTATION: We want students who will go out in the world and make money, which is, of course, the goal of education. We don't waste time focusing on intangibles such as making a contribution to the world, following your passion, or helping people. Higher test scores mean a higher paying job, a higher paying job means more money, and more money means more success! We want our students to be successful!
I think teachers around the country, including myself, are resisting these goals for public education, but policy does have an influence, and I have to wonder if many parents are home-schooling, or seeking out charters or private schools, to escape exactly the culture I've outlined in my "brochure." This leads me to wonder: what if all the reforms and supposed "improvements" being forced on public schools are really meant to undermine them and drive people away rather than improve them and draw people in? I don't think I'm being paranoid.
Great teachers and great schools have the goals that our son's college brochures list. They are the goals I aspire to every day-- which makes me counter-cultural. Ironically, I think the schools and teachers who aim for these higher goals are probably the ones that eventually get higher test scores-- because they aren't focusing on test scores.
Schools have altered themselves, reformed themselves, supposedly to make students more fit to attend college. It is yet another irony that in aiming for un-creative, dehumanizing, supposedly more rigorous instruction, they are undermining the very goals of the colleges themselves: to create nuanced, creative, passionate thinkers who want to make a difference in the world.
What has interested me the most is the brochures we actually find appealing, and what they focus on. The schools our son is drawn to, and the materials that impress us, talk about the following things:
- developing creativity
- finding your passion
- tapping into your personal interests
- having talented and knowledgeable professors to teach you
- being treated as a human being who is full of potential
- dealing with real-world problems in a hands-on way
- engaging in nuanced thinking, ambiguity, and discussion
- being part of a community
- being prepared not only to make a living, but to make a difference in the world
And so on. The thing that struck me one night, though, flipping through a brochure with key words like CREATIVITY, PASSION, PERSONAL INTERESTS, COMMUNITY, SIGNIFICANCE, and RELEVANCE emblazoned across the top of each page, was the fact that if you did a brochure about public schools, the way they have been redefined and deformed in an age of NCLB and Race to the Top, it would read like the exact opposite of what colleges are advertising these days:
Attend PUBLIC SCHOOL!
Experience the magic!
CONFORMITY: In public schools, our goal is to ensure that everyone thinks exactly the same way! Our obsession with multiple choice questions, visible every day as students use their "clickers" in class, means that students think there is only one right answer to every problem, are uncomfortable with nuance or ambiguity, and never try to generate their own, novel solutions to problems.
NON-INQUIRY: Asking too many questions can get you in trouble. That's why we let students answer questions, but we avoid letting them ask them.
EQUITABLE INSTRUCTION: Our scripted curricula and detailed instructional calendars insure that, like a fast-food restaurant, our classrooms provide students with the same exact educational experience in every class. Teachers become standardized dispensers of knowledge, easily replaceable, thus guaranteeing every student will get the exact same experience!
DETACHMENT: We want students to develop a detached and depersonalized view of the world, in which they feel no messy, personal connections to the concepts they are studying! We want our students to know that no one cares about their personal stories, and they shouldn't care about anyone else's.
DATA-OBSESSION: We are obsessed with Data, and we will treat your student like a number. Your student will be referred to by test score level: "He's a 5," or "She's a 2." If your student can't make gains, he or she has failed, and prospects for the future look bleak.
CORE-CLASS FOCUS: We focus completely on core classes and minimum proficiencies. We feel that the arts are a waste of time and tax-payer money, so you won't find students frittering away their time on painting, drawing, playing musical instruments, singing, dancing, or writing creatively. Or, if we do have the arts, we will make sure that rubrics, measurement, and quantification make these courses as rigorous and joyless as our hardest core classes. Fun and enjoyment have no place in a school of rigor and data-driven instruction.
GOAL ORIENTATION: We want students who will go out in the world and make money, which is, of course, the goal of education. We don't waste time focusing on intangibles such as making a contribution to the world, following your passion, or helping people. Higher test scores mean a higher paying job, a higher paying job means more money, and more money means more success! We want our students to be successful!
I think teachers around the country, including myself, are resisting these goals for public education, but policy does have an influence, and I have to wonder if many parents are home-schooling, or seeking out charters or private schools, to escape exactly the culture I've outlined in my "brochure." This leads me to wonder: what if all the reforms and supposed "improvements" being forced on public schools are really meant to undermine them and drive people away rather than improve them and draw people in? I don't think I'm being paranoid.
Great teachers and great schools have the goals that our son's college brochures list. They are the goals I aspire to every day-- which makes me counter-cultural. Ironically, I think the schools and teachers who aim for these higher goals are probably the ones that eventually get higher test scores-- because they aren't focusing on test scores.
