Revival

August 17, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m from Tulsa. That means many things, but among them is an essential familiarity with Evangelical Protestantism in all its flaws and glory. I’m not a practicing evangelical, but neither do I find them so strange – they are my people, in warts as well as wisdom.

If you’ve never been to a proper revival meeting, you’ve missed a grand cultural experience. Some border on the bizarre, others can lean a bit quaint, but most are not so far removed from the weekly experiences of the faithy folks in attendance. It’s pretty rare in your typical revival service or tent meeting for the message to be something radically new.

You don’t generally introduce a host of new songs, or swap theologies with the church down the street, or even change the format of the service much without careful framing, smiling explanations, and a special insert in the bulletin. You certainly don’t introduce new doctrines or complicated thoughtways at such times. That would be completely missing the point.

Because the goal of most revivals isn’t to hear something new. The goal is to be reminded. Refreshed. Revived. Hence, you know, the name.

It is in that spirit I’d like to remind some of us of some things we already know. Stuff we’ve learned from both study and practice, in the classroom and out. Feel free to throw out an ‘amen’ or raise your hands, although if you’re more of the snake-handling variety, I’d appreciate a heads up first. Otherwise, please allow me to preach to the choir a bit…

(1) This year’s students are a different group than last year’s students. You are not (in most situations) picking up where you left off in terms of either knowledge or ability, and certainly not in terms of rapport or expectations. You have to start all over, because they’re new… even if you’re not. And that’s totally OK.

(2) The whole “this is a new group” thing also means some of what worked well last year may fall flat with this group. Maybe you’ve lost your touch, or maybe this group is just slow, or maybe it’s just one of those things that don’t make sense – it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the cause, some things will have to evolve.

Yes, it so very sucks when you finally get a lesson perfected over a few long years and then… it suddenly quits working for reasons you never quite understand. But it happens. You’ll find something else that works – you always do.

(3) On that note, it’s totally OK for you to do stuff that works in class, even if it’s not what works for everybody else. It may not be what’s trendy at the moment, or hi-tech, or flipped, or project-based. Some of you give killer lectures that suck kids in, while others work magic with a few markers and an unnatural enthusiasm for asymptotes. I know one lady who makes “foldables” a meaningful genre, which so never works for me.

Live it up, brothers and sisters. The fields are ripe for harvest – teach like the wind.

(4) Still, it won’t kill you to try some new things. I know that guy they brought in for that interminable PD day was boring, or irritating, or both, and that you’re cynical about these ‘fads’. You can (and do) tell innumerable stories of seeing them come and go.

I get it. People are scrambling to figure out what works – some with pure motives, others not so much. In that mess, though, are lots of things that work, and are good for kids. Find a balance between chasing trends and being that arms-crossed curmudgeon with your 48-year-old transparencies and mimeograph pages. You might learn something, and so might your kids.

(5) The smart kids need good teachers too. Before we quibble over my use of ‘smart’, feel free to substitute ‘successful’, ‘best and brightest’, ‘highest performing’, or whatever – you know the ones I mean. Let’s not forget amidst all the hand-wringing and standard-raising we’re doing trying to bring signs of life to the bottom 20% that there’s a top 20% as well, and that despite popular rhetoric THEY WON’T TEACH THEMSELVES.

We owe them challenge. Engagement. Time. Resources. Passion. Just because they’re not in discipline trouble or triggering Improvement Plans from the state doesn’t mean they’ll be excellent on their own. Let’s work our asses off trying to help them be amazing. To whom much has been given, much will be required.

(6) The bottom feeders need good teachers too. Before we quibble over my use of ‘bottom feeders’, I use the term affectionately for the most part – and you know who I mean. (If you really wish to be more politically correct, feel free to substitute ‘mouth breathers’.) The point is that we’ve got to keep trying everything we can come up with to reach and engage and inspire them, no matter how hard they work trying to convince us they are stupid, disinterested, or unreachable. Most of them are not.

Mind the gap between acknowledging factors beyond your control (don’t blame yourself for every miracle you can’t work) and justifying lethargy by blaming the kid and his or her world. It’s not their job to come from better backgrounds – it’s yours to overcome that background.

