Hole in the Wall Education

August 24, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m a bad person.

I’m an idealist with little use for idealists. It’s not personal. I like those I actually know. But their articles, and books, and speeches make me want to break things and yell school-inappropriate things.

I resent speakers and writers who build their reputations on explaining how amazing children are and could be if these damn teachers would just get out of the way. I’m sure they’re nice people, smarter and probably better traveled than myself. It’s just that what starts as a neat isolated experience becomes a TED Talk, then a doctrine, then a Pink Floyd cover band.

“Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!”

Don’t get me wrong – it’s just peachy keen swell that throwing a few computers in the middle of an impoverished village and making sure no teachers interfere practically guarantees a bunch of eight-year olds will master calculus, cure cancer, and reverse climate change. Here’s to the success of every one of those dusty darlings and even newer, bigger opportunities for them to challenge themselves AND the dominant paradigm. Seriously.

Variations of this theme abound on Twitter, the blogosphere, and administrators’ bookshelves. Hand any teenager an iPad and stop crushing his little spirit with your outdated ways and he’ll learn like the wind. Enough, you fiend – let them love learning!

But I don’t buy it. Not even a little.

I can’t point to research or books with provocative edu-titles. If you really want me to, I’ll try it – I’ll lock my students in my classroom with the two relatively outdated computers available there and come back in May to release them.

Maybe it would be better to do the entire building… eleven hundred freshmen set free to learn with a bank of Dells and no silly adults with their stifling expectations. Imagine the money saved on staff – and computers never take personal days or violate professional dress code!

Forgive me if I don’t anticipate an education revolution as a result.

My bet is something more akin to Lord of the Flies, although I could be WAY off – it could be more Hunger Games or Clockwork Orange-y. I’m not prescient, I’ve just met teenagers.

It probably doesn’t help that my students have so much else they could do instead of take a self-directed learning journey of personal discovery. The kids in the inspirational anecdotes don’t tend to have an Xboxes, smart phones, cable TV, malls, or meals which include protein.

Remember how entertained you now think you were as a kid with just a cardboard box and some Cheez Whiz for a whole afternoon? That was great, mostly because you had ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Teeter totters are awesome compared to staring at dirt; they lose some magic compared to Halo: The Arousing. It’s just all so relative. In the land of rotary dialers, he with the Atari is king.

But only there.

I’m not unsympathetic. I get what these writers and speakers are going for. Most are trying to make the very valid point that when we try to cram kids’ heads full of 87-pages of curriculum standards compiled by committees and approved by states to be tested by bubbles, we are unlikely to either fill their buckets OR light their fires.

Our American spawn resist being cajoled into dronehood – which is largely what public ed does and is designed to do. We do try these days to at least beat them into more CURRENT drone models… it’s just that things in the real world keep changing so fast…

But… technology! ALL LEARNING CAN BE GRAND MATH AUTO!

I’m not against online coursework. I know for a fact that it serves a useful function for certain kinds of students in specific situations. But let’s keep a little perspective.

We’re swept up in the promise of ‘individualized pacing’, intense engagement, and infinite branches of exploration – like the Holodeck or those Divergent serums. One would think educational software must be on the verge of surpassing the major video gaming companies in terms of graphics, storylines, and immersion. (Watch out Elder Scrolls VII – here comes Bioshock Civics: How the Powers of the Executive Branch Have Evolved Commensurate to Expansions in Mass Media!)

It’s not. Remember that Oregon Trail game we were all so excited about a few decades ago? That’s still about as cutting edge as educational games have managed, and that’s not even what most virtual learning is attempting.

The vast majority of online coursework consists of reading short passages, watching videos, following a few links, then answering multiple choice questions. There may be a little writing. You work alone, and guess at the multiple choice questions as often as necessary to hit 75% or whatever before you move on.

This pedagogy is everything we’ve been fighting against since Horace Mann. Nothing wrong with utilizing textbooks or lectures or video, but a teacher whose class is driven by such things is unlikely to win a Bammy.

To be fair, the more cutting-edge programs let you email your teacher or make a few lame required posts to a ‘discussion group’ from time to time. Truly this is leaps and bounds beyond my foldables or a good Socratic circle, but Fallout: Populism it is not.

Most learning happens because teachers in rooms keep trying to figure out how to inspire, motivate, cajole, or trick their darlings into learning things the teacher thinks are important even though the 11-year old may not realize it just yet.

There are glaring problems with this system, some within the school’s control and many more without. The biggest problem with the current model is also the most substantial barrier to all this self-directed learning we keep hearing will save us all – state legislatures dictate most of what’s supposed to be “important” and decide how these things will be assessed.

But the absurdity of rigid state mandates doesn’t mean the logical solution is to eliminate all adult guidance regarding essential knowledge or skills. Crazy as it may sound, many good teachers are perfectly capable of finding balances based on the abilities and interests of their kids – some non-negotiables, because hopefully the certified professional knows a few things the pre-teen does not, and some choice for the child regarding what they pursue and how they pursue it.

And if that doesn’t work, we can go back to your plan. But I’m not cleaning up after the pig head on a stick.

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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.

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Where Can I Find This Rooster?

