Author: Mr. Chase

Invincible-ish

Invincible

Times I get close:
– The final stretch of a marathon, when I realize there is more in me than I’d thought 26 miles ago.
– In a classroom when students are responsible for calling on one another in conversation, the class ends, and I have to make them leave so I don’t have to explain myself to their next teachers.
– When my sisters tell me (in whatever way) that I’m a good big brother.
– Riding across the country with my little brother and we were listening to the first season of Serial. The conversation turned to who we’d call if we found ourselves in a similar situation, and he said me.
– An improv show where more than 60% of the material lands.
– Any time an airplane I’m on lands.
– When The Verve’s “Freshmen” comes on the radio and I get to sing along.
– When someone pushes against a thing I believe deeply in my core, and my brain is there to have my back and together we defend my position while leaving the door open for change.
– The Grand Canyon.
– Having to do algebra in my head and realizing I still can.

And, mostly, I don’t feel invincible. Instead, I attempt to be prepared to take on what gets thrown my way as best I can.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Diagnosing the Teaching of Adults and Children

Vitamins

So many ways to think about the differences between teaching children and teaching adults. Let’s frame it up a bit first. For starters, let’s put both of our groups in a traditional setting. The schools in which they learn and teach have 7.5 hours of classes, desks are in rows, grades are delineated by age. For the adults, there’s someone in charge of meetings if not scheduling PD. These happen once a month or once every two weeks. At a district level, trainings are offered by a PD department. These are staffed by teachers in one of two categories – they were either exemplary teachers and were pulled out of the classroom in a move to create economies of scale with their practice, or they are ineffective and were pulled out of the classroom so as not to cause too much damage.

There’s our system. It might be your system with a few different creaks and cracks in the floorboards.

Now, back to the question of the difference between teaching the adults and the children in this system. For the children, instruction is most likely a collection of linear timelines of facts and skills separated by artificial disciplines. While not completely dependent upon rote memorization of facts and procedures from the earliest days of public education, students are expected to await the topics and information teachers have scheduled. A student might happen into a unit or lesson of study that ignites his interest or curiosity, but this is left to chance and requires a great deal of social capital and individual agency to pursue outside of the regular schedule of study.

Reading this from the outside, this can seem a horrible way to pass your time. From the inside, though, many of our students don’t know any different. And those who try to demand something different often find themselves breaking against the system. They become examples for the others of why the status quo is preferable to something else, no matter how much they might enjoy that something else.

Teaching these students means moving along the well-worn path of covering content and using discipline or classroom management to control them when they stray from that path. While the schools we’re discussing may accept creativity in practice, they do not encourage it outright and certainly do not require it.

It is easy to imagine the same is true of teaching the adults in this system as is true of teaching the children. Almost.

These adults find themselves as caretakers of a system in which they were once the children. Here, let me point out, they are rewarded for being caretakers of the system rather than of the people in the system. So long as things move smoothly throughout the year, they may remain.

Teaching the adults means reinforcing that smooth movement. To keep their attention, it often means re-packaging old efforts and presenting them as a new advancement. The more veteran teachers can sense the repetition. They’ve likely taught through several cycles.

The key difference in teaching the adults here is their increased agency – personally if not professionally. Should they find the system so distasteful or unsatisfying that they no longer wish to be in it, they can move on. Whether top or bottom performers, when they leave, they allow the system to move closer to stasis. The status quo remains.

Unlike the children in the system, it is no longer necessary to prepare lessons across multiple disciplines for the adults. They’ve become specialists in specific content.

Teachers are allowed to shrug off math as English teachers, and disdain history as science teachers. This makes the dosage of professional development easier as well.

The needs of the adults as they have been shaped by the system require only content-specific reinforcement. They have no need for understanding or presenting how their respective content interacts with and is interdependent upon colleagues across the hall.

Teaching the adults means presenting information in ways that make it seem new and exciting without the requirement of a well-balanced intellectual diet. When adults leave, similar to when children are asked to leave, it is because they don’t fit the system, not because the system could not fit them.

Obviously, the above is a bleak perspective. In writing it, I attempted to be more pragmatic than pessimistic. Sometimes the two intersect. If the question is “How should teaching these two groups be different?” Then the answers are going to be specific to the individuals and cultures within schools and districts. As Chris and I suss out in our book, it means realizing asking the right questions is key. To beginning to make the system framed above a more humanistic one, the following three questions are the place to start:

  1. How do we honor and care for the humanity of each of the adults and children in our care?
  2. How do we make our learning spaces places where children choose to be, and where they make the education they need?
  3. How do we ensure each adult has a balanced learning diet, and the same opportunities to explore new curiosities that we hope they create for children in their classes?