If you wanted a job that was possible, you should be selling shoes or doing accounting or something. This is education – reality is not an acceptable excuse.

(7) The ‘bubble kids’ need good teachers too. They make the least splash each day and they generally cause the least suffering – all the more danger they’ll pass unnoticed. Find them, notice them, grab them (not literally, unless you’re really really tenured), and find ways to help them be great. Or at least pretty good.

It’s hard more often than not, by the way. Tiring. Sometimes very discouraging. That’s OK. You know going in the range of emotions involved. Be ready for them.

(8) It won’t kill you to send a little good mojo to your teacher peers. Where two or more or gathered, there will be complaining about students – consider at least sandwiching every conversation in positives about our lil’ darlings and about one another. It’s like a giant, ongoing parent contact. (“May I start by saying what a bright, creative child Adolph is…”)

(9) Our kids have potential, even when they hide it rather well.

(10) You have potential, even when it hides from you rather well. You must not quit – the need is too great and the harvest too close. You just don’t see it every day – but you do sometimes. Look again – there it is…

Sight is nice, but mostly we walk by faith – in ourselves, each other, and the possibilities. Unlike the religious kind, it’s rarely enough – but it’s what we have, so we make it enough. Organist…?

My 300 Epiphany

August 10, 2014June 23, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

Several years ago, in what seems like a very different place and time, I had a horrible school year. Some of you know how it can go – I was trying new things, and they weren’t working. Or, if they were, they weren’t being supported, and had to be abandoned, whatever prior promises. The stuff that used to work wasn’t working either, and the student rapport to which I was accustomed just wasn’t there – at least not to the extent on which I’d grown reliant.

Then the parent calls started. I’m not a teacher who gets that many upset parents, or – if I do – has trouble resolving them.

Usually.

But that year… that year they just DID NOT LIKE ME.

It took on a life of its own as little cliques began talking to each other, and as students became aware I was anathema to mom and dad, oh god it just spiraled. In retrospect, I should have found better ways to anticipate, nip, resolve – but I didn’t, and it grew.

Introducing… Courtney. Of course her name wasn’t really Courtney, but for purposes of this blog she’s Courtney. Her real name was Alisha, but I’d never use it – it would be unprofessional.**

Courtney was popular and pretty and a straight ‘A’ student. Her father coached and her mother taught at another building. All of my superiors knew and loved her parents – and her mother hated me with the fire of a thousand suns.

Neither Courtney nor her primary progenitor cared for the way I taught, the skills in which I found value, or the policies I implemented. By Labor Day they more or less resented the oxygen I was breathing which would have been better inhaled by worthier beings.

Courtney often left school just before my class to go with dad to athletic events – which is, you know, fine in and of itself. But that’s when I really stepped in it. I followed the school policy guide regarding missed days and make-up work – a procedure which, as it turned out, was completely unacceptable. The entire Courtney family was soon convinced I had it in for their daughter, and mom began copying people way above my pay grade on every email – of which there were many.

Now, you might think the inclusion of the people who write and approve the policies would bring some sanity to the discussion. You know, if they ever replied, or acknowledged, or joined the conversation in any way – even when I begged.

Which they didn’t, although I did. So it didn’t.

I’d never felt so… angry? Wounded? Humiliated? Worse, I felt foolish for being so blindsided. I’m hardly an idealist – what made me feel immune from the realities of bureaucracy and cronyism?

I was young enough to still cling to a FEW ideals and principles – should I give in so easily when I didn’t think it was best for classroom dynamics and expectations, best for me, or even best for Courtney? Did we want to teach her that sufficient complaining could solve any problem?

It probably didn’t help that I was myself outraged on a weekly – sometimes daily – basis by some district policy or building decision or the other. I didn’t see the irony at the time, of course – and it probably wouldn’t have helped if I had.

Everything I tried to do to improve the situation just made things worse and embarrassed me further. In hindsight, I probably could have done better – but I just kept rolling down that hill of broken glass. On fire. Without shoes.

By summer I was looking for other employment. At the very least I wanted another building (different administrators), maybe even another district. I had a good shot at a curriculum coordinator position in a district closer to home, but… I mean, I still wanted to be in the classroom…

That was the summer the movie 300 came out. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a rather elastic take on the Spartans at Thermopylae. It’s not a great movie by any definition, but it’s very entertaining. I was home alone for a few weeks (my wife has a real job) and Netflixed it.

