Author: Mr. Chase

I Leave

NYC - JFK Airport: TWA Flight Center - Departure Board

A friend commented the other day that there’s a sadness sometimes in me. I’m always making sure, she said, that everyone will be okay when I leave and that I’m always getting ready to leave.

It’s true.

As an adult, I’ve lived in six states. I’ve moved away from my family and at least five families of friends I’d cobbled together. Each move has been my choice. Each time, I was moving toward something new or bigger – school, a job. And, I was moving away.

As a result, I’ve got friends across the country with whom I talk less than I’d like and to whom I’ve basically said, “If you want to be my friend, these are my terms.” I am fortunate enough that I’ve met some tremendous people who have chosen to love me enough to care through my leaving.

Some haven’t, and I don’t know that I’ve blamed them. This is what happens in life, people leave.

My most well-worn callouses are metaphorical. They are worn by the friction that occurs when a person leaves and rubs against whatever was as he heads toward whatever’s next.

I’ve been thinking about that sadness ever since my friend mentioned it. I’m not sure if it comes from the leaving or the unshakeable belief that everyone will leave. Maybe it’s both.

In some ways it’s an ideal mindset for a teacher. Each Fall, I’m entrusted with a new group of students for whom I care as deeply as any teacher can until the year ends and they leave. Then, a new group.

It’s not a great perspective in other relationships. Dating can be difficult when you realize you’re in love and, at the same time, wondering which of you will leave first.

The difference between the guy who left Illinois and Florida and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Florida, though, I hope, is that I can see it now. I can name the leaving. That forces me to understand it’s a choice, not an inescapable eventuality.

A Zac’s Guide to Procrastination

Procrastination - A1

I like the way you phrased today’s question, “favorite way to procrastinate” is a whole other animal than “most often used.”

There’s an implied choice here, that I don’t don’t know I bring to my procrastination game. It has me wondering if other people do. Do other people procrastinate consciously? Are they willfully delaying the inevitable? Am I doing it wrong?

More often than not, when I’ve procrastinated, I’ve taken myself too far down to the wire to reflect on how I got there or whether it was worth it or if I was doing something I enjoyed while avoiding doing the thing I should have been doing.

Sometimes, as exhibited by the above, I write long and winding sentences as a procrastination tool.

Other times, like when I should have been grading and commenting on student work one winter while living in Philly, I decided it was time I really dedicated the weeks necessary to finally watching all of the Stargate SG-1 series on Netflix. Spoiler alert: Every major world religion or mythology is based on an alien race.

I also procrastinate by doing the thing. While Chris and I were writing the book, I would sit down in front of my computer screen to write and stare at the cursor in a game of man-versus-machine chicken. After enough time had passed, I’d give myself credit for trying long enough, and move on to doing something else. The cursor, it turns out, always waits.

I expected to type that my favorite procrastination is running. I write about it enough here that it just made sense. That’s not why I run. I run to get things done. When a deadline looms, I go for a run to figure things out in my head, to plan for the doing, or to work through whatever problems I’m supposed to be solving. To use running as a means to procrastinate would feel disloyal or like an abuse.

I suppose I haven’t really answered the question. I’ll get back to you on it.

I’m Not Everyone’s Lorax

Lorax

I should say speaking up and acting anytime someone uses ableist language, but it wouldn’t be true. I should say diving into the question of why even subtle racism is racism or why privilege – white, male or otherwise – isn’t simply a made up term and should be examined. I should say those things and a thousand more are the are triggers of acts in the world so blatantly wrong, that I can’t keep silent.

Most of the time, I can and I do have the conversation or make the challenge. And sometimes I don’t, because becoming the person I want to be takes time, the fight can be exhausting, and I’m sometimes unsure of whether another conversation about why we should consider a word other than “crazy” will make a difference.

So, it’s the absolute nature of this question that keeps all of the above off the table as possible answers. I act more often than not, and not all the time.

Except for kids. I speak up for kids. In public places, in semi-public ways, I’ll speak up for kids.

Sometimes, it will be asking, “Is everything okay?” when an adult has clearly reached a frayed end of patience and needs someone to say, “Hey, is this who you want to be to this child?”

Sometimes it’s talking to teachers about what might be the detrimental effects of automatic deductions for late homework.