Schools have altered themselves, reformed themselves, supposedly to make students more fit to attend college. It is yet another irony that in aiming for un-creative, dehumanizing, supposedly more rigorous instruction, they are undermining the very goals of the colleges themselves: to create nuanced, creative, passionate thinkers who want to make a difference in the world.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The Power and Importance of Dissent
At the end of the summer, the day before I went back for pre-planning for the new school year, I went with my teen-aged kids to see The Dark Knight Rises, the last movie in Christopher Nolan's superhero trilogy. I really liked it, more than I expected, but one scene stood out for me, a scene not about Batman himself, but about a police detective named John Blake. Blake is attempting to get some of Gotham City's children out of the city on a bus before a nuclear bomb goes critical and destroys the city. Another police officer, going on old orders, refuses to let the bus cross the bridge to safety, because if he does, the bomb will go off. As Blake points out, the bomb will go off anyway in a matter of minutes.
The police officer blows up a section of the bridge anyway, to prevent them from leaving, saying he is "Just following orders."
After Gotham is rescued (sorry if that was a spoiler), Blake leaves the police force in disgust at the blind obedience of his fellow officers, saying that sometimes "structures become shackles."
We live in a time where structures are indeed becoming shackles-- especially in education. District staff, principals, and teachers are all being asked to just follow orders. By implication, students are as well. The message is, "You are an employee. You do as your employer tells you." I've also heard the message, "It's the law now, so you've got to do it."
In other words, follow your orders. Now most of the times following orders is a good and proper thing. Society couldn't function without some rules. It doesn't matter which side of the road drivers in different countries ride on-- British drivers drive on the left, we drive on the right-- but it does matter that everyone in the same country follow the same rule. If drivers don't, disaster ensues. Following orders for such obviously useful rules is not just the right thing to do-- it is the only safe thing to do.
But obviously not all rules or even laws are so obviously useful and right, and when laws and rules conflict with a person's higher values, then dissent is not only a possibility-- it should be a necessity. Without dissent there would have been no Declaration of Independence, and no United States of America. Without dissent, we might still be living in a segregated United States of America. Without dissent, women might not be voting yet.
Of course, not all dissent is correct or constructive, and some dissent can actually become violent and destructive. But healthy dissent is necessary for a society to stay healthy. Or a school system.
Back when education reform started-- around the same time my teaching career did, in the early 90's-- the reformers were the voices of dissent. They said the system favored the job security of teachers over the education of children. They said we needed to be reaching our lowest performing students. I think their dissent was valuable. I wonder if their solutions were really what was needed.
Now the reformers say that if we don't like the reforms, we are in favor of the "status quo." I hate to tell them-- but reform is the new status quo. There are teachers who have never know anything but the education world of standardized testing and standardized teaching. And how many hundreds of thousands of children have gone through a system that treated them like so much data and then spit them out the other side?
Over the past few years, I've heard people "in charge" say things like this:
"It's the rule now. "
"You need to just do it."
"It's been signed into law."
"You are just an employee."
"You need to follow the rules."
Those statements only go so far. What if you were ordered to beat a child, or keep teaching in a contaminated classroom? You'd refuse-- you'd dissent. Well-- how far does dissent extend? At what point do you stop saying "Okay" to everything and speak up?
They are all the equivalent of a parent saying, "Because I said so." I've heard "because we said so" invoked to defend the Common Core Standards, yet the standards themselves promote using evidence to make your point. The Common Core would give give its own defenders an "F" for saying "Because I said so."
It used to be that we could talk about textbooks and have professional opinions of them. Now we have programs and reforms coming at us that we are supposed to accept without question. We are discouraged from thinking for ourselves. "Just do it." The slogan takes on a different meaning under these circumstances. As Diane Ravitch has stated, how can we expect teachers to teach children to think for themselves if they are not allowed to think for themselves. Any reform of education that discourages thinking is an irony, a paradox, an oxymoron.
I am an English teacher. I do more than teach good grammar, reading skills, and writing skills. My calling-- and I do think it's a calling-- is to not only teach the What and the How, but the Why. Language is here to help us make sense of life. Language has power-- our words and ideas can literally change the world. Our nation has as one of its foundational principles-- written down in the Bill of Rights-- the importance of the free exchange of ideas.
