It’s A Structural Thing

August 21, 2019June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I’m sure it will surprise absolutely no one to learn that I’m not naturally the strict, by-the-book authoritarian type. In fact, I traditionally hate doing things that way – I really do.

That doesn’t mean I think those who manage their classrooms (or families, or companies) that way are necessarily doing anything wrong. I’ve worked with teachers who care deeply about each and every child in front of them but would nonetheless rather burst into flames than hang a motivational poster, let alone bend a rule. It’s their very consistency that works for them. (It’s hard to feel picked on or abused when the Superintendent’s kid is serving the same after-school detention you are for being the same 23 seconds late after lunch a second time.)

One of the best pieces of advice I was given as a student teacher (or as anything else, for that matter) was from a soccer coach and social studies educator who wasn’t even my assigned mentor at the time. It’s been over twenty years, but I remember his name (Coach Kinzer), his voice, and even his face as he spoke. I even remember the school library where we talked while his kids worked on a project of some sort. (The project I don’t actually remember.)

That stuff they cover in teacher school, that’s fine, I guess, but you’ll quickly discover not everything works that way once you’re actually doing it. So, here’s my advice, if you want it:
Figure out what’s going to work for you in how you’re gonna run your classroom, and then stick to it. Don’t draw lines you can’t or won’t hold or make promises you can’t keep.
Now, me – I’m a hard-@ss. I don’t really see that working for you. But however you’re going to handle your classroom when it’s yours, make sure it’s something you’re willing to maintain all the time, because you can only fake it someone else’s way for just so long before it all falls apart.

I’ve had a few groups over the years which required more structure than others. And just because I prefer an informal approach to management and discipline doesn’t mean there aren’t critical boundaries. It’s not like I’m in tie-dye and wearing my gray hair in a ponytail every day, flipping the peace sign to the kids while they cuss me out, throw heavy objects, and light things on fire.

What it does mean is that I don’t tend to be rigid about things. Most issues I address only if they become a distraction or a safety issue, or when the school or district is particularly fixated on something. Historically, I’ve been pretty flippant with my kids as well. It’s high school, they’re practically people, and the more you abuse many of them, the more convinced they are that you’re establishing a true and lasting rapport. The crap I get away with saying just to poke at them would shock and horrify anyone who doesn’t actually work with young people, but for some reason it seemed to work.

This choice comes with an obligation in return not to freak completely out when a student misreads the appropriate limits of such interactions and, in return, crosses lines which to the rest of us are still obvious. Sometimes they go from friendly barbs to tacky comments (which don’t crush my spirit but might negatively impact bystanders). Other times one of them will argue past the point of typical whining and it has to be shut down. The most common issue is that they simply haven’t developed a good natrual balance between “look at us building essential relationships” and the “shut up and get to work this is school.”

Each of those must be addressed, but if I’m going to play Mr. Flexible Cool-Teacher, I can’t respond to every poor choice by trying to become that “hard-@ss” Coach Kinzer was so good at. I’m particularly unwilling to escalate it beyond the doors of my classroom without multiple efforts to steer them back into the Realm of Reasonably Structured Learning.

It doesn’t always work. I’ve written referrals – even sent kids straight to an office a time or two, with a quick call and “paperwork to follow.” I’ve called parents, talked to administration, etc., when necessary… but I don’t like it. I’ve always figured I should be able to handle most of it with a little pluck and creativity. Well, that and their undying love for me based on how genuinely they know I care about them, whatever their weird personal issues. Honestly, I’ve always sort of taken pride in pushing my kids academically and personally based on love and mutual respect.

But you probably know that bit about what pride comes before…

I’m in a new school and a new district this year, teaching a new subject (English Language Arts – *waves-to-ELA-peeps*) This is not like any place I’ve worked before, and it probably makes sense that comes with some limitations on my tried-and-true approaches to relationships and classroom management.

Please understand, I really like the school. I like the kids (so far). I wouldn’t have taken the gig if I wasn’t 100% enamored with the head principal’s philosophy and approach to, well… everything in the school day. None of the learning curve I’m about to share is criticism of any of my new little darlings – and certainly not of my colleagues. They’re pretty much miracle-workers, based on what I’ve seen so far.