Sometimes it’s making a tough phone call when I’m worried about self-harm, or making sure there’s a safe, warm, dry bed in the event that home doesn’t look like home anymore.

I speak up and act in the face of the blatantly wrong treatment of the youngest people in our care as a society because I can and because of those who spoke up and acted for me in moments when I needed it.

This isn’t to say I believe children are without agency or the power of self-advocacy. I know full well they often have the most important voices. There are times, though, when those voices shouldn’t be expected to have to speak up or when my own voice can be heard a little better.

While I know I’m not always the person I wish I were for all the kinds of people about whom I care, I find no problem acting on behalf of kids.

You Can Keep Your Jetpacks

DSC_0435

One of my favorite elements of how Steven Johnson frames the telling of his book The Invention of Air is the historical context. Not to give too much away, but Johnson tells the history of two seminal discoveries in world history, not through the lens of the Great Man Theory, but as the timeline of events leading up to those discoveries.

“Things were moving this direction,” Johnson implies, “so this fellow interacted with the key timelines at the right time for these discoveries to unfold.”

As much as I’ve taken anything away from my reading of that book, I’ve taken away this frame for looking at discoveries and inventions. What must be true in the world and other events for this one event to occur?

Johnson also offers perspective on where those events led, showing readers what was made possible because these other things had happened.

All of this is to say my answer is reliable, publicly-available teleportation.

Hear me out.

If we get to a place where humankind all over the world has access to teleportation on a regular basis, then what else needed to happen? What other problems, much more urgent than realizing the promise of Star Trek, were likely to have been solved as well? Seeing the halting or reversing the effects of climate change and the thing itself would be grand, but we’ll likely be in an awful spot by the time we accomplish that.

So, I want to live to see the thing we most likely accomplish in our spare time after we’ve averted the majority of the impending apocalypses we’ve got cooking.

Publicly, and commonly used teleportation also means we’ve worked our way past what will undoubtably be the initial military implications of such technology. I want to see the world after we’ve figured out other folks are as likely to beam in to blow us up if we decide to do the same to them.

A world where we can teleport is also a world where we are no longer cut off from those with whom we were promised we’d be more connected because we could reach them virtually. Emailing, videoconferencing, and chatting – it turns out – don’t offer the same gateway to empathy that can be established when we are able to share the same air with another person – someone who would otherwise be foreign.

I’m not of the mindset that a world of teleporters is a utopia. It would will, I’d wager, be closer than we are today.

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.

What’s On the Walls of My Classroom?



In many of the classrooms I inhabited as a student, you’d find the requisite posters of inspiration or quick reference of whatever content was specific to that room – grammar and punctuation, formulas and functions, etc. Later, in high school, Mrs. Henning-Buhr’s room was an amalgam of markers of student expression over the years.

When she found out she had a painter in class, a mural would appear. Projects hung what I’m sure was dangerously from the light fixtures. Echoing the mark I’m sure the courses were taking on us, she invited us to leave our mark on the room.

For my first years as a teacher, all of the above was how I envisioned my classroom. Quotations, student work, the odd mural, painting one side of a drop ceiling tile (because you could turn it over and hide it if you ever had to leave that classroom behind).

The vision shifted when I attended a presentation on occupational therapy. A subject I’d had no prior exposure to, OT principles made me believe everything I put on my walls was a thing a student had to filter out when I was asking for focus on whatever the lesson of the day or moment might be. I was challenging my students to get to what I was trying to teach before I’d even started teaching it.

In the weeks after the presentation, everything came off my walls. I even asked a volunteer parent to sew curtains to put on tension rods covering the distraction of books on my book shelves. I went all in.

The walls of my classroom stayed that way until I realized they shouldn’t exist. The Museum on the Seam’s Coexistence exhibit came through the district in which I was teaching, and we able to get a field trip approved to take all of my students. Stepping off the bus, I gave my camera to a student and said, “Document this.”

Set up in a park down by the local bay, the exhibit was a collection of billboard size artistic interpretations of the theme matched with quotations from historical figures relevant to the art.

Students roved the park taking notes–or not. We ate lunch, enjoyed the park, and loaded the buses at the end of the day to head back to school.

