Late start to my post this morning. Don’t even know where to start. I have nothing to say and everything to say at once. So, I think I will just share an exchange between a student and me from a feedback conference yesterday.
I have not always been so patient. It’s taken time for me to become a better listener, a better questioner. And though there are still times when I rush to fill the silent moments in my conferences with kids, I have gotten better at letting go. Here’s the message I shared with all my kids yesterday.
I am learning to let go.
Today’s Trail
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…demonstrating our learning with a Learning Check.
Real, I’ve come to find, is rarely ideal. It has blemishes. It will always have blemishes. It’s real–it has to. And though some think it unappealing and unattractive, it is authentic, and I think authentic is beautiful.
Of course, on some level, this may simply be my rationalizing my own reality, but I have little interest in “playing school” with my kids. To be sure, that is not to say that I have no interest in their learning. In fact, it’s their learning that compels me to dare different in the first place, which often leads me down a different path for I am afflicted: I have an aversion to playing pretend. I’m suspicious of the “look of learning,” believing we can–and often do–dress things up to make them look like–what we believe–to be learning. Of course, this is not to say this always the case, but in many cases we seem to have this idea that the compliant classroom is the model classroom. I don’t accept that at face value. But I suspect by now that comes as no surprise to my readers, for I have long pushed the commitment-over-compliance narrative, believing true learning comes from commitment, not compliance. And in my experience that means things have to look different, and different is not always pretty.
Yesterday, we had a personal-reading day, and not wanting to play pretend with my kiddos, I offered this message to set the stage.
Kids made choices. Were all those choices ideal? Nope. Some chose their phones. Some worked on math. Most read. Not ideal. But it was real. So, you let kids hang out on their phones and do math during reading time? No, I let them make a choice. And then, I asked them to own it in a record/reflection at the end. Am I remiss in my duties, then? I don’t know, but a choice is not a choice if it’s not a choice.
There is power and promise in choice. One of my kiddos pointed that out during Smiles and Frowns.
One will not find the ideal in room 206. That is a choice that I have made, and I will own that choice. Yes, I want better, but better is more real than ideal. That is the reality I welcome in my classroom.
A bit lost this morning. Caught in thought about what I’ve done, what I’m doing, and what I want to do. Sometimes, the lines are so blurred, the view so dim, that I am no longer certain about who I am and what I am doing. And while I do believe at my core that I am doing necessary work to disrupt the status quo, the edges fray at times, and I am left dancing with doubt.
Of course, he’s a familiar partner, and we execute our choreographed routine expertly, but it is contrived–we share no love, court no connection, for each threatens the other’s existence, but there on the floor we meet anyway, stepping through our now-automatic routine. Some days, he leads. Other days, I. Either way, we dance.
My latest lead, has me pushing him around the floor, trying to gain ground on what best represents learning. No, not a new routine. I have been stepping to this for some time, but it’s a quandary that gets me moving in double-time as I consider the routine (now rut) of the status quo and its dependence on standardized data. In the end, I imagine a reckoning, a place I’m moving towards, a place I cannot escape. And I worry a little–maybe more than a little–about the consequences of our final dance. And though this finale is not near, it’s not too far away either, for I only have so many years. At some point, we will have our last dance.
“Sy, it’s my goal to break your spirit by the end of the year.”
He didn’t mean it meanly. And I really don’t think he fully meant it, but he said it, and while I like to think he was only joking, I also know that there is nearly always some truth in kidding.
I think my “spirit,” as he likes to call it, confounds him a bit. I think he’s used to “breaking” teachers. I think he’s come to expect their predictable responses to his behavior, and so far my responses have not fallen into line. Most of the time we think it’s incumbent on the teacher to figure out the kid, but sometimes it’s the kid who has to figure out the teacher. And I’m not quite sure he’s fully figured me out yet. So, when I hear “break your spirit,” I really hear “figure you out.” And, I suppose, that’s what it’s really about–figuring it each other out as we daily dance through the human experience. I am honored to have such a skilled partner. He keeps me on my toes.
There’s a difference. It’s there. I see it, feel it, hear it daily. And as “present” as it is, the reason eludes me. Why is there a difference? Are the honors kids really smarter? Are the “regular” kids (hate that title, by the way) actually dumber? Is it parenting? Is it socioeconomic? Is it bias? Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s a difference. And I want to know why.
Most of my career, I have taught “regular” kids. Not until my twentieth year did I start having honors kids. And though I have more honors than “regs,” each year I have continued teaching a few sections of regular sophomore language arts. This year, I have four sections of honors and one section of regular. And there is a difference: academically, behaviorally, socially. But why?
Of course it may be impossible to know the actual answer. It may be equally unlikely that we could ascertain all the factors that contribute to the difference, but if I were to guess, I’d put my finger on the institutional bias the kids have experienced since they entered the schoolhouse. From day one, they have been ranked and sorted; consequently, they have learned to live into the roles of school.
As such, my informal observations have led me to believe that the biggest difference is one group simply plays the game of school better than the other. And the longer they play the game, the more situated into those roles they become. And why wouldn’t they? We handed them the script, and we have made them follow it for years. In truth, we have largely made them. We have fixed them into place. And we keep them there–mostly, it seems–because we believe we have to. But we don’t. And until we radically rethink how we do things, they will remain statically stuck waiting for the deus ex machina to liberate them. But the god in the machine won’t save them. The play must go on. The script and stage are set. They are what we think.
