Anticipating the Rubber Hitting the Road

I find myself in the same quandary every year. I can't recall what teaching teens is really like. By now, my eighteenth year of teaching, I feel like Dante at the beginning of The Inferno, midway in life's path with a dark woods, threat of beasts, and a bit off the trail. No, teaching is not a journey through hell despite its rough moments, piles of essays, and lost weekends of work. It's just that I never can recall the pace or timing of teaching until the rubber hits the road.

Maybe I'm not supposed to. Every year is different as every class, every student is unique. And I'm changed, too. Every encounter with students is a new one despite my experience, the tricks in my bag, my attempts to keep up with slang, and the four four-drawer file cabinets filled with instructional materials. I've traveled to Africa this summer to steel the authority of my teaching Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart, and read a couple of books on "understanding by design" and "differentiation of instruction" to hone my practice in general.

Yet, students always show me the way. Rather than Virgil, a shade of reason to guide my journey, it's the rationale of student inquiry more than standards, student character more than habits of the mind, and student energy more than AYP (annual yearly progress) that charts the scope and sequence of the year.

Until there are twenty-five students--expectant, tired, nonplussed--facing me and I say "let's see who's here" will I know what teaching is really like again.

Essences of Teaching: No. 4: Summoning Our Courage

Fourth in a Series of Three . . . or More

(Review Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

If I may add a fourth "S' along with storytelling, scholarship, and sharing, I would add the essential of summoning our courage to face and meet the challenges of our profession. Unlike random heroes of a dramatic moment, a time of peril or personal tragedy, people whom we hail as "hero" when faced by a non-negotiable situation of extreme circumstance, teachers must summon courage each and every day, with each and every classroom, and with each and every child. Our heroism comes from a steadfast vision of what should be the case, of what future we imagine, and what we know children can do, think and learn.Many Challenges

We must summon our courage inside and outside the classroom. To address the struggles of students can be daunting. Whether our students have learning disabilities, physical disabilities, emotional problems, drug addictions, English as a second language, or are bullied for sexual orientation, religion, or minority ethnicity--the sheer number of variables of what calls a teacher to intervene can make it tempting to "let that one slide." Yet we teachers know if they "let that one slide," then we've let a child slip through the cracks, and so rather great teachers take stands against mediocrity, make eddies in the river of complacency, place roadblocks to bullying and defamation, and shake off the hindrances to learning. As we do so we become exemplars of resiliency and accomplishment – the true sources of self-esteem for ourselves and our students.

A Tsunami of Technology

A great challenge is presented by incredible increase of technology that is reshaping the way students think and learn and therefore demanding we change the way teach. We must summon our courage, for this is not a pedagogical trend or a wave to ride out, it is a tsunami of technology and it is cresting above our heads. To survive, our communities must embrace the use of technology and support its funding. Teachers must be given training support and make every opportunity to learn and work with new and emerging technologies on an on-going basis. "Our schools are going to change more in the next ten years than they have in the last hundred. Everyone reading these words will be part of that change. Get ready." So says James Daly, editor of Edutopia magazine. Summon your courage.

Standardized Tests

With George Orwellian flair of a name and Aldous Huxley's dystopian vision of education, the No Child Left Behind Act has ushered in Big Brother's Brave New World version of teaching and learning—every student to turn out like the next by 2014. Its euphemistic name makes it difficult to argue against its substance, for no teacher, no legislator, no community member would not be in favor of the phrase. But as professionals of in the field, experts in pedagogy, we know a name is a name is a name and that the current plan in practice does not smell like a rose. Standardized tests encourage cookie-cutter curricula that are limited in scope, purpose, and utility, while our students are unlimited in needs, potential, and talent.

Standardized tests, as they are now, with high-stakes emphasis and heavy penalties and few educational rewards are stifling our learning communities while offering little in the way of inquiry, relevance, or the future.

Since standardized tests have been introduced in the 1990s in Pennsylvania, one by one,--writing, then reading and math, now science, and with more proposed on the way--we know the Class of 2009 has sat in a class from Kindergarten to Twelfth Grade preparing for and taking and retaking government mandated standardized tests for at least 180 days. One whole year of their public schooling spent on a standardized testing. A whole year!

Standardized testing by definition negates variables of divergent thinking and innovation. Standardized testing by definition negates the uniqueness of our students, their differentiated abilities, and their varietal talents. Standardized testing by definition negates the ingenuity of our teachers, their ability to develop relevant curriculum, and their professional talents to deliver instruction in meaningful, learning activities and provide real-world assessments. The more we use standardized tests to measure student ability, the less our schools are empowered to offer students opportunities to show their true achievement. Each year that a school meets Annual Yearly Progress of testing, is a milestone of that school's curriculum's regress toward becoming irrelevant.