And in the two hours I spent immersed in some very bizarre choices regarding nudity and testosterone-laden CGI violence, I had an epiphany. A paradigm shift, if you will. One whose impact has lasted for a number of years.

I was trying to fix things – the student, the parents, the situation. More than that, I was trying to fix the system, the district, the underlying assumptions and realities of public education. I wanted – I NEEDED – agreement, support, understanding, validation, and action by others to make this happen. I could understand resistance, but not inertia, or apathy, or complete denial of things which were to me so glaringly clear.

I knew odds were slim and the task was great and the fields were ripe for harvest, but I still carried a faith from my evangelical days that we could win.

We could save them. We could change the system. We could make a measurable difference. If only a few key people would ‘get it’, would listen, would cooperate… we could win.

None of those things were delusions of the Spartans as they prepared to face the Persian hoards storming their shores. They positioned themselves at the narrowest pass between the oceans and their homeland, and determined to hold it as long as possible – but with little illusion what that would mean.

“Come back with your shield, or on it.” The parting words of a good Spartan mother to her son, or wife to her husband, as he left for battle. One did not flee under any circumstances. The glory of the moment was far more important, and the price of failure too high.

The Spartans didn’t do much well in terms of variety, but they were tough sons-of-bee-hatches. It was always a good day to die.

I found myself running through edu-quivalents of the more dramatic phrases uttered at Thermopylae – reshaping the content while attempting to maintain the testosterone:

(Annoying Persians) – “We will fill the air with arrows of bureaucratic nonsense!”
(Classroom Teachers) – “Then we will teach… in the SHADE!”

Yeah, it didn’t sound much better in my head, but I kept trying.

(The Hoards of Ignorance) – “Lay down your lesson plans!”
(Classroom Teachers) – “Come and GET THEM!”

So that part didn’t work. At all. Even then. But the larger paradigm shift did stick.

It wasn’t about winning. Winning would have been fine, and is often worth striving for, but that focus could often lead to frustration and poor strategy.

What mattered was the fight. Going down gloriously. Holding the pass for as long as you might, no matter the cost. Standing in the gap full of idealistic defiance for as long as you can before you are inevitably overrun.

Don’t get sidetracked by history, or home, or hope – focus on this pass, this moment, the tiny pieces of success. Claim them and don’t let go.

Well, until the part where you’re slaughtered in futility. But not until then at least.

Most of my students – even the high maintenance examples like Courtney – lack literal swords, but the battle is a draining one. The variety of pressures from within and without have been covered extensively by those far more gifted than myself.

And yeah, teaching can be a noble profession and all that. I mean, we don’t do it for the money or the glory or the clarity of expectations from above. We do it because on some naïve, idealistic, melodramatic level, we want to change the world.

I don’t think of it that way anymore. I have found great freedom and comfort, actually – and I share this without cynicism or sarcasm – in the fact that I’m pretty sure we’re going to lose.

The bureaucrats have more bullsh*t than we have shovels, and the hordes of ignorance are legion. Those who are with us are far, far fewer than those who are against us, and whether you use Common Core math or give up and figure it the old way, we are totally and completely screwed.

But it is a good day to teach.

OK, yeah, that phrase didn’t work either, but that’s the thing – I’m going to just keep at it because I don’t have a better plan. This is it. This is the better plan.

I’ve shared this with a few people in person, and with a few important exceptions they don’t find it encouraging AT ALL. Several have found it rather the opposite, actually – and I apologize if that’s its impact on you, my Eleven Faithful Followers, here and now.

But try, just for a moment, to taste the glory of wildly doing what you do best without recourse to future progress or past circumstances. Imagine knowing you’re not alone, and that if you’re going down, you’re going down doing all you know how to do – insufficiently, to be sure, but leaving it all in the fields.

Teach like a rock star, a badass, or whatever other silly name you choose – because it all comes out the same.

Of course, maybe – and I hesitate to even consider – maybe our collapse will buy enough time for someone else far behind us to gather their – no, never mind. No time for such distractions. Here they come.