If we take an informed, participatory citizenry as the goal of public education, and decision reflects that goal, then these three questions can help us create the schools we need.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

my busking options

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

My Urban Panic Button

Oregon Dairy Princess Mary Ann Cantrall, 1969-70

One of the most stressful aspects of urban living for me has been the urban piece. I grew up surrounded by prairie and fields and those country roads John Denver was always singing about.

It’s not my fear of unpreparedness for a possible apocalypse (though this Salon piece didn’t help), and it’s not the ill health effects (and thanks Daily Mail for this pick-me-up).

The most difficult aspect of urban dwelling for me is the lack of rural. With so many people and so little green, city living makes attempts at quieting my mind feel sometimes fruitless.

At times, I’ve wished for an app on my phone that acts as an urban panic button. It wouldn’t call the police or alert other emergency personnel. It would quickly plot the route to the most green space with the fewest people. Successes versions would allow for amentities like hammockability or privileging green over people or vice versa.

While I’ve found quiet spots in D.C. since arrving a year and a half ago, they aren’t the same as the easy access to which I’d become accustomed in Florida, Illinois, or Colorado. Many of them are the size of postage stamps and act as post cards from true open green spaces as though they were passing the message, “wish you were here.”

So do I.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Want to be irreplaceable? Be funny.

Einstein Bikes

Humorists and comedians have always been the smartest people in the world. Being funny, making people laugh, getting them to understand the absurdity of life without bringing them to tears because of its abject cruelty takes a nuanced intellect. It must  hold both the pure factual knowledge valued in commerce and scientific endeavors as well as the emotional capacity for deep empathy necessary for understanding what’s happening in the minds of audience members.

From there, our best jesters must present to audiences and readers a factually-correct story that mines a shared emotional reaction across lived experiences in a way that brings laughter and sometimes joy.

Machines will someday take over the sciences. They’ll see all the emperical data and analyze them toward whatever ends bring balance to a given equation. In a similar way, given enough if/then statements, machines will likely become our counselors. Analyzing the case histories of enough patients and a complex linguistic algorithm, they’ll be our therapists if not our friends.

The intersection of these two worlds, where our funniest people have always found their most profound material, will remain the last stronghold of humanity. Siri will respond to my request for a joke with a joke, but Siri does not understand why a joke is a joke. It is similarly incapable of understanding how to tailor a joke to my particular sense of humor, intellect, and experiences. Siri can’t read a room.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Practicing the Practice of Practice

Yoga

Last year was a year of running and a year of writing for formal publication. In a twelve month span, I ran more than 1,100 miles. Similarly, I co-wrote prepared for publication three different texts. If I wasn’t reading/writing/editing/revising, then it felt I was running or recovering from a run (and getting ready for something to do with writing).

At the end of the year, I had publications and miles. I also dreaded sitting down to write or putting on my shoes to head out for a run. I’d forgotten what it meant to have myself as an audience and I had a right IT band threatening revolt.

The resolution for this year was simple – practice better practice.

For my life and for my teaching, that means listening to what’s necessary, what’s out of balance and making whatever moves best bring balance and meet the most pressing needs.

This has meant more yoga in my life this year. Learning and refining my goal-setting practice from last year, means I don’t hold myself to daily yoga sessions. Instead, I do what I did this afternoon and say, “Some yoga would be nice here.”

That’s best practice – knowing what’s needed in the moment and adjusting to meet those needs.

I haven’t headed out for a run yet in 2016. I’m listening to that IT band and trusting it will tell me when we’re ready.

Writing is getting a similar treatment. These blog posts back and forth with you come from daily questions, and I listen to my brain before I sit down to write. If it’s still full from the day or worn out, then I allow myself to write today’s post tomorrow (or the day after that). The standard is writing, the practice is knowing when I have something to say.

That’s best practice – knowing what’s needed in the moment and adjusting to meet those needs.

This past week, I was in Orlando for FETC. I was part of no fewer than 4 conference presentations over the course of two days. In each one, I paid attention to the audience who had decided what was going on in our room was more worthy of their time than what was going on in other rooms.

As such, I tried to adjust the planned presentations to offer room for questions, discussion, and exploration. Tellingly, the reaction was often silence. Conferences are still conferences, as it turns out – our worst versions of school. I worry the practice we’re utilizing in these spaces is one of subjugation of the assembled audience to the belief that whoever’s wearing the presenter’s badge will decide the needs of the room. When given the chance at self-determination of their learning, the audience doesn’t know what to do.