Such milestones become tombstones to the kind of student performance our state and our nation country needs in order to compete in a global marketplace, a marketplace in which the successes will be built upon creativity as much as productivity, upon designing as much as performing, and upon collaboration as much as invention. When have you seen a standardized test that calls students to be creative, to design, and to collaborate? They don't exist. We must, as Robinson says, be "out of our minds" if we think standardized tests are the measure of whether we have left a child behind. The tests themselves leave children behind.

Thus, we must summon our courage. We teachers must resolve to replace testing with authentic assessments that mean learning for students and accountability for educators.We must summon our stories and our scholarship--what we as professionals know to be true from research and in the life of a classroom and in the life of each child.

"Beyond Here Be Dragons!"

"Why would anyone want to blog!" First, this is a question screamed at me today by a colleague. Second, notice I do not punctuate it with a question mark. The scream made it rhetorical.

I had been talking about a student who had recently removed a blog that included posts, though heartfelt and honest in tone and style, were perhaps so personal so as to compromise the author and his subjects in a less than perfect, not so understanding world. Although the young blogger had removed his blog, other bloggers were pulling up its contents in Google Reader and reposting them. Our world may not be understanding, but unlike the virtual world it could be more ephemeral. What we post can virsist on without us.

It is to this nonrecantable, uncontrollable existence of our posts to the blogosphere my colleague objects. She gave me pause. As she objected, I reflected.

Several thoughts came to mind. Of how she was right--it does seem unfair that once we publish, to others we cannot see, cannot know, who can abuse, misuse, and reuse our contributions in ways we cannot immediately imagine. I also thought of how I find the process of blogging--and publishing--to be almost as enriching and rewarding as reading the blogs of countless other educators who are doing the same. I have the sense that publishing my "reveries" is dues for reading the "buzz" of other bees. That together we create the prairie.

Indeed, I know that my metaphor is romantic. After all , the blogosphere is more a woods than a prairie. It offers what the 20th Century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard calls the "immediate immensity." To sit in front of a computer screen, less than a meter between you and the rest of the world, in the comfort of your own home, and not realize that it translates to billions of other screens (now and into the future) is to forget the forest for the tree. The forest may be lovely, but it is dark and deep. And there may even be wolves.

"Beyond here be dragons!" This makes me think of yet another topographical metaphor for cyber-space. The sea. But like the explorers before us we students and teachers set sail to explore while others cozy up to a cup of tea and a good book back at home. Nothing wrong with the latter, and someday I hope to make it home safely, so save a cup for me. In the meantime, I'm off.

Struggles of Trying to Be Tech Competent

Not sure I'd call myself a technology-in-the-classroom vanguard, I am at least a risk-taker, but this week I can see why more teachers aren't. The frustrations of scarcity of equipment, equipment failure, system failures, and professional development learning curve can be daunting.

As a team leader, I've spent this week in mind-boggling discussions that have included litanies of why teachers need technology and why they can't expect to get it, and I've spent class periods working with ninth graders struggling to learn creative processes for researching multi-media, remixing, and documenting information for a series of documentaries on Shakespeare's life, times, and works we are creating with Photo Story video and will broadcast on the Web. (Stay tuned.)

I'm struggling along with my students. We are learning together. From some perspectives that is the best way to learn. But for many teachers, and at times myself, the confusion and frustration makes the ole halcyon days of book-learning look like a welcome retreat. I'm rather comfortable with trying the new technologies and feel that they offer great relevancy and motivation for today's learners--and yet I'm frustrated and confused at times with my wanting tech savvy and lack of tech support.

Atop this, I'm finding great disparities in what some students know and what others do not. Even wider are the gaps in what parents are able to know and do and provide in terms of everything from understanding, encouragement, and support, to hardware, and software.

Yesterday as I walked down the hall I heard a cry of desperation from young teacher. This teacher, one from the digital generation, couldn't get a laptop signal to jibe with an LCD projector that is shared from room-to-room screamed "That's it! I'm done with this hassle. I get it all ready and then it goes down in class." I hope this is just a momentary fit and she'll gather her nerve another day.

I understand. I have to gather mine for tomorrow.

Every generation of good teachers take their stripes. These are ours, while we don't delay media literacy to our students despite a lacking critical mass of support from the learning community at large. Not only must we take the risk of trying emergent instructional technologies, develop reflective pedagogy to guide our continued practices with them, and work in a state of "perpetual beta," but also must we advocate with administrations, parents, students, and communities for the changes in school and system design needed to support, fund, equip. and sustain the sort of progress that will allow our students to gain competencies and remain competitive (as governments and schools around the world move ahead with greater celerity than we).

Image created with NGA Collage Machine

As Much As We Can Carry

At my school, we've had another security threat and all lockers are to be emptied and locked in 24 hours. Book bags, gym bags and so forth will not be allowed on campus, and so students will be coming to class in two days with only the books they can reasonably carry with them about campus all day. Some students won't come period and those that do won't have much with them. Many may have nothing in hand.