To teach my students that reading and writing are about only career and college readiness violates my calling as a teacher. Reading and writing encompass career and college, but they also encompass so much more. When everything I am tells me that certain policies will hurt kids and ultimately hurt the teaching profession and the nation, then I must speak up about them. To not speak up is to violate the very foundations upon which my subject matter rests. If English teachers, the people who teach our children to think and write and speak, feel censored, unable to tell the their truth, then our profession is meaningless.
So when I speak up here as a dissenting voice, as so many teachers are, I am carrying on a proud tradition. When I satirize and parody education reform by making fun of the FCAT with the U-SKUNK, or the Common Core Standards with the Standard Standardized State Standards, I part of a long line of satirists who have tried to make people see things in a different way through humor. My voice may be small, but that is no reason to stay silent.
To look around you and know that what is happening is bad for kids, and yet remain silent because you fear a slap on the wrist, a bad job evaluation, or even getting fired, is the real crime. If nobody says anything against them, the pushiest voices win, and the structures they build become shackles.
As the bumper sticker says, "Speak up, even if your voice shakes."
The police officer blows up a section of the bridge anyway, to prevent them from leaving, saying he is "Just following orders."
After Gotham is rescued (sorry if that was a spoiler), Blake leaves the police force in disgust at the blind obedience of his fellow officers, saying that sometimes "structures become shackles."
We live in a time where structures are indeed becoming shackles-- especially in education. District staff, principals, and teachers are all being asked to just follow orders. By implication, students are as well. The message is, "You are an employee. You do as your employer tells you." I've also heard the message, "It's the law now, so you've got to do it."
In other words, follow your orders. Now most of the times following orders is a good and proper thing. Society couldn't function without some rules. It doesn't matter which side of the road drivers in different countries ride on-- British drivers drive on the left, we drive on the right-- but it does matter that everyone in the same country follow the same rule. If drivers don't, disaster ensues. Following orders for such obviously useful rules is not just the right thing to do-- it is the only safe thing to do.
But obviously not all rules or even laws are so obviously useful and right, and when laws and rules conflict with a person's higher values, then dissent is not only a possibility-- it should be a necessity. Without dissent there would have been no Declaration of Independence, and no United States of America. Without dissent, we might still be living in a segregated United States of America. Without dissent, women might not be voting yet.
Of course, not all dissent is correct or constructive, and some dissent can actually become violent and destructive. But healthy dissent is necessary for a society to stay healthy. Or a school system.
Back when education reform started-- around the same time my teaching career did, in the early 90's-- the reformers were the voices of dissent. They said the system favored the job security of teachers over the education of children. They said we needed to be reaching our lowest performing students. I think their dissent was valuable. I wonder if their solutions were really what was needed.
Now the reformers say that if we don't like the reforms, we are in favor of the "status quo." I hate to tell them-- but reform is the new status quo. There are teachers who have never know anything but the education world of standardized testing and standardized teaching. And how many hundreds of thousands of children have gone through a system that treated them like so much data and then spit them out the other side?
Over the past few years, I've heard people "in charge" say things like this:
"It's the rule now. "
"You need to just do it."
"It's been signed into law."
"You are just an employee."
"You need to follow the rules."
Those statements only go so far. What if you were ordered to beat a child, or keep teaching in a contaminated classroom? You'd refuse-- you'd dissent. Well-- how far does dissent extend? At what point do you stop saying "Okay" to everything and speak up?
They are all the equivalent of a parent saying, "Because I said so." I've heard "because we said so" invoked to defend the Common Core Standards, yet the standards themselves promote using evidence to make your point. The Common Core would give give its own defenders an "F" for saying "Because I said so."
It used to be that we could talk about textbooks and have professional opinions of them. Now we have programs and reforms coming at us that we are supposed to accept without question. We are discouraged from thinking for ourselves. "Just do it." The slogan takes on a different meaning under these circumstances. As Diane Ravitch has stated, how can we expect teachers to teach children to think for themselves if they are not allowed to think for themselves. Any reform of education that discourages thinking is an irony, a paradox, an oxymoron.
I am an English teacher. I do more than teach good grammar, reading skills, and writing skills. My calling-- and I do think it's a calling-- is to not only teach the What and the How, but the Why. Language is here to help us make sense of life. Language has power-- our words and ideas can literally change the world. Our nation has as one of its foundational principles-- written down in the Bill of Rights-- the importance of the free exchange of ideas.
To teach my students that reading and writing are about only career and college readiness violates my calling as a teacher. Reading and writing encompass career and college, but they also encompass so much more. When everything I am tells me that certain policies will hurt kids and ultimately hurt the teaching profession and the nation, then I must speak up about them. To not speak up is to violate the very foundations upon which my subject matter rests. If English teachers, the people who teach our children to think and write and speak, feel censored, unable to tell the their truth, then our profession is meaningless.