That said, this is not a group with whom my “loose management” style is working, or going to work. Not any time soon. In fact, despite my efforts to be Mr. Consistency from Day One, I’ve already experienced the natural consequences of presuming preparation they haven’t had, internal mechanisms they haven’t developed, and a rapport they don’t want. It hasn’t been a total disaster or anything, but…

Well, some of it has. But not mostly.

These aren’t bad kids. Most of them aren’t consciously trying to drive me out of the profession. Nor do I believe they need for me to be angrier or more uptight or unreasonably restrictive about every detail. Structure isn’t about being loud. It’s not emotional. In fact, you establish structure so that you don’t have to be loud or emotional. It may require “winning,” but winning isn’t the goal.

I’ve never bought into the whole “don’t smile until Christmas” thing, but there’s some truth to the idea that there are times it’s more important that your class be a solid place – reliable, predictable, perhaps even unbending – than a warm-fuzzy zone. There’s much truth to the idea that some kids desperately need structure, and may never have experienced clear rules with immediate consequences but zero ugliness or personal judgment. I’ve worked with teachers who are GREAT at that stuff – it’s just never been me.

It’s going to have to be this year. Not for me, and not for the state tests (which are a big issue in a school on all the wrong lists). I need to find that solidity. That almost detached, seemingly unsympathetic frame of mind necessary to have real school over time. It’s doable, and it’s the right thing to do in this case, for these students in this situation. It’s still nowhere near my natural way of doing things.

Then again, it’s not supposed to be about me and my preferred way of doing things. It’s not really supposed to be about me, period. I read a teacher book, once – I know some stuff. And I have a blog; that makes me an EXPERT!

But this is, like… hard. I’ve already had enough things in recent years be hard. I’d like to sit back and wisely counsel others on dealing with adversity – I’ve no time for more of it personally. The learning happens in the struggle, sure… but can I not just read a book or something and we’ll call it even?

I’m not mad at anyone (well, myself sometimes) and I sure as hell don’t want to send any signals that I dislike or resent my kids – I don’t. I really, really don’t. (Some of them are already quite lovable, including the young man I’ve called security on twice already.) They need me to handle this well, and to be predictable, and to calmly make them mad by enforcing the policies, and to quietly assume the best about them when they’re trying to convince me otherwise, and to let them not like me because I’m so very “unfair.”

They need me to step back and not push relationship unless they decide they want it. To neither stereotype nor patronize them by believing I am in any way “down with kids.” (I’m so totally not.) Where my instinct is to connect, they need me to first be willing to contain. It kicks against everything I’ve loved about the gig for twenty years to so often and so calmly say, “no” and stand by it because anything else is chaos right now.

But I’m learning. And some of them are already asking some interesting questions. Not about English or History, unfortunately, but I suppose that will come. I don’t know them or their worlds and can’t read them the way I could so many others before, but in a way that’s probably just as well. This is going to take a while, and I should absolutely let it.

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Teach A Kid To Fish…

October 13, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

It’s so tempting sometimes to actually teach my kids some history. But I can’t.

Well, I CAN – it’s just I know I shouldn’t. Not very often. Teaching them stuff is, um… bad.

Direct instruction has been weighed and found wanting, as the amount of information available is simply too vast and the needs of the next generation too unpredictable to settle on this or that bucket of knowledge as canon. We are called, it seems, to teach them to think! To question! To boldly go where no student has gone before!

If you read the various criticisms of lectures and other teacher-driven, direct-instruction-ish stuff, you’d think the underlying problem is that such things are ineffective. That’s not true.

I give pretty sweet lectures, packed with content and connection and interaction with students – all sorts of edu-goodness. When former students come back to visit, or email me years later, they may thank me for pushing coherent thesis sentences – but they remember with enthusiasm the stuff from the lectures. They tell me how it was the first time they’d liked history, or understood government, or whatever, and tell me stories of how something learned therein came in handy in subsequent academia.

The problem isn’t that my activities or direct instruction aren’t effective; the problem is that they leave me doing so much of the work. As a department and a district, we’ve prioritized teaching kids to think, and to learn, and to function. We’re trying to make our students into students.

We’re trying to teach them to ask various types of questions effectively, to dig into documents or statistics or pictures and ponder what those sources do or don’t communicate, and how they do or don’t communicate it. We want them to read and write coherently, and above all else – and this is the killer – we’re trying to teach them not to be helpless little nurslings in the face of every idea, task, or challenge.