Determined and duly instructed to have "a scheduled day of school," I monitor and adjust--finding links to online texts for homework reading and posting pdf files of handouts and worksheets that students can pull from home. I find myself paradoxically plugging in technology when the personal immediacy may be too much to ask, yet a way to keep things human.

Thus done, I pause for a moment and am reminded of last summer, when I was flying home from Istanbul on the weekend of the British air travel scare. As I was standing in line with all of my bags, planning to carry some valuable and fragile treasures from my stay onto the plane, all passengers to the United States or Britain were informed that we'd be allowed nothing but our passports in hand. I found myself in the queue scrambling my pottery, icons, carpets, books in a hodge-podge of dirty laundry. Madly I wrapped objects d'art in a weeks' worth of underwear. All cameras, books, magazines, koosh pillow--any item that might have comforted me on the 18 hours of travel ahead had to be sent through baggage. Stripped of everything but a passport and boarding pass, I gathered myself onto the plane that would take me to Paris and then onto another bound for New York. After the news reports, the surprise at the check-in, the extra searches, and the wonder at what could happen next, all I could carry was my wits at their end.

I've learned over the years that no matter what happens, the school bells ring and the kids come in, the school bells ring, and kids go on their way. What happens in between in the little time we have together is fleeting, itself likely to be forgotten. Teens always have on their minds myriad, sundry things at any given moment, least of which might be my lesson at hand. Still, I hope in the time we have together in the next couple of days, we learn some things about literature surely, but more than that, I hope we remember lessons of resiliency, resolve, and respect as we cope with the distractions, frustrations, and uncertainty, to say nothing of anything worse. I expect we have a chance to realize that every day it takes courage to get on with each other in school and in the wider world. We just usually don't think about it. Thank goodness we teachers and students are not accustomed to searching, wanding, and sniffing for harm, slantways checking each other for something off.

Nor are we used to looking to each other for calm, assurance, and protection with quite so much necessity. Yet, even on the ordinary days, there we are, trusting each other, restlessly working, negotiating, arguing, mending, and figuring out the past, present, and future together. It's not for the feint at heart even on a good day. In the days of the immediate future it may likely be a full measure tougher. We just might need as much courage as we can carry.

Knowing Ourselves

But cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves, when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear, but float upon a wild and violent sea, each way and none.

--Shakespeare, Macbeth 4.2.18-22

Last week high school where I teach had a security threat–a Friday, the 13th thing. Having followed the graffiti-delivered threat and subsequent rumors grinding from the mill for some time now, at the end of the day Thursday, school officials announced the threat in a letter to parents. The administration would take precautions of securing the buildings and so forth, but school would be held as scheduled. Well done, indeed.

On Friday, what learning could be had was got without incident, other than two-thirds of the students were not in class.

A retired detective and school security director once told me that there are three responses to danger given to human beings: fight, flee, or freeze. I suspect these all come from another F word: fear. I’m not sure what accounts for all the fear nowadays. In the years following 9/11 it’s easy to scapegoat the government and the media for a climate of fear, and of course these estates have much to do with American perception, but I think we must look at the motes in our own eyes as well. According to a Harris Poll, teens today are somewhat more afraid and 49% think a terrorist event is likely to occur near them than teens were in November 2001 (42%).

Personally, I’m more worried about the worry. My seniors were in 7th Grade when the World Trade Center was felled. What have we been teaching, have they been learning, since? It seems for all American’s flag waving nationalism and bumper sticker self-righteousness when it comes down to there is a lot of us that is likely to flee or freeze when faced with an actual danger.

Freedom is not for the feint at heart. How much a land of the free and home of the brave are we if we shrink from a scrawled message on a bathroom wall. I agree with our opening the school Friday to all who would attend.

It reminds me of taking a airplane trip in November 2001, my first since 9/11. Perhaps it took a little courage, but by far it was the most encouraging thing I could do at the time. The way to fight terrorism–whether from abroad or from home or from school–is to face it. To shrink from it is to "hold rumor from what we fear and know not what we fear," and thus, to let terrorism win and leave us to "float upon a wild and violent sea, each way and none."

I don’t blame my students who stayed home on Friday the 13th–some were scared, some had parents who were nervous, and some saw a chance to play hooky–I do fret, though, about what lessons about fear we teach each other and ourselves by not showing up. In my experience, when matched against freedom, knowledge, and love, fear, ignorance, and hate lose in the end.

As a world literature teacher, I strive to teach about courage and freedom and to provide knowledge and love of other cultures. But to quote another line from the scene noted above, "I remember now I am of this earthly world where to do harm is often laudable and to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly." It can be difficult nowadays to separate news stories from one’s own life, especially if you are a student living in one place most of your life and finding out about the world largely from others. I understand that.

I think, also, that in order for courage and freedom of a society to have meaning they need start with the individual. Sometimes it may seem as if we are deciding between our survival as an individual and survival of a civilization. Yet, could it be that they are one.

Image credit: Microsoft Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers. Media Content. Microsoft Corporation, 2001.