I most worry this is how we’re running classrooms.

 

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

I’d Build a Constellation of Philanthropies

milky way

While I know some things about some things, everyone seems to think starting their own philanthropy is the answer. I think about it differently.

Instead of having a multitude of smart, dedicated people working on the same problem from a million different places, what might happen if that multitude of people (and perspectives) was asked to work together to consider a problem? A charitable DARPA.

Instead of starting a philanthropy, I’d try to use that sum of money to entice existing, similarly-aligned philanthropies to join forces and work to solve a given problem together.

Homelessness, unemployment, hunger, education, nutrition – all pieces of poverty – I’d find the leading organizations and minds and say, “I’ll fund a coalition if you choose to work together.” As the work progressed, we’d keep our doors open to other organizations that felt common cause while holding different views as to the solutions.

As I’d argue is endemic to our culture when people disagree, it has become too difficult to take our toys and go play somewhere else. This isn’t conducive to a rich debate, collaborative effort, or deep exchange of ideas. We don’t need more philanthropies, we need more efficient philanthropies.

How Hyperlinks Have Changed Me as a Reader and Writer

An Image of 20 open tabs on my web browser

When I was in college, learning as an English Studies major, we were just beginning to have conversations about “hypertextuality” and what it’s implications might be for reading and writing. If everything could be connected to everything else to which it was referring, how might that change the load for readers?

Decades into the transformation, I’ve got my initial findings ready to report. It means a ton.

First, the reader’s perspective. Reading hyperlinked texts has created a continuous cavalcade of texts populating my browser windows across devices, apps, and windows. It hasn’t made reading more difficult, but it has made the act of learning from my reading more complex. I recently finished reading Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. It was a rare work of fiction to make it into my reading diet these days. Then, yesterday, I dove into Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft. I should say that I’m reading both of these books through the Kindle app on my tablet. When I’m traveling, this lightens the load of my carry-on.

It took me a while to realize the experiential difference between the two texts. For Station Eleven, I got to read all the way through without any need of clicking. Mandel didn’t embed a single hyperlink in the book. I read it linearly as I do most works of fiction or when I’m reading a printed book. The cognitive demand was focusing on the story, the characters and how things were progressing as I moved through the book. If you haven’t read the book, it’s important to know Mandel packs the structure of the story with a great deal of complexity. Readers need to track multiple storylines across diverse geographies while also keeping track of a non-linear chronology. From a teacherly perspective, it’s advanced stuff.

Still, moving to Soulcraft was jarring. Crawford’s book is rife with endnotes and references to studies and other works that support the thesis he proposes. Because I was reading digitally, those endnotes were lit in blue on my screen, asking (daring me?) to click through and read those endnotes.

This exemplifies the biggest change I’ve experienced as a reader in a hypertextual world. I have to be active in my choices of how I navigate through what I’m reading while also actively engaging with the content of what I’m reading. My brain must do more if I’m to take advantage of the full experience.

Admittedly, the most clicking through I do when reading in the Kindle app or any of its brethren is using the dictionary function or highlighting a passage to keep or share. In online reading, though, it’s a different story. The image above is a screenshot of the window in which I’ve been writing this post. That’s twenty tabs. Some of them have been waiting for my attention for more than a month.

Hypertextuality hasn’t meant I’m reading more. I’ve always been hungry for words. It’s meant that I’ve more reading anxiously waiting for my attention. The ease of “Open Link in New Tab” driven by the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) on important thinking means I’m never at a loss for material and often overcome by choices when it’s time to read. This is why those tabs have been left open so long.

The hyperlink has given me immediate access to more information and diversions, required me to think about what I want to read while I’m thinking about what I am reading. Basically, the Internet is a choose your own adventure book.

Now, as a writer. Hyperlinks have simplified the words I feel like I need to put on a page or a screen. I just did it in the previous paragraph. I wanted to make a choose your own adventure reference and realized not everyone would know what I was talking about. Rather than using the space to explain it, I got link to the Wikipedia entry and move on. Fewer words.

Plus, using tools like citebite and the highly extension, I’m able to pull in text I want to reference or share it out to posts I want to make on social media. I start to write alongside an author. I’m changing a text as I read it. I’m co-authoring. Sure, I write here on the blog. And I am a writer on other people’s blogs. I’m commenting in-line on Medium posts (which I just realized I could do here on my WordPress install). Basically, the hyperlink has made everything I type a web.