Morning, all. Tired and uninspired this morning. So, I am not going to force anything. Been a busy but productive week, and I am glad it’s Friday. Proud of how our Wisdom Writers Project is coming together. Kids have worked hard, and I am eager for our publishing party in January. Will share more details in the coming weeks.
I am not a patient person. I have long found patience to be a waste of my time, not a virtue. But as I have gotten older, and as I have tried to become wiser, I have come to learn that patience pays. It pays at home, and it pays in the classroom. And though I am still learning the “art of patience” in both settings, I have discovered that I am a better husband, father, and teacher when I practice patience. So, I try–and sometimes fail–to be patient.
In the classroom, on my journey, I have no choice. I am asking much from the kids. I am asking them to do what they’ve rarely been asked to do in the past. I have asked them to take ownership of their learning, and I have worked hard to create an environment where that is possible. But, just because I want and work for it to happen, it doesn’t mean it happens easily or immediately. It takes effort. It takes time. It takes patience. Sometimes, it takes more than is available or possible. The year is only so long, and the human is still only human.
By the time kids get to me they’ve been conditioned to expect and accept “the way” in education, which I believe leads them to believe that their learning is not in their hands, but the hands of the teacher, that school is something done to them, not with or for them. So, then, when I ask them to take things into their hands, it is strange for them. And it takes time for strange to become normal. And while most move beyond the strangeness and begin to “get it,” some–sadly–never do. One, it cannot be forced. Two, time runs out. That is the way.
And though I am certainly conscious of this dynamic, I still find myself struggling to be patient as things play out. In my weaker moments, I wonder if I shouldn’t just go back to ways less-strange, but those moments are fleeting, and I reach for my resolve, I paw for my patience, and once it is in hand again, I stick to the plan, and I patiently resume the journey, which isn’t always easy.
Yesterday, two of my kiddos made it a little less-hard when they handed me Kindness Cards.
I needed these yesterday. I needed to know that the kids can see what I am trying to be. I have to work intentionally to piece patience into the puzzle of my work, the puzzle of my person. And in doing that, I am learning to find peace in patience.
“We work so hard for kids within a system that doesn’t work for kids.”
Jennifer Risser, 8th grade ELA, Pennsylvania.
One of my connections on Twitter shared this thought with me in response to my #IWonderAndWorry thread. And though she suggests I “nailed it on the head,” it is she, I believe, who more accurately hits the mark. We work too hard in a system that largely doesn’t work for kids. We are stuck in a Sisyphean cycle it seems, forever rolling the rock.
And while I suppose some may see that as a cynical view of our job as educators, and though I cannot deny there may be a mist of cynicism on its edges, it is not the center I seek, for that is the hopeless view of things. And though I am certainly critical of that which is, I am equally hopeful of that which may yet be. I have hope. And so do so many others. It’s why we roll the rock. But we also have our eyes open. And as we look, we see that we created the mountain, the burden in our way. And, too, as we see, we wonder why we can’t just go around the mountain? Surely, there is another way. Surely there is better. And it is just that, a belief in better. We can keep rolling the system up the hill, or we can roll change around it. Both are formidable tasks. It is no easy task, the rebel role, but there’s strength found in rolling something one believes in. There must be, else we would have quit long ago. Better is something to believe in, a a better rock to roll.
Just go along. It’s that easy. Nod and smile. Close your mouth and your door and go along. It’s not gonna matter; it’s not gonna make a difference. So just keep it to yourself. And go along.
I can’t. Too many wonders and too many worries to go along. I can’t. I haven’t. I won’t. Oh, would that I could. I sometimes wonder (it’s what I do) how much easier my path might have been had I just chosen to go along. And sometimes–just sometimes–I wonder if I could go back, fall into place, and ride the rail set before me and quietly go along into the sunset of retirement. But those moments are fleeting, and I come back to the reality that it’s been too long to go along now.
Yesterday, upon wrestling with wonder and worry, I took to Twitter and proposed starting a wonder-and-worry conversation.
And I will kick it off today. And my hope is that we can engage in some forward thinking about the wonders and worries I present. I have little interest in the same old “solutions” that have been recycled time and again because we can’t or won’t break beyond what’s always been. I think we have to think differently to do differently. But it is hard to break beyond. And many will choose not to, claiming we have it figured out–and not to diminish the hard work that others have done in their own pursuits of better, I am not convinced we can rest here. Better waits. But we’ll never get there by going along. We have to go beyond. Beyond along.
Today’s Trail
Along (maybe a poor choice of words) today’s trail we will experience…
Morning, all. Back at it today. Had a hard time getting started this morning. Seems like the only days I can ever sleep in are the days I can’t. Was up at 4:00 all break, and this morning I easily slept past 5:00.
Tired or not, I am eager to reconnect with my kiddos today and to make the most of the next three weeks before winter break. Crazy that we are nearly at the one-third mark for the year. Cannot believe it is already December. Time flies.
Today’s Trail
Along today’s we will experience…
…reconnecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…growing with grammar.
…completing a Response to Feedback form for our latest LC.