That part feels damn near impossible most days. If ignorance is a mighty river, we’re that ichthus fish swimming against the tide – losing out to the gar of apathy and the tuna of better-things-to-do.

Seriously, we should make shirts.

This is where the idealists jump in to argue that we can do both – we can teach content THROUGH the skills! Whoever’s doing the struggling is doing the learning! Let’s celebrate this breakthrough!

The learning DOES happen in the struggle – this is dogma to me. I would argue, however, that we must inculcate and consciously teach the struggle. Our darlings do not, by and large, come with a built in appreciation of struggle – at least in application to education. Some struggle enough getting through the rest of their worlds and have little energy left for academic wrestling matches. Others push themselves quite impressively through their own little zone of proximal development while playing music or sports or video games, but lack enthusiasm for transferring the principle to unpacking the Federalist #10.

It’s that teaching of the struggle that’s killing me.

It’s not an intelligence problem, or an attitude problem. It’s not even the challenge of the content.

It’s the mindset of helplessness and a sort of dazed, bewildered hurt they experience at the least of my expectations. That’s what I can’t seem to overcome. I don’t know how to fix it. I must fix it, of course – we’re no longer allowed to let kids fail in any way, shape or form – we must save them repeatedly or they’ll never learn to be independent, self-directed learners.

Forget analyzing the Federalist Papers, I can’t get them to reference my class webpage for help or assignments they’ve missed, let alone videos I’ve posted for them to watch. And getting them to check their own grades online rather than expect I spend half of every class period EVERY DAY explaining what they haven’t turned in (“but I wasn’t here that day”) – you’d think I’d handed them a scalpel and suggested they do their own colon splicing.

It’s not that they don’t know how the internet works – Google is their info-god. It simply never occurred to them that not EVERYTHING associated with school would be photocopied and hand-delivered to their backpack as many times as they can lose it. The drive – the initiative – the risk-taking craziness required to click on a few things or look on more than one page or ask questions of the people around them – it’s simply beyond many of them.

We’ve taught them to be completely helpless. We’ve trained them not to move until we tell them exactly what to do, and how, and then do it for them. The learning does indeed happen in the struggle, but how do they learn to struggle without, well… struggling?

I don’t say this to curse them or bust out the standard “kids these days” routine. It’s a new generation and we’re going to have to figure out some new ways to reach them. That’s fine – that’s why I make the big bucks. I’m SO up for the challenge.

Most days.

But it makes me tired. The number of ways students go out of their way to make their own learning untenable is fascinating. The internal mechanisms protecting them from forward momentum are legion. The currently trending vision of an edu-spirational Arcadia where students are natural learners if only the damn teachers would get out of the way is ridiculous. Come watch 200 kids in the commons a half-hour before school starts staring bored into space rather than risk reading or finishing their math and tell me how self-actuated they are.

I love them, you understand – but I drag them into the light kicking and screaming, if at all. Meanwhile, I hear repeatedly that I should be letting them do more of the dragging.

I’m not supposed to spoon-feed them, but they won’t chew – and they’re starving, informationally-speaking.

I’m not giving up on them, but more and more I’m wondering if the skills and mindset I’m failing to instill are worth the trade-off of basic knowledge and cultural literacy I could lead them through instead. AND the results are clearly measurable – we like that, right?

I feel myself giving in… letting go of the idealistic ‘oughta work’ and looking longingly towards the ‘would actually result in learning.’ I feel myself slipping off-program, avoiding my admins, and lying to my PLC about what I’m really doing in class that day.

I want to just teach them stuff about history and government and things that actually matter to them in the real world right now. I want to see that look where they ‘get it’ and remember it and love me for it. I don’t care if they become self-directed learners THIS year. I don’t care if they don’t master document analysis or political cartoons or thesis sentences anymore.

I’m tired. Maybe I’ll just teach a little… just this week… I won’t get hooked. I can quit any time I want – I swear. Just say the word and I’ll… I’ll flip my lesson and establish mastery-based standards achieved through collaboration, I promise! But just give me a little… one PowerPoint over the Progressives… one crazy story about Andrew Jackson and I’ll stop.

I promise.

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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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