And I, for one, feel great.

**In case you’re worried, of course her name’s not Alisha, either. I just said that to be funny, and perhaps a bit shocking. Her real name was Shannon.

Leave My Teachers Alone

July 27, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I forget sometimes how fortunate I am to be in a building where my various superiors pretty much want the same things I do. I’m given a fairly accurate idea up front of what they will and won’t defend me for doing, and it’s not so far from what I’d reasonably hope.

The higher-ups not only tolerate but encourage a certain amount of mutually respectful, productive dissent. They seem to have this belief that we’re all professionals with comparable goals, and that collaboration is not the handing down of clichés to be implemented, but the discussion of goals and methods to be refined.

It’s almost like we’re on the same side.

I forget, but I’ve been reminded quite often lately as I work with other teachers across the region. I’m glad to be of some encouragement, but I hate how common their stories are getting to be. It’s so completely unnecessary that they’re being made to feel the way they do.

“I’m worried,” they say – or scared, or overwhelmed. They’ve been pressured by their superiors to raise some scores or salvage some program, because they’ve been identified as the ‘go-getters’ or ‘reliable veterans’ or some such. The consequences range from crippling guilt to official removal should they fall short.

“I’m not sure I can do this.”

This is not the healthy self-doubt and perspective of which I’m such a fan, but the opening stage of emotional and professional collapse.

These are the already pretty good and sometimes nearly great teachers who feel an ethical obligation to implement every idea and strategy which might serve their kids, now or in their futures. They feel professionally bound to cover everything in their ever-changing state standards, participate in National History Day, partake in home visits, community outreach, fight AIDS in Africa, establish peace in the Middle East, reduce teen pregnancy, end racial inequity in education and society, and coach not only track and basketball but wrestling – hopefully only this one year since Coach Zephyr had that “situation.”

They don’t like excuses in their students, so they make none themselves. They are needed, so they try.

“I don’t know how to add everything we’re doing this week with everything the rest of my department did in the other workshop last week and still cover the content and how do you do it all for every kid every time perfectly but differentiated and data-driven?”

And I sometimes say things to them that I don’t like to say, but which are nevertheless true.

“You realize no one else is covering all of this all the time, right?”

The nice thing about the state tests being so erratic and poorly designed is you don’t lose much based on what you do or don’t cover. Lots of great teachers have sucky test scores and several pretty crappy teachers have good scores. Don’t get too hung up on them.

The strategies and skills we’re doing this week are great, but they’re not how I spend all day every day. They’re part of what I do, mixed in with stuff that’s fallen out of vogue despite its usefulness – lectures, discussions, reading, some cute little projects. I’m trying to get them READY for college, not require them to complete it THIS YEAR.

And besides, at the risk of committing some sort of sacrilege by saying it aloud… no one else wants this job.

A half-dozen districts within shouting distance can’t fill their positions with warm bodies, let alone qualified applicants. Has no one explained the paradox of this to those-of-the-polished-desks? May I try?