Think of the curtains I would have needed to keep them focused on exactly what I’d determined was important that day.

The conversations following the field trip were rich, and I’m still fascinated and impressed by the roll of film shot by that one student to whom I’d handed the camera.

That trip best sums up the walls of the classroom within my head. It allows the freedom to go out and experience the world and invites pieces of the world otherwise unobtainable into the setting. It recognizes a classroom without walls doesn’t mean a classroom without limits, and that experiences should provoke students to question what’s on the other side of those limits.

I’m Glad I Waited to Teach

Calendar Card - January

Teaching.

Just like you, I knew in 8th grade I wanted to be a teacher. It was where I started to realize the power of words and the effect playing with those words, studying them, and using them thoughtfully could build or destroy.

If you’d asked me then, I would have said something like, “Because I like English class.” Subtext.

Not knowing what a “good” teacher preparation program looked like as a high school senior, I trusted the promotional materials I’d received from Illinois State University, and handed them four years of my future.

For all of the grumbling and complaining I did along the way, I’m so very glad I did. And I’m glad it took time.

While everyone around me seemed to be lamenting the fact none of the required general education courses aligned with their intended majors, I thought it was fantastic. I learned that geology wasn’t for me and that chemistry might be (something my HS experience had eliminated as a possibility time and again). Those courses afforded me the opportunity to take courses on Islamic art and culture, and the theater of the Civil War. Both offered me perspectives I’d never anticipated and to which I’ve turned more frequently than expected in the years since.

As courses in my major began, I was deep into elements of English I’d never considered before and asked to participate in what seemed like onerous hours of classroom observations and a multitude of mini lessons.

Plan, justify, teach, reflect, repeat.

It was a pattern, but not a monotony. That reflection–public and private–is where I started to play with nascent ideas and justify why views on quality learning and teaching were different from my peers’.

From lab schools to local schools to my student placement teaching, it all felt as though my university was purposefully getting in the way of me being a teacher.

They were.

They were getting in the way of me being a teacher who found himself in the deep end with no experiences, mentors, or theoretical framework on which he could rely. They were getting in the way of me thinking the kids I went to school with growing up were going to be the same as the kids I taught in Florida or Philadelphia in the years ahead.

I was sure I was ready to teach as soon as I thought I was done learning. Luckily, those who’d come the way before were there to show me knowing I was never done with one was the ultimate preparation for the other.

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.

The Last Time I Needed Courage

BEGGAR · COLOGNE · GERMANY

I don’t often meditate on courage. For most of yesterday, my answer was, “I don’t know.”

I can tell you the last time I had a great evening spent with friends or when I truly enjoyed a fantastic meal – the big little moments. I’ve often thought I don’t remember these moments because I’m an optimist. Why remember things that were difficult when you can fill that space with more pleasant memories?

Then, I remembered the last time I needed true courage to speak – lump in throat, knot in stomach, and all. It was yesterday morning. I was walking up the steps to the Metro station, and the guy coming toward me down the steps said, “Hi, do you have two dollars?”

I said “No, sorry,” and kept walking. I did have two dollars, and I lied. The courage wasn’t in the lying, and that’s why I have trouble remembering these moments. They are moments when the courage to connect with a stranger in the smallest of ways fails me or I reject it. It doesn’t seem like courage, I understand, and maybe it’s not for others. Courage, in my daily life is in the stretching beyond the familiar, the expected, and the safe.

The right thing to do, according to my own morals and ethics, is to give what I can and care for the other. Instead, I told that guy he wasn’t worth an episode of television on iTunes or Amazon. The last time I needed true courage, I let the lump in my throat and the knot in my stomach win.

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.

Come on in; are you hungry?

A cookie tin sits on my counter. There’s a cartoonish Santa face on the lid. Inside are what you might call sugar cookies. I would be quick to correct you. These are grandma cookies, and a freshly-filled tin of them has traveled home with me from celebrating Christmas with my family for as long as I have lived outside of the city limits of my hometown.

When I was younger, my gramma asked if I wanted to help her make the Christmas cookies. Mind you, this was sometime in the Fall, so my tiny self thought she was joking. Not one for abject silliness, my gramma explained that she made the cookies in the Fall so she could have them ready during Christmastime and be a little more available to be with our family. That was the first important lesson I learned that day.