So when I speak up here as a dissenting voice, as so many teachers are, I am carrying on a proud tradition. When I satirize and parody education reform by making fun of the FCAT with the U-SKUNK, or the Common Core Standards with the Standard Standardized State Standards, I part of a long line of satirists who have tried to make people see things in a different way through humor. My voice may be small, but that is no reason to stay silent.
To look around you and know that what is happening is bad for kids, and yet remain silent because you fear a slap on the wrist, a bad job evaluation, or even getting fired, is the real crime. If nobody says anything against them, the pushiest voices win, and the structures they build become shackles.
As the bumper sticker says, "Speak up, even if your voice shakes."
Monday, August 13, 2012
My First Foray into the Common Core: A Trip to Thesaurus.com
I have often talked about how things are in education; I have not yet delved into where they appear to be going. And where they are going is the Common Core State [sic] Standards. The subject is so big, and so complex, that I've hardly known where to start. As newspapers and parents here in Florida are panicking because Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores have dropped, I've wanted to scream, "And what does it matter? This test will be gone after two more years, and what's coming after it is so different, based on the little we've seen, that our current hand-wringing is completely pointless!"
From what I've read in several places, many parents and the public at large (this article, for example, which paints the standards in a favorable light) are almost completely ignorant of the the Common Core Standards. I want to address the CCS in my comic strip, Mr. Fitz, but I've hemmed and hawed for a long time about how to go about it. When I first started the strip, I hoped to get syndicated someday (I've been turned down by all the syndicates 3 times each), so I didn't want to use the real name of our Florida standardized test for the standardized test in the strip. As I explained in an earlier post, I instead named the test in the comic strip the U-SKUNK ( the Universal SKills, UNderstanding and Knowledge test).
My dilemma with the Common Core Standards is whether to use the real name, or make one up. Using the real name might make it easier to educate my audience (or at least make it more obvious what I'm picking on), but using a made-up name is more artistically consistent, and offers more chances for laughs.
So in an attempt to find a parody name for the Common Core Standards, I went to Thesaurus.com. There I looked up the words "Common," "Core," and "Standards."
The first thing that struck me about the synonyms for all three words was that they were overwhelmingly negative in their connotations. Here are just some of the synonyms for the word "common":
average, ordinary, banal, bourgeois, commonplace, conventional, general, hackneyed, homely, mediocre, monotonous, obscure, passable, plain, prosaic, run-of-the-mill, stale, standard, trite, trivial, undistinguished, wearisome, workaday, and worn-out.
I will grant you there are some less negative words, like "current" or "prevailing," but hardly anything that is outright positive as opposed to neutral.
That's "common." What about "core"? Well, Thesaurus.com had these synonyms to offer:
base, basis, bottom line, bulk, burden, consequence, corpus, crux, foundation, heart, main idea, meat, nitty-gritty, nub, origin, pivot, root, substance... Better, I suppose, though even here quite a few of the words had negative connotations. Although no thesaurus I looked at listed "standard" as a synonym for "core," it strikes me that if you look at core as the central idea or object, something you look at to get your direction, like a tall building in a city, or a castle at a theme park... or a flag. If the core of something might be viewed as a standard in the sense of a banner waving in the wind, then, by George, "core" could also mean "standard."
And standard? Well, other words for standard as an adjective included accepted, authoritative, average, basic, classic, customary, definitive, established, garden variety, normal, official, orthodox, popular, prevailing, regulation, stock, typical... and vanilla. As a noun, standard becomes a banner, an emblem, a figure, a streamer, or a symbol.
So in other words, we could have named the Common Core State Standards any of the following:
The Monotonous Burden Symbols
The Bourgeois Nitty-Gritty Regulations
The Mediocre Meat Figures
The Stale Stock Streamers
The Banal Basic Banners
The possibilities are endless. So what will I call the standards in my comic strip. I'm keeping under wraps for now, but I've decided that simplest is best. If you've read this post carefully, you might even be able to guess.
I haven't said anything about the standards themselves yet, or the ironies and baggage that come with them, yet I thought it was worth taking a closer look at the name itself. After all, isn't looking at nuances of meaning, examining assumptions, and thinking critically part of what the Common Core is about?
If nuance, questioning, and thinking aren't really what the Common Core is about, then the Common Core is not worth having. If the Common Core really is about nuance, questioning, and thinking, then its supporters should be asking people to challenge and question it just like any other "text." That's how the "open marketplace of ideas" works.
Even in the face of the Mediocre Bulk Emblems.
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