Dear Leadership,
Sorry to tear you away from your Twitter feed or whatever title was hot at FedEx this month (“Hey, Who Licked My Sucker?!”) but you need to re-open your eyes to some realities of teaching.
The people you need are all about to either break or leave, and you’ll be left with a building full of heavily tenured bozos.
The pay sucks, and the pressure is daunting. The folks who come in with missionary zeal and a heart for kids are being driven out of the profession by the lack of autonomy and the elimination of any sense of purpose they felt when they signed up. If you can’t or won’t provide extrinsic rewards and insist on crushing intrinsic motivation, what did you think was going to happen?
The current system – the same one trying to desperately to crank kids through a 19th Century factory model for reasons we can no longer agree on – is well on its way to ensuring that the only people likely to remain in the classroom are those either unqualified to do anything else or not motivated enough to move on.
And you want to “raise standards” on those who are left? Or what? You gonna… put them on an “improvement plan”? Fire them? Replace them with…?
No one else wants this job.
But you know this handful care, and try, and so you target them. They already worry they’re not doing all they could to help their kids, and now you’re demanding they “up their game” with a bunch of stuff they had no idea was coming when they signed up to teach.
I get that you’re frustrated taking the blame for those state scores, but you’re taking it out on the wrong staff. They love these kids even when it’s sucking the life out of them to watch the system do what the system does.
You can tell they still want to get better and do more and be the kind of teacher they signed up all those years (or weeks) ago to be. You can tell there are still signs of life in them – unlike that group you’ve pretty much written off until they retire because they quit a long time ago and you can’t do a damn thing about it so you just avoid them.
You can tell the teachers who have that intrinsic sense of responsibility. They carry that weight. They don’t feel particularly strong, or skilled, or heroic, or prepared, but they stand in that gap and wait for the hordes to continue their storm. They didn’t get any of that from me, and they sure didn’t get it from you – it’s just who they are, broken and imperfect as they may be, and you can sense that.
Here’s a crazy idea – why don’t you find some way to make yourself useful? What can YOU do to help reach those kids about whose scores you seem to be so concerned? What can YOU do to improve the climate in the building that keeps losing its best teachers and where we send the problem teachers in hopes they’ll go away, or at least do the least damage while they remain? What are you contributing to forward momentum other than rhetoric and clichés?
You want us to reach our kids by out-high-expectation-ing them? By “raising the bar”? You know that’s stupid, right?
There’s considerable discussion going on at the moment about what motivates young people, but “high expectations” isn’t the unanimous winner you’d like to think. It doesn’t turn turds to gold for their teachers, either.
What leverage do you think you’re wielding here? You wouldn’t have to be such an ass if you thought you had any real influence on any of this, so leave them the hell alone. If you can’t be useful, just leave them alone.
They’re the best thing you have going for you, and however inadequate they feel, they’re the best thing their students have going for them as well – at least until we manage to make more meaningful systemic changes. Stop grinding them down, and stop pretending you’re inspiring them with every new thing you pile onto their plate.
I get that you feel pressured from above and impotent from within to actually MAKE the changes those clever speakers at the convention say you should. I get that after so long out of the classroom, you reek of illegitimacy when it comes to effective classroom management or practical pedagogy, however desperately you desire to prove you’re a “teacher at heart.”
And yeah, I’d imagine most of the teachers and parents and situations you deal with on a daily basis are like the kids your assistants see day after day – the highest maintenance, least responsive, not-nearly-as-fulfilling bunch.
It’s enough to make anyone grumpy.
But part of why you’re so unhappy and hating how you feel is because you’re doing this wrong. Stop trying to figure out what everyone under your jurisdiction should be doing differently and focus on what you could be doing to support whatever they’re doing already. If nothing else you’ll start to build a little credibility to cash in when you do have a good idea or essential policy from time to time.
You don’t go to war with the workforce you wish you had, or hope to have someday. You go to war with the teachers you have. Untangle leadership from overseeing and start making yourself useful. If not, then at least stay out of the damn way.

Absolution (Bring Me My Crosier)

July 12, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m neither Catholic nor anti-Catholic, and my message here is not a particularly theological one. But you gotta admit, there’s something appealing about the idea of one faith, one authority, one source of rules – and a clear, solitary source of redemption. One place to go if you need a meal, a message, or social mores. Every ritual at every step – birth, marriage, death, and beyond – coordinated and structured for you. Enough room to be yourself, but not so very much room that one’s “self” could stray far enough to get into any real trouble.

I’m not suggesting there weren’t serious problems with the institution, or even the idea. There’s no need to begin nailing things to my metaphorical door. But the unfettered intellectual and spiritual liberty we so justly celebrate comes at some cost. Removing walls, and ceilings, and sometimes entire foundations, is certainly very freeing – but then, so is being launched into space without ship or tether.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a leash. Sometimes fences set us free.

Dostoyevsky wrote “The Grand Inquisitor” through the pen of one of his characters in The Brothers Karamazov. In it, Dostoyevsky wrestles with the inherent conflict between freedom and security in a surreal confrontation between a high Catholic official and a Jesus who comes back before anticipated. The message is that we don’t actually want as much freedom as we think we do. We want rules, customs, structures, even punishments – we crave the clarity a little oppression provides.

I would thus like to borrow something from Catholic tradition. Let’s talk absolution.