From a design perspective, it’s also allowed me to hide that web by embedding links within text. Whenever possible in email, because I want them to look clean and reduce the amount of text on a page, I embed my links. More often than I’d expect, this results in people responding with something like, “Looks like you forgot to include the link you mentioned. Could you send it?” Then, I do. I paste the ugly, naked URL in a reply email and mention nothing about the fact they missed it in my initial missive, because of all the cognitive demands I know they are experiencing just keeping up with reading in a hypertextual society.

So, where does that leave me? As a writer, I’m clearly seeing more of a benefit from living in a hypertextual society. There’s less of a demand on what I need to explain as I’m writing, and I’m able to make references to lesser known cultural touchstones or academic works while suggesting my readers do the work of building background knowledge. As a reader, I’m learning to manage my experience and make active choices about which rabbit holes I choose to jump into. I’m raising my awareness of the fact that being exhausted with something I’m reading doesn’t necessarily mean I’m exhausted with the content, but perhaps with the process. Luckily, I can always choose to walk away from a text. Even better, my writer self can empathize with my reader self and try to create an experience that’s respectful to you.

(Final open tab count at posting, 25 26.)

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

Just Get Better

Thermometer 20oC

Tonight, a new improv team I coach had their first show. While I understand the difference between coaching and teaching, today’s question made me flash on a recent email I’d sent as an introduction to the team letting them know I’d be their coach. I made the following three commitments:

  • For each show and rehearsal, I will push you to be better improvisers at the end than you were at the beginning.
  • I will give you direct, concrete feedback.
  • I will help you set and work toward personal improv goals.

It was surprising, 4 years out of the classroom, to look at my commitments and realize they were the same things I would tell new students at back to school night.
“I’ll be your English teacher,” I’d say.
Student would sheepishly look at the floor and either student or parent would admit to the student not being a reader or writer or both.
“I’ll help you with that,” I replied.
That became the goal. At the end of the year, I didn’t need my students to consider majoring in English or start envisioning themselves as English teachers. I wanted them to want to claim the titles of reader and writer because they’d felt themselves get better, and because they saw the two activities as parts of who they were.
If they grew up to be engineers, tremendous – so long as they grew up to be engineers who read and wrote. If they grew up to be waiters and waitresses, good on ’em – so long as they were servers who read and wrote.
I am hard-pressed to think of a vocation or profession where my mind wouldn’t be put more at ease when I heard it was a position filled by a person who identified as a reader and writer.
This is how I always have and always will measure my success as an educator. At the end of the day, do you see yourself as closer to or further from identifying as a person who practices whatever I’m charged with teaching you?

The Rudder of Those Around Me

The B flat trumpet is a "she"...

My grandfather is kept alive now by an electrical impulse sent to his heart to make sure it keeps beating. The arthritis that has twisted his hands and feet makes walking and the simplest of tasks both painful and frustrating. At Christmas, I told him the same story three times within ten minutes because he asked me the same question three times.

I did my best to tell the story in the same voice each time because he is the man who taught me how to fly fish, to shoot an arrow, and to appreciate jazz.

He taught me how to drive a tractor and laughed at my great-grandmother when she saw 8yo me alone on the mower and called to let him and my grandmother know I was too young.

When my car caught fire on a bridge and my lack of credit necessitated a co-signer on a loan to buy a new one, he didn’t hesitate the sign the loan or take the opportunity to lead an in-depth explanation of credit history and interest rates.

While he isn’t perfect, my grandfather is as fine a man as I think I’ll ever know, and his body is tired.

In these moments, when the people who have been people for as long as I have been in the world are too close to leaving it, I am my most rudderless.

The character lesson of finding out who I am without my grandfather is one I dread learning.

Still, though, there are moments.

Over Thanksgiving, I stopped at my grandparents’ house. I brought with me a second-hand trumpet I’d picked up, and told my grandfather I was there for a lesson. My grandmother went to the basement and came up with a flugelhorn case. My grandfather opened it, took out the horn, and began our lesson at the kitchen table.

Those same gnarled fingers found each valve exactly as they have for the past six decades of performing in jazz bands, brass bands, and municipal bands. Though it meant pressing with the third knuckle rather than the fingertip, he showed me how far I have left to go to travel in his footsteps.

How could I not laugh when he explained his inability to hit the high notes like he used to was due to a lack of practice rather than allowing himself the out of old age?

Well over an hour into our lesson, it was my grandmother serving me a grilled cheese sandwich, not my grandfather’s energy that resulted in our horns being returned to their cases.

He’s still here, and his presence is a reminder of who I am and how I’ve gotten that way.