June 18, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

“Who is the best marshal they have?’
The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, ‘I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.’
I said, ‘Where can I find this Rooster?”
― ‘Mattie Ross’, True Grit (Charles Portis)
“If you don’t have no schooling you are up against it in this country, sis. That is the way of it. No sir, that man has no chance any more. No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home.”
― ‘Rooster Cogburn, True Grit (Charles Portis)

Educators love false dichotomies, especially if they’re rather dramatic. For some, Common Core arrived as Moses, ready to raise its #2 Staff and part the Red Sea of Low Expectations. For others, it was clearly Pharaoh, seeking to drag the Hebrew descendants of Horace Mann back into the Egypt of Standardized Testing and building Pyramids with Bloom’s Taxonomy in bas-relief on each side. We fall into equally passionate camps if you bring up Teach For America, Charter Schools, Literacy First, or pretty much anything with the word ‘Initiative’ tacked on to the end.

Most recently, the subject of ‘grit’ has become a hot topic on Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media we old folks still use while feeling rather cutting edge about being online at all.

‘Grit’, of course, isn’t an entirely new concept. You can’t read anything useful about developing talent, attaining goals, or improving student mindsets without running into the research Carol Dweck did on this a few years ago, and of course we all remember British Prime Minister Winston “Eddie Lawrence” Churchill with that thing about never giving up on ships, which was apparently a pretty inspiring thing to say to British graduates in 1611.

But ‘grit’ is a thing again lately, and producing all sorts of interesting snark. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of snark, but if Twitter were your only guide, you’d believe there are only two basic ways to approach students in terms of overcomage:

(1) Students must be taught ‘grit’, and grit comes from enduring. Therefore, we must prioritize the brutal drill’n’kill-type instruction they apparently love on PD days in Chicago. Determination means overcoming suffering, and suffering we must therefore inflict. Joy must die and hope must wither, for only thusly shall they learn to blindly, numbly press on. No pain, no gain.

OR…

(2) Students must be perpetually free, invigorated, encouraged, loved, and understood. If we simply prance through the classroom flinging Inspiration Daisies, students will climb over one another for opportunities to pursue all essential knowledge and unleash their natural hunger for personal excellence. Any hesitation, momentary confusion, or weariness, is a failure of the teacher to properly shoot rainbows from his or her pedagogical orifice. Struggle means you’re doing it wrong. Stop breaking the future!

I’m not sure either are useful extremes.

I love my kids, but I haven’t found them to be particularly self-driven about anything tied to this week’s state standards. There are important discussions to be had about whether we’ve trained them from an early age that under no circumstances will we allow them to fail at anything, ever – especially in school. “Throw your limp drooling bodies into the Slough of Apathy if you wish, but by god we’ll keep remediating you and lowering that bar until you ooze over it whether you want to or not!” But those sound hard, and I don’t feel like it.

Instead, I’d like to share a few clips I post on the “Required Viewing” section of our class website and refer to throughout the year. They all involve finding solutions rather than simply offering more vehement expressions of one’s difficulties. I will of course editorialize endlessly for each.

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Go. Around. The. Leaf. I show this the first week of school and it’s a mantra throughout the year. I am not unsympathetic about life’s complications – but bring me alternatives. Solutions. Make it work and I’ll almost always accept your means of getting there, or of going somewhere else with it.

This is not nearly as touchy-feely as it sounds, and most of the time it saves me time and energy, while teaching my darlings some modicum of responsibility – without merely dropping the piano of inflexible expectations on their heads. (That’s the state’s job.)

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Come on, this one’s easy – looking at problems a different way, etc.? Yeah, I knew you’d get that one.

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No, the moral is not “shoot them.” I prefer something more along the lines of “don’t overlook the obvious,” or “sometimes you gotta cut through the drama to see the solution clearly.

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This one is a classic. The lesson is rather obvious if you’re not the people on the escalator. But of course we often are, more than we realize. Not you and me, of course, but everyone else on our Facebook wall. Those people are a mess. Why can’t they just see it?

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“The fences aren’t just ’round the farm…” Need I say more?

I don’t know if a few video clips will prove paradigm-altering for my darling students, but it’s a place to start. The hard part is helping them practice it throughout the year. Teaching students to persevere really makes you want to give up, sometimes daily.

But I can’t, because, um… the videos.

Curriculum Guru Ayn Grubb taught me a phrase that’s stuck with me ever since, and which has evolved into an entire teaching philosophy. I combined it several years ago with a nifty graphic I found online and haven’t been able to locate since, but I’m hoping it’s like peanut butter and chocolate in those old Reese’s commercials and that I now have something both legal and appealing to wrinkly aliens if condensed into pellet form:

Our darlings come to us at a variety of “Point A’s”, and we’re trying to get them as close as we can to “Point B” – some combination of skills, content knowledge, etc. The skills matter, a great deal. And the content matters, despite periodic trends suggesting that anything worth knowing is just a Google away, so why bother?

But what is too easily forgotten is the value of the struggle in between – the value of getting confused, or frustrated, or getting stuff wrong, or even failing from time to time. And then figuring it out. And then getting back up. And then finding a way to succeed. And then doing it again.

So, I’m not sure which dramatic extreme to join in the arguments about ‘grit’, but I hope my kids develop at least a little of it while in my care. I certainly learn enough about endurance and problem-solving from being with them, so it seems only fair. Why should I be the only one to suffer?

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