The traditional Catholic Church did something better than most when it came to confession. They formalized it and structured it so that the old was drained before the new began. The confessional allowed complete emptying of sins and the shortcomings. Just as significantly, the penitent were given acts of contrition to perform. Contrary to caricature, these were not the cleansing themselves, but symbols for the penitent to give them something tangible – some ‘buy in’ – in order to solidify their absolution. The forgiveness meant more and felt more real if the sinner could DO something to demonstrate their change of heart. The confessional, the assigned acts, the beads and even the collar – they’re scaffolds for the intangibles in play. They’re props in the most literal sense – holding up the parts we can’t see.

We need this.

It’s recently been rediscovered that smart people tend to underestimate their intelligence while the ignorant dramatically overestimate theirs. In the same vein, I see dedicated, gifted teachers wrapped in more self-imposed guilt and failure than the bozos think possible. There’s an unfortunate correlation, it seems, between passion and self-loathing.

You may remember the moment in Schindler’s List when our protagonist laments the ring he didn’t sell, the lives he didn’t save, the ‘more’ he didn’t do – when of course he did so very much. I’m not equating a pretty swell 7th Grade English teacher with a man who risked everything to save a few souls from the Holocaust – that might be a bit of a stretch. I am suggesting, though, that it’s often those who do the most who feel the least accomplished; those who reach the farthest who are most painfully aware of falling short.

If you are that educator, in or around the classroom, carrying that sense of failure or inadequacy, and can’t quite shake it off – at least not easily, or for very long – you need to listen to me. I’m old and wise and have a blog. Come on – you think just anyone can do this?

Confess your shortcomings – real or perceived – and accept absolution. This is not mockery of faith; it’s appropriation of a principle powerful enough to extend past the spiritual realm. Sit with someone you trust and say them out loud. If you can’t, email them to me. I won’t tell unless you become REALLY famous someday and have something to gain by it. I swear.

I take up my metaphorical crosier, and I absolve thee.

You are absolved of your inadequacies – real and perceived – during that first year of teaching. OK, part of the second year as well. And that bad month the third year. All of them. You are absolved of how often 1st hour isn’t getting quite the same education 3rd hour is, because by then you’ve worked out the bugs. That period after lunch some days when they’ve become unmanageable wildebeests? Absolved, absolved, absolved.

I absolve thee of those times you didn’t strike a good balance between school and home, and let your relationships drift or even suffer a bit because you were obsessed over grading, or prepping, or figuring something out. Those angry memes about teacher pay make it sound like everyone else is spending 15 hours a day laboring over Prezis and grading essays, but they’re not. Even if they were, you are absolved.

I absolve thee of those conversations in the lounge or hallway which turned a bit bitter towards co-workers, superiors, parents, or – and here we stop to cringe slightly – students. A little blowing off steam is cathartic, but you were frustrated, or worried, or defensive… and you became ‘that teacher’ for a moment. Cut that loose, it doesn’t help. You are absolved.

I absolve thee of the days you gave book work or filler you could barely justify because you just needed them to be quiet and busy for a little while so you could catch up on grading or other school-related paperwork. Let’s not make this a habit, but it happens – and you are absolved.

I absolve thee of that horrible video you didn’t really preview but that one teacher said was pretty good. It definitely has to go. You kinda suspected, but… you didn’t know. You are absolved.

I absolve thee of the kids you couldn’t reach, although you saw them slipping away and couldn’t figure out what to do. I understand your hostility towards peers who sounded cavalier towards your kids and insisted on “consequences” for their “choices” – which you knew weren’t choices at all but reactions, or defiance, or angry despair. I absolve you for not knowing what to do, or not doing it better, or not seeing it in time.

I absolve thee for the kids you didn’t reach, although now it seems so obvious what you did wrong – or what you couldn’t do quite right. The signs you should have seen, the things you should have tried, if you’d had more energy, or time, or if you were just a ‘better person.’ I absolve you of your failures – real or perceived – to do more or give more, although at times the consequences were extreme. It wasn’t mostly about you, of course – there’s such a cavernous gap between ‘being part of the problem’ and ‘not being the entire solution’ – but you feel them as one in the same. I understand. Let it go, or at least set it aside – there’s so much left to be done and we just can’t. You are therefore absolved.