The other began with the words, “Where do you think you’re going?” It turns out, you’re not done baking cookies in my grandmother’s kitchen until the kitchen has been returned to it’s pre-cookie state. To the dismay of my tiny self, this meant washing bowls, spoons, pans, and other paraphernalia. Cookies aren’t all fun and games.

There’s the tradition – cooking. The whole process, from start to finish, of preparing nourishment for those we love is something I know other families share on a regular basis. At the same time, it feels unique to mine. From my gramma’s Christmas cookies to my mom’s potato soup that serves up much larger than anyone should expect its half dozen ingredients to be able to do, cooking, feeding, sharing a meal with those I love is a tradition I can’t shake.

To feed another is not only to say, “Here’s something to eat,” it is also to give of your time, to share in your skills, and to welcome the cleaning and tidying up these meals can necessitate because these people are worth it.

When I was in undergrad, living in a squalid and terrifyingly over-priced apartment, I invited my friends over for a full-on four course meal at the center of which was served a rack of lamb. Nevermind my vegetarianism and completely disinterest in consuming what I’d cooked. I’d heard it was difficult and fancy. That seemed like a great place to start in showing my friends how much they meant to me. I cannot remember how the lamb turned out. I can picture everyone sitting around the coffee table on suspect carpet, eagerly sharing the meal and ridiculous stories served on paper plates.

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 Wish for Fatherhood

Hand of Dad

More often than not, I find myself wishing for fatherhood. In asking the question, Ben offered up birthday cakes, shooting starts, or lucky pennies. When confronted with these totems of wishing and even in their absence, my wish is consistently the same.

When I was little, pre-literate; I was sitting outside my mom’s office while she finished the last meeting of her day. Everyone else had gone home for the night, so when she and her colleague exited the office, the only person they saw was me sitting with a telephone book open to the yellow pages.

“What are you doing, Zachary?” she asked.

As the story has been shared over the years, I looked up and explained I was searching for an adoption agency that delivered. I was certain, I told my mom, that if I could get a younger sibling delivered in under 30 minutes, she’d be incapable of sending it back.

This same drive fuels my wishing to be a dad. I realize I know none of the stress, sleep deprivation, and millions of other ways my life would be altered were I to suddenly find myself a single dad. And, as much as that should probably keep me from wishing for it, it’ll be what I quietly whisper to myself when confronted with the next birthday cake, shooting star, lucky penny, or stray moment.

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 Most Valuable Chair-less Lesson

Overturned chair

The most valuable learning away from a chair and desk? Running – particularly my first marathon – has been the most valuable learning I’ve experienced. I might include whatever learning has happened at a chair/desk.

I wasn’t a runner when I started. I wasn’t anything that included physical activity, really. Whatever intrinsic joy I might have found in sports and other elements of P.E. in school were subsumed by the social pressures–real and imagined–I felt to know how to do things like layups, bunting, etc. I decided early on that excercise and sports weren’t for me. And that was how things were until I turned 21 and decided I didn’t want the most momentous thing that happened in my life that year to be the ability to legally consume alcohol.

My first steps as a runner were June 1. Two miles. I wanted to die. Oct. 12 of that year, I completed the Chicago marathon.

Running that race, I realized the marathon wasn’t going to be the event that made me a runner. It would make me a marathoner, sure, but I was a runner as soon as I made the commitment to take those first steps in June, as soon as I’d said, “This is a thing I’m going to do.”

Up to that point, I’d seen sports as things you had to have pre-provided knowledge and experience with in order to understand and participate. I’d missed the athletic boat early on, and figured that was my chance. I’d have to be happy with other things I had learned.

While I shy away from an absolute such as, “It’s never to late to become X,” one of the best lessons I’ve learned from running is the importance the decision to do or be a thing in helping you to become that thing. I wasn’t a runner because I’d decided I wasn’t or couldn’t be.

Now, when I let life dictate the terms of how I spend my time and find myself at the far end of a run-less stretch of weeks, I don’t start to doubt my identity as a runner. I’ve been a runner since an exhausting midwestern June 2-miler, and most of the time, that’s enough to get me out the door.

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.