I absolve thee of not being enough people, or having enough time, or being smarter, or more energetic, or more creative when you most wish it. I absolve you of not being that one teacher you wish you were more like, or – worse – not being that idealized version of yourself you keep thinking you should have become by now. I absolve you of any miscellaneous foibles or failures, real or perceived, and of eating twice a day and sleeping at night when there’s so much to do.

Your penance is the same regardless of the frequency or degree of your sins:

Take that hour before bed to have a family, or watch that show, or do those aerobics you keep meaning to do in the morning but just… can’t. See those friends, have that drink, and speak more positives than negatives about your job, your peers, and especially your kids.

Begin – where you are, who you are. If you’ve made it this far, you’re amazing and getting better. Your foibles and failures feel overwhelming, but they are now behind you. Go teach. Get better. Love your kids and your subject and your job as best you can, and stop carrying that which you cannot bear.

Learn from the past, sure – but let it go as often as necessary to get back to work. As I said, it’s not that I mind you drowning in your own angst, but we simply can’t spare the manpower. Those who’ve gone past are gone past. This season’s fields are ripe, and there are so few laborers, with so few tools. We need you here, giving whatever you have to give. Please.

You are absolved. But don’t touch the crosier.

Related Post: Happy New Mirrors!

Koko the Gorilla

July 7, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Koko the gorilla, now over 40 years old, was taught sign language from the time she was a wee little fuzzball, and has been studied ever since. She understands a surprising amount of spoken English and even more ASL, and she signs extensively in response to either. She’s sometimes referenced when animal rights are discussed, and essential when the evolution and uses of language are being analyzed. Apparently she can sometimes be quite innovative in her communication.

On the other hand, well… she’s somewhat limited by the fact that – and I feel almost cruel saying this…

She’s a monkey.

Yes, I know she’s not technically a monkey. I’ve seen enough Planet of the Apes movies to know they’re touchy about those distinctions. But if she’s more than a monkey, she’s not quite a people either. She’s a gorilla doing the best she can to hear, watch, and express herself to people who are not her – people who are not even gorillas. Koko provokes some interesting questions about what it means to be sentient, whether certain basic civil rights should be extended to animals, and exactly how many different roles Roddy McDowell could play in one franchise before it became self-parody – none of which are why I find her so fascinating.

She is, to me, a hairy metaphor of something more tangible – an appropriated symbol for something near and dear to my innards:

Koko is why the ‘liberal arts’ matter in education.

I’m all for STEM education, actual future employment, beating the Russians to the moon – all of it. Some of my best friends are math & science teachers (not really, but it seemed like something I should say), and some of my best students are on promising courses to change the world through engineering and biotechnology and Mandelbrot Sets and whatever the hell it is they do once they move into math that doesn’t even use numbers and letters anymore.

As we press into this brave new world, however, I’d like to revisit some reasons non-STEM subjects matter, not just for the sickly pale artistic types, but all students:

1. Right-brain stuff helps you do better left-brain stuff, and vice versa. In practice this means mathematicians are mathier when they also partake of music, science-ish types do better science when they’re stimulated by history or watercolors or e e cummings, etc. The liberal arts and the arts arts are good for the things that aren’t arts.

2. Even people with real jobs (apparently in about ten years this will mean primarily engineers, medical professionals, and iPhone app developers) need to know how to read effectively and communicate clearly in order to do their real job stuff well.

3. Everyone has some magical special gift which must be discovered, nurtured, blah blah blah. In other words, something must keep us in touch with our souls. (Cue violins and rapidly moving clouds.)

4. If we don’t study history, we won’t know how to best manipulate and conquer people while blaming them for the results.

5. We must recapture – and I don’t know how to say this without being kinda cheezy – we must recapture a mindset of reaching beyond our condition, not merely enduring it.

Teacher: What’s an insult? Koko: THINK DEVIL DIRTY
Teacher: [spoken only] What’s an injury? Koko: THERE BITE (to a cut on her hand)
Teacher: What is crazy? Koko: TROUBLE SURPRISE
Teacher: When do people say darn? Koko: WORK OBNOXIOUS
Teacher: What can you think of that’s hard? Koko: ROCK… WORK.
Teacher: What’s a smart gorilla? Koko: ME.

Technical understanding of language allows us to accurately describe what is, or could be – tangible, literal, objective reality. Very important. But a mature understanding of language allows us to use words built on the literal and reach higher than what we can see, hear, or measure. Here’s a paragraph from one of the studies done on dear Koko:

A conversation with Koko that involved this kind of creativity with the sign ‘rotten’… Koko demonstrated the standard form of the sign in an exchange of insults after her companion called her a ‘stinker.’ Koko then inflected the sign by using two hands (perhaps meaning ‘really rotten’) and in the same sequence, brought the sign off her nose toward her companion, conveying the idea ‘you’re really rotten.’ Koko’s use of rotten in this conversation also demonstrates her grasp of the connotation of a word rather than its denotation or concrete or specific meaning.

The objective value of knowledge matters, but the subjective and symbolic value sometimes matters more.

These invented signs indicate that the gorillas, like human children, take initiative with language by making up new words and by giving new meanings to old words. On the next level, there is evidence that Koko… can generate novel names by combining two or more familiar words. For instance, Koko signed ‘bottle match’ to refer to a cigarette lighter, ‘white tiger’ for a zebra, and ‘eye hat’ for a mask. Michael has generated similar combinations, such as ‘orange flower sauce’ for nectarine yogurt and ‘bean ball’ for peas. Other examples… are ‘elephant baby’ for a Pinocchio doll and ‘bottle necklace’ for a six-pack soda can holder…

We should learn all we can learn and know all we can know, but that’s not where it ends. Language and stories and art (yes, she does art) and teachers push Koko – and us – to do more than solve a puzzle to get a banana. Under their influence she strives to understand more than can be understood, and to be more than she is.

It’s not a technical problem, it is – for lack of better verbage – a spiritual quest, a stretching of the proverbial soul. Lest you think I exaggerate:

Some responses, on the other hand, are quite unexpected. “How did you sleep last night?” (expecting ‘fine’, ‘bad’, or some related response.) ‘FLOOR BLANKET.’ (Koko sleeps on the floor with blankets.) “How do you like your blankets to feel?” ‘HOT KOKO-LOVE.’ “What happened?” (after an earthquake). ‘DARN DARN FLOOR BAD BITE. TROUBLE TROUBLE.’

Wikipedia defines an ‘earthquake’ as ““the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s crust that creates seismic waves. The… seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time… At the Earth’s surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground.”

That’s a pretty important thing to understand, especially if you live in a world with earthquakes. But what Koko tried to capture was – I’d argue – pretty important as well:

Darn Darn Floor Bad Bite. Trouble Trouble.

That’s an earthquake alright. If you’ve experienced or even observed an earthquake, it makes good sense. In some ways, it’s better than the technical definition.

It’s experiential, it’s emotional, it’s loaded with metaphorical implications. By stretching to capture something she technically lacks the intelligence, the language, the experiences, the paradigm to explain, Koko touches important truths that would never have been brushed up against otherwise. Not just nice words, not just pretty ideas, not just nourishment for the soul – implications and realities that matter greatly if you’re ever going to be in an earthquake or live in a universe where earthquakes exist. Maybe even if you don’t.

That’s what we’re trying to inculcate and nurture in the so-called ‘social studies’ and ‘language arts’ and all those other classes which are too often defended only for their roles in promoting ‘reading and writing’ or ‘critical thinking’ skills. That a subject might have wider utilitarian purpose is great, but that doesn’t mean that should be its exclusive or even its primary purpose. If we believe otherwise, we need to take down all of those ‘reach for the stars’ posters and replace them with ‘more accurately measure and label the stars’, and at least be consistent.

Obviously it’s important that we be able to solve the technical challenges of coming days, and press forward on scientific, mathematical, and otherwise tangible frontiers we can’t even imagine yet. I’m a big fan of curing diseases, feeding the world through aeroponics, and whatever The Elder Scrolls VII will look like. But what shall it profit us if we gain the whole giga-world, and lose our proverbial souls?

And yes, that’s cheesy. I’m wincing a bit even as I type it. Like Koko, I lack the words or ability to capture it better, so I’m doing what I can to approximate what I almost conceive. Don’t mock me, or I’ll fling